Sitowise Group Oyj (1FT.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome all, and thank you for joining Sitowise's Q2 results webcast. I'm Mari Reponen, Head of Investor Relations here at Sitowise. And with me today are our CEO, Heikki Haasmaa; and CFO, Hanna Masala. And they will begin shortly the presentation on our Q2 results, followed by our outlook and growth priorities. Please submit any questions via the chat box below during the present and we will address them during the Q&A session. And let's get started then. So over to Heikki and Hanna.

Thank you, Mari, and welcome all on my behalf as well. Let's start with the key figures for the second quarter. Net sales declined by 2%, which was actually in line with our expectations, reflecting both the decline in the number of the employees in Buildings and Sweden business area and also the negative calendar effect for the quarter. Adjusted EBITA margin was 5.1%. And again, taking into account the calendar effect, the margin would increase to 6.5%. It is good to note that the negative performance in Sweden burdened still heavily the margin. However, at the same time, improved utilization rate supported our performance in all business areas. And overall, I'm really satisfied with the performance in the Finnish operations where our underlying performance continued to clearly improve year-on-year. Our operating profit was in line with last year's level. Cash flow from the operations improved, and leverage was slightly lower than at the end of first quarter. Our order book totaled at EUR 148 million at the end of the quarter. Then looking at the second quarter in more detail, we can be really pleased with the performance in Infra and Digital business. Organic growth was 8% in both business areas, and that's a great achievement considering the mixed operating environment in both business areas. The growth in the Digital Solutions was also supported by the continued strong growth in product business, which grew by 21% compared to last year. The profitability in Infra remained above the target level. And also Digital Solutions delivered a good profitability, again, taking into account the current market environment. So we are really satisfied with these performances. What was also a highlight was that we saw a clear improvement in the structural engineering businesses, both in Finland and Sweden year-on-year. And these have been the areas where we have been -- had mostly challenges. So in that level -- in that sense, we are now in a much better position also looking at the next quarters. All of this has been supported by the strong adjustment measures, which we have been taking the last quarters, but also the active sales efforts. And as a final point, the next 12 months outlooks in Buildings, Sweden and also Digi are improving in our view, and we'll come back to these ones a bit later in the presentation. The second quarter was still too early to see visible improvements in Sweden business area, but we are really working hard to show some results further during this year. And as mentioned, the profitability of the structure engineering in Sweden improved significantly, but the weak demand in the building services engineering post some challenges and the Swedish business remained loss-making. During the quarter, we continued to face strong price pressure. It was especially in the public sector and seen then in the Infra and Digi businesses. However, as said, we managed that overall well. And then in the Buildings and Sweden business, the biggest challenge is just the overcapacity overall in the market. Order intake was a bit lower than the very strong first quarter. This development was marked by the absence of the larger project wins, especially in the Infra business areas. However, the order books in Infra and Digi remained at a good level despite the lower order intake. So this means that we are in a good position for the second half of the year, even through the order intake was a bit lower in these businesses. In connection of the first quarter, we also said that we see that the bottom of the construction market is now behind us. And we can just confirm that message, and we expect the market to improve, however, in a bit slow manner because the construction markets are still on a very overall low level. Then we'll deep dive more to the business areas, starting with the Infra, first, a few operational highlights. So we signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Downing Renewable Developments Finland to support the long-term energy system development. Also additionally, Infra secured a framework agreement with Gasgrid for project management services and that reinforces its role in critical infrastructure delivery. So great wins for the Infra business. And overall, we delivered a strong second quarter in Infra. Net sales grew by 7%. And now Infra is by far the largest of our business areas with representing 39% of the group sales. And also, as I said earlier, I'm very pleased with the profitability of the Infra business, which was again above our target level, so meaning over 12%. The growth was mainly organic, but there was also some support from the LandPro acquisition, which was done third quarter last year. But overall sales and growth was driven by the green transition and rail transport projects, which were won earlier this year and also last year. Price competition and calendar effect slowed momentum overall like slightly, but we saw a clear improvement in our utilization rate and demand remained solid across municipal infrastructure design, environmental services and also the security-related projects. And overall Infra order book, as already said, remained at a healthy level at the end of the June. And when we look ahead, we expect the market to remain quite mixed