Spir Group ASA (SPIR.OL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of the third quarter results for Sikri Group. My name is Per Lomsdalen, and I am the Chief Executive Officer of Sikri Group. And I'm very happy to be here together with our CFO, Camilla Aardal to present our results for the quarter. After the end of this presentation, Camilla and I will answer the questions you might have. Please feel free to submit your questions into the webcast player. First, let me quickly go through some highlights from the third quarter and present why Sikri Group is such an exciting company. We had a strong quarter in terms of revenue growth and continued high margins. Overall, revenues increased by 9% year-over-year, while the adjusted EBITDA margin ended at 20%. The revenue growth was driven by additional customers, the 2023 election project in Norway for [indiscernible] and solid traction for new products and improved revenue mix. Looking at our SaaS business model, we have very attractive metrics. Our recurring and recurring like revenue remains, as you can see, at the very high level. And IRR increased 7% compared to Q3 last year to NOK 385 million. Our scalable business model has also resulted in improved margin. Reported EBITDA ended at NOK 48 million in Q3 this year, up from NOK 40 million in the same quarter last year. We have also improved our financial position considerable by this year. Net interest bearing debt is at NOK 655 million at quarter end, adjusted for late payment received in October compared to NOK 756 million at the start of this year. Thus, we have reduced net interest-bearing debt by almost NOK 100 million so far this year. Sikri Group has leading positions in 2 attractive markets in Norway and Sweden, which both are experiencing a strong drive for digitalization. Firstly, we deliver mission-critical software for the public sector. This was the backbone of our company when Sikri was first funded. Our primary customers within this area are government agencies and other public organizations. I will give you some more details of the public sector part of our business shortly. Secondly, our business is centered around real estate data and geoinformation. In this area, our primary customers are real estate, agencies, homeowners, constructors, engineers, banks, insurance companies and telcos. These are the 2 main markets of Sikri Group, a market where we have leading market positions. Over the years, Sikri Group has become a house of scalable technology brands. And these are our 4 brands within our 2 main markets. First of all, Sikri on the left side, operating within the public sector in Norway, is a leading provider of mission-critical software. Sikri has a high level of recurring revenue and long-term contracts with minimal churn. Metria is the leading real estate data and geoinformation provider in Sweden. After we acquired Metria last year, we have restructured the whole company by divesting the PMS business area and implemented a cost efficacy program. And the main focus is to develop its core business and increase margins. We are expecting to see effects from this transformation already in the first half of 2024. Ambita is the leading provider of real estate data in Norway with a high and sustained market share. Ambita creates value by moving upwards in the value chain with higher margins. Lastly, Boligmappa, the digital platform for property documentation, is an investment case for us with close to 900,000 unique users with significant potential. We are currently exploring new revenue models, which will give us higher growth rates and better margins moving forward. And with that, I would like to leave the floor to Camilla to present our financial numbers.

