Earnings call transcript: NNIT Q2 2025 Surpasses EPS Expectations

NNIT reported a strong second quarter for 2025, significantly exceeding earnings per share (EPS) expectations with an actual EPS of $1.34 compared to the forecasted $0.77, marking a surprise of 74.03%. Despite this, revenue fell short of projections, reaching 461.5 million DKK against an expected 470.25 million DKK, a negative surprise of 1.86%. The stock initially rose by 3.77% following the earnings release but has since seen a slight decline of 1.29%, reflecting mixed investor sentiment. According to InvestingPro analysis, NNIT is currently trading near its 52-week low, with the stock showing relatively low price volatility. InvestingPro’s Fair Value analysis suggests the stock may be undervalued at current levels.

Key Takeaways

• NNIT’s EPS significantly outperformed expectations, indicating strong financial management.
• Revenue missed forecasts, highlighting potential sales challenges.
• The company is focusing on innovation with new ERP and AI tools.
• Market uncertainty, particularly in Europe, remains a concern.
• The stock price showed volatility post-earnings, reflecting mixed reactions.

Company Performance

NNIT’s performance in Q2 2025 was marked by a robust EPS beat, suggesting effective cost management and operational efficiencies. While the revenue shortfall raises questions about sales execution and market conditions, InvestingPro data shows overall revenue growth of 7.12% in the last twelve months. The company’s strategic shift towards innovation and restructuring appears to be paying dividends, particularly in the U.S. market, which saw a 4.1% organic growth. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 6 additional key insights about NNIT’s financial health and growth prospects.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 462.2 million DKK, down 2.5% year-over-year.
• Earnings per share: $1.34, up significantly from forecasts.
• Operating profit: 22.9 million DKK, with a margin decrease from 6.7% to 5%.

Earnings vs. Forecast

NNIT’s EPS of $1.34 was a substantial 74.03% above the forecasted $0.77, marking a strong financial performance. However, revenue fell short by 1.86%, signaling potential challenges in sales or market conditions.

Market Reaction

The stock initially reacted positively to the EPS beat, climbing 3.77% to $63.3 but later settling back to $62, reflecting a 1.29% decline. This movement suggests investor caution due to the revenue miss and broader market uncertainties. InvestingPro metrics reveal the stock has experienced a significant YTD decline of 32.97%, while maintaining a beta of 0.94, indicating slightly lower volatility than the broader market. The company’s market capitalization currently stands at $237.26 million, with analyst price targets suggesting potential upside from current levels.

Outlook & Guidance

NNIT maintains its full-year outlook, expecting organic growth between 0-5% and an operating profit margin of 7-9%, indicating confidence in its strategic initiatives despite European market challenges. InvestingPro analysis indicates net income is expected to grow this year, with analysts predicting continued profitability. The company’s comprehensive financial health assessment and detailed growth projections are available through InvestingPro’s exclusive research reports.

Executive Commentary

CEO Peer noted, "We see early signs of improvement and some new contracts were won," highlighting optimism despite regional uncertainties. CFO Carsten emphasized the "biggest uncertainty is in the region Europe," pointing to ongoing market challenges.

Risks and Challenges

• European market uncertainty could impact growth projections.
• Revenue shortfalls may indicate sales execution issues.
• Decreased operating margins suggest cost pressures.
• Short project lead times in Europe could affect revenue stability.
• Tariff discussions may influence customer decisions.

Q&A

Analysts focused on the European market’s volatility and its impact on NNIT’s future performance. Questions also addressed the company’s ability to sustain its innovation-driven growth amidst economic uncertainties.

Full transcript - Nnit AS (NNIT) Q2 2025:

Operator: At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to this NN IT Investor Presentation for Q2 twenty twenty five. 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 will be a question and answer session.

I will now turn the call over to your speakers. You may now begin.

Peer, CEO, NN IT: Thank you, operator, and good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for joining this webcast. My name is Perfors, and I’m the CEO of NN IT. And with me today, I also have our CFO, Carsten Rinjus, and together, we’ll present our results for the second quarter, which we released yesterday evening. Please turn to Slide two. I will walk through the business highlights, including strategic and regional updates.

After this, Carsten will go through the group results, including our financial outlook for 2025. Before heading to the next slide, please pay attention to the disclaimer in the bottom of the slide. Let’s turn to Slide three. Going into the second quarter, we knew that the market unrest would continue, which we also mentioned in the Q1 company announcement. We also had two fewer working days in Q2 compared with the same quarter last year due to the timing of Easter, which also negatively impacted our numbers.

