BTS Group AB

STO:BTS B

Earnings Call Transcript

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Hello, dear BTS investors. I'm Jessica Skon, CEO of BTS Group. Welcome to our Q2 report. I hope you're all having a lovely summer. I am joining you from San Francisco for this report.

And we'll start with the good news for basically 80% of our business. Our 2 biggest markets, BTS North America and BTS Other markets, grew by 12% in North America and 8% in other markets. And together we had an increase in combined EBITDA (sic) [ EBITA ] of 23%. Now if we look at the group level, our sales only grew 3%. And our EBITDA (sic) [ EBITA ] improved 4% to SEK 110 million. The reason for this is because BTS Europe had a tough quarter. Their revenue shrunk by 23%.

So despite the poor showing of BTS Europe in terms of their revenue performance, BTS' margins continued to remain solid at 15.1%. And our profit after tax remained stable.

So let's dive into a little bit more detail. We're going to start with our biggest unit, which in the second quarter was also the fastest-growing unit, and that's BTS North America.

So we're very happy that we've had 2 quarters in a row of back to double-digit growth. And if I just share a little bit more what's behind that: It's growth in the pharma, biotech sector. Fast-moving consumer product goods also continued to grow. We saw some decline in our work with our financial services clients. This is kind of interesting. Our revenue grew with some of our professional services firms. So while that's been a shrinking part of the portfolio for BTS Europe the last 4 quarters, in North America, it's actually back to growth.

We are noticing in general that we've had less conservatism amongst clients, but I would say in general the tight cost control remains. On the West Coast, which is our biggest unit in BTS North America, our tech and software clients drove the growth primarily there. And then if we look across the portfolio of services, it was about a year ago that we acquired The Boda Group, which gave us a very strong value proposition in executive coaching one-on-one services. And our overall growth in leadership coaching business was on a faster growth trajectory in the second quarter than some other parts of the portfolio, thanks in part to that acquisition and our strong competitiveness now in that area.

So that's our biggest [ bit ] with double-digit growth. Let's go to the opposite extreme now and we'll talk about BTS Europe.

So it was a tough quarter. There's absolutely no doubt about it. Just a little bit of background as to essentially what happened or some details behind the numbers: BTS Europe had about 30% of their revenues be delayed, get canceled or essentially disappear. And you can kind of break that down into thirds. The first 1/3 was due to bigger projects, specifically in the Nordics, that were winding down and then the team was not able to secure the second project after that. And in a couple of those clients, there was complete kind of company-wide cost freeze that went into effect. Another group of 1/3 was -- had to do with cancellations, and the reason cited by those clients was industry related. And another 1/3 was project delays. I think we had 6 different projects that delayed just in the last [ 6 quarters ] of the quarter as well, which was not great, but at the end of the day, we just didn't have a big-enough pipeline to make up for all of that change in the second quarter.

So look. I've been talking about this for 4 quarters, maybe 5 quarters now, that we've continued to be all hands on deck, focusing on our best job to find the clients that are spending and are investing in change and building up the capabilities of their people. We're continuing to do that. And at the same time, we're really continuing to double down on what we might call more of an entrepreneurial growth mindset for the team. So we're doing that by absolutely everything we can to extend and maximize time with clients. We're working from the client sites more than in the past. All of our partners are engaged in billable client projects and apprenticing the talent and building relationships. We're hosting more client meetings, more client events and so forth.

We are increasing -- not increasing. We're expanding the people who can be incentivized for finding opportunities and for leads and building relationships, so essentially increasing the number of our sales force; and then working on new ways to bring the full portfolio to the market, like the total access partnership I mentioned last quarter, partnering globally with different experts from around the world to support some of the European markets as well. And it was a tough quarter. These things have been in the works for a while. We're doubling down as well. And at the moment, our assessment is telling us that this steep decline is temporary. And we expect BTS Europe to be back to growth in the second half.

