Lemonsoft Oyj

OMXH:LEMON

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q1

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this interim report from Lemonsoft Oyj, where we will be covering the main themes of the first quarter for '23. My name is Jan-Erik Lindfors, I'm the Deputy CEO of Lemonsoft, responsible for our customer operations. And also here today with my colleagues, Mari Erkkila, CFO, and then Alpo Luostarinen, responsible for our Strategy, our M&A and Investor Relations as well. So welcome to the webcast.

Let's kick off by looking at the highlights from the first quarter for '23. So if we look at it from a sales and market perspective, we can see that our net sales grew despite some short-term market headwinds. We had 18.3% growth in net sales and our profitability still remains good at 24.7% adjusted EBIT. If I look at the quarter from a market perspective, I can say that we're not happy with the growth from an organic growth perspective. Most of the growth that we generated during the first quarter came from our acquisitions, and you could say that we saw short-term market headwinds when it came to new sales and also a slight increase in churn and downgrades from customer, which then affected our organic growth negatively.

Because we are not happy with the result from the first quarter, we're, of course, always taking measures and actions to rectify those, and those are ongoing. And having a balance between organic growth and inorganic growth is, of course, for us, very important from a growth strategy perspective. I will come back a little bit more to the market and to what customers are buying in a little while.

Looking further ahead on key numbers here, we had over the last year, we've increased the number of employees from 158 to 182, but pretty much flat from Q4 '22 to Q1 '23. So the transition that we're making to an industry-focused organizational model where we have clear accountability for customers and for deliveries, where we streamline our implementation models and improving our customer services is still ongoing.

Product-wise, we're continuing to execute on our product road map. We have several product development initiatives ongoing. Among those, the next-generation Kellokortti product and also shift and resource planning, which is features asked for by a multitude of customers.

Unfortunately, we also had a setback in terms of a malware attack at the end of March on our platform services. And we were hit by a ransomware attack. We reacted swiftly. We took down our servers and our services as a precaution, acted according to our disaster recovery plan and then took services back up during the following days so that our services were then available for our customers to use again.

The breakdown in services affected around 2,200 user organizations. Most of those were already up and running back in a couple of days after that, the actual attack. But of course, this is a very unfortunate incident we didn't see, however, that the economic impact of the attack would be such that we would have had to release a stock exchange release or a press release to that. We will, of course, reimburse customers according to our SLA, but it will not have a significant effect on our full year results, which is why we didn't release a stock exchange statement either. So we did continuous communications with customers throughout this process and got very good feedback on that as well. So of course, unfortunate incident, but also something that we learned from and have been able to take measures to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Other significant events during the reporting period would be that we moved to IFRS reporting in April. I think most of you have seen the statement that we released regarding that earlier. I'd like to thank our finance team for their great work on the transition. It's a lot of extra work moving to IFRS, but I think the team handled it very well. And hopefully, we'll all be able to reap the benefits of this going forward.

Then if you look at the -- from a sales perspective, again, Q4 versus Q1 '23, I think what is clear to see that we had a dip in sales from Q4 to Q1. The reason for that is basically, we had an exceptional Q4 when it came to consulting sales. Customers, at the end of the year, are really concerned about their competitive advantage, how to be more efficient and they bought a lot of consulting services and trading from us. Now that trend didn't stay for the first quarter and that's why we see a slight dip in sales then between Q4 and Q1. So we have EUR 5.9 million for the first quarter as our net sales for Q1 '23.

Now if you look at that over the rolling 12 months, it's still a very nice picture that you have in the middle of the slide here, so EUR 23.5 million in terms of rolling 12 months and nice development overall.

Then when it comes to number of customers, we have actually changed the way that we report the amount of customers that we serve. Now previously, we reported all organizations that were using our different software products. And now we're reporting the actual invoiced clients. So typically, in our setup, one group company can have several subgroups or sub companies, subsidiaries that they use, and it's still only 1 invoicing customer, even if it's a group that we serve. So now we're reporting customer numbers according to invoicing customers, that makes it easier for us to stay on top of things and also easier then to track the average revenue per customer as well. So that's a change in the reporting from last time around.

A couple of words on the growth strategy and the market update. If you think about -- I would say, the growth drivers, I suppose at the moment, there's still uncertainty in the market because of the macroeconomic situation. But at the same time, you can see the mega trends that really favor us, we're talking about digital transformation, we're talking about cloud and AI and of course, sustainability. Those grew positive mega trends that drive our business. If you think about that then from an [ E&P ] market perspective, then especially digitalizing, production, manufacturing, logistics and finance are those that really offer us excellent opportunities to help our customers be more efficient and more agile in their working.