I will just briefly go through the numbers, and Carsten will put some more words on them later in the presentation. The group revenue ended at DKK 462,200,000.0, which corresponds to negative total growth of 2.5% and an organic growth of minus 9.7%. Please remember that we have not done any M and A activity recently, while the organic growth is equal to total growth cleansed for currency rate development. The group operating profit, excluding special items, ended at DKK 22,900,000.0, equal to a margin of 5%. Please turn to Slide four.

The market unrest we have observed during the year has continued to slow down the IT Life Science consultancy industry, which especially had a significant impact on our European business. However, despite the somewhat softer quarter, there are early signs of improvements. The customer activity has started to pick up and the demand for IT Life Sciences services is increasing, even though there is still some hesitation amongst our customers. This has been characterized by the size, scope and duration of the project that continues to be more narrow and shorter compared with the past. With that being said, we won important contracts during Q2 across the regions and between our segments Life Science, Public and Private.

The Life Science contracts are within large global pharma companies in Region Europe and in U. S. In Region Denmark, we have engaged with a four year contract with Energienet and a two year contract with Sun and Belt. These two new contracts are a true testimony to how we have been successful in building strong domain expertise in different segments since the divestment of our infrastructure in 2023. One of the strong highlights during the second quarter was Region U.

S. We are happy to see that Region U. S. Returned to growth and significantly improved their profitability. I will go into further details about Regent U.

S. During the walk through of the regions. Lastly, we have maintained our full year outlook, which I will come back to later in the presentation. Please turn to Slide five for an update on our strategic progress.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: We

Peer, CEO, NN IT: are now two years down the road since the divestment of the Infrastructure business in April 23. Our future state remains the same. We aim to become an industry leading employer and a solution provider specialized in international lab science and the Danish public market. Since we began our transformation journey, we have taken important steps in order to transform the company. One of the first things we implemented was changing the organizational setup from a complex matrix structure to a regional structure, ensuring regional autonomy and closer customer proximity.

Furthermore, we called out that the public segment to be one of the main areas in the new strategy. Over the past two years, we have significantly grown this segment alongside building a strong foundation with important expertise and capabilities. We strongly believe that we are rightly positioned to continue this growth journey, capturing market share. We have also taken steps changes by improving the IT backbone of NN IT with the implementation of a new ERP system and a new HR system and also an IT separation ourselves from ABEN. So integrating also our two group companies and relocated offices across the world to optimize our setup and drive efficiency.

In spite of all the many strategic milestones we have reached, we have maintained a high customer satisfaction and the attrition rate has been lowered. Currently, the attrition rate is ten percent. Last year, it was thirteen percent, clearly a development that we are very pleased with. During the second quarter, we have continued our strategic progress. To highlight some of the most important initiatives that are ongoing, I would like to mention how we are refining our operating model.

We are continuously working on having the right capacity mix to our projects and capacity planning in general to ensure that the right workforce is at hand. We have enhanced our performance management model alongside improving data quality, which allow us to forecast our business with higher accuracy. Furthermore, we have continued to scrutinize the cost base and how we can operate the business more efficiently. In that process, we have identified a substantial amount of regional and corporate overhead costs that we would structurally reduce that we structurally reduce our cost base. Carsten will go further into this with more details in his section.

We have also reassessed our go to market plan in terms of how we target, but also what we offer to our customers. To increase our profitability, we are sharpening our solution portfolio mix. Today, we sit with too many solutions and too many solutions that are either difficult to scale or who are not repeatable. We want to ensure that we only offer solutions that are repeatable and commercially attractive. This entails that we are narrowing our portfolio, and we continue to invest in those services that contain strong growth and profitability potential.

Lastly, I would like to highlight a market sharing focus. In the past, we have mostly been centered around large global life science customers. This has taken us a long way. However, we do see further opportunities by pursuing a broader audience. Even though the projects are typically smaller in scale in the lower tiers, we do see a solid growth and profitability potential.

Having a broader market tiering focus also sets a new standard for how we generate leads and build the pipeline. We are currently working with this through training as part of our commercial savviness focus. Please turn to the next slide. Even though three out of the four regions of N and IT operate in the same domain, their performances are fragmented. This is primarily due to different market positions, market characteristics and how the macroeconomic environment impacts the given region.