So again, despite Europe, BTS Group continues to grow both top line and bottom line [indiscernible] by our 3 different markets. So BTS North America improved their margin from 14.5% to 15.5%. BTS Europe, we've already talked about. I mean on the margin side that is clearly because of the revenue drop. BTS Other markets is developing really well, all right? Not only did they have 8% growth, but their margins improved from 15.4% to 18.2%. And when we see the margins jump like this, it has a lot to do with the efficiency gains from the year before carrying its way forward this year. They do a great job of sharing teamwork from across their geographies and around the world; continue to have good operational discipline, tight controls on costs and pricing and scoping.

And overall in APG, they had a bit of a change in service mix in the second quarter. They ended up selling services that are actually less profitable for them, but in a strange way, it helps BTS Group because it's more customized services that BTS has to execute on their behalf. So that's the reason for the decline on profit there.

If we look just kind of at historical quarter-over-quarter growth, what you can see here is, again despite the challenges in Europe, BTS continues to grow. And again despite the challenges in Europe in the second quarter, we're seeing stability in our profit performance in the second quarter. [ And I think kind of ] both of these slides are just a simple reminder of the strength in being across 24 different countries and around the world.

So we were also really busy in the second quarter. We made 2 acquisitions that I'm really excited about. One of them was we acquired the Wonderway group. And Wonderway is super cool. They're a start-up. They're pioneering in AI. Their focus is on helping salespeople become better salespeople, helping companies become more competitive and generate faster revenue growth. And they've invented a product called the Verity product, which we're super excited about it. For the first time ever, it gives BTS the opportunity to not just pull people out of the job to help them practice and prepare and get better and raise their game and so forth, but we can actually coach them in their real moments.

So the Verity product plugs into products like Microsoft Teams and Zoom. It listens to client conversations. It gives them a real-time assessment of their performance fully customed to the client sales methodology, sales plays; and what great selling looks like, so this is BTS being able to more day-to-day support our clients with accurate data on performance, which then helps us be more efficient in updating the training, the coaching and the change work that we're doing.

The other acquisition that we made was a really cool company out of Thailand. I've spent some time with them in the previous quarter. We have over 50 of their employees joining. They're the #1 organizational development and leadership business in Thailand. You can see Arinya there. She is the Founder, in the middle. She's really a trailblazer; and thinking differently around how Thai companies transform themselves, how they develop their workforce, how they up their game. Their services range from CEO advisory and coaching, all the way down to scaled transformational services. They've got an amazing group of talent and market leadership not only in the Thailand market but across Southeast Asia. So we're really excited about that because of the growth potential in that market and the synergies already that the teams are experiencing and all the energy that's coming out of this.

Just an update as well on the continued experimentation and progress in AI. From our perspective, we're looking at it from 3 different ways. One is how does it differentiate our services in the market; number two, the revenue that we're getting by helping our clients demystify AI through our training and change services; and then overall using it and tinkering with it to figure out what, if any, other productivity gains it might be providing for our people.

So just quick updates here. Obviously the biggest move for us in terms of service differentiation in the second quarter is buying Wonderway and having the Verity product now to take that to market. We built 4 more bots, so we're up at a total of 14 now. We have -- these bots are designed for continual practice and on-demand practice. We have 13 clients currently using them. One of them in particular is using 8 of them right now, and they're super happy. We also have a platform where we can customize bots for our clients very quickly.

And then in terms of AI training, our overall pipeline and demand for this is growing. In the second quarter, we won a large deal with a large health care provider in North America to be their top dividing -- top-to-bottom training partner. Everything, from the top 100 to the next 5,000 employees, are going through BTS services and training to demystify it, to begin to use it, practice and understand it and so forth.

And then in terms of internal productivity, I reported out last quarter that, the teams who are using it and are running a bunch of experiments, some aren't working. And many are. And the ones that are -- back in the first quarter, we were estimating about a 0.5% FTE savings across that team, right? Well, we have more people now tinkering around and using it. And now they are claiming 6.5% FTE savings. We have about 170 BTSers, out of 1,200, who are finding productivity gains. And it's coming from all the categories you can see below.

