Storytel AB (publ) (STORY_B) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Hi and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Storytel Group's Q2 2025 earnings call. We are pleased to report continued solid financial performance across both our streaming and publishing segments, despite an uncertain environment and also strong currency headwind with a significant impact on our top line, which we will talk more about. Today I'm here, Bodle Ekson-Tvort, the CEO of Storytel Group, and joining me today is also head of finance Jonas Olsson. Some highlights here. We have delivered a second quarter with continued robust performance based upon a strong paying subscriber growth. We then increase of over 11% year on year, and we have now almost 2 million 550,000 paying subscribers. And as you know, most of them are highly engaged and really true book lovers. Furthermore, we deliver a solid financial development, reflecting a well balanced underlying growth across both our streaming and publishing segments, resulting in a growth of 8% in constant currency. And we have continued to focus on operational excellence and continued with a cost discipline that have also strengthened our gross margin, which in turn fueled improvements in both our EVTA and cash flow generation, as you can see. The publishing segment achieved strong sales growth and also improved profitability. That's really good, and it's partly driven by our recently acquisition of Bortfabriken. But I will also emphasize that underlying growth excluding the acquisition remains very solid combined with continued progress in streaming. This highlights the strength of our business model. And when we look into our strategic expansion into growth markets outside the Nordics, as well as extended customer segments, this has resulted in an expected decrease of ARPU. And as you have read today, this is, ho...