Storytel AB (publ) (STORY_B) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Welcome to Storytel Q1 Report 2026. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Bottle Erickson-Torp. Please go ahead. Good morning everyone and welcome to sunny Stockholm and our earnings call for the first quarter this year. I'm Bodle Ericsson Torp, CEO of Storytel Group and together with me here today is our CFO Stefan Ward. We are glad to announce that we are off to a good start for this year 2026. with a strong subscriber growth, increased profitability and a strong cash flow generation driven by strong operational performance. So we are well on track to continue to deliver our guidance. So here comes some of our strong highlights. We have started off the year with a solid start with revenue growth of almost 8% in constant currency. And we continue margin expansion to an EBITDA margin of 17% compared with 14% Q1 last year. So we continue to strengthen our financial position and ended the period with a net cash position of 220 million SEK. And we also added 72,000 paying subscribers during this quarter. It's up 8% year-on-year, and we had 2.74 million paying subs at the end of the period. We actually had the strongest Q1 net intake of subs in the Nordics since the pandemic, and our new European segment crossed the 1 million mark for the first time, so we are happy for that. When it comes to publishing our external revenue growth was solid over 9% in constant currency and while our margin expanded to 28%. We are well on track for our transfer to main market on schedule during Q2. So over to our group financial highlights during the quarter. We have faced material currency headwinds in the quarter that continues. So reported net sal...