Simcorp A/S

CSE:SIM

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q1

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Q1 report 2019. [Operator Instructions] I must advise the conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, the 22nd of May 2019. I would now like to pass the conference over to your speaker today, CEO, Klaus Holse. Please go ahead, sir.

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Good morning, and welcome to this call where we're going to discuss the first quarter financial results for SimCorp, and that is on Slide #1. If you go to Slide #2, then what you will see is the disclaimer that governs everything we say today. So if you haven't read that, I highly encourage that but I think most of you on this call have been on calls like this before and have seen it. So we'll move to Slide #3, which contains the agenda for the day. First off, I'll give the key highlights for the quarter then we'll move on to a more detailed financial review, which will be given by Michael Rosenvold, our CFO, and Michael will also take you through the outlook for 2019. And then we will, as was announced, move to a Q&A session towards the end of all this. If we move to Slide #4., what you will see is that we had a solid start of the year with a good Q1. We had order intake of EUR 21.5 million. That was up EUR 7.5 million over the year before. That contributed to a revenue growth of 9.1% in local currency but given the currency effects of the tailwind, that gives us its 11% up in reported. So that's kind of what you see in the reported revenue. EBIT is up to EUR 26.4 million, up EUR 3.1 million over a year ago. The margin is 26.5%, also a little bit up over last year. Operational services grew 7.2% reported currency but only 4.9% in local currency, given the distribution of that -- or grew, yes, in report and in local so the distribution is we do more in currencies where the currency is with us this year. Free cash flow, up from last year, very solid. Michael is going to get back to that. The 3-month -- the 12-month rolling software updates and support growth is up to almost 10% now as we have quite a few customers that went live in the first quarter. You will see that showing significantly growing in the first quarter alone. Microsoft is also going to get -- or Michael is going to get back to that. As we move to Slide #5, we will talk about the new clients that we got in 2019. In the first quarter, we got Willis Towers Watson in the U.K. in a front to back office implementation for an asset manager. We've got Sava Re Group, which is a Slovenian insurance company, a full front to back office implementation as well. And then in Q2, after we closed the first quarter, in the last 7 weeks, we got an undisclosed asset manager in Europe to sign up in a full front, middle office implementation, not back office. And then we've got a Coric client in the U.S., an asset manager that signed up. And then lastly, we had one of the asset owners in Canada sign up for a full front to back implementation as well. So overall, 5 new customers coming in, in 2019 for SimCorp Dimension clients, 1 Coric client, 2 asset owners and asset managers. So overall, a good spread of what has happened so far in the first 5.5 months of the year -- or 4.5 months of the year. If we move onto the next slide, we just wanted to reiterate what we said on our Capital Markets Day almost a year ago from now, where we discussed how we see the market and split between asset owners and asset managers. The asset owners being the pension funds, the sovereign wealth funds, the insurance companies and so on and what we're seeing is that this group of companies are more and more in-sourcing what they do. So we see pension funds setting up or increasing their presence in what they invest in. They do more in alternatives. They have in-house teams for these. Some of the investments in equities and fixed income, they also take in-house as such. We see sovereign wealth funds doing some of the same. We see insurance companies that are not only taking more in-house but also kind of taking the asset manager that sometimes is inside of that insurance company and kind of pushing that out as an asset manager that are competing with the general asset manager industry. We're seeing that with some of our customers like an AXA and a Generali and so on, that are on that track and using our software for that. So a lot is going on, on the asset owner side. They