Customers really, at the moment, looking for products and services that help them short term to optimize their business. So we definitely see longer sales cycles in new customer acquisition, especially for the medium and large ERP project size. But then again, going back to what I said on the short-term quick solutions that bring either cost savings or revenue, we see increased demand for B2B e-commerce. We see increased demand for integration projects, so making sure that you get as much out of your IT investments as possible. And then, of course, reporting, budgeting, forecasting, all of those products and services that makes it easier for the customer to control and report and take good decisions on his business is what customers are buying at the moment.

Lead generation in Q1 was slightly softer than the previous quarter. We still have a stable sales pipeline. We see maybe a bit more even industry vertical mix than we had before. Q4, we had a lot of manufacturing and logistics leads come in. And now during the first quarter, that was a bit more evenly spread. We did a lot of good sales in our transport optimization and logistics solutions. And also, we're starting to see, I think, the synergy effect of being able to cross-sell to customers across the customer base. We saw in the vertical, the PSA vertical with the Finazilla product that we're able to generate cross-sell, upsell [ leads ] and closed off deals during Q1.

A couple of partnership highlights also during the first quarter. In order to be able to answer the demand for quick integration implementation, we agreed a platform partnership with [indiscernible] Technology. So together, we are using their integration platform as a service, and we're doing our implementations on that. And then from a channel sales perspective, where we also saw a slight softening of new customer acquisition through the accounting channel. We did a partnership with Talenom that we hope will deliver leads and deals for us over the year. Now as I said, market conditions are still challenging for our customers. There was an updated Finnish economic forecast from ETLA a couple of -- or around a month ago. And you can see that the forecast is for the Finnish economy to do a slight contraction in '23 with 0.3 percentage points from GDP. Inflation is still high and all of those things are, of course, also affecting our customers when they do their business.

So all in all, I would say, from a market and customer perspective, short-term headwinds, long-term tailwinds. If you look at the mega trends, they're all for us. If you look at the ERP trends, they're all for us. The market and growth drivers for those applications that our customers need are still there. So there's market share for us to take.

So I will hand over then to Mari for the financial part of the presentation. So please, Mari, go ahead.

[Mari Erkkila, executive]

Yes. Thank you, Jan-Erik. Net sales growth mainly due to new customer acquisitions and the acquisitions of Logentia and Finazilla, whose net sales were not included in the comparison period. Net sales were EUR 5.9 million and adjusted EBIT margin was 24.7% of the net sales in the review period. Net sales growth has been 18.3% in the review period and SaaS has grown by 16.1%. Organic growth was 1.2% in the review period due to slower net revenue returns development.

And then expenses. Material and services cost comprise purchase relating to hosting licenses and other external services, which is approved gross margin. Cost base consist primarily of employee benefit expenses. During the revenue period, have been capitalized are the development expenses, about EUR 500,000. Other operating expenses has increased as planned. Yes. Thank you.

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Thank you, Mari. Those were the sales and the cost side highlights. Then just a quick look at our personnel development. So as Mari said, of course, a significant part of our cost base is our staff and we have now split staff into basically 3 functions. So R&D, which is a little bit more half, and then customer functions, a little bit less than half, and then support and other functions. So just to make it simpler to see that we also -- we basically have a two-part organization split between customer operations and R&D operations.

Number of employees, Q1 versus Q4 is more or less flat. And as I said earlier, also in the last time we were together in a presentation, we've transitioned over to an industry-focused organizational model. Basically, that means that we have a business area where there's clear accountability for sales to new customers, sales to current customers, product portfolio as well as the deliveries to customers. I think the implementation of that in the beginning of the year went very well. Now we are, of course, evaluating quarter-by-quarter. How well did it go? And what kind of results did we produce from that? But Q1 personnel development is stable, according to plan and no major changes on this one.

And even though the Q1 was a little bit softer than we hoped for and then our outlook for '23 is still the same. So we maintain our profit forecast for '23 with a net sales growth of between 10% to 20%. And then the profitability of adjusted EBIT to be between 25% to 30%. We see -- I still estimate that the first half of the year will be a little bit weak and the second half of the year will be a little bit bigger. It depends on how the market situation develops. And as we know, there's still uncertainty out there. But then again, there's also a lot of opportunities for customers who need to have short-term help with growing their business and making their business more transparent and so forth.

