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Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of the results for the first quarter of 2022 for Crayon Group Holding. My name is Magnus Granerod, and I'm Head of Investor Relations at Crayon. And with me today presenting the key developments and financial results for the quarter are our CEO, Melissa Mulholland; and our CFO, Jon Birger Syvertsen. The financial results and presentation are available for download from the Investor Relations section of our website, and this live audio cast will be available on demand after the live event has concluded. Those of you who are following our webcast can also submit questions through the online platform.
And with that, I'll leave the word over to you, Melissa.
Thank you so much for joining our Q1 earnings. I first want to celebrate with all of you that it's 20 years of Crayon being established as a business. I want to thank our employees, whom we call our Crayonites, our customers, our partners and our vendors for putting the trust and established business with Crayon. We couldn't have done the past 20 years without each and every one of you and are so grateful for the growth journey we have been on as a company.
We were established with a singular business strategy to be really on the side of the customer. And this continues to hold true even 20 years ago. In 2002, we were established in Oslo, Norway with 6 employees. Today, we are a size of 3,300 employees across 47 countries.
We have achieved a tremendous amount, everything from being a leader on the Gartner Magic Quadrant, 2 years in a row for our software asset management and managed service capability to delivering 3 ISO certifications this past year. Around people, we continue to expand our capability with an emphasis around diversity and inclusion as well as technical competency ranging across 7,000 certifications over a whole breadth of technology solutions and providers. And lastly, we have really accelerated our acquisition strategy as part of driving our inorganic growth for the company and the efficiency that we have ahead.
Moving into Q1 results. We had a fantastic Q1 performance. This is based on that strong go-to-market that we have and really a testament to the business resilience that the IT market has. We had 46% gross profit growth at NOK 928 million, 57% growth around adjusted EBITDA, NOK 146 million and 15.7% growth around adjusted EBITDA margin.
Taking a look at the results across our 4 business areas and starting with the Software & Cloud Direct business, which had 22% gross profit growth and 47% adjusted EBITDA margin. This is clearly demonstrated by the strong momentum we have across all markets. We had an acceleration due to our business model of supporting customers with cost savings and optimization. Microsoft launched new commerce experience, which created a momentum around pricing changes. And that really drove a significant portion of the direct business this quarter.
We also had strong growth in markets such as the U.S., India and all around Europe. One highlight that I want to mention is a fantastic win out of the U.S. with a media technology company that we achieved a 5-year Azure commitment of $122 million.
On the Software & Cloud Channel business, we also had phenomenal growth, 127% of gross profit and 50% adjusted EBITDA margin. This was driven by strong growth momentum across all geographies with a strong potential -- positive contribution from Rhipe. The Rhipe integration has continued to propel the channel business, which has led us to be one of the largest cloud channel partners for Microsoft and is a statement around that acquisition strategy that we have as we take that to market.
Driving our business areas even further around the services side of the business, we break this up into 2 distinct areas. We have the Software & Cloud Economics services business, 16% gross profit growth and 9% adjusted EBITDA margin. Again, we had growth across all market clusters with increased managed service delivery of our Cloud Economics practice. We are expanding that to a term we call FinOps and SASOps, which further expands the financial opportunity through managed services that we are taking to market.
We also expanded even further to Google Cloud with a significant win with a customer called Cognite in Norway. This is our first Cloud Economics delivery on GCP with many more to come.
On the consulting services side, we had 57% gross profit growth, 14% adjusted EBITDA margin. This was driven by, I would say, that multi-cloud capability across AWS, GCP and Microsoft but also our data and AI motion, and I'll discuss this further in the presentation. We've got really strong demand in this part of the business, and we continue to see that acceleration across cloud managed services, propelling growth in this area.
Now taking a look at customer lens, I want to share with you win that we had this past quarter, which really speaks to our core business that we established 20 years ago, which is around the public sector space. So we had a win, which is the Ministry of Finance of Denmark, which supports the government in pursuing economic policies and innovation in the public sector. Crayon was awarded a contract for a 3-year framework agreement on standard Microsoft software products, which equates to a value of DKK 1.6 billion. The EU tender includes 25 government entities in Denmark and is really, I think, a statement around how we can provide solutions contributing to the highest level of security for the Danish government.