are often looking for a fully integrated front to back systems. So we're well positioned on that side, which we also saw in 2018 when we signed 8 new asset owners, so SimCorp Dimension, and only 2 asset managers. The asset manager side on the other side is under pressure because of the in-sourcing. They're also under pressure because of the ETFs. So all the passive investments that are going on and then some of the alternative investments where we have more -- it's happening in-house and not a typical asset manager job. So that's the picture we're seeing in the market. But even with that, as you've seen in the last 4.5 months of this year, it's balanced given that we get both asset owners and asset managers as customers so far and we're benefiting from being a fully integrated system that people are looking for. We just want to reiterate this as some might have forgotten what we said at the Capital Markets Day. So moving on from there, talking a little bit about one of the focus areas that we've had over the past few years and where we see significant progress. We have invested in building out SimCorp Dimension to also focus on alternative investments, and in 2018, we signed up 17 customers on this solution and we're signing up more customers as we go in 2019 as well. So we're quite happy with our coverage of a new set of modules in SimCorp Dimension. The characteristics of this one is we're very front office-friendly. So we work the workflows that these customers have and then where we're really, really strong is, as usual, on the IBOR side where we cover all the transactions and then we have full accounting coverage which we don't see elsewhere in the market. We've got good coverage across assets, which means that if a fund or an asset manager wants to blend the assets and so on, we actually do that quite well. We are very good on a number of other. We've got easy implementation with other platforms and so on and it's, as usual, no client-specific coding. It's all pre-configured, it's all configuration in the software. So we do it quite well on this one and there's a set of reasons for this. If we move on to the next slide, I just want to give you kind of an overview of how much have actually gone into this. As you know, we've been on this development effort for quite some time. We released the first set of this with our January release in 2018. And as I said, had good progress on -- we did one more release -- or we did smaller releases throughout the year, and then with the January release in 2019, we released quite a more comprehensive set of functionality. And on this slide, you'll see how much is actually going into this. I won't dive into all of the details on this one, but just say that if you move on to the next slide, that is kind of highlights and focuses on one of the things that is super important to people who manage alternative assets, which is the capability to look through the assets that you own. So if you own a part of a private equity fund, then understanding what's inside of that private equity fund, what is the sectors that, that private equity fund has invested in, what's the currencies they've invested in, what's the exposure they have across the world and so on is quite important. And that's quite a bit of complexity in this. As you might imagine, you invest in a private equity fund, you make a commitment upfront into the different currency than you're trading in as a pension fund. And now you made a commitment in the currency. Then the capital call comes, the currency is now in a different point, do you then do it committed or at the capital call. And so there's a lot of intricacy in this and having to understand what's inside of that fund for you to be accurate in what you report, for you to be accurate in your risk assessment, for you to be accurate in your performance, et cetera. So we think we've done some very innovative work that we don't see any of our competitors having on more capabilities, on look-through, which is one of the key things that these asset owners are and asset managers are looking for. So we think we're in a good position on alternatives and that'll be an area that'll keep growing, which we also said in '18 and we're seeing that come to fruition, which we're quite happy about.That kind of brings me to the next slide, and that is the agenda for the rest of the call, where Michael is going to take over and take us through a more detailed financial review of Q1.