As mentioned, Region Europe is heavily impacted by the market unrest, which was a primary reason for the material organic growth decline in Q2. Furthermore, the timing of Easter also negatively impacted revenue due to too fewer working days compared with the same period last year. Towards the end of the quarter, we have seen early signs of improvement and some new contracts were won. The regional operated profit margin increased compared with last year, and the absolute regional operating profit was flat. We are pleased to see that we maintained the absolute profit level despite a material decline in revenue.

This was driven by the capacity adjustment done in previous quarters and regional overhead cost savings. Region U. S. Returned to growth, delivering an organic growth of 4.1%. The smart supply chain area, the former Exelis Health Solutions, experienced strong growth through expansion of the customer base.

One of the key drivers for the growth is the solution focused around serialization and first time launches. In The U. S, we have a solid model that is repeatable across customers. Furthermore, it also drives our profitability as a solution are more or less ready to be implemented after contract signing. Outside of the smart supply chain area, the R and D is still seeing low activity, while the data migration business is slowly recovering and is growing again.

The region delivered strong profitability development, which can be attributed to top line leverage, profitability of the repeatable solution and tight cost management. The 4.4% organic growth in Region Asia was driven by bringing in a lot of new customers and spaced expansion of engagement also with long term customers and increase in hardware software resale. We are satisfied with the top line development in Asia, even though there continues to be uncertainties around how the trade war will affect China going forward. The decrease in regional operating profit margin compared with last year is mainly due to emerging price pressure and that hardwaresoftware comes with a lower margin compared with time and material projects. However, the development in Q2 is definitely not where we want it to be, and we do have expectation to our business in Asia that the margin should be structured higher than today’s level.

In Q2, the revenue in Region DK moderately grow by 2.4%. The main growth drivers were strong performance from Scales, who continued to solidify its position as leader within Dynamics three sixty five Microsoft Solutions. Revenue growth in the public and private segment was flat to declining as revenue was negatively impacted by fewer change requests than anticipated and by the timing of Easter, with two working days fewer working days in Q2 versus the same period last year. During the quarter, gidrun DK won important contracts such as being selected as an dNet DevOps partner and support Schone Belt with their Azure platform. Profit and margins contracted compared with last year.

However, regional overhead cost was negatively impacted by around DKK 5,000,000 in Q2 this year, which is a reclassification between Region DK and corporate costs. Adjusting for that, the margins would have been flat compared with last year. In Q2, Region DK has streamlined its organizational blueprint and rightsized its managed capacity. This is expected to have a positive impact on the region’s profitability from the third quarter. Please turn to the next slide.

I will briefly go through this slide as Carsten is going to add some flavors to it in terms of implied outlook for the second half of the year, the key drivers and the assumptions behind it. Our financial outlook for the full year is unchanged. However, we do expect the year to end in the low end of both the guided ranges. The reason for us to end in the low end of the range is due to the market circumstances where the uncertainty and visibility are lower than usual. Please turn to the next slide.

Now I will hand over to Carsten for the group financial performance and the details around the financial outlook. Please, Carsten.

Carsten, CFO, NN IT: Thank you, Peer. Please turn to the next slide. As Per alluded to, the financial performance for the second quarter was dampened by the market uncertainty and the timing of Easter. Revenue amounted to DKK462 million, resulting in negative revenue growth of 2.5% compared with last year. The organic growth was negative by 1.7%, which was driven by the decline in Regent Europe.

This was partly offset by growth in the other three regions. The capacity adjustments and cost savings effectuated in previous quarters were not enough to offset the revenue decline, while the group operating profit, excluding special items, decreased from DKK 32,000,000 in Q2 twenty twenty four to DKK 23,000,000 in Q2 this year. Margin was 5% in Q2 ’twenty five versus 6.7% in Q2 ’twenty four. Please turn to the next slide. Before I will go into more details around the regional and corporate overhead cost savings, I will just highlight the development in special items.

Special items in the second quarter unfolded as internally planned, ending at DKK20 million. DKK19 million was related to restructuring costs, DKK1 million related to earn out payments and DKK1 million related to new IT platforms. For the first half of the year, special items is DKK46 million, where DKK39 million is related to restructuring costs. The full year outlook for special items is unchanged and is still expected to be below last year’s level of DKK69 million. Please turn to the next slide for the planned overhead cost savings.

