eEducation Albert AB (publ) (ALBERT) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Hello and welcome to today's presentation with Albert, where CEO Fredrik Benksson and CFO Erik Bei Lin will present the report for the first quarter of twenty twenty six. After the presentation, there will be a Q and A, so if you have any questions to the company, you can submit them in via the form to the right. And with that said, I hand over the word to you Fredrik. Thank you. Good morning and thank you for joining. I am Fredrik Bejtson, CEO of ALBERT and I'm joined today by our CFO, Erik Bejelin. Together, we will take you through ALBERT's first quarter report for January through March 2026. After the presentation, we will open up for questions. When we presented our year end results in February, we set a framework for this year: positive EBITDA and positive cash flow for the full year with quarterly variation.

0:53 Q1 is our investment quarter. Today, I can confirm that Q1 delivered exactly what we communicated. We exited the quarter with DKK57.6 million in cash. That is the strongest position in more than a year and DKK15 million above year end. This is a business that generates cash. The revenue base is smaller than it was a year ago, but it is also fundamentally better. 96% recurring digital subscriptions, 95% from our core markets, The Nordics and The UK. That is a more focused and a higher quality starting point than we have ever had. Revenue and EBITDA in Q1 reflects timing and deliberate choices, not a change in trajectory.

1:41 Let me explain what I mean by that. We made two choices in the second half of twenty twenty five that directly affect the numbers you see today. First, we scaled back customer acquisition during the management transition, prioritizing profitable sources over volume. Second, we activated continued revenue streams or discontinued revenue streams that we deemed unprofitable. In a subscription model, lower sales in one period translates to lower recognized revenue in the next. That is the mechanic and it's well understood and that is exactly what we are seeing in Q1. The trailing effect of lower sales in the second half of twenty twenty five hits recognized revenue hardest this quarter.

2:31 The more relevant forward indicator is invoiced sales. For continuing operations Q1 invoiced sales were broadly in line with prior year. That tells you where the revenue base is heading. We are not satisfied with the top line. Growth is a strong priority, but we are building revenue from a stable source where we can see a profitable outcome. This is not a surprise and it is not a deviation from our plan. Erik will take you through the revenue and ARR numbers in detail, including the currency effects on our UK business. EBITDA was negative in Q1. This was expected and was budgeted.

3:18 Revenue and costs are unevenly distributed across our quarters. Our marketing spend is front loaded, and Q1 is where we invest ahead of the seasonal cycle. We increased marketing investments in campaigns with revenue effects to follow. This is a planned return based spending. We communicated in February that the full year would deliver positive EBITDA with quarterly variation. Q1 is consistent with that communication. Eric will walk you through the EBITDA in detail, the cost base and margin development. Let me revisit what I think matters the most: what we actually have and what we are doing with it. ALBERT JR is our consumer platform for mathematics, reading and other curriculum skills.

4:10 It provides a head start in primary and secondary education. A market leading position in The Nordics During the second half of twenty twenty five, we deliberately restrained while we improved our tracking tools and evaluated outcomes. That work is well underway. We now invest with better visibility in what gives results. In Q1, we increased our marketing investment. Trial to paid conversion from the Q1 campaign came in above the levels we saw in comparable campaigns previously. We are not ready to quantify the full impact on the subscriber base, but early data supports the investment. Zumdag is our B2B platform for schools in The UK.

4:57 Zumdag is, to our knowledge, the only maths fluency platform with independently verified efficacy. The impacted study showed significant improvements in math performance for pupils using Samdag. That is not a marketing claim, that is evidence. And this matters because The UK market is moving towards evidence based procurement. Having proved that your product works is becoming a condition for the conversion, not so nice to have. We are using this position towards larger institutional accounts, multi academy trusts and local authorities, where deal sizes are larger and retention is stronger. The sales cycles are longer, but the value per relationship is meaningfully higher.

5:43 The pipeline for these larger relationships is building and we are in conversations for deals of a scale we have rarely seen before. The proportion of Sandoz business has been unprofitable already at contract signing and deal sizes has been low. Lifetime value has been below the cost of onboarding for smaller customers. We are now moving away from this, not from the customers, but we are automating processes for smaller accounts, making them profitable. We are also expanding Sandoz's language reach, and the first platform to the new language, Welsh, is due in September. This is a concrete step towards broader coverage within The UK.

6:29 Swedish Film continues to develop and deliver through its blanket license and school offer, which is branded Filmoscula. Here we have a stable, profitable business, reaching roughly 40% of primary and secondary pupils in Sweden. It contributes positively to improved cash flow and it requires minimal investment to maintain its position. Across our brands, more than 10,000,000 learners have engaged with our products. Each brand has a clear market position. Each one has real users, real engagement and a real impact. To summarize where we are in the execution plan: On the top line, we are investing in customer acquisition in Albert Heilmio with early positive signs on conversion.