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Thank you, Klaus, and I will go straight to Page #11 where we start showing, you can say, the traditional picture we are showing where you can see the impact from currency and M&A. And as you can see, there are no M&A impact as we have now owned SimCorp Italiana for more than 1 year and thereby, it's part of the normal organic business. But as Klaus also said in the beginning, we do have a tailwind from FX this year after 2 years of headwind from FX. And you can say that the highlight is that we believe that we delivered solid organic growth in Q1 and we maintained a high EBIT margin also compared with the high EBIT margin we had in Q1 2018. And you can say the most comparable number is the organic local currency margin of 26.1% with the reported 26.0% last year. So you can say a very stable development in the EBIT margin from the high level last year. Then I turn to Page #12, where we also believe that we had a strong order intake of, you can see here, EUR 21.4 million in Q1 compared to EUR 14 million in the same period last year, i.e. an increase of more than EUR 7 million compared to same period last year. The client-driven development order intake accounted for EUR 1.5 million in the first quarter, which was very similar to last year where it was EUR 1.6 million. And we had one conversion where we had a perpetual license, which converted into a subscription-based license like we had last year, and I will come back to that a little later. Please also notice that we have -- as we now have old SimCorp Italiana for the full year, we have included SimCorp Italiana in the numbers and also restated historic numbers. So the numbers are comparable. If you look at the order book, we have an order book now of EUR 47 million -- that's on next page, 13. We have an order book of EUR 47 million, slightly up compared to the order book at the end of the year. It means that we have added more to the order book than we have revenue recognized, which is of course positive. And if you look at the comparison to the order book same period last year, it's actually an increase of EUR 28.5 million. Please notice that in the order book of EUR 47 million, EUR 19 million is relating to CDD orders. Then I turn to Page #14, where we have the revenue split on revenue types where you can see the first highlight is the license part, which is going up slightly compared to Q1 2018, which was a pretty high license quarter compared to prior period. And you can say add-on licenses are going slightly down compared to Q1 2018 from EUR 14 million to EUR 12 million. But if you compare to Q1 2017, where the add-on license was EUR 4 million, we are still at a pretty high level on add-on license for Q1 performance. As Klaus said, software update and support revenue went up a lot. It was 10% for the last 12 months. And in this quarter, isolated, it is 12% as a lot of maintenance has start kicking in and of course also fueled by the normal price indexations. But that's, you can say, a normal part of the business. Professional services is still growing, not as high as we saw a few years ago but still a solid, good growth of 5% in local currency. Then turning to Slide #15, where you can say we are making -- we are showing the split between different kind of add-on license revenue streams. And the most notable here is that we had one conversion from perpetual license. So sufficient license in Q1 like we also had in '18. It was a higher impact in Q1 '19 where it was EUR 1.6 million compared to EUR 0.5 million in Q1 2019 (sic) [ Q1 2018 ]. It's a very positive, in our opinion, event because it was a client who in Italy decided to outsource its operation but then chose instead to convert to a subscription-based license contract with SimCorp and the annual subscription fee will be higher than the current software update and support fees. So you can say from a cash flow point of view, it's also positive for SimCorp. Then turning to Slide 16 where we are showing our cost development. All operating costs increased by 8% in local currency. And if you look at the different cost elements, then you can say cost of sales increased by 9%, which was primarily driven by a high level of business activity for our consultancy business, our professional service business but also our ASP hosting. And then, of course, it's also impacted by the annual general salary increase of approximately 3 percentage point. R&D costs increased by 11% in local currency. So actually, our R&D costs increased more than our revenue and that also means that if you look at R&D relative to revenue, that increased by 0.4 percentage point from -- so it's now 19.2% for Q1 2019. Then turning to Slide #17. We believe that the cash flow is still delivering positively. We had a higher free cash flow in Q1 '19 compared to Q1 2018. And I think an important measurement is the 12-month rolling cash conversion, which is cash conversion is free cash flow divided by net profit. That was more than 100%, which is quite an achievement also when you take into consideration the IFRS 15 impact on cash conversion. Then our last slide before Q&A, Slide 19. The full year guidance. We maintain our expectations for the full year. So we believe, in local currency, that revenue will increase between 8% and 13% and EBIT margin, also measured in local currency, will be between 25.5% and 28.5%. We do believe that Q2 will be a quite solid performance as we also stated in our annual report. We do expect -- or we still expect to be able to revenue recognize the significant deal we won in December 2018 in Q2 and that will, of course, fuel the revenue recognition and the performance in Q2. But that is as expected when we made our annual accounts. And then the tailwind we have had from FX, we do also expect to have for the full year. And based on the exchange rates prevailing at -- in April 2019, we expect the impact on revenue to be 1.5% and the impact on EBIT margin positively 0.2%. And that concludes our presentations and we are going to Q&A now.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question today is from the line of Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken.