At NN IT, we have continuously worked on structurally reducing the total cost base. In the production cost line, we have mainly adjusted capacity to fit the current demand. However, for regional and corporate overhead costs, we have worked with different levers to become more cost efficient. For instance, we relocated offices to reduce rent and implemented new IT systems to structurally lower our IT spend, amongst others. During the second quarter, we executed on further planned cost reducing initiatives to further streamline the company and to protect profitability in times where the top line is under pressure and to gain further leverage when growth returns.

We are executing cost savings activities of around DKK 30,000,000 to DKK 35,000,000 in run rate effect. On the slide, you can see four building blocks where all the cost initiatives have been grouped. Internally, we work with 40 different cost initiatives. In this bridge, I will go through some of the levers and initiatives. After the finalization of IT separation last year and the implementation of new IT systems, we have identified levers to further reduce our cost of IT services by in housing them instead of having them outsourced as we currently have.

Moreover, we do see a potential to further reduce our IT consumption and other services or platforms, most notably reducing our spend on cloud consumption. Even though we have lowered our facility expenses quite significantly after the relocation of several of our offices, we do see further opportunities. The main savings will come from further optimization of our premises in The Philippines and in Prague. Streamlining the organizational blueprint by relocating work tasks to our shared services in Philippines have been a key driver for the workforce adjustments that has affected both regions and enabling functions. Lastly, I would like to highlight the cost reduction lever number four, which is synergies and cost optimization.

The cost initiatives relate to synergies obtained through integration of group companies and improved workflows and processes. Furthermore, we are, through procurement efforts, enhancing our contract setup and vendor selection to drive economies of scale. During Q2, we have effectuated many of those initiatives, and we expect to see the full year impact next year. Please turn to Slide 12. As Peer mentioned, the financial outlook for 2025 is unchanged.

The organic growth range is still 0% to 5%, and the group operating profit margin, excluding special items, range is 7% to 9%. Based on the performance for the first half year, we now see that we will most likely end in the low end of both of the guided ranges. To deliver on the full year outlook and improvement in performance is required, the uplift in the organic growth will be supported by new contracts won across regions, backlog in terms of existing contracts signed from before the second quarter and increased activity, especially in Europe. As a result of the strategic progress and the initiative launched, we also expect to see some positive outcome, especially in terms of sales and pipeline generation. The drivers for the main for the margin improvement are mainly related to leverage from top line increase, savings from capacity adjustments and impact from cost reductions done earlier this year and the run related to our strategy.

The confirmed outlook assumes no further deterioration to the current macroeconomic environment and larger disruptions to the IT life science consultancy industry. Before we head into the Q and A, Thier will provide some closing remarks. Thier?

Peer, CEO, NN IT: Thanks, Carsten. We remain cautiously optimistic about the future as we, on the one hand, continue to see the market unrest impacting our business. But on the other hand, we have observed early signs of improvement. We do see that the customer activity is increasing even though the projects are shorter and more narrow in terms of duration and scope. Furthermore, we have also engaged in important contracts across our regions towards the end of the quarter, improving the backlog for the remainder of the year.

We have progressed well on our transformational journey we set sail back in 2023. We have reached important strategic milestones over the past two years. And during the second quarter, we have continued our progress by refining our operating model and sharpening our go to market plan. The full year outlook is unchanged, and the improvement in the second half of the year will be driven by the backlog, the impact from strategic initiatives and structurally lowering the cost base. This concludes the presentation for today, and thank you very much for joining this call.

Now we will open up the line and take your questions. Operator, can you please turn to the next slide and open up for questions?

Operator: Yes. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Paul Jasson from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. You are now unmuted.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: Yes. Thank you for taking the question. Let’s start by the outlook. You say that it’s unchanged, but means that you keep the high end of the range as you don’t check it out. But in general, what is the risk here?

How much predictability do you have? So where is the uncertainty? Is it the European market? Or is Denmark or U. S?

That’s question number one.

Carsten, CFO, NN IT: Yes. Paul, the biggest uncertainty is in the region Europe. It is the region where we have the shortest lead time on our projects. We see an average lead time of two to three months. So here, we do not have full visibility throughout the year compared to Region U.

S, for example, where we work with longer contracts. The same goes for Region Denmark. We normally operate with longer contract lead times and have a better visibility. So the primary risk is Sweden and Europe, as you also alluded to.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: And does that mean that as you start working on the larger public sector contracts in Denmark, we should see growth picking up or activity level picking up in Denmark in the second half?