As Marina Lønning, our Danish GM so rightly says, it is our hope that the new solutions we can offer can help to create a simpler everyday life for the employees in the state for the benefit of the citizens of Denmark.
Now moving into our services side. We have a fantastic win in Australia from Downer Group. Downer Group employs 44,000 people across Australia and New Zealand and specializes in projects ranging from transportation to energy, to hospitals and education. This is a very broad sector. The business challenge is that centralizing thousands of data points to identify major risks that could create harm, also ensuring that this employee staff is healthy and safe, created an opportunity for Crayon to assist with AI machine learning and developing data insights, also language technology through natural language processing to establish safety procedures by identifying and accurately classifying data.
We were able to also develop a platform called zero harm AI platform created in less than 5 weeks. This was done through an agile methodology that we've established in the company. And we extended this to what we call machine learning operations or MLOps, which is an algorithm we've created to be able to train the model on new data. So it will help Downer Group continue to innovate forward.
Now this is really a demonstration of the AI and machine learning expertise that we've been building over the past 7 years. I'm proud to announce that Crayon is now a Microsoft AI and machine learning advanced specialization partner. This is a classification that you have around the world, and we are so grateful to be classified in this group, based off of third-party auditing of our Global Center of Excellence and the approach that we take to market. We have more than 80 data and AI experts who have delivered 100-plus customer solutions in market and in production, which is really a statement around the capability and that long-term customer value we want to bring to market.
Now to take this even further, I want to share with you our services and platform strategy that we have for the company going forward. We break up the services into 3 core areas. The first is really core to Crayon's DNA, which is optimizing tech ROI, that technical spend. You could think about this around our software asset management practice, which we also call Cloud Economics. So saving customers that time but also the cost. We are extending that into areas such as FinOps, which is going to provide the dashboarding and the automation capability to even innovate further on this as a managed service.
Keeping to that, we will continue our professional services that we have, which represents 50% of our gross profit today. If you look at the cloud adoption aspect, we really focused around a couple of core areas as a managed service offering. The first is really around managed services around Azure but also data backup. So how to manage and back up the data. And we all know that data is being very much growing in this market today as all of us consume things online.
But we are also establishing a cybersecurity practice, which we are taking globally because we see that security concerns are still very relevant for our customers and our partners.
On the data-driven side, this really speaks to our data and AI practice. So we've developed algorithms around machine learning ops which, for example, if you're a company, a large enterprise company that has multiple algorithms, it takes a lot of effort and people to update and maintain those models. So we've actually built the IP to automate that process, and we'll be delivering this as a managed service.
But we also have other areas such as document intelligence and data-driven machine maintenance as well as areas such as visual quality inspection as well. All of this will be supported through what we're calling our Crayon-iQ platform. Some of you may be familiar with our Cloud-iQ platform, which continues to be really core to our business performance. Cloud-iQ provisions and helps with that automation and that billing of cloud licensing. We're continuing to build upon that through automations and we'll deliver this through our Crayon-iQ platform in a way to reach people and our customers and partners at more scale.
Now all of this could not be done without people. People are our greatest asset, and we are continuing to be focused on a people-led culture. We have hired 231 gross new headcount this last quarter and are continuing to be focused on Q1, I would say, retention at 94.9%. I also want to highlight that we were an award winner for the SHE Index, which measures gender equality in the workplace. We, last year, were at 79 out of 100 points, and this year moved from 79 to 98. Given that substantial adjustment, we were awarded the Rising Star Award winner for SHE. We also had 1/3 of our employees participate in our employee stock purchasing program called ESPP. And this is a great example of the culture that we have that our employees are continuing to invest in Crayon.
I think Satya Nadella from Microsoft says this so well that in an inflationary environment, the only deflationary force is software. IT and the software market continue to I'll say, accelerate. And clearly, our Q1 results demonstrate that through a pandemic, through inflation, through circumstances like this, people still need IT, and they need a way to do so, that innovates their business, creates more efficiency, but also reduce costs, which greatly positions Crayon for continued growth ahead.
Now to round off the people side, I cannot miss focusing on the Ukraine. As part of Crayon's culture, we say that we are -- we treat our employees as though we're a family. We felt it was critical to extend that family culture to anyone to help employees and any employees around the world be able to evacuate their family members. So with that, I want to thank our security team, the Polish team and everybody involved for helping to evacuate more than 28 people, including Crayon employees, Rhipe family members as well as Crayon family members around the world that were living in the Ukraine.
All evacuees have found new homes with the support of employee volunteers and we create a Crayon donation fund. So you will see here that 500 people have raised over EUR 44,000 and Crayon will match 100% of all donations, which will be there to support our employees. This is just a small example but a really important one of how we stand up to support our colleagues as part of the culture that we have in the company today.
So with that, I'm going to transition to Jon Birger to take us through the financial results.
Thank you, Melissa. But before we go to the financial results, since we reported our 2021 earnings, we released our annual report, but more importantly, for the first time, we have also published a separate ESG report.
First of all, I'd like to highlight that I'm extremely proud of the entire team driving and supporting this effort. It has been a major effort with contributors from all over the business, including our volunteers volunteering their time across the company. And the result is a report which clearly demonstrates our strong commitment to sustainable development, equity, social responsibility and strong corporate governance. I encourage you all to read the report. And of course, if you have questions, please reach out through our usual Investor Relations channels.
Now the ESG report clearly outlines our commitment to the stable development. And as part of this commitment, we have also set tangible targets for ourselves across the different dimensions. On the people side, we're committing to broadening our definition of diversity by going beyond gender and setting targets accordingly. This is extremely important as we're a global organization operating across all continents. And just looking at my global finance team, I can see every day how the diversity we represent as a team contributes to positive business outcomes across the organization. 5 years from now, by 2027, we also have a target of increasing our share of women in the workforce to 40%.
On the planet side, we started reporting our greenhouse gas emissions as part of the ESG reporting. This will continue, but we will also complete our science-based targets process by 2024 and target a reduction of our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 by at least 40%.
On the prosperity side, we see significant opportunities. Cloud computing offers companies across the industry landscapes an opportunity to improve their sustainability performance while leveraging the most efficient forms of computing and storage. And this will be a core part of future customer interactions and ensuring a leadership position both on sustainable FinOps specifically and ESG in the field of Software & Cloud licensing and services all up will be instrumental for us going forward.
Now moving on to the financial section, I look forward to taking all of you through the Q1 results. And as a reminder, all numbers will be Norwegian kroner unless otherwise stated.
When reviewing the Q1 results, there are 3 clear highlights I'd like to draw all of your attention to. First of all, there's strong growth, both organic but also inorganic growth contributions. Driving these growth improvements, we see clear margin improvements as we continue to scale our international operations. And the Q1 results clearly demonstrates that we are on track to deliver on our full year 2022 outlook of 35% to 40% gross profit growth at improving EBITDA margins.
As a company, we continue on our globalization journey. And this journey implies that for the past 4 years, we have increasingly delivered increasing portions of our gross profit from outside the Nordics. And we've come a long way on this journey, but still with a long way ahead of us. The light gray bars represents our international business. As recently as 2018, Crayon had NOK 558 million in gross profit from the International segments, representing a bit more than 1/3 of the total gross profit in the company.
On an LTM basis, this gross profit is more than tripled over the course of the 4 years, driven by strong organic growth across the portfolio and recently also our acquisitions. And despite strong growth rates also in the Nordics, our international markets now amount to 52% of the gross profit in the company.
Still, even at this level, we're a long way away from realizing the potential in the international markets. And as the market potential for our services outside the Nordics is orders of magnitude larger than the market potential in the Nordics themselves. And we will continue to invest in new headcount and resources to drive growth outside the Nordics.
As