EVRY reports EBITA of NOK 223 million for the fourth quarter of 2012 - Seite 3

Weaker economic conditions in the Euro zone had a marked effect on the Swedish economy in the second half of 2012. The Swedish National Institute of Economic Research reported a fall of 0.3 points in its Economic Tendency Indicator in January 2013, and the indicator now stands at 89.4%, which is slightly more than 10 points below the historic average. This indicates that growth in the Swedish economy is still considerably weaker than normal. EVRY has seen that the uncertain outlook in 2012 had a marked effect on the IT services market in Sweden in the second half of 2012. Customers in Sweden were clearly taking a cautious approach, causing them to defer decisions on IT investments with a resulting drop in demand for consultants and projects.

However, there are signs of emerging optimism in the Euro zone. The main index for the Swedish stock market has risen by around 20% over the last six months, and this may indicate that investors expect that the current period of weak economic growth in Sweden will be relatively short-lived.

Based on this, EVRY expects the Swedish IT services market to remain at the level of the fourth quarter of 2012 throughout the first half of 2013, but expects to see the Swedish economy improve leading to growth in the IT services market in the second half of 2013.

Customers in both markets insist on an attractive profitability analysis when considering investments in projects and solutions, but are also willing to pay higher prices for specific domain competencies. This has resulted in increases in hourly rates in some segments of the market, while other market segments are still affected by downward pressure on prices as the result of competition from global vendors.

In relation to outsourcing, the Norwegian market was flat throughout 2012, but the Swedish outsourcing market has continued to grow. Global players have started to be serious contenders in these markets, and this is causing higher expectations for price and quality on big customer contracts. However, this is having only limited effect on the market for other large and medium-sized customers, since global vendors focus on the very largest customers. The SMB market in Norway is in general growing markedly more quickly than the enterprise market, although in Sweden there are only small differences between these customer segments. These trends are expected to continue over the course of the quarters ahead.