Carsten, CFO, NN IT: Yes. We as you know, we, for example, won in a key net where we will start delivering in the second half of the year. So these are projects that will support the growth in the second half that we won previously this year.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. Second question is about the bridge ahead of the SEK 30,000,000 to 35,000,000. Can you that’s the full year impact in 2026, as I understand it. So how much cost reduction do you already have by the end of Q2? And how much will we see of that in the total of 2025?

Carsten, CFO, NN IT: Well, if you look at the effect for ’26, it is adjusted also for the cost indexation and the expected sort of general salary increases that will be part of next year’s cost run rate. So the net effect of what we are doing this year is expected to be in the range described, 30,000,000 to 35,000,000. We already executed some cost saving initiatives last year and have also done something in the first half of this year that will have effect in current year. You can already see some of these impacts, for example, in Regent U. S.

And in Regent Europe, if you look at the regional overhead having effects throughout the year of 2025. But the full year impact of what is shown in the slide should be seen from Q2 twenty twenty five to Q2

Peer, CEO, NN IT: And we continue to see a good growth into this year up until now. So on the positive side, you can say that we have had no indications of a slowdown with our activities with Novo. And I think one important reason for that is that most of our projects are actually based on the need to have project, if I put it that way, meaning projects which are focusing on the expansion of their production facilities here in Denmark, but also in other places around the world. And that is something that we at least see continuing. And also looking forward, these projects are not completed.

So even though we don’t know anything about the future, we see that we are there are still a lot of work that remains to be done. But another aspect of our relationship with Novo Nordisk is that it’s quite short duration, this project. I mean, it’s not multiyear projects. So we can have a visibility for this year, but not that much into the future. So but so far, so good.

And I’m very pleased by the development we have with Novo.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. Thank you. I will stop by.

Operator: Thank you, Paul. Next up, we have Miguel Rasmussen from ABG. You’ll now be unmuted.

Miguel, Analyst, ABG: Yes. Thank you, Pierre and Carsten. So I just have two questions. I’ll take them one by one. So coming back to Paul’s question on sort of the outlook.

I would like you to give some more commentary on the sort of what has current trading been for July and August, also particularly in mind that it’s actually two months ago, the end of Q2, where you saw you had seen some improvement there also sort of reflecting back to the fact that in Q2, when we had the meetings back in Q1 in May, you said that particularly the European clients, they would be sort of the joker there would be the tariffs. And now we’ve gotten somewhat more confirmation or certainty there. And then well, actually, maybe not because of The U. S. Court ruling the tariffs legal.

Is there any change in the way that we should think about the European outlook in terms of their certainty or uncertainty, if you like?

Carsten, CFO, NN IT: Well, just taking it from the top. We are not giving any comments on the current trading in this call, but you can say we have been through the summer vacation and the activity throughout this period has been as predicted and as included in our narrowing of the guidance for this year. Of course, what is happening on the tariffs is speculation, but our customers are picking up in activity as also delivered to by peer. We see a good increase in the dialogue with our customers, but they do not enter any contracts because they still since the tariff discussion is ongoing, and we need to see that completely sold, I think, to really see a relief in the market in our customer base and thereby getting back to the sort of pre trade war situation. So that is really what we look forward to, to get this sort of completely solved with the uncertainty then going back to the pre tariff war discussions.

Peer, CEO, NN IT: And maybe some top into that is, I mean, it’s been a sour market for some quarters that I referred to a number of times in this calls, right? And on the one hand, we see that continuing. But I mean, eventually, they need to adapt to the new situation and make some strategic decision, right? Because they’ve been standing on one foot based on this uncertainty because they really don’t know where this is going, halting and descoping and waiting with a lot of activities. But we can you see that we see early signs now of an increased discussion.

It is not that it’s income paper, but we see a higher activity levels around new projects. Projects have been halted that will come back in some shape or form, but it’s not in the backlog yet. But it’s some promising signs, but yes, that’s where we are.

Miguel, Analyst, ABG: Okay, sure. Second one is on the special items. I’m just imagining a situation where we see maybe a significant deterioration Don’t know if that will happen. But say it does, would you need to lay off more people?

And sort of how would that impact your sort of view on special items in the quarter in terms of severance costs, etcetera?