And look. We haven't made a decision yet if we're going to go for the enterprise agreement or not. I think we're -- I think we have the right discipline in place to really understand if in fact we will get some gains or not. And with more clarity, we'll make those decisions as we move into the new year.

So I mean that's the quick highlight on the second quarter. Those of us who know us well, we are very proud of this. BTS is a story of long-term profitable growth year-over-year. And we're continuing to experience that now even though Europe has had a tough quarter. So from the year -- from the time we went public in 2001, we've had an average growth of 12% per year and average EBITA growth of 15% per year. You can see our stable and growing dividend over the course of those years as well.

And our outlook for 2024 is it remains unchanged, so we expect our EBITDA (sic) [ EBITA ] to be better than in 2023.

And with that, I think we will open it up for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Karl Norén from SEB.

[Karl Norén, analyst]

Yes. A couple of questions from my side. The first one, on the North America, which is now, as you've mentioned, back to good growth again here for the second quarter. I mean, how much of that would you say is a result of that the market has improved? And how much is the result [indiscernible] BTS has taken market share and worked in new ways, et cetera?

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

I think it's both, right? I think the -- I think we feel less conservatism than a year ago, right, but I would say you -- we still have examples in the day-to-day who sometimes postpone or express fear or move more slowly, but it is at a different pace than it was a year ago. And I think our win rates are up, right? So the win rates are up. I think confidence is by, yes, average deal sizes are progressing nicely. Some -- I think it's a combination of both.

[Karl Norén, analyst]

And it's not only the tech industry. Because you mentioned in the report, I think, that tech is growing nicely again. But I mean recently we've seen some increasingly -- increasing fear of a recession maybe in the U.S. Are you seeing [ any of that ]...

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Yes, yes, it's -- we are not seeing it at all yet -- or not at all. I'll just say like -- I'll just that. I think the U.S. has been pretty, like, hyperbolic the last few weeks in terms of the news. And maybe it's the election or something. So it just kind of feels like people are -- I don't know. It seems like they're overreacting right now.

[Karl Norén, analyst]

Yes, yes. yes...

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

And it -- to your question, it's not just tech. We are seeing really good success in pharma, bio as we have for the last 2 years, so that kind of success is just building on itself. And then professional services came back for us in the second quarter, so...

[Karl Norén, analyst]

Yes. That's good. And then on hiring, I noticed that you stayed relatively flat in terms of the number of employees here during the quarter. Can you just talk a little bit about how you look on hiring right now in the current climate in the different regions? I guess it's a bit of mix [ with Europe that's really ] performing and [ others ] growing...

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Yes, yes, yes. It's definitely a mix. There are some markets, like the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where they need talent. And so we first moved people around inside BTS and we are also open to hiring. We have also brought in some senior talent. We expect, like, time to selling, time to revenue generation to be more quickly than the younger talent. We kind of grow that over time. And we'll continue to look for great talent and bring them in, but yes, I think we're still conservative, right? And one of the nice things about BTS is -- let's say we had a big spike in demand. We can use a lot of the external talent who are on contractor relationships with us to help with some of that increase in demand while we would build up a full-time base again. So...

[Karl Norén, analyst]

Yes, sounds great. [ And this is the last question ], on the acquisition there in Thailand. Is it possible to say what kind of margins they have been performing, that business that you acquired, [ the carve-out ]?

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Yes, I don't think we said that in the earnings. They were about 6 million in...

[Karl Norén, analyst]

[indiscernible] in the release.

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Yes, yes, exactly. They were 6 million, approximately, in revenue last year.

[Karl Norén, analyst]

Yes.

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

And yes, I don't think we've stated that. I think we expect their margins as a percentage to be slightly lower than [ BTS' ], with the plan to improve them quickly.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Daniel Thorsson from ABG Sundal Collier.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Yes. A question on Europe, first. Would you say that the recent decline here is a BTS development or a market development to the largest extent? Do you see that the market is still active out there, [ but it's just you ] focusing on the less-attractive parts? Or are you seeing any broader downward trend in the European market? And also following up on that one: Are you planning any special cost reductions in Europe ahead?