[Daniel Djurberg, Research Analyst]

Congratulations for a good set of numbers. First, I would like to ask a little bit about the comments you made, Klaus, earlier this week with Bloomberg about the investment manager and market consolidation, driven by in-sourcing, et cetera, that could impact negatively, I guess, on the order intake. But looking at the -- now we've also seen your order intake therefore, so far, for Q2 with the 2 new Dimension deals taken. So this obviously hasn't hit the fan yet. So can you elaborate some about the -- how to think about the possible impact on order intake from this statement you did?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

So thank you. Thank you for the question. I'll just reiterate what we said at the Capital Markets Day that I also had on the slide in the presentation. We do see a change in the way asset owners and asset managers, in fact, we see the asset owner space in-sourcing more, the asset managers space being under pressure. We've seen that for a long time. That was the same story that we told to Bloomberg. Bloomberg decided to tell half of that story, which probably makes it more interesting. Or at least more -- there's probably more that clicks on that story then if you tell the full story.

[Daniel Djurberg, Research Analyst]

Yes, I know how it works. Another question would be on alternatives. BlackRock completed the acquisition of eFront some 2 weeks back and they have been in the business for, I think, 1999 or something. So in my view, they should have a bit older platform, perhaps much -- very older, but perhaps a bit more legacy. Can you comment a bit on what you see as your biggest strength and perhaps also weaknesses in the marketplace on alternatives.

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

In the alternative space, it's something we've looked at for quite a while. As you might have noticed, eFront was also up for sale 4 years ago, and at that time, we realized this was an area we wanted to get into but we also realized that buying a company like eFront at that time would require significant integration because you want to have all of your transactions in the same IBOR, you want to have them in the same ABOR, for accounting reasons and so on. Otherwise, it becomes hard to do transactions across different asset classes, risk across asset classes, performance across asset classes, reporting across asset classes and so on. You want it all. And when we looked at it, we saw that, that would require significant integration costs to be able to do that. Based on this, we decided to not go for that but instead put a significant team aside at SimCorp and develop functionality that covers this. We only covered a functionality for the limited partners, which means the partners who invest in a private equity funds, invest in real estate and so on where our friends at eFront is also building software that allows the private equity funds to manage their fund to fund this. We only have customers that are in pension funds, insurance funds and so on -- insurance companies and so on, which are the investors and private equities. So we needed to build that half of the functionality, if you will, and that's what we've now done. That's what we're competing with. That's where we're winning deals over eFront in the market right now. That's where we're replacing eFront at existing customers right now. So we think that was the right decision at the time because the integration costs would be too high and it wouldn't be integrated enough.

[Daniel Djurberg, Research Analyst]

And then my last question would be an update on the alternatives, also on the R&D cost that we saw expanding 30% or something in the quarter. Is it mainly related to these next steps that you commented upon then in your prepared remarks on the alternatives, i.e. real estate and compliance integration, et cetera, that drives the R&D? And is it -- should we expect it to boost further and then come back to normal phase? So just comment on that.

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

So R&D, I think it's hard to look at R&D quarter by quarter. It really depends on how many people we have to hire and so on. So some quarters, a little lower; some quarters, a little higher. But if you look at a general trend year-over-year, you should expect to see R&D stay roughly in line with our revenue growth and maybe a little lower in a sense. Where the money goes, after this time, it's the front office, it goes to alternatives, that it goes to our move to the cloud. That's kind of the 3 big investment themes we have in R&D.

[Operator]

And our next question is from the line of Gautam Pillai from Goldman Sachs.

[Gautam Pillai, Equity Analyst]

Congratulations from my side also on a great quarter. I have 2 questions, if I may, and the first one is on the U.S. momentum. Okay, can you discuss how the market is developing in the U.S.? Obviously, I think towards the second half of last year, you had some traction in the U.S. I was just wondering how it has progressed the beginning of 2019. And on that topic, is it a higher sales effort in that region? Are you hiring more salespeople? Or is there room for improvement in sales utilization in the U.S.?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

So in the U.S., we see good progress. We keep having a very strong pipeline across North America. And as we announced, we did close 2 new deals, one Coric deal and one Dimension deal in the U.S. in the last couple of months. So we continue to see good traction in the U.S. And I would say our pipeline supports that we'll do more deals, both on Coric and Dimension in U.S. and Canada throughout the rest of the year. So that's -- I think you should see progress on that side in this. And then, is it hard to sell in the U.S? I would say, no. It's more complicated in the sense it's a big geography, you need to travel more. In that sense, I think we are now at a point where we have enough North American clients that we've got reference ability and so on. So that's little less of an issue. Still, we're seen as a European company and that does require little more attention from some of these customers. But we've got very good traction. I was just in San Diego for our North American user conference where we had 150 participants from our customers. And I would say the mood there was really, really good. Some of the stories that our existing customers tell us on how successful they've been with the product almost brings a tear to your eyes. And that's always good when you, at the same time, have prospects in the room. So we're very grateful for the effort that our existing customers do and the success they have with the product and then the help we get to close new customers in the U.S. from that population.

