Innofactor - Moving on from recent challenges

Challenging last quarter of 2021
Innofactor’s Q4 results fell well short of our estimates, as the company faced challenges with the organizational changes in Finland and employee turnover. Net sales amounted to EUR 17.5m (Evli EUR 18.6m), declining 4% y/y but in comparable terms on par with Q4/20. EBITDA was EUR 1.7m (EUR 2.6m Evli), falling from the Q4/20 adj. EBITDA level of EUR 2.6m. Profitability was effectively down solely due to the challenges noted, although EBIT included larger one-off amortizations. The order backlog was at EUR 72.8m, up 20.6% y/y.

Poised to improve but some concerns remain
Innofactor expects its revenue in 2022 to increase from 2021 while EBITDA is expected to increase from EUR 7.5m, which would have been 2021 EBITDA without proceeds from the Prime business divestment. We have lowered our estimates for 2022, now expecting net sales of EUR 69.0m (prev. EUR 70.1m) and EBITDA of EUR 8.1m (prev. 9.5m). The organizational changes were started during Q3 and should impact to a clearly lesser extent going forward and the employee turnover appears to have peaked in Q3, which led to a spillover in Q4. The situation was more towards the normal in Q4 and the headcount began to grow, but the recruitment market has however been challenging for a while and we see this as a continued concern. Fundamentally Innofactor is in our view in a good position to post improved profitability figures in 2022, with all countries also having posted clearly positive EBITDA figures in Q4.

BUY-rating with a target price of EUR 1.6 (2.1)
On our revised estimates and some uncertainty going into 2022 we cut our TP to EUR 1.6 (2.1), valuing Innofactor at approx. 17x 2022 P/E. We see reasonable potential for higher than estimated profitability with the good order backlog levels should challenges not persist. We retain our BUY-rating.