with modest public sector budgets this year. However, we are still very confident that Infra's strong market position, also the strong expertise what we have and our ability to co-create new solutions with digital solutions and our AI teams will continue to support the growth and innovation during the next quarters. Then Buildings. First, also a highlight there. So we launched a new service called Energy Map that provides energy efficiency data for properties across Finland. The service is free of charge for housing companies, property managers, with a commercial service available for real estate owners, investors and energy companies. And so if you are having a role in your housing company board, so you might want to check it, it's a very interesting one. Buildings business area continued to navigate a quite challenging market still. Net sales declined by 9%. The drop was driven by these market conditions, overcapacity, as said, and also the calendar effect. However, we were able to respond proactively by adjusting our operations, which also included permanent personnel reductions and temporary layoffs during the H1. And we succeeded now really well with the improvement in utilization rate sales activity and overall with the project management. While the overall construction outlook remains quite modest, we believe, as I said, the market has bottomed out and are really optimistic about the gradual recovery. And we continue to focus our sales efforts on segments with long-term demand, meaning industry, energy, security critical services, sustainability and also the public buildings. And overall, when we look ahead, we see medium- and long-term opportunities supported by Finland's growing renovation depth and also the new regulatory requirements around sustainability and data. Then moving to Digital Solutions. And there, we have also secured some very important contracts lately. First, starting with the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency, Digiroad system, that was a 3- plus 2-year contract, really important win for us. Then our Swedish subsidiary, Infracontrol, also secured long-term assignments with Swedavia and Traffikarket, and we had several important wins among our forest sector clients for the product business. And today, just we also announced another major win for Digi as we won the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency competitive tender to continue developing the RAIDE, railway information systems. That's also like a 3-plus 2-year contract with a value of roughly EUR 2.7 million. So excellent wins, and this will be also supporting the next quarters in the Digi business. Overall, we delivered a solid quarter for the Digi. Net sales up by 7%, now Digi being 19% of the group sales, and the growth was very much organic driven by our product business. Then while the consolidation of the Infracontrol subsidiary in Sweden impacted overall profitability due to its lower margin, we saw anyhow like-for-like profitability improvement in both Finland and Sweden. So overall in Finland, we are -- in our Digi business, we are still well on the target level, but this consolidated figure was a bit below the target. When it comes to the market, we see that the market environment starts to recover. There was increased activity in the custom software development and also the Digi Consulting. And then, of course, the product business is something where we can create the market by ourselves, and that continues on a solid path, especially with the help of our Louhi and Routa products where there were several important wins during the quarter. And as pointed out earlier, the order book is a healthy one for Digi for the next quarters. Of course, when comparing our Digi operations to IT sector peers, it's good to note that our flexible business model also combined with the deep expertise in the IT, geospatial intelligence and also the built environment positions us well for the continued growth. So we'll continue to focus heavily on the Digi business overall. And then Sweden, overall, the tendering activity increased from the previous quarter and new project wins mainly came from smaller short-term assignments, but also one larger win in building services engineering during the quarter, and that's a very positive sign for the H2. And this image on the slide is from the Terrassgården housing project in Råbylund in Lund, and that was finalized earlier this year. Overall net sales in Sweden declined by 17% and now the share of Sweden is 14% of the group sales. Again, the decline was driven heavily by the market conditions, and that has led to a smaller team size following the adjustments what we have been doing the previous quarters. Our focus during the quarter was on sales and also securing the sufficient workload, and this naturally now continues. What I'm really encouraged by is the clear improvement in the utilization rate and especially in the structural engineering. And so there, we see now good potential growing again. However, overall, the business was still unprofitable, and we are really working hard to turn it around very soon. At the end of June, Sweden's order book was stable, but yet still too low. And that's why we, of course, now focus heavily on the sales, structured account management and also we will be implementing a new CRM system, which is used in Finland, now to Sweden as well. And then looking ahead, there is clearly uncertainty related to the timing of the Swedish construction market recovery, but it's also -- or there are some signs also for gradual improvement so -- and we feel that now we are -- our team is now like rightsized to the size of the market and to the order book. So we expect the better times to be ahead. Now I'd like to hand over to Hanna, if you continue with the group performance.