Carsten, CFO, NN IT: Well, as you can see from the year to date spend on special items, we have done some significant restructuring. We will, on an ongoing basis, as a consultancy company, adjust our capacity. But we do believe with the adjustments that we have done now that we have, for now, adjusted our capacity to the pipeline and the deliveries we see. If we see significant changes going forward, we will, of course, have to address those if we see significant changes in our pipeline. But we do not expect, you can say, reductions at the same level as we have seen in the first half of the year.

Peer, CEO, NN IT: And I mean, we are now the Nuren and IT Consultancy business. And one of the kind of aspect that we have been sharpening continuously, but not the least during this first half year, is actually the capacity planning process that we are better now at actually assessing the future and working with our capacity planning a little bit more proactively and when needed, adjusted ahead of time and not after the fact.

Miguel, Analyst, ABG: All right. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you, Miguel. Next in line, we have Yiwei Zhou from SEB. Your line is open.

Yiwei, Analyst, SEB: Hi. It’s Yiwei from SEB. Thank you for taking my questions. Also two from my side. Firstly, you highlight this new contract win in Europe.

Could you maybe put a bit more color on this, for example, the duration, the contract size?

Peer, CEO, NN IT: Yes. Thank you for the question. And I mean, one of the changes that we have done now during this year, actually, that we have actually started to expand our market penetration away from not just being on the top big pharma, the top 20 customers, also going into the segment of medium sized and small sized pharma because there is an interesting size, and we’ve been very successful in that segment in The U. S. In that segment, the projects are a bit smaller in scope and shorter in duration.

But we are happy to see that actually, it is we have now started to see some positive outcome of that activity, meaning that we now have won actually some contracts and also have starting to grow the pipeline. Also for the larger pharma companies, and we have also talked about this before, the projects are actually a bit small in scope and duration. So we see that trend also hitting the other pharma base. But there are also, as we have communicated today on our website, some nice contract wins with companies that are a bit smaller, but we’re not talking three digit million, but it’s definitely double digit million.

Yiwei, Analyst, SEB: I just want to get clarification on the the the the one you just announced, the press release, that is, not a large, global pharma. It’s a small smaller pharma company

Peer, CEO, NN IT: in Europe. I I categorize it as mid sign. It’s correct. You’re you’re totally right. It’s not Global Pharma, but it’s definitely mid size.

It’s not a small company. It’s a well known brand. And then and, unfortunately, we can’t reveal it due to confidentiality in the in the client contract, but it it’s it is definitely if I would say the name of it, you would definitely agree that it’s a midsized company, and it’s a very global company.

Yiwei, Analyst, SEB: Okay. Clear. And my next question is also on the Eurasia Europe. You talked about so you have focused a lot on the resource planning. But if this region had the resource planning has been a big issue because the the duration of projects are shorter.

But what have you changed fundamentally? Mean, I what give you the confidence to highlight the improvement?

Peer, CEO, NN IT: Yes. No, it’s a very fair question. But if you look at the absolute revenue development in Europe, you see it’s almost a 40% decrease in revenue. And that in combination in shorter contract duration means that we need to be much agile and swift in our capacity planning. And that we have done, and we can also see that in Europe that we have despite this sharp decline in revenue, we have actually improved our margins.

And it’s also a question of actually now moving into our new ERP system where we have improved our data quality, meaning that we can be much better doing this forecasting. And of course, it’s also about selling and the pipeline generation, right, that you need to spend much more time with your clients to be able to build the pipeline. So that’s been another improvement. So even though we have been reducing capacity, we are maintaining a big activity level on the market of actually selling our services, right? So but what we have I think one big change actually overall, not just in Europe, but but looking at our company in the second quarter, that is that we have been better on driving this company more efficiently.

And then not the least, I think we did a leadership change in Europe early in the year, and I think that has proved to be the right decision.

Yiwei, Analyst, SEB: Okay, very clear. Thank you. I’ll jump back to the queue.

Operator: We have a follow-up from the line of Paul

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: It’s just a short one. You mentioned the peer and HR system. I just want to understand, are they fully implemented now so that you are where you should be? And is the two new systems here, is that also the reason why you say you will have better forecasting accuracy going forward?

Carsten, CFO, NN IT: Yes, Paul. I’m very happy to confirm that we are done with the implementation of both systems. And it has been quite a big enabler on our data transparency across the business. So yes, I can confirm we are fully implemented.