Thank you, Per Haakon. I look forward to going into more detail on the operational and financial development for the third quarter, which was a solid quarter for the Sikri Group with good progress across the company. Please remember to submit your questions through the webcast player during the presentation. The third quarter results are solid, especially in light of the current market conditions affecting several of our segments and also seasonal impacts that always affect Q3. We are pleased to report overall revenue growth of 9%, as mentioned by Per Haakon. Profitability improved from Q3 2022 due to improved product mix and a continuous focus on cost and scalability in shared services across group companies. The strong focus on operational results have materialized in an improvement in reported EBITDA margin of 2 percentage points. This furthermore translates into a strong improvement in net income, which ended at NOK 12 million, up from 0 in the same quarter last year. Finally, we capitalized development costs of NOK 22.2 million in the quarter versus NOK 18.8 million in Q3 2022. I've touched on some of the drivers of the quarter's results and let's now dive more into detail into the 4 key segments of the Sikri Group. Starting with Sikri, we are pleased that the transformation to cloud solutions continues to materialize into higher annual recurring revenues. Annual recurring revenue improved by 13% from Q3 last year to NOK 191 million at the end of Q3 this year, and total revenues for the quarter grew by 32%. The growth is driven by stable and high win rates and our ability to implement new agreements as well as the 2023 Norwegian election project. We're also pleased to see that the churn rate remains low at only 0.4% in the quarter. Sikri submits offers on almost all public bids where our products or services fit. It has also been a priority to upgrade our existing customer base from on-prem to our cloud solution. As of now, all customers have been moved from on-prem to cloud. Sikri has a dedicated team and a cloud-based cost-efficient solution for the clients to leverage automation technology. Sikri offers automation as a service and manages all aspects related to this technology. During the third quarter, Sikri utilized this service by entering into a new agreement with Verdal Municipality to deliver the automation of 6 processes using RPA and automation technology. But what makes Sikri [ sonic. ] Since the establishment of Sikri, our #1 priority has been to increase our market share by winning a higher share of the contracts awarded. As we bid on all relevant contracts, our 2-year average win rate of 60% has enabled us to grow our customer base. This has led to the steady growth in annual recurring revenue. And it is important to understand that Sikri SaaS agreements are long-term contracts with public sector clients who appreciate predictable terms and long-term supplier relationships. Furthermore, the software is core in nature and thereby naturally sticky. Sikri contracts run from 3 to 7 years with options to extend. This means that the order book is quite substantial. Sikri is a strong and solid company with predictable and stable revenues. And using our unique position, we look forward to identifying new areas to contribute to the further digitalization within public sector. Ambita's revenues increased by 2% in the quarter. The real estate market in Norway is still challenging. However, there was a slight upswing in the number of properties put up for sale in the quarter, which drives higher transactional revenues in Q3. Furthermore, Ambita is quarter-by-quarter increasing its revenues from SaaS solutions due to product innovation and strong sales efforts. The sale of the user-friendly and flexible version of Infoland Meglerpakke, the information package for properties for sale, was positively affected by the increase in numbers of property put up for sale during the quarter. On the other hand, growth in Ambita is also affected by the commencement of new homes. This market has been poor so far in 2023 with a decline of 45% compared to the same period last year, negatively impacting parts of Ambita's business. Despite a continuously uncertain market, we are pleased that the EBITDA margin has improved from 18% in Q3 last year to 19% in Q3 this year. The margin development is mainly a result of good traction for our new high-margin products, including the digital purchase agreement service, digital shape of contract and our solution for digital registration and collaboration, Tinglysing & Samhandling. Going forward, we will continue to increase our product footprint, investing in services that we expect to improve the overall profitability. The main focus for Boligmappa is to continue to build great products, reach and network effects. Nevertheless, it's great to see growth in new subscriptions as well. Annual recurring revenue has grown by 16% from Q3 2022 and is now at NOK 41 million. Revenues overall increased by 10% year-over-year. Boligmappa will continue to focus on user growth among private users and development of new revenue models. But to understand Boligmappa, it must be placed in the context of investments for future growth. We're investing in the development of the solution, broadening functionality, improving user interfaces, increasing focus on market visibility and preparing for future new revenue models. We can already see the effect of our growth initiatives with a solid increase in monthly active users this year compared to last year. There are close to 900,000 unique users of the Boligmappa solution today. implying that Boligmappa is one of Norway's largest user platforms. More importantly, we've seen a strong growth in the number of active users. This is a volume game. And the value of the solution is increasing daily with 1,600 documents being uploaded to the solution every hour. Going forward, we're focusing on developing new revenue models, which will be introduced now as the platform grows. We expect to see the first effect of this during H1 2024. In the Metria segment, the revenue development was flat this quarter. This is, however, in the light of a very weak real estate market in Sweden, a positive development. The number of properties sold in Sweden