7:21 In Sandog, we are building the pipeline for larger institutional relationships. The lead times are longer, the revenue impact will come gradually. We are not chasing volumes, we are building sustainable, long term, high value growth. On operational efficiency, there is more to extract from the cost base at the current size, but we primarily strive for growth. In B2B, we see clear synergies from automation and larger deal sizes. The goal is not to minimize cost, is to maximize our return on every Krona spent. On technology, Albert has been working with data driven pedagogy for over a decade. The data from millions of learning interactions is real and a long term competitive advantage.

8:07 This is one of our motes. We continue to use adaptive technologies as a tool for better products and more efficient operations. So, to summarize: We exited Q1 with the strongest cash position in over a year. The business is built on recurring digital subscriptions in two core markets. Q1 delivered what we said it would deliver: an investment quarter with the revenue effects building from here. We expect sequential improvements through the second half of the year and our full year targets remain: positive EBITDA and positive cash flow for 2026. Reflecting on our markets, mathematics education is a challenge that governments and school systems are investing more in, not less.

8:57 In The UK, the shift towards evidence led procurement is accelerating. And in Sweden, the debate about screen time in schools is raising the bar for digital learning quality. Both these trends favor products that can demonstrate real outcomes. At ALBERT Group, we have three established brands with a combined reach of well over $1,000,000 We have independently verified efficacy and we have a revenue base that is 96% recurring digital subscriptions. We also have a financial position to invest in growth on our known terms. There are a few more quarters of work before the top line reflects what we're building underneath, but the leading indicators are moving in the right direction.

9:44 And the value of what we have three brands, proven outcomes and the cash to invest on our own terms that is not a bad starting point. I want to thank our teams in Gothenburg, Stockholm, London and Edinburgh. The work that you do reaches hundreds of thousands of learners every day. And to our shareholders, thank you for your continued trust in our transformation, learning impact and potential. We are building value step by step. And with that, I would like to hand over to Erik, who will take you through the financials in detail. Thank you, Fredrik. Moving into the financial update. Following our structural reset, our focus this quarter was on driving operational efficiency across the group.

10:32 While our shift towards profitable acquisition has created some short term revenue noise, the organization is now leaner and our cash position is significantly stronger. Let's jump into the revenue. On this slide, you see two graphs. On the left is the total net revenue for the group, and on the right, net revenue has been adjusted to show only our continuing operations. Total revenue for the quarter was SEK 32,300,000, representing a 16% decrease year over year. To provide a bridge for that number, the majority of the gap is due to the Strawbridge divestment, which accounted for over SEK 3,300,000 of revenue in Q1 twenty twenty five. We also managed through a significant currency headwind this quarter. For example, the pound weakened by roughly 8% against the krona compared to last year.

11:22 However, we as a group are in a strong position because a large part of revenue is already in SEAC. Since the vast majority of our operating costs like salaries are also in SEAC, this creates a natural hedge. It protects margins even when the converted top line is compressed by foreign exchange rates. Looking at our continuing business on the right, we reported SEK 32,300,000. This reflects the strategic choice we made in late twenty twenty five to prioritize high quality, profitable customer acquisition overall volume. We will essentially trade the short term volume for much healthier and more sustainable revenue base as we move through 2026. On this slide, you see our EBITDA performance.

12:09 On the left is the total for the group and on the right, it's focused specifically on our continuing operations. For the total group, we saw a significant 45% improvement, reporting a loss of SEK 3,700,000 compared to the SEK 6,700,000 loss in Q1 twenty twenty five. This validates our structural pivot and shows that our leaner cost structure is delivering results. On the right, you'll notice that for our core business, the loss was 4,000,000 this quarter compared to SEK 3,200,000 last year. We, as a group, made a deliberate budget decision to lean into a strategic window for marketing during this period. In the fourth quarter, specifically around Christmas, digital marketing costs are at their peak due to holiday competition.

13:00 In Q1, the market is significantly less expensive. We chose to concentrate our marketing spend in the core business now to capture higher volume of users at a more favorable unit cost. This slide tracks our EBITDA margin, which measures our operational efficiency. The percentage of revenue we retain as operational profit. Our total group margin improved to minus 11%, a big step up from the minus 17% we saw a year ago. This progress is a result of our structural reset and the move towards a leaner, more effective and market driven organization. However, if we look at our core continuing operations on the right, the margin moved from roughly minus 9% last year to minus 12% this quarter.

13:51 We view this as a tactical trade off because Q1 is a low cost window for customer acquisition, which shows to apply slight pressure on the core margin today to secure a higher volume of subscribers for the rest of the year. As indicated by the yellow trend lines, we're still on a clear path towards sustainable positive EBITDA, and we expect this Q1 investment to drive margin expansion as that revenue scales in the coming months. Finally, let's review our liquidity. On the left, cash flow for the period was SEK15 million, which is an improvement of over SEK4 million compared to last year. Our educational film business is a key driver here. It has a very attractive cash profile that contributes strongly to our reserves, particularly in the first quarter.