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Yes, I think it's both as well. I think it's a mix of market just because of the percentage of clients that the European team heard from in the last 4, 5 weeks of the quarter with cancellations and project delays that -- just weeks before they told us we were a go. So that to me is a sign a bit of a market which is unusual. I think it's also us, of course. Every one of the countries declined, all right, so I can't just point to one team or one office. It was pretty consistent across the board. However, our win rates on our big change opportunities are significantly better than they were last year, which has led us to kind of giving birth, if you will, to a handful of new clients which are actually -- the momentum is building quite nicely there, which is partially behind why we think we will be back to growth in the second half, yes, but I think the -- definitely the feeling in the European market in the second quarter was the most conservative, by far, out of our markets. And yes, it felt like 1 of the harder quarters that [ NAM ] experienced out of the whole thing, but [ NAM ] is kind of on the other side of that now -- or I hope so, at least. It feels that way.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Okay, so you -- have you already seen that August has started off quite good? Or I mean vacation here in -- across Europe tend to be quite late in summer, so it should be quite difficult to say anything about Q3 right now, but you still guide for a positive growth in the second half of the year.

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Yes.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Is that putting some risk on Q4 in Europe? Or how should we see it between Q3 and Q4?

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

I mean in general I'm not a fan of putting hope into our forecasts, all right? So we have enough line of sight right now on a pipeline in the third quarter where it feels better than the sharp decline of the second quarter, so -- but I mean, when I say back to growth, I'm thinking low single-digit growth. And anything over that would be a plus. And then in terms of cost cutting, BTS Europe actually has cut quite a lot; and they did that last year. I think that we are rightsized right now. And yes, I think -- if we cut further, I think it's too far right now, so we need to be a bit careful.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Yes, makes sense, makes sense. And then secondly, we have been talking about driving higher prices for some time now and closing the gap to the big consulting firm. Is that difficult in the current kind of weakish market? Or are you seeing some progress there given the earnings growth in especially North America and other markets, for example?

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Yes, we're not -- I mean, of course, we always have a handful of clients that we lose because of price. And that's okay, from our perspective, because it means we're pushing the limits. This is the time of the year where now we start to look at updating the pricing across our system, all right, on different services and solutions. That will impact then 2025. And definitely we feel like we can do that again in many of the markets, all right? So North America, Southeast Asia, Middle East. There's more than that, but those would be the 3 that feels like we would be going forward with that.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Yes, I see. I see. And then we got some responses here on the Thailand acquisition, but the German here, Wonderway, can you say anything about how many employees they are; or sales, if they have any at all; or...

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Yes, yes. yes. So they're a smaller start-up. There was only 5 of them who joined. Their sales is really small. And it's a matter of bringing their product Verity to market basically through our sales and marketing practice. We have a good start. We have about 13 opportunities in the first month. So I don't know if that's a lot or a little, but for us it feels good because there's 13 different account managers who are making introductions and testing it out as they're getting educated on the product. It's a subscription offering. It's -- typically will be funded and paid for from a different budget that our team is used to selling into, so it feels a little bit different in its nature, but its intention is very aligned with what BTS does, right, which is to deliver behavior change. And this allows us to do it more real time and continuous than in the past.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Rikard Engberg from Carnegie Investment Bank.

[Rikard Engberg, analyst]

So I just have a follow-up question for Europe. So you're talking about there were -- that there were quite a lot of delays, so to say, during the quarter. And these delays, have they been postponed to this year, with the -- have a focus on the later part of the year? Or is it towards next year you see the delays...

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Yes, they were all postponed to the second half of the year. Usually, when projects get delayed, some come back to life. And some go away, all right, but the intention of those was just pushed to the second half.

[Rikard Engberg, analyst]

Okay. Most of my other questions have been answered already, so yes.

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

[Jessica Parisi, executive]

No. Thank you all very much for your time. And enjoy the day.