So I think we have excellent opportunities still during the year. We will continue to execute on both our product road map as well as our customer experience road map to reach these goals. So that was a pretty quick summary, I would say, for Q1. Do we have any questions on the line from the audience?

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Yes. So Jan-Erik, let's go through a few quick questions. First of all, everybody has been interested about the organic growth in development, which was below expectations. How do we expect that to continue towards the end of the year?

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Yes. So it's an interesting question because, of course, for organic growth to be in line with expectations [Audio Gap] with our customer acquisition. We see quite a lot of fluctuation between the industry verticals, right? So at the beginning of the year, we have seen the new customer acquisition is a little bit softer for the manufacturing industry. But then again, picking up from a professional services point of view and a construction point of view at the end of the quarter.

Now from a current customer sales, we can actually say that we saw good progress in cross sales during the quarter. But we could also see that the customers are cost-conscious, more cost conscious than before. And as I pointed out earlier, they buy at this moment in time solutions where they can really make short-term controlled changes to their own business, things that optimize costs or where they improve transparency or where they improve reporting. It's really important for customers right now to be in control and to be able to make good decisions on their behalf.

So -- and as I said, I think H1, we'll still see some short-term market headwinds. I think it will pick up during Q3 and Q4.

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

And I think you went through some of the details, but could you a bit elaborate still on the exact measures and initiatives that we have to expand on organic growth?

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Yes, of course. So when you look at it from a new customer acquisition perspective, as I said, the main thing is to make sure that our business area organizations can execute on the pipeline they have in a good way. So making sure that we prioritize the right part of the sales pipeline to be able then to close the right deals. I mean we have a long history of converting good deals in the manufacturing and logistics space. And even though the sales cycles in that segment is a little bit -- or was a little bit slower during Q1, making sure that we are on top of that, and we close those new deals, that's extremely important.

Then from a current customer point of view, what we do all the time is we go through that customer base, and we see what kind of opportunities we have for the different verticals and the different customer target groups that we have. So we run regular marketing campaigns, upsell campaigns, cross-sell campaigns, both inbound and outbound so that we can optimize what comes from current customers.

But at the same time, it's important to understand that our customer base is very wide. We have everything from the small customers that pay us a couple of tens of euros per month up to those who pay us EUR 25,000 to EUR 30,000 per month, and they all need different solutions, right? But important for us to build the right target to open and scale across them.

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

And looking back on Q1 on the organic growth, which was the biggest effect, new customer acquisitions or current customers downgrading? And a bit of the components of NRR churn, for example, how do you see that?

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Yes. I mean, we saw -- if we talk about downgrades and churns, then, of course, that's net revenue retention rate is the #1 KPI for us to develop in terms of making sure we hit our targets for the year.

So if you look at churn, we saw increased churn. It was mainly from the construction vertical. If you look at the percentage of churn or percentage that, that was of all churn, then the construction churn was roughly 30% of the overall churn that we had in the year -- or in the quarter.

Then if you look at downgrades, that was pretty even. But you can see that customers in all sectors are basically making sure that they protect their bottom line. And as they have the possibility to scale up on those seeds as they want, and that has an effect on our net revenue retention as well.

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Good. And let's jump a bit into acquisitions. How do you see the growth that we've had for earlier acquisitions done in 2020 and '21? And how they've developed once they've become sort of organic?

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Yes. I mean if you look at the acquisitions that we did, you said '20 and '21, that's Metsys and Kellokortti, yes.

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Yes. And PlanMill and Talosofta actually.

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Yes. So if you look at the -- Kellokortti has developed really nicely both from a growth and profitability point of view. I mean, we have more customers than ever, more users than ever and we've been successfully scaling that business. I think it's a really good example of what we can do...

Now if you look at it from a PlanMill and Talosofta perspective, those products in the -- in different parts of the product life cycle, right? So PlanMill is focused on a certain target group of PSA customers that have been with the company for a very long time. And PlanMill, the best way to kind of scale PlanMill or to make sure that we get the most out of PlanMill is to make sure that our customers stay with the platform as long as possible. So we provide different integration solutions, different kind of feature development for that and so forth.

Talosofta, then again, was not a straight out M&A, but a business deal. And there, we've been able to eliminate extra admin work. And so the profitability of that product has improved because of a great deal.