Yes. I will do that. Thank you, Heikki. Yes, as mentioned, the second quarter order intake came down from the high level of the first quarter. And therefore, the order book declined both when comparing to the previous quarter and a year ago. As Heikki said, we didn't have kind of larger project wins in second quarter, especially in Infra, we've had this quite nicely in the earlier quarters. But as said, the focus remains and intensifies on active sales in all business areas. And as we now see early signs of the demand recovery, this should turn the order book to growth. And the deals that Heikki mentioned, some are quite fresh, and we are also seeing some bigger deals coming in near term. So this is a good basis then for the Q3 order intake. Overall, we feel confident about our ability to rebuild and grow the order book as the market conditions improve and as we have kind of the restructuring behind us as it now seems. On the group level, the net sales declined by 2% in second quarter, and this is obviously clearly less than in the preceding quarters, also less than the drop in the FTEs. This quarter, we are particularly pleased to see that the adjusted EBITA margin improved from the previous year, as we have put a lot of focus on managing the capacity and the costs and to improve the utilization. So this is now starting to bear fruit. Good performance driven by strong infra and digital solutions, improved utilization rates across all business areas and tight cost control overall. And Heikki already referred to the negative calendar effect and the tight pricing environment, and these had then an offsetting effect on the profitability. To improve the group level profitability further, we continue to work hard to increase our order book and utilization, especially in Sweden, but of course, in other business areas as well. Typically, the revenue level is quite directly linked to the amount of personnel, but it is good to note that in second quarter, the net sales decline was, as I said, actually lower than the decline in FTEs. This indicates a stronger net sales per employee than earlier. And obviously, also the growing product business, which is not so directly linked to the amount of employees supports in this. In the second quarter, we completed the reductions and reorganization in 2 of the business -- Buildings business areas, business lines. This meant that 26 employments ended. Partly, these were persons who had already been temporarily laid off. So the FTE reduction was a bit smaller. Also, we've had a nice amount of summer employees and trainees so the total FTE number was up from the first quarter. Utilization rate improved in all business areas, as mentioned, and this is really important, and we are really happy to see this trend turning. The impact of 1 percentage point change in utilization is indeed quite significant. It's roughly triple compared to the 1-day calendar effect. So this is something where we don't stop here. We continue to focus and look for improvements also in the future. The cash flow from the quarter was a good one and better than a year ago, also significantly stronger, obviously, than in the preceding quarter. The main reason was the working capital development. As we've commented in each of the past quarters, the liquidity remains strong, and this is, of course, very important. The net debt came down slightly along with a higher cash level at the end of leverage. And following this, the leverage also was slightly down from the previous quarter. And as a reminder, the financing facility we have was extended in March this year, and we continued with the 2 relationship banks we have. The extension was for 15 months from the previous maturity. So the package is now valid until summer '27. The slide here summarizes the key financials and other metrics and mostly we have covered the essentials. Just a couple of comments from here. After we had high restructuring costs in first quarter, the items affecting comparability were now on a more modest level, roughly EUR 400,000. The net result was somewhat better than in the first quarter. However, it remains slightly negative. So obviously, we can't be happy about that, but push forward with improvements. The other points we've already covered, so I can give it back to Heikki.

