Thanks for everyone attending our CMD, we had over 500 participants! You can find the recording here: CMD 2023
Answers to the questions we did not have time to take in Q&A come here:
Q: What is the role of language in community expansion? As Peter Sergel mentioned one big thing is educate companies and train people to present. Would that be possible New revenue stream for FLIK?
With languages we need to listen to the local community and our clients. Eventually they will decide which formats (reports, news, videos, presentations etc) go with which languages. We need to go with the language that best connects that particular company with its target groups and shareholders.
As part of our holistic offering in IR Events we help our clients in many ways how to deliver their messages, in this we can also use our partner network, but we are not looking to grow a business from training.
Q: Usually you get What you Measure. How do Inderes Measure strategy, and are The results public?
We like to look it this way:
- Employees: employee net promotor score and our organisation survey
- Community: number of active users (and several other engagement and reach metrics)
- Customers: client satisfaction, average revenue per client, number of listed company clients
- Shareholders: growth, profitability, total shareholder return
In our investor relations, we continuously evaluate which metrics we present publicly in our reporting so that investors can also evaluate our progress.
Q: Are you planning on selling software globally or only in the Nordics
In this strategy period, we are focusing our limited resources to the Nordics and building on our strength of very close relationship we have with the clients. Building a global software business would require a very different strategy and a lot of capital. We are not there yet as a company, and we still have a lot of work in our home markets as the software business is still at a start-up / scale up phase. We will of course not say no to potential clients (we do have handful of software clients outside Nordics) and we might experiment low-risk ideas in an opportunistic way. But for our shareholders our message is will not allocate a lot of capital and take significant risks in building global software business in this strategy.
Q: Do you still have the 3d studios in flik that you invested about two years ago? What the investment has looked like?
Yes, our Ruoholahti studio can be used for both traditional production and a green screen virtual world production, it’s a two-in-one studio. We converted the studio to enable both as part of the overall upgrade investment, which was not significant. We have been using the studio for both, of course the volume is on the traditional side as the virtual productions are more on the high-end of the market.
Q: Given the high market shares in Finland in most product categories - Do you see opportunity to hike prices for example in research and AGMs?
We are every day making better products that create more value for our clients and in the long run we will monetize this to build a healthy, growing business, which in turn enables us to continue building better products. In some areas we see that we are creating significant value against price (and competition) and we might have some long term opportunities, and in some areas we are a challenger that needs to proof its position. Monetizing the Flywheel is art, you need solid monetization to build great services for investors and listed companies, but if you monetize too aggressively and risk losing either side of the platform, you will quickly slow down the Flywheel.
Q: In yesterday’s release you flagged the possibility of a merger with HC Andersen – Could you talk a bit more on this and the certain conditions that needs to met?
We are evaluating that as a strategic option for the long term. HCA has a great team and good customer base. Inderes has great IR products and the platform through which serve the investors. Our collaboration works in a strategic partnership model but we wanted to be transparent that we have also this option on the table.
Q: How significant market penetration in Sweden are you expecting to achieve during the strategic period in the whole flywheel space?
Our target is to get the Flywheel spinning, I can’t say in advance what this means in exact numbers. Enough growth to enable new career opportunities for our people. Large enough community and investor reach to become a relevant investor media. Enough customers to establish a position as a known IR partner in the market. Enough growth and profitability to create shareholder value.
Q: If we think about your long-term financial guidance: This year you are supported by acquisitions to reach the long-term financial target, but how much are you ready to sacrifice your profitability this year and after this year to invest in long-term growth?
We are aiming for balance of profitable mature growth products/markets and start-up products/markets to drive profitable growth for short, medium and long term.
Q: Does expanding to nordics fight against your endless goal; Rather being small and excelent than big and okay business?
A good question we need to ask ourselves all the time. To go deeper, we need to ask ourselves are we seeking growth for the sake of growth? Do we grow because of some external pressure or does it come from within the organization? Does Nordic operating model make us a better company, are there enough cross-country synergies to justify a Nordic model? Will this benefit our people, community, customers and shareholders? These are questions we’ve been asking ourselves for a long time and will continue asking. We actually had been holding back international expansion for several years because we felt were not ready for it as an organization (we needed to proof this model in Finland first and focus our energy on that), now I can say it comes from within the organization. We believe that taking this model to Nordic scale will make us a better company.
Q: Earnings & earnings growth reporting: are you going to report these geographically and by business divisions regularly? And if, what information regular reporting will include number of customers from geographically and by business divisions ? Thank you
At this point I can only say we’ll continue to develop our reporting in a way that best serves our targets and investors. With this we need to take into account the resources and cost related to reporting new metrics in a continuous way. Also, our internal structures are on a constant change and the reporting should stand the test of time, so what we come up with today should be relevant in 2027 as well.
Q: Was the stake in HCA good investment from capital allocation perspective?
The partnership and strategic investment is our go-to-market choice to start building position in Denmark. At the end of the strategy period we can probably evaluate if this was the right choice.