14:40 On the right, you see our ending cash balance of SEK 58,000,000. We started the year at SEK 42,000,000, so we've grown our cash position by over SEK 15,000,000 in just three months. This is a very healthy position that gives us the financial stability to execute our 2026 roadmap without needing to look for outside funding. Thank you. Over to you, Fredrik. Thank you, Erik. With that, we'll open up for questions. Thank you so much for the presentation here. As you mentioned, I will now carry on with the Q and A session. Are you satisfied with the results of the Easter campaigns in B2C? Will the impact on ARA be visible in Q2? Better than we have seen before, And of course, if we reach higher volumes, that will impact ARR as well.

16:00 No, it's fine, it's fine if you can hear me. We are seeing positive signs on that campaign. It's still a little too premature to evaluate the campaign as an entirety, but what we see so far is extremely promising. We see a very high degree of trialing to paid ratio, which means that we pay for customers to come in and try, and then we are dependent on a large volume of those actually converting to paying customers. That ratio is better than we have seen in a long time, so that is very promising, and the customers that convert to paying will convert into the ARR as well. Thank you so much for that.

16:47 What are the key growth drivers for ALBERT in Q1 twenty twenty six and what is the outlook for the rest of the year? We don't really have an outlook per brand per se, but in ALBERT, in the second half of twenty twenty five, we deliberately evaluated all the channel mixes we had in marketing. We reduced marketing spend where we deemed it was less profitable than we had as our targets. And that of course affected top line, which we saw here in the Q1 report. There is a lag between the campaigns that we have invoiced sales from and what becomes the net revenue source.

17:43 Looking at what we do forward, we are now increasing marketing spend as we did in Q1 In revenue sources, we deem the ratio trialing to paying and the cost per acquisition is within the limits we have set, and they are more rigid than they have been. So we expect to grow profitably, but when we shift from the effect of the lower volumes into the higher ones is something where I can't really specifically say a date on. It will be seen in the coming quarters. So we are investing in marketing quite front loaded in the first half of the year and then we're harvesting on that in the second half of the year.

18:35 Thank you. How do you balance longer sales cycles in Sandong with near term revenue pressure? That is a good question. Looking at the mix of customers, we had quite a significant amount of customers that were clearly unprofitable from day one, as our analysis showed. We have a manual onboarding process that is a costly thing and quite a few customers are it could be on class licenses, which is a very low revenue source per deal, but still important as they can lead to school contracts or district contracts. So we have built, and that was launched just a week ago, an automated process so that smaller customers can and will sign up themselves and onboard themselves.

19:31 So we have built that into the product as well, we have an onboarding guide in the product that helps them to get in the product, get started and become active even faster than we could before, but specifically a lot cheaper. So we expect that to free up time for our sales staff to focus on the bigger deals and bigger deals have a lead time that's anywhere from six months to twelve months. It's quite a long lead time to get into the multi academy trusts, which is a collection of schools that have some joint acquisition process.

20:19 So we are in those discussions now in a greater length than we have been before. So that is what we're doing and we expect that to show over the coming quarters. But it is quite a slow process to change into the bigger deal sizes. Thank you. How should investors reconcile strong cash flow with negative profitability? That depends on which level you refer to on the profitability side. We have a cash flow that's seasonal as well. Of course, have the Swedish film that has a lot of invoicing to schools and customers in the beginning of the year and then costs to license companies later in the year.

21:13 So we have some seasonality in our product mix, but as we have set as a goal and we aim achieve, we will be EBITDA profitable and cash flow profitable for the full year. So we have quite a good cash base to work from. Thank you. Moving on to the last question we received here. Looking ahead, which market do you see most potential in right now and also if we look ahead a bit? That's a tricky one, because in Sweden we have the business to consumer or Nordics, we have the business to consumer product in Albert and in UK we have the business to business product and they are quite different. In an optimal world I would like to be able to use the strength in each and bring that to our new markets. But now we stated that we focus on our core markets.

22:14 We have quite a good potential still in The UK for instance in Zumdog. We have very high affinity in some regions and lower in others. That is a huge market and I would say that there is such a huge growth potential for Sandog in The UK that we focus on that more than we do on the rest of the world business, which is quite expensive to navigate. And in The Nordics there is also quite a good possibility for ALBERT to continue to grow by doing things better, especially in the markets where we have a lesser penetration than we have in Sweden.

23:02 Sweden sets the standard for what is achievable I think and there is nothing that says that we should not be able to have the same affinity in the other Nordic countries. So we operate those two businesses individually, not to disturb each other and that is one of the biggest changes we made when we transformed the organization less than a year ago to focus on the brands and their individual possibilities. So I can't choose between one of them. I think both have a good potential and they have a good fit in our portfolio. And then Swedish Film, of course, which is the cash engine in the company. They are exclusively Swedish with a high penetration, So in that instance, we're looking at adding newer technology, improving our efficiency and becoming stronger for the customer base we have to secure that.

24:05 Thank you so much. Those are all the questions we had. So thank you, Friedrich and Erik, for presenting here today and thank you all for tuning in. I wish you a pleasant week here. Thank you Thank so you. Thank you. And see you on July 28.