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Yes. And then on Lixani, well, of course, we acquired that with a development perspective from a longer perspective that we expect it to grow later on. And of course, that's been a bit slow, but still looking forward to seeing growth in there. From an overall perspective, I would say that the acquisitions that we've done in 2020 and '21 have been generally on a lower growth or flat growth level, basically. Maybe Kellokortti a bit different from the others. But otherwise, a bit flat. And then after that in '22, we acquired more growth-focused companies. But how do you see, Jan-Erik, do you consider those -- the previous acquisitions successful? And which of these still need some work to do?

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Yes. I think -- I mean, for me, Kellokortti is better successful, as you said, very nice growth, very nice profitability. I think PlanMill, very successful as well, very profitable for us. Talosofta, I think we have work to do on the actual product side to be more competitive on the market.

And then when I look at the latest acquisitions, Finazilla and Logentia, I'm very happy with those because both of those are products that you can easily sell, easily scale, easily deliver and are addressing customer needs right now in the market. So I'm very happy with those 2 as well, growth and profitability has developed nicely as well.

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Good. And then if we look at the overall M&A market, a quick word from there, I would say that the M&A activity in the first quarter, in the whole market, has been quite quiet to be honest. But there seems to be increasing activity, interesting companies in the market and the ones that are developing positively and have a good growth and profitability structure typically tend to get a lot of interest from investors. And yes, we continue on our track, of course, and continue to look at acquisitions. And hopefully execute some of this during this year.

But moving forward to capitalization of expenses, we did some at the end of last year and continued on that track in Q1 based on IFRS transition. Would you like to comment on that? Is that reasonable run rate going forward, what we did in Q1? And how we see that towards the end of the year?

[Mari Erkkila, executive]

Yes. I think so that the level is same also, second quarter, but I think so that a little bit change is coming third and last quarter because some products like Lixani, it is almost ready. But of course, it's coming new, what we can capitalize. So I believe that level is same every quarter in this year.

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Very good, very good. And that, of course, depends on the activity that we have. But based on that assumption, we can continue.

And then finally, Jan-Erik, maybe we need to discuss a few words on the malware attack. And do we expect some ongoing implications from that? Or is it sort of fixed and done after March and April?

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Yes. I mean from a result impact point of view, our evaluation was that it won't significantly impact our results, right? So of course, we had a couple of days of downtime, we will reimburse customers accordingly to our SLA, and we have reserved a certain amount of money for that. So we don't [Audio Gap] from a process like this. We have [Audio Gap] more clear just now how critical we are from a...

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Sorry, Jan-Erik, could you repeat? The line was breaking a bit. If you could repeat the past 3 sentences?

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

The past 3 sentences. Okay. So maybe I'll do it from the start. Yes. So the impact on -- if that's to continue over the [Technical Difficulty]

[Mari Erkkila, executive]

Maybe there is something, problem with line.

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Yes. Probably the line doesn't allow us to speak about the malware attack, but still, Jan-Erik, when you are back online, maybe we can continue. Can you hear me now, Jan-Erik?

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Now I can. I seem to have some network issue here on my side. I don't know why, but that's what it is. So where did you lose me again?

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Just go on from the beginning. Yes.

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Yes. So basically, the question was that do we expect any impact from the attack over the rest of the year? And what did we learn?

So first of all, we don't expect any more financial impacts from the attack during the year. We are reimbursing customers according to our SLA. The impact on that was not significant enough to have an impact on the year result. And so we'll continue then. From a result perspective, it wasn't significant enough. But of course, from an operational perspective, again, we learned, of course, how critical we are and how sticky we are for the customers in terms of the importance to their business, right? So when we're down for a day or two, it's really a difficult thing for customers.

And of course, it's not nice to be down, but we took down services as a precaution to make sure that nothing would spread or nothing would escalate from that point of view. And it affected more customers than it should have had, but we were -- we prefer to be on the safe side and so forth.

So as I said, business continuity, risk management is something really important for our customers. And of course, the first piece of a good customer experience is making sure that your service is always available to deliver. So that's clearly something to keep top of mind.

[Alpo Luostarinen, executive]

Very good. Thanks a lot, Jan-Erik. Thank you, Mari. And we'll continue business as usual, and let's come back in Q2.

[Jan-Erik Lindfors, executive]

Thank you so much.

[Mari Erkkila, executive]

Thank you.