Operator
At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to this NNIT investor presentation for Q4 2025. Today's call is being recorded.
If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. All participants will be on listen-only mode throughout the presentation, and afterwards there'll be a question-and-answer session.
Now, to turn the call over to your speakers, you may now begin.
Pär Fors
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining this webcast. My name is Pär Fors, and I'm the CEO of NNIT.
Here at our headquarter in Copenhagen, I'm joined by our CFO, Carsten Ringius, and together we will present our fourth quarter and full-year '25 results that we released yesterday evening. Before we continue with the presentation, I would like to share a few words related to the announcement we sent out on January 15.
There I communicated I have decided to leave NNIT at the end of July or earlier if a new successor is appointed to whom I can hand over the baton. The reason for this move is actually that I decided to move back to Sweden to be with my family.
There's really no drama around this, and during this time, until the very last day, I will stay fully committed and energized in continuing to build a stronger NNIT together with all the great people here. That's enough about me, let's turn to slide number 2.
I will walk through the business highlights, including regional update. After this, Carsten will go through the group results, update to our financial disclosure, and our financial outlook for '26.
Before heading to the next slide, please pay attention to the disclaimer in the bottom of this slide. Let's turn to slide number 3.
The financial performance toward the end of the year was below our initial internal expectation, why we adjusted our outlook on December 22. The quarter was impacted by continued market unrest, especially impacting our business in Europe.
Additionally, we saw an unexpected temporary slowdown in contract signing in US, including project postponement and rephasing of revenue. I will go more into details into this later in the presentation.
As a result of the shortfall in Europe and in US, the organic growth was -7% for the quarter with a corresponding margin of 4.2%. If adjusting for the US revenue rephasing, organic growth was -3% and margin would have been 8%.
The full-year result ended in line with the latest outlook on both organic growth and profitability of -2.8%, +5.3% respectively. Please turn to slide 4.
As in the prior quarters, especially our European business has been impacted by the slowdown in the life science IT consultancy industry. Our tier 1 customer are still hesitant where we see project scope being more narrow and contract size being less value compared with what we had seen in the past.
Despite, we do see solid business opportunities. Entering the lower-tier segment is a good example.
On a positive note, we have recorded our highest customer satisfaction score of 4.6 for '25, which underpins that our customers value the work we deliver. Furthermore, we do also see that a customer of NNIT is a long-term customer due to the strong collaboration and quality, and that we have to maintain and create healthy relationship over time.
During the quarter, we have signed strategic important contract across our regions. In Europe, we have continued to broaden our customer portfolio with the lower-tier segments, ending the year with 20 new contract customers in those segments whilst also expanding engagement with our existing customers.
Additionally, we have entered new agreement in the public segment in region Denmark with the Danish Health Data Authority, Sundhedsdatastyrelsen, and with the Danish Agency for IT and Learning, Styrelsen for It og Læring. At the webcast for the Q2 announcement, we shared that we have continued to execute on our strategy by strengthening our go-to-market approach, refining our operational efficiency, and continuing the focus to structurally reduce our cost base.
In the fourth quarter, we have continued to progress on the strategic initiatives, laying the foundation for '26. On top of that, we have addressed our organizational footprint to accelerate our strategic focus in the life science segment and in the public segment.
I will come back to this later in the presentation. Please turn to slide 5 for the regions performance review.
As we have mentioned before, three out of our four regions operate in the same life science domain. Still, their performance can vary quite a bit quarter by quarter.
This difference between regions is primarily due to varying market position and market characteristics, as well as different macroeconomic effect across different geographies. As alluded to before, region Europe has continued to be significantly impact by the market unrest affecting our customers.
We have observed a different customer behavior, especially with our tier 1 customers, where new, larger engagement have been absent to the same level as we have historically seen. This has been the primary reason for the material organic decline in Q4.
However, we do see some very good traction with the lower-tier segments, where we continue to bring in new customers during the quarter. Regional operating profit margin increased compared with last year.
We are pleased that we have been able to expand the margin despite a material decline in revenue. This was driven by stronger project execution and capacity adjustment done in previous quarters, as well as saving on regional overhead costs.
The underlying organic growth performance in Region US was underwhelming at 2% due to unexpected temporary slowdown in contract signing and postponement of several projects. Furthermore, a rephasing of revenue has been made in the fourth quarter due to revenue recognition adjustment made related to previous quarter.
This resulted in a reported organic growth decline of 27%. The margin was close to 8% as the timing of the adjustment happened toward the end of the quarter with limited opportunity to further reduce the cost base.
However, adjusting for the revenue rephasing, the margin was 31%, supported by structural cost takeout carried out earlier in the year. For Region US, we do expect the region's revenue and profitability will normalize as postponed project resume and new customer contract are finalized, thereby supporting a return to previous performance level in the coming period.