declined by around 20% in the first half of 2023 and has continued to be low in Q3, impacting Metria's sale of real estate information in a slightly different way than for Ambita in Norway. Metria sale of real estate information is driven by property sold and mortgages and around 25% of Metria's revenues are exposed to these drivers. This implies that revenue from Metria's other products have developed positively. Annual recurring revenue for Metria is now at SEK 112 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter has declined from 21% in Q3 last year to 18% in Q3 this year. This is mainly due to the continuing of the transformation of Metria after the divestment of the planning and surveying business area into Sweco. Now that the segment's business is focused on the group's core services, our priorities are reshaping organization, continuing to gain traction in the market with Metria's SaaS solutions and improving profitability. In the quarter, Metria signed a contract with one of the largest telecom operators in the Nordics to provide the telecom operator with Metria Maps, a service, which has grown 15% in the last 12 months and currently generates annual recurring revenues of SEK 30 million. Metria Maps is a fast and reliable map service that's easily integrated into the customers' business systems. Users get access to reliable, up-to-date and quality assured maps adapted to their needs. But why is Metria a great fit into Sikri Group? And what have we done so far during the 18 months since acquiring the company? We acquired Metria last year. And it was a company with a strong position within property and geoinformation in Sweden. And we saw that it would be a good addition to our strong positions within property technology in Norway and can enable us to develop new and exciting products for the future. After the acquisition, our first order of business was to defend our position as an important supplier to Sweden's environmental protection agency. And we won a key framework agreement in Q4 last year. The next step was to further sharpen our focus on what Metria really is good at. And so we divested a non-core business area Planning and Surveying in Q2 of this year. On the back of the divestment and because Metria is exposed to a volatile real estate and construction market in Sweden, our current focus is on margin improvement, and we expect to see improved margins from H1 of next year. Metria is a product-focused organization with deep domain expertise, which we're using to develop new services. And we're already taking a position within analysis and data for use within energy and environment, areas which we expect will be important for many of the group's customers going forward. Moving on from our 4 segments, we also want to highlight our income statement presented as actuals both for the quarter and the first 9 months of the year. These figures are as reported and not pro forma adjusted. Year-to-date 2023, Sikri Group's revenues increased by 17% compared to the same period last year. We also delivered a solid improvement in gross margin, driven by a shift in the product mix. EBITDA year-to-date is significantly improved since last year, mainly due to underlying operational improvement as well as a high level of one-offs last year related to the acquisition of Metria and the IPO. Depreciation and amortization expenses have increased compared to last year due to the increased amortization of intangible assets from acquired businesses. Net income has developed positively from last year as the underlying business is improving and fewer nonoperational costs have impacted both our P&L and our cash position. The increase in financial expenses so far this year is mainly explained by the increase in borrowings due to the Metria acquisition and some minor increases in interest expense on lease liabilities. As a portion of the debt has been reduced, financial expenses are expected to be lower going forward as seen now in Q3, where the reduction is already visible. As illustrated on the left-hand side of this slide, our cash flow is impacted by seasonal fluctuations. And Q1 is always a strong quarter in terms of as Sikri AS invoices a large part of its customers on a yearly basis in January, while Q3 is a seasonally weaker quarter in terms of cash flow. In addition, Q3 was impacted by a late payment connected to outstanding receivables from our counterparts in the sale of planning and survey, impacting Q3 figures negatively with NOK 25 million. However, this amount was paid in October this year. Adjusted for this, free cash flow was minus NOK 10 million for the quarter. In reported figures, we generated 0 operational cash flow. But as explained, this would have been NOK 21.5 million in positive cash flow if we had received said payment in time, which is a significant improvement from Q3 2022. The improvement is due to improved underlying profitability, more one-offs in Q3 last year and improved working capital. Investment cash flow consists of capitalized development costs, which were NOK 22.2 million this quarter as well as some participation in capital increases in some minority shareholdings. Financing cash flow consists of interest and lease payments. Sikri Group's cash balance was at NOK 52 million at the end of Q3 2023. Assets consist to a large degree of intangible assets where of close to NOK 1.1 billion is goodwill, and the remainder is capitalized development, customer contracts and trademarks. Equity is close to NOK 1.1 billion, leading to an equity ratio of 49%. As Per Haakon mentioned, net interest-bearing debt is NOK 680 million at quarter end. Adjusting for the late payments that I mentioned, net interest-bearing debt would be NOK 655 million. This includes lease liabilities of NOK 47 million. It continues to be a priority for the group to maintain a healthy capital structure, and we have proved during the last year that we are focusing our efforts in this important area as net interest-bearing debt has been significantly reduced during the year. We have a solid financial position, and with improved results this quarter, I believe we're in a great place to deliver even better results going forward. Per Haakon, would you like to summarize with some closing remarks?