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Then you can add on a side note that last year, we had to wait until December before we signed new deals in North America and we signed 6 deals in December. And this year, we already have 2 and we're only in May. So I think at least the start this year was better than last year.

[Gautam Pillai, Equity Analyst]

Indeed. And just coming back on your comments on eFront. I understand on a like-for-like basis, you are winning against eFront. Now as a part of BlackRock and Aladdin, from a competitive standpoint and potentially BlackRock investing more in the platform, how do you expect that to evolve given alternatives is a big focus area for you? And secondly on the point about competition itself, Aladdin has been developing -- trying to develop a back-office platform or extending their platform for a few years now. Do you see them in back-office deals yet? Or is that platform still far from complete?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

So it's very clear that BlackRock is trying to move to a similar position as what we have, of having one integrated system, front to back, with all asset classes. As you say, they're rumored to be developing a back-office solution in the market. We haven't seen that much of that. And if you look at the partnership they did with BNY and so on that kind of indicates that they think more customers are going to be outsourced on the back office than not. But they're trying to get there. On alternatives, they made a significant acquisition as they bought eFront and that just brings to this. They'll probably have a little bit of the same challenge as we thought about when we looked at them some years ago on how do you then integrate this into Aladdin. Aladdin wants to be the IBOR and so on across all asset classes. So they'll have some work to do on this. But it's -- we welcome and I think our customers in the buy side in general should welcome that BlackRock also thinks that it's an integrated system front to back with all asset classes. That's what customers need. So I think the buy side should be happy that there's at least 2 big vendors that have this same point of view.

[Gautam Pillai, Equity Analyst]

Okay. My last question on the cash flow progression. And clearly, the cash conversion has been quite strong in the last 12 months and there's, I think, sort of expectations given you have shifted to a subscription model and the accounting in the P&L doesn't reflect that. Now if I remember correctly, there was a one-off benefit on working capital in 2018. Michael, I just wanted to check, if we were to kind of exclude that working capital benefit, what would the conversion be instead of the 103% which you've reported? Is that how we should think about cash flow going forward?

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

I think, in general, with the growth we have, you should expect more like 80% than 100% as a rule of thumb.

[Operator]

And our next question is from Claus Almer from Nordea.

[Claus Almer Nielsen, Senior Analyst of Capital Goods and IT]

Also a few questions from my side. The first question goes to the growth in employees. Obviously, it goes up by your revenue growth, but what should we expect for rest of 2019? How many more employees do we need to add? That would be the first question.

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

The answer to that one will be that depends on how many new customers and so on that comes in because they -- most of what we're going hire in 2019 is going to be consultants that are going to do some of the implementation work. And we are probably also going to add some on the R&D side. We have to staff some of the CDD deals we sold last year and continue to sell this year. And we continue to grow R&D year-over-year. That's where you're going to see the most of the hires.

[Claus Almer Nielsen, Senior Analyst of Capital Goods and IT]

But no more exact numbers? You're not willing to share some more exact numbers, right?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

No. But I think if you go on our website, you will see that we have quite a number of open positions that is available there. So we are hiring and we're hiring around the world in general.

[Claus Almer Nielsen, Senior Analyst of Capital Goods and IT]

Okay. Then a question -- yes, go ahead.

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

I think -- Klaus, can I add to that question? I think you can, of course, also look at our full year guidance. And if you take the midpoint there, then -- and compare that to the margin last year, I think you should expect salary cost to increase at approximately the same as revenue.