Peer, CEO, NN IT: And maybe a flavor to that, Paul, if I may, is also that in parallel, we have also incorporated the previous group companies into the same system. So it’s just not that we have rolled out a new system for everybody. All our previous group companies are also now on the same system instead of different system. And that has really improved the way we have control of our business and also the speed upon which we can act. So that is further benefiting us.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: And that’s the reason why you talk about better accuracy going forward on the forecasting?

Carsten, CFO, NN IT: Yes, that’s correct. We now do the resource planning for our entire consultant capacity in the same system, thereby giving us a much better transparency, linking it to the utilization management.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: And then you spoke about the fact that you had too many solutions and that you had to focus. Can you give a little flavor on what you are cutting out of the future business and on what solutions to focus?

Peer, CEO, NN IT: No. I mean, I think it goes across all that we do. And so what we have done so far is that we have sharpened our consulting portfolio in The U. S. Because in the old setup, I would say, it was that we defined a solution portfolio that should go all the way from the drug discovery and solution that supported drug discovery all the way to commercialization and all the support functions around quality, safety, etcetera.

And that is actually spreading ourselves a little bit too thin, meaning that, for instance, The U. S, we have deselected some of these areas now and are much more focused actually over The U. S. On manufacturing and supply chain, where we have a much more higher repeatability of our solution portfolio. And you can really see that also in our numbers.

And also in Europe, we are doing the same journey. We are probably a bit later on that journey there, but we are doing it right now. But we are really focusing on solution that can provide high value to our clients and are not just based on hours being sold, but also some kind of package solution that can travel both within a region between clients, but also between regions. So it’s a journey where we are kind of having started, I would say, a little bit, but where U. S.

Has been most successful so far. And I think Europe has more to do in order to move that forward. But the most important thing that they are repeatable in some shape or form, and they are easy to implement for the clients, so we can provide fast value to our clients, but on the flip side of that coin is also good profitability for us.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. And the final one, that’s a more structural one. The last six months, at least there’s been a lot of focus on AI impact on the Consultancy business. Can you talk a little about how you look at from your side and the products and services that you’re covering? And what kind of risk for opportunities you see here?

And also comment a little about how much of your business is time and material or output based price?

Peer, CEO, NN IT: Yes. I mean, I think it’s one of the diseases of our industry having been in this for thirty years. So sometimes we are as an industry talking a lot about new things and maybe overestimating the short term impact, while at the same time that we are underestimating the long term impact. But in AI, have actually done it’s the area by far where we have done the most investment. We have developed our own AI tool for all our people, which we have also been able to sell to our clients.

But on the market, and I would say this goes for many of the larger consultancy company here in Denmark and also in other countries, there are a lot of proof of concept, but there are no huge AI projects going on. But having said that, we are really using AI in a number in almost all our deliveries. I mean, when we are building application for the public sector, we are using tooling both for the coding and for the testing, where AI is a natural part of that, enabling us to be more effective. When we work with the Life Sciences projects within Veeva and Regulatory Affairs, we are using our own developed tool to make us work more efficiently. But it is not that I can point to, Paul, that it has to create directly a tremendous revenue in the first half of the year, and I think that goes for many companies.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: And what about the time and material versus output based pricing? Where are you in that spectrum?

Peer, CEO, NN IT: I must say, I mean, about output based pricing and value based pricing is something that we also talk a lot about in the industry, but where it’s quite hard to actually make that work because you need to define the benchmark with the clients, you make sure that the value that they’re paying for is really happening. So in our boutique, what we are working with is more focused on repeatable solution than value based pricing. We like time and material because that’s part of our business model. But of course, with time and material, you can only obtain a certain margin. You can be smarter with applying cheaper resources for the project, thereby increasing the margin.

But the real secret source is actually to be able to increase the level or the proportion of repeatable solution. And once again, I’d like to refer to our U. S. Operation, where you see a clear testimonial of what happens when you kind of redefine your resource mix or your solution mix and what effect that has on margins.

Paul, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. That was all from my side. Thank you. Thank you.

Operator: As no one else has lined up for questions in this call, I’ll now hand it back to the speakers for any closing remarks.

Peer, CEO, NN IT: Okay. But then thank you all of you for all your clever question, and thank you for tuning in. Please do not hesitate to reach out to either me or Carsten if you have any further questions. I wish you all a great day.

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