Thank you, Camilla. Overall, Sikri Group is well positioned in an attractive market with underlying growth. Going forward, we will continue to pursue our growth strategy, and we'll continue to invest in own solutions as well as M&A opportunities. Furthermore, improving margins through leveraging common support structures will be a key priority for us going forward as well as ensuring that costs are aligned with market exposure. We expect our investments in product development to materialize in improved margins and in improved cash flow yield over time. Our services are expected to remain stable and we will continue to exploit opportunities in existing and new markets, products and services. We are ready to go for it. That concludes our presentation for today. We are now ready for the Q&A session. Camilla and I will be back in a few seconds to answer your questions. Thanks.

Welcome back. As promised, we have a short Q&A session, and we have received some questions while we were presenting the figures for Q3. So we'll try to answer as many of those as we can.

Yes.

Yes. All right. I think this is a question for you, Per Haakon. How will the market conditions affect your company in 2024? And when do you think the market for commencement of new homes will change in your favor?

Yes. I can divide the answer based on the different companies in the group. So I think for Sikri, which is mainly towards public, we're going to see stable growth also next year. The digitalization is moving forward in that industry. So we foresee that there's going to be a good growth there. When it comes to EBITDA, the -- that will be probably a bit rough, but we will deliver anyhow because we deliver when the house get out in the market. So we don't foresee any negative growth in EBITDA either. I think the market probably will also pick up in the end of next year when it comes to a new house. And then we foresee to have a stable growth on Boligmappa. We will add on more users. It's going to grow stable, and we will also do some changes on the -- on how we go towards the market in Boligmappa. When it comes to the Swedish organization, we believe it's going to be rough in the first half. It looks like the number is going to be rough in the first half, but we are doing quite -- some changes when we look at the product mix in Sweden, and we foresee that there's going to be growth Q3, Q4 in Sweden as well. So I would say, overall, looks good for next year, but I think first half is going to be a bit bumpy still in Sweden. That's why we do the -- have an eye on the cost in Sweden still for next year.

Very good. I think, connected to that, we can maybe just comment shortly on whether or not we are looking into any more M&A opportunities going forward, connected to the whole growth question.

Yes. The absolutely. M&A is still a huge part of the strategy for '24. We are right now winning the strategy map for '24. We have a good list of M&A that we're looking at, but we will do it in a smart way. So we will, where needed, look into detailed M&As. For example, in our Sikri portfolio towards public where we can see that maybe we need to add on some more product lines to have an even better product to go towards the market. So we have an eye on M&A, but it's going to be on a strategic level down in all the different companies.

All right. We also have some more financial questions. I can see, for example, we have spoken about and you just mentioned Boligmappa as well. And we talked about these new revenue models that we will be launching for Boligmappa. Does this mean new ways of monetizing contractors or new services, targeting new customers or enabling third parties to advertise their services on the platform? And the short answer to that is that it can be or likely will be both. And we're looking at several new ways of monetizing, as it was mentioned, contractors and the contracts we have and new contractors in a slightly different way, capturing some more of the value that Boligmappa creates, but also targeting new customers or new -- totally new ways of making money with partners. So we will be launching those going forward, and we're in the testing phase still on some of them. So it's going to be a a slow launch, but hopefully.

Yes, and also towards the consumer market, right? We look at Boligmappa, how the consumer can also get some extra benefits of Boligmappa. And we believe that we are in a position now to go in a different model to go to market with Boligmappa. We have established a good footprint in market with almost 900,000 users on Boligmappa. So we can see that we are in a clearly good position for getting yes, another grip of the customer that we have out there to give them even better services of the product. I think we will see the outcome of that in first half next year, maybe something in Q4 as well.

All right. Let's see, we have a question and this is kind of a complex answer, but can you give some flavor on the share of revenue in Ambita that's coming from other products than Meglerpakke, which is our Infoland offering to real estate agents? And how do these revenues develop compared to Q3 last year? And how about year-to-date? The reason -- answer is complex is as we have said before, that's a small share of our revenue. You can think about it more on a 15% to 20% volume of the total revenue for Ambita. But within that space, there are both products that are growing very strongly like Tinglysing & Samhandling, which is the digital interaction, digital registration of properties. Now that's had a very high growth, about -- over 20% against Q3 last year or year-to-date last year, but also in that portfolio is products towards the construction market, which is very much standing still right now. So it's kind of bits and pieces. But the products that we highlighted in the presentation just now that the growth is very good. And we expect to continue to be a strong area and develop new services from Ambita.

