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Good viewers of InderesTV. We have Digia's CEO Timo Levoranta here being interviewed. Timo, welcome to the interview! Thank you. It was a good quarter, or profitability improved clearly, but would you like to start by telling us what the main points were otherwise?
Well, very briefly. It was certainly profitability and the success of our own products. That would be the quarter in a nutshell.
All right, but it is good that we will then move on to other themes and return to those important matters later. But let's start with revenue. There was a bit of the same trend as in Q2, meaning international revenue grew well, organically in Finland. The decline eased a little bit. So what would you comment on these markets and the drivers behind those figures?
Well, overall. It was quite stable. It was 0.6% negative, so pretty much at last year's level, so in that sense it was good. And that Central European market, where we do a lot of work together with the same KAARE, meaning we have built this joint sales model, joint operating model, so it has progressed well and it is quite a vibrant market as a market, if I were to say so.
Sweden as a market. There we operate in a couple of areas. One is the analytics area and the other is then more of this high-end development area. So let's say that the analytics area is quite stable, actually performing very well. That is positive.
In Finland then, let's say that overall Finland was still a bit negative. Those delays are visible there. It feels a bit silly to keep explaining these delays. That sort of soft demand and project delays. That was still clearly visible here in Q3, and then the competition is quite tough, and then you have to try to figure out which competitions you want to win and.
Those.
Competitions that are not as important.
Well, others in the sector as well, or a few others complained during the summer that precisely these delays, which have now been ongoing for several years, that they have continued, that customers' decision-making is slow and so on. However, perhaps in the analyst call you were a bit more positive about the outlook than perhaps previously, and then perhaps that is somewhat prompted by success in productization and perhaps especially this significant agreement by OP for your own DFS product, so could you open up these prospects a bit and. Also, what is the impact of the OP agreement on that DFS business?
Yeah, to return to the quarter still. Indeed, it was important for us now in this quarter to return profitability to a sensible level, and 10.6 was in our view a good level in that sense. And indeed, in our strategy we have those four points there. There is productization, artificial intelligence, internationalization, and expertise. Well, those four.
And now indeed here on the productization side we got good deals in a bit of different areas on the DFS side, on our own enterprise resource planning system side among other things. And you asked about the Digia Financial Systems side, so let's head there. Partially renewing the core systems of the securities side and processes related to them for OP, and it is great that we get to do this together, and it is, however, in scale now the largest deal in the history of this business area. Meaning it is a significant deal, so it certainly creates work from this point onwards towards the future as well, so now we have demand there and we have demand elsewhere too. So now we still need to look for a few good experts. Of course, they have already been searched for and partly we have them, but it looks really good in that sense. Yeah.
You mentioned that profitability there. Indeed, a clear improvement from the somewhat pressured H1, that we returned to our own levels now in Q3. What were the key drivers behind it?
According to the strategy, declared a year to renew and grow largely. Sorry, a year of renewal. Largely this. And indeed we have now renewed our operating models, so that operating model then, meaning that of course there is that. Then we are perhaps able to deliver these things a bit more efficiently when structures and others have been changed. So this certainly has an impact on it. Clearly on it. The slight pick-up in the market affects that as well of course, but perhaps more we would have been on this operating model side then. And then we consider it quite important in that sense that it must be done now, so that we are then in good shape throughout this strategy period and for the future.
Indeed, then perhaps still returning in part to that September. You updated your guidance then. Could you tell us a bit about the reasons behind it and what this new guidance for the current year was?
Yes, we updated in terms of profitability in the sense that we certainly saw that in June we went a bit. Early August, but let's say that those deals did not materialize at all at the pace we wanted. Then we made two specific decisions, that we will not stop investments for this future. And then operating model renewals are being carried out. And then if we make model renewals, since we don't adjust such one-off costs out of our guidance either, it affects this directly, so this was briefly the background to it.
Yes, and then perhaps I will still briefly return to those prospects. As I led into a bit earlier, summer is usually kind of a turning point or the second turning point. You yourself are a lot in the market, and now a few have given sort of cautiously positive comments after the summer, so what are your first feelings after the summer? Regarding customers' investment activity. There were a few wins there that showed a bit that there is activity there at least.
Perhaps right after the summer. There was still indeed a bit of slowness there, that it was not very brisk, but it certainly started moving then. Towards this September. So the third quarter turned out to be our best sales quarter of this year anyway. So there is indeed a bit of that positive tone there. It's not yet in a way that it's set in stone, but it can be seen.
And perhaps looking to the future, I partly mentioned our own intelligent ERP Envision. When we think about this matter long-term, now we went into the municipal sector when the City of Tampere chose it for these financial systems, and then more of these competitive tenders have been coming up. There is a new interesting market again, and in this market again a kind of Finnish one made in Finland. You have a license, that everything else is a system in your own management, so it is starting to be interesting and these kinds of things. They don't materialize in a single quarter, but it builds that foundation further down the line.
But a good new reference from a new vertical indeed. Yes, great stuff. Thank you very much Timo for the comments and good luck for the rest of the year!
Thank you.
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Digia's Q3 revenue development was stable, with revenue at EUR 49.0 (49.3) million. The margin improved after a quieter start to the year. EBITA was 5.2 MEUR (5.2 MEUR). International business accounted for 22.1% (19.6%) of revenue. Digia CEO Timo Levoranta comments in the video.Topics:(00:00) Digia's Q3 performance(00:25) Revenue performance(02:15) OP contract(04:02) Profitability improved after a slow start to the year(05:07) New guidance(05:58) Outlook after the summer