[Claus Almer Nielsen, Senior Analyst of Capital Goods and IT]

Okay. Then second question goes to your conversion of clients. You got this EUR 1.6 million gain in Q1, but there will also be a negative impact going forward. I don't think you specified that in the report. What should we take out of our future estimates from this key conversion?

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

We do actually specify that.

[Claus Almer Nielsen, Senior Analyst of Capital Goods and IT]

Oh, sorry.

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

It says -- it's written in the footnote. So we think that annual software updates and support will be EUR 0.1 million lower.

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

That's on Page 4 in the footnote.

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Yes.

[Claus Almer Nielsen, Senior Analyst of Capital Goods and IT]

Okay. Sorry, about that. And then just the final...

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

No, no, no. So slightly lower, EUR 0.1 million.

[Claus Almer Nielsen, Senior Analyst of Capital Goods and IT]

Yes. Okay. And then just the final question regarding the number of Dimension clients. Have you lost clients in the quarter?

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

We only report that on an annual basis.

[Claus Almer Nielsen, Senior Analyst of Capital Goods and IT]

Okay. So no flavor on that part?

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

No.

[Operator]

And our next question is from Hannes Leitner from UBS.

[Hannes Leitner, Equity Research Analyst of Software]

I got also a couple of questions. Maybe you can talk a little bit about the pipeline for the rest of the year as you have achieved already 5 deal wins. Should we think that you come at the high end as last year where you averaged of around 10 deals? And also maybe talk about the geographic split. That's the first question. The second is Sofia/Coric had quite a good rebound from the weak Q4. You stated at Q4 results. What should we expect for the rest of the year? And the third one is in terms of go lives, what do see there coming through for the rest of the year? And maybe you can remind us on the front-office penetration rate, what it reached and what's still the opportunity left.

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Yes. So if we start with the pipeline then, we have achieved the internal lens of our pipeline. It's better than it used to be and it has to be because, otherwise, it's hard to predict the growth in a sense. So we've got good pipeline across the world, both in Europe, in Middle East, in Asia and North America as well. We've got quite good pipeline there. As you said, we signed 5 new clients until now. Last year, we signed a total of 12 if you include the Coric side of this and I would say our ambition is to get to [ no less ] deals than we did last year. That's clearly the ambition we have. Whether it gets better or worse, that's hard to say. It's a lumpy business to get new clients in. But that's at least the ambition we have in this one. On Coric and SimCorp Italiana, SimCorp Italiana, it continues to do quite well and it's a very stable business for us in Q1 as well. So that's good. The Coric business, as you say, we signed a deal now in the first quarter. So that's a good start and we do expect to see more Coric deals come through as we go throughout the year as well. Also there, we have quite good pipeline as such. Then you asked about the go lives and that kind of is all the customers that we signed up the previous year. As they go live, we tend to see if we can do a press release where we talk about their go live and that should give you an indication of where that goes. Other than that, it's hard to give a flavor on what to expect there because it's really the customer who decides when they go live. They might have a plan to go live in a specific month and then, for some reason, they delay a month or delay 2 months. But -- so it's hard for us to give you any real flavor on this one. I don't know if, Mike, do you have a comment on Sofia for the first quarter...

[Michael Rosenvold, CFO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Yes, I do have a few additions to Sofia and Coric. For Sofia, we have been very transparent all the way. You know that as Generali is moving more and more from Sofia to SimCorp Dimension, then you will see more revenue in the traditional SimCorp Dimension and you will see less revenue in SimCorp Italiana. And that is, as you know, according to business plan and everything. So it's a very stable business but we all also know that some revenue will transfer from SimCorp Sofia towards SimCorp Dimension and that is as planned. So -- and that's also where you see a little dip this year. That's due to that conversion in Q1. In terms of Coric, we were also very transparent last year that Coric last year was a disappointing year and we have clear expectations that it will be better this year and you saw also in Q1 2019 that it was better. In terms of the spread in both new wins and pipeline, I think the good thing is that if you look at the 5 deals we have won so far, they are widely spread. We have had quite a while where we didn't win new deals in U.K., now we've won a deal in U.K. We had 1 in Luxembourg, also quite nice, and 2 in North America. So I think we are active in all markets and that goes for wins, but also the pipeline.