Thank you, Hanna. This is a familiar slide showing how our business mix has changed over the past years. The key point is that the share of our well-performing businesses has been further growing. This is clearly like -- or this change is driven by our own actions, our decision to focus on certain growth areas in sustainability, energy, industry, security and also the product business, but it's also because of the market dynamics, especially the weak construction markets in Finland and Sweden. The current performance level in our business area is quite mixed still. So the table here summarizes the percentage of sales of each business area during the quarter, market outlook for the next 12 months and then the current profitability level. We expect the market in Infra to remain stable and in a good level. In Digi, stable, but improving. On the other hand, the markets in Buildings and Sweden, still we expect them to remain quite weak, but we see that they will be improving. So in summary, over the next 12 months, we expect to see 3 of the 4 business areas improving. So that will be like a good sign for the future. And when we look at the profitability, as said, Infra continued solid performance, being above the target level of 12%, Digi profitability with the Infracontrol was below the target level. However, when we exclude that one, so the Finnish operations were in target level and thus healthy. And Buildings continued good improvement, but Sweden was still loss-making and -- so this we want to now turn around in the coming quarters, and we are really working hard for that. Then still summarizing the market outlook. So overall, market environment is expected to remain quite mixed this year. There is growing demand in green transition, security and also digitalization overall, and they are supporting our business performances, especially in the Infra and Digital solutions. In Buildings business, there are signs of the moderate market improvement, but we still expect the construction market recovery to be quite slow and materialize only gradually towards the end of this year and then more in next year, especially with the residential construction. In Sweden, there's also uncertainty related to the timing of the construction market recovery. But in general, we see that there are improving signs, as I said. And then just to mention the other factors impacting the '25 still include also the number of working days so there's a bit positive for the H2 compared to last year. And then summarizing basically where is our focus. So of course, a key priority, as I said earlier, this year is to improve our profitability. And we had now a solid performance there. Underlying business performance continued to improve. And also compared to last year, we've made progress, and that's the path where we want to be. Secondly, we want to maintain strong cash flow, which was also good for the quarter. And thirdly, further build the resilience by diversifying our business areas -- our businesses in the areas so that we are able to capture the growth opportunities. And so this continues so that we are not so dependent on this, which have been in a weaker market. And overall, we see growth by focusing on the strategic growth segments and maintaining the high sales activity. And we've done extensive adjustments in our Buildings and Sweden business areas during the past quarters. Now we feel that it's really time to focus on the sales, order intake, and that's the way how to speed up also the turnarounds in Buildings and Sweden businesses. Of course, we continue to improve the utilization and especially with the help of the AI solutions where we have had good progress. So we want to just use all what we have in our hands in a very effective manner. And finally, the focus is on mastering our core processes. We continue to build the strong commercial and sales mindset, also focusing on the project work, keeping the schedules and that will be seen then in the customer satisfaction, but also in the business performance. And our strategy remains the same as here. So -- and earlier, so I would just say that we've had a good progress with the most innovative, sustainable and efficient overall. So we are on a right path. Now I think it's time for the questions. And just maybe before that one, I still want to highlight that it's actually Hanna's now final webcast and release with us. So I really would like to thank you for the very hard work. And of course, you've been really instrumental in our success. And you still will be there for some weeks, but I've truly enjoyed working with you, and we will be all missing you. But at the same time, I'm happy for you, and I wish all the best for you in the future position.

Thank you, Heikki. It's been great to work with you and all the colleagues. And of course, it's really nice to end with this quarter where we have a bit of like an improvement in the profitability. So I believe the future is bright. Thank you.

And now the Q&A.

Yes.

Yes, we have a couple of questions, and please do send more if you have any. So starting with Sweden, there is a question like in Q1, you stated that the savings from personnel reductions in Sweden were expected to improve profitability from the second quarter onwards. So have you made progress in that?

Yes. I would say, like just shared that all of these adjustment measures have been -- firstly, they have been -- they were needed. We succeeded well with them. And for example, now with the structural engineering, we clearly can see that they bear the fruits as well. So that's progressing. However, okay, what we didn't fully expect was that there was a tougher month for this building engineering system. There was a bit too low volumes but we are on the right track with that one now. So we look at the -- we see that the H2 will be better for these businesses.