The reported organic growth for Region Asia was down 30%. However, we had a one-off last year, boosting last year's revenue by 9 million Danish kroner.
The underlying organic growth was 10%, driven by hard efforts bringing in new local customers whilst continuing to grow larger customers. We are pleased with the underlying development as uncertainties persist around the trade war and how it will affect the region going forward.
The increase in regional operating profit margin compared with last year is mainly due to increasing utilization and a solid focus on execution. Region Denmark delivered a strong growth of 8%, driven by the public segment and SCALES, who continued to solidify its position as a leader in Denmark within the Dynamic 365 Microsoft solutions.
As mentioned on the last slide, Region Denmark won important contract within the public segment during the quarter. We're happy to see that our strategic industry focus toward public segment is paying off and that we have built a solid business, which will be further supported with the new agreement in '26.
Profit and margins improved compared with last year even though regional overhead cost was negatively impacted by around 5 million Danish kroner in Q4 as in the previous quarter. Adjusting for that, the margin would have been 10% last year, which entails a margin increase of more than 5 percentage point in Q4 versus last year.
As the other regions, Region Denmark have sharpened their project execution and leveraging cost reduction initiative carried out earlier in the year. Please turn to the next slide.
As I mentioned, we have reassessed our organization footprint to accelerate our strategic industry focus. In Q3, we restated the figures for Europe and Denmark to reflect all life science related business in Europe.
It has resulted in Europe, US, and Asia to be fully life science focused. In Denmark, we have introduced two distinct areas: Public, covering all related activities and pass-through, led by Jens Møller.
Jens bring valuable experience from our customer application development area and has been with NNIT for a number of years. It also meant a farewell to Kasper Søndergaard, who has pursued another career opportunity outside NNIT.
I would very much like to thank Kasper for his strong dedication over the past many years and welcoming Jens to the management team and congratulating him to his new position. The second area in the new organization setup is consolidation of all Microsoft Dynamics 365 activities.
We have transferred our Microsoft related activities to SCALES to ensure an even stronger product offering within the Microsoft space. Lastly, I would like to mention AI, of course.
It is a high priority for us on our agenda, as well it is for many other companies. We are ramping up the AI effort as AI is an integral part of our solution portfolio and a key element of our strategic direction for '26 and beyond.
Therefore, we have established a global AI center of excellence led by Sam Leermakers to ensure a structured approach on how we think, implement, and work with AI towards our customers and in our solution and in our internal work. Please turn to the next slide.
I will briefly go through the figures later in the presentation. Carsten will go through the details and assumption behind it, including an update to the financial disclosure.
Before we head into the outlook, some terminology changes will be done in connection with the Q1 trading statement in May. Organic growth will now be referred to as constant currency revenue growth.
Group operating profit margin excluding special items as group EBIT excluding special items. For '26, we target constant currency growth in the range of 0% to 5%.
Group EBIT margin excluding special items 6% to 9%. Special items will be significantly below the level of 2025, which was 83 million.
We expect the market unrest to continue to have a dampening effect on our business, including a continuation of our current tier 2 1 customer behavior. For your reference, the market outlook for our life science IT consultancy services was downgraded from around 4% to 2.8% by Everest Group in January.
Our financial aspiration toward '27 continues to be suspended. Please turn to the next slide.
Now it's time to hand over to Carsten for the group financial performance and update of the financial disclosure and details around the financial outlook. Carsten, please.
Carsten Ringius
Thank you, Pär, and good morning, everyone. Please turn to the next slide.
During the year, we have significantly improved the free cash flow. In the first half of '25, it was negative by 134 million Danish kroner, whilst it was positive 87 million Danish kroner in the second Oh, sorry.
Wrong slide. My apologies.
The financial performance for the fourth quarter was below our initial expectations, but in line with the latest communicated outlook we released in December. Pär has already been through the regional performance, therefore I will just highlight the key figures.
The organic growth ended at -7% in Q4, however, adjusting for the US revenue rephasing, the organic growth would have been -3%. As Pär alluded to, we won new contracts across regions, which lays the foundation for '26.
The group operating profit margin excluding special items was directly affected by the lower revenue recognition, ending at 4.2%. However, if we adjust for the revenue rephasing, the margin was 8%, which is in line with the margin for Q3.
If you move on to slide 10. 2025 has been heavily impacted by the market uncertainty.
It has dampened the revenue development in Europe, and we have seen disruptions to the US business. On the other hand, there has been more than 5% organic growth in both Denmark and Asia despite the uncertainty.
Full-year revenue amounted to 1.79 billion Danish kroner, equal to an organic growth of -2.8%. During '25, we have adjusted capacity to fit the current market demand and taking out regional and corporate overhead costs to structurally lower the cost base.