[Hannes Leitner, Equity Research Analyst of Software]

And -- okay. Just to clarify on the announced deals. It doesn't linger now the -- or doesn't hamper the remaining pipeline for this year, so the opportunity is intact. And then other thing is although you haven't addressed yet on my question, last bit was the front-office penetration. Is there any further progress to report? And would you then also provide us similar once alternative investments is really rolling out?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Yes. On front office, we continue to get more and more customers. We now have about 2/3 of the SimCorp Dimension customers also using the front office. And as we grow, more and more pick it up, more and more pick up more modules, so we feel good about our front-office progress in this one. And as you can see in the new customers, there's also new customers that are selling just front office, middle office, not back office. And for all the customers, front office is part of this. So we feel we are at a good point there. We strengthened. It's been a good bet. Alternatives is rolling out. And as I said last year, we signed up 16 new customers -- or 17 customers from the existing customer base mostly, but also some of the new customers we signed up had alternatives as part of this. The significant deal that will hopefully be able to recognize now in Q2 that was signed in December last year, alternatives was a big part of that.

[Operator]

And our last question is from André Thormann from ABG.

[André Thormann, Analyst]

So my first question is how many of the new clients that you reported, these 5 clients, is asset managers?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Okay. New clients we reported, of the 5 in total, there's 3 asset managers, 2 SimCorp Dimension as asset managers in the first quarter. Then Willis Towers Watson, we count as an asset manager as such, and then there's the European asset manager that signed in Q2. And the Coric deal is a big U.S. asset manager.

[André Thormann, Analyst]

Okay. So actually this quarter, you didn't see much of that asset manager pressure?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

At least we signed some of the asset management deals we worked on for a long time.

[André Thormann, Analyst]

Okay. And then my next question is in terms of the add-on license. If we look at only the additional regular license sale exclusively, then that goes down, I can see, like 36%? I know you elaborated a bit on this in your presentation. But can you give some more flavor on this?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Yes. I think the flavor we can give is that Q1 2018 was an unusually strong start of the year. So we had some big wins, which we also discussed in connection with Q1 2018. And I was trying to do the comparison to Q1 2017 where add-on license was only EUR 3.5 million. So you can say going from EUR 3.5 million to EUR 11.9 million is still pretty solid. And even if you then -- if you want to subtract the conversion of EUR 1.6 million, then you are still at a pretty high level. So we don't -- it's not like that we're seeing any alarms for Q1 2019. It will always fluctuate and we had a very strong Q1 2018 last year of -- yes.

[André Thormann, Analyst]

Okay. And then another one, you have been talking a lot about eFront. Just to be entirely sure, as it is now with Aladdin's acquisition of eFront, are you like behind BlackRock on the alternatives, roughly said?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

Are we behind BlackRock on alternatives? That would -- that kind of would divide the question in 2. You would say, are we behind eFront in alternatives? That would be the first question to ask. And given that we are winning over eFront in new deals and given that we're replacing eFront at existing customers, I would judge that to be a no. Are we behind BlackRock that has now bought eFront? If you think that what you want is an integrated solution, truly integrated solution that has IBOR, ABOR, that also does alternatives, then they have a few years of integration work to do before they're there.

[André Thormann, Analyst]

Okay. So you're saying that you're winning customers against eFront as you see now on alternatives?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

We have replaced eFront at existing customers.

[André Thormann, Analyst]

Also after the acquisition?

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

That's a month ago so that I don't know. I don't have that detail.

[Operator]

There appear to be no further questions at this time. Speaker, please continue.

[Klaus Holse, CEO & Member of Executive Management Board]

If there are no further questions at this time, this is the time where we say thank you for joining the call. Thank you for listening to this, and thank you for all the good questions. And then we say we'll see you again in August when we do the second -- or the first half of the year/second quarter. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you all for participating, and you may now disconnect. Speaker, please standby.