North Media A/S

CSE:NORTHM

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Welcome to the North Media's Interim Report for Q1 2023. [Operator Instructions] This call is being recorded.

I'll now hand it over to your speakers. Please begin.

[Lasse Brodt, executive]

Hello and welcome to the presentation of our interim report Q1 2023. My name is Lasse Brodt, I'm Group CEO. With me is Group CFO, Kare Wigh.

Let's turn to Slide 2 for today's agenda. As usual, we will cover financial highlights for the group and the businesses as well as outlook for the year. We'll end the presentation with a short status on our strategic priorities before we go to the Q&A.

First, let's look at group financial results. Again, this quarter, BoligPortal delivered a solid performance and the other businesses performed as expected. So overall, our financial results were in line with our expectations. Revenue amounted to DKK 240 million. This reflected an expected decline in Last Mile and growth in Digital Services due to BoligPortal. The EBIT margin came to 18.3% due to the revenue development in -- I mentioned before.

Cash flow from operations and free cash flow increased. And in the quarter, we benefited from a 17% return of our securities. As a consequence, capital resources increased -- and let's go to Slide 4 to look at the development in the businesses.

First, let's look into FK Distribution. Overall, FK's performance came out as we had expected. We were still impacted by inflation and, to smaller extent, structural market changes. The leaflet volume fell 10.5%, and the reason was high paper prices, fewer pages and change of frequencies. During the quarter, we did see paper price coming down from the increasing level of Q1 2022, but they remain above normalized levels.

Price increases partially mitigated the lower volume, but overall, revenue declined in the packaging and distribution business. At the same time, revenue grew from the digital platform minetilbud and selected mail. The margin came in at 20.8%, supported by lower costs for distribution, logistics and capacity. We continue to see that the underlying demand for leaflets remained strong, both on our customers -- from our customers and from the consumers.

And let me conclude this slide with the appointment of Andreas Hald as new CEO of FK Distribution as of May 1. Andreas has almost 25 years of experience from logistics, distribution and transport services. Most recently, he was Managing Director of Bring Courier & Express in the Nordics. Andreas' job is to expand FK's position in Denmark within existing activities and to direct it more towards the international market. We have worked together before, and I'm confident that he is the right person to bring FK to the next level. My own priorities, I'll get back to that in a little while.

With this, I will hand over to Kare to take us through the next part of the presentation.

[Kare Wigh, executive]

Thank you, Lasse. And for BoligPortal, the first business in our digital activities, BoligPortal delivered 17% revenue growth in the quarter, and the EBIT increased by 57%. Adjusted for the acquisition of Boligmanager in Q1 last year, the EBIT actually was up 79%.

There was a record high inflow of rental properties to the portal. The main contributor to growth was increased advertising fees from landlords and, to a smaller extent, income from partner sales. It's a strategic priority to establish local presence in Sweden. It's a necessary step to improve our understanding of the market and to grow the business. In Q1, the organization was established and the new Head of Commercial Activities took up his position on March 1. To conclude, it was a very solid performance by BoligPortal in Q1.

An important part of BoligPortal marketplace is the use of the market data that we collect and sell. With a record number of vacant rental properties, let's have a look at how, for example, landlords can make use of the available and very detailed data. In Q1, BoligPortal has launched a new product called [ lejedata ] in Danish, it's like rental data. It's an interactive tool where landlords can subscribe to real-time market data, which is a key element in the highly competitive market for home rental. With real-time data, the landlord can monitor the market development overall and down to a specific street. The landlord gained a better understanding of what the tenants request, for example, in terms of number of square meters, number of rooms and the level of the rent, and how his or her own items or properties perform against these factors and where to adjust the advertising.

At the same time, the tool allows for benchmark of one, for example, rent and how long it takes to rent out the residents. Again, data are available for a city and neighborhood or down to a single street.

With this short example of how data is a fundamental part of BoligPortal's marketplace. Let's go to Ofir. The job portal Ofir operated in market with a lower number of job adds compared to Q1 last year, where we did see solid growth. Against that background, revenue declined by 16% and. The EBIT margin was impacted accordingly and by continued investments. As you may remember, the decrease in number of job ads became significant in September last year and has now stabilized at a lower level. It's important to say, though, that the general market for job ads is still active with around 27,500 new job adds per month, and that's significantly above the levels we saw before COVID-19.

The decrease in Q1 this year was more or less evenly split between public and private sector customers, particularly revenue from large advertising packages declined as customer behavior [ tamed ]. At the same time, our candidate database saw a modest increase of users.

Now let's turn to Bekey. Bekey revenue decreased by 10%, mainly due to lower hardware sales for implementation in municipalities. It must be said that in Q1 last year, hardware sales was high as we gained new customers. The Homecare Denmark segment continued to constitute the majority of the revenue. We saw good progress in recurring license and service fees. This is also positive in the sense of establishing more and stable revenue streams in Bekey. The Properties segment increased revenue but still lower than expected, while the Distributors segment didn't perform as expected. We should still remember that both of these segments constitute a minor part of the business. The EBIT margin was impacted by the lower revenue.

This concluded the business reviews. Let's now look at the outlook for the group and for the whole year of 2023. And based on the performance in Q1 which, as we have just mentioned, was as expected, and a continued low visibility in our markets, we maintain our full year guidance. That is for the group and expected revenue of between DKK 920 million and DKK 975 million and an EBIT of between DKK 125 million and DKK 160 million. This is based on an expected revenue in Last Mile of between DKK 760 million and DKK 800 million and an EBIT of between DKK 135 million and DKK 160 million. And Digital Services, here we expect revenue of between DKK 160 million and DKK 175 million and an EBIT between 0 and DKK 10 million.

And with this, I will hand you back to Lasse to end this presentation by looking at our strategic priorities.

[Lasse Brodt, executive]

Thank you, Kare. In Q1, we focused on achieving our strategic priorities for 2023. The direction for each business is clear. At a group level, we maintain our ambition to ensure the strong capital structure to explore opportunities to grow. FK Distribution, we will continue optimizing our operation and invest in, particularly minetilbud, for further growth; BoligPortal, continue the transformation towards a full rental housing platform and expand the business in Sweden; Ofir, strengthen the backbone of the business as well as provide new front-end towards the customers and expand customer base, maintain our multichannel strategy; Bekey, gain a better foothold in the markets.

In addition, we are working hard to strengthen our business development to ensure fast decision-making and to set clear strategic direction for the entire group. This is what I will dedicate my time to from now on.

And with this, we will end our presentation today. And we now look forward to answering your questions. Operator, please go ahead with the Q&A session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] As there are no questions in this call, I'll hand it back to the speakers for any written questions.

[Lasse Brodt, executive]

Thank you all for joining today's call. We will be back, as we have shown in the slide, back in August with our results for the first half of 2023. And as always, you're welcome to call me if you have any additional questions. With that, we wish you all a good day. Thank you.