Correct. And we are looking into what's going to happen in Q3, Q4 next year when the construction market picking up. And we are looking at our product mix and we will have an eye on the cost of the different products. So we are ready to take the market also Q3, Q4 on our new products. But I would say we are very stable on Ambita overall. Ambita, as I said, it's a rough market, but we are gaining good success in that market, but we will get even more benefits when the market picks up in Q3, Q4 for Ambita with the product mix that we have.

Yes. Okay. A couple of smaller questions just on the financials. What was the margin on the NOK 12 million in revenue from the Election project? So Sikri has a frame agreement. Sikri AS has a frame agreement to deliver services connected to counting of votes on the election, which is every second year. There was about NOK 12 million of revenue on that in Q3. The margin on that is overall quite low. It's about 20%, and that consists of own consultants, external consultants and a large chunk of hardware, which is mainly passthrough. Another just purely financial question is someone has picked up the fact that we had in our investing cash flow, NOK 9.2 million payments for associates and other financial assets asking what that was. And that is actually we have participated in a capital raise in a minority shareholding that we have in SIM Energy, which is an exciting area. And we also have purchased some technology from our old split of [indiscernible], some people might remember from last year and had a small acquisition within AIoT. So that's a combination of those factors. Also a question about Metria Maps, which we highlighted a little bit from Metria Products, which is very exciting, asking whether this is a pure SaaS product with a SaaS product margin. We have NOK 30 million now of annual recurring revenue within this product, which is very, very good. As I said in the presentation, Metria is a very product-oriented organization with a lot of deep domain expertise. This is one of the solutions that we're gaining some traction on. This is a pure SaaS product, some purchase of data from Lantmateriet, which is the Map Authority in Sweden, but high margin overall, not 100%, but high margin.

I just see that we got one on the AE portfolio. How do -- are your planning to use? Yes, internally. So just back to what we said, we bought a company last year [indiscernible] and AIoT. So what we're doing these days is that we're looking at some of our products where we can use this in across the function -- across the different companies. As such, we have a group of people now established, who will work on that. And then we will -- when we have the products, we will go to the market with it. And then we will announce how we use it -- the kind of products we have. We have also hired one CTO who will soon start to take this as one of her first responsibility. So we are on it. We are using quite many hours on it. We are doing development on it, but we want showcases before we have it. And we won't showcase it before we have our customer in the other end. But yes, we are clearly working on that.

Yes. Very important for us going forward. All right. I think we are out of time for one final question. This is very interesting. You have a strong position within the public sector area and with real estate data and geoinformation. Are there any other areas where you see potential for growth going forward? I'm going to assume more than not necessarily talking about M&A, but maybe organic growth would be more interesting on commenting on.

Yes. First of all, we need to make sure that we deliver on all cylinders on the different companies in the group. We are doing that today. I would say, fairly good. We have a very good quarter. We -- as I said, we have an extra eye on Sweden, but that's because -- that's just because the market is what it is in Sweden, so we really need to make sure that we have control of the cost in Sweden, which we have, and the market will pick up in Sweden. So I think that's the #1 for us to deliver on all the different cylinders for all the different product lines. And we are spending quite many hours looking at development costs and all of that to make sure that we are very healthy group in the end. But then we're also looking into energy and environment to more details in that because lots of what we're doing in Sweden is about all the energy environment discussions that we have there that we also can use in Norway. We have the products. We have the software. And we are doing lots of time on that in Sweden, and we have an eye on how we can do that in Norway as well. So that could be sort of a new functionality in the group. But again, it's early days for it. But clearly, we have the products to go more in details into that area as well.

And Metria has a position.

Yes. Metria has a position.

Due expertise within geodata that can be used.

Yes. And energies community and everything. We have the power of taking that market, which we're working now. But I think that we will see that more clearly in Q1 -- probably Q1, Q2 next year, how that works out, but we are working on it.

All right.

Yes.

I think that concludes our presentation and our Q&A session this morning. So thank you very much.

Thank you. .