We have also improved our efficiency in our internal processes and become more operational efficient when it comes to project execution. Despite of all these activities, the negative revenue development has resulted in a contracting profit margin.
The group operating profit margin excluding special items was 5.3% compared with 6.3% last year. Please turn to the next slide for a brief update on special items.
As communicated on December 22, special items were expected to be around 83 million Danish kroner, and as you can see on the slide, full-year special items ended at 83 million Danish kroner, where the development in Q4 was mainly related to 11 million in restructuring costs and 16 million in board-initiated projects with advisor support. Please turn to the next slide.
During the year, we have significantly improved the free cash flow. In the first half of '25, it was negative with 134 million Danish kroner, whilst it was positive 87 million Danish kroner in the second half of '25.
The improvement from the first to the second half-year is mainly due to stronger management of trade receivables and better payment schedules for our larger customers, and also partly generated by non-recurring items. I'm happy to see the improvement in free cash flow, and it is something we have close attention to, and where we expect to see an overall improved development in '26 compared with '25.
Please turn to slide 13. In terms of our financial disclosure, we have updated our terminology, and we will go live with our new financial reporting structure in connection with our Q1 trading statement in May.
Firstly, the terminology, to avoid any confusion and to be more concise in our definition, organic growth will now be changed to constant currency revenue growth. Constant currency revenue growth is defined as the reporting revenue adjusted for foreign exchange movements.
If any M&A activity will take place, organic growth will be used again. Furthermore, we are making minor changes to the profitability terminology, where regional operating profit and group operating profit excluding special items now will change to regional EBIT and group EBIT excluding special items for further alignment compared with peers.
In regards to Region Denmark, we will now separately report on Public and SCALES. This will now mean that we will have five regions in Europe, US, Asia representing Life Science segment, and Public and SCALES, which activity is in Denmark.
All the five regions will have their own P&L and will follow the same methodology as of today. Ahead of our Q1 trading statement release in May, we will share the historical P&L figures for Public and SCALES.
Please turn to the next slide. In '26, we'll continue to execute our strategic initiatives, accelerating the commercial focus towards the public and life science segments while improving the operational efficiency and structurally reducing the cost base.
We see opportunities to profitably grow the company within the strategic commercial focus areas, although the geopolitical market unrest is expected to continue. The growth drivers are continued expansion in the lower-tier segments, growing existing engagements across tiers, and start on the project delivery on the public contracts signed in '25.
However, we do also expect that some of the tier 1 customer characteristics observed during '25 will continue into '26, which will partly offset some of the growth potential. The constant currency revenue growth is expected to be 0% to 5%.
We also expect to grow our profitability compared with 2025. For 2026, the group EBIT margin excluding special items is expected to 6% to 9%.
The drivers for the margin increase are driven by operational efficiency gains, full-year impact from cost-reducing initiative done in '25, and continued focus on streamlining processes. Special items are expected to be materially lower than '25 and will mainly related to restructuring costs as the earnout payment programs are completed.
We expect the first quarter to be below the guided range for both constant currency growth and group EBIT margin excluding special items as financial performance is expected to gradually improve throughout the year. In the outlook for '26, we assume there'll be no further deterioration of the current macroeconomic environment and no M&A activity is assumed.
Please turn to the next slide. Before we head into the Q&A, Pär will provide some closing remarks.
Please turn to the next slide. Pär, please.
Pär Fors
Thanks very much, Carsten. There's no doubt that we've had a challenging end to the year.
The fourth quarter was a quarter with continued market unrest and unexpected disruption to our US business. We had also positives, especially with strong performance in Denmark and in Asia.
Also, we managed to keep the momentum in terms of signing new contract across our regions, laying the foundation heading now into '26. Internally, we are executing on our strategic initiatives according to plan.
We are becoming more operationally efficient, we have expanded our go-to-market approach, and we are structurally lowering our cost base. Despite all the things mentioned around financial performance and focus on strategic initiatives, we have recorded our highest customer satisfaction score, emphasizing our strong relationship and collaboration with our customers.
Lastly, we announced the full-year outlook for '26 that reflects growth and improving profitability. This concludes the presentation for today.
Thank you very much for joining the call. Now we'll open the line and take your question.
Operator, please turn to the next slide and open up for questions.
Operator
Thank you. Will do.
If you do wish to ask a question, you will need to press 5* on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press 5* again.
There'll be a brief pause while questions are being registered. It was 5* to ask a question.
Let's wait a few seconds to see if anyone has lined up. No one has lined up for questions, then I will hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.
Pär Fors
Thank you, operator. Even though no question, I hope that our presentation today was explanatory and gave you some good input to our performance.
Most importantly, I want to thank everybody for joining this call, and wish you all have a great day. Of course, don't hesitate to reach out to either me or Carsten if you would have any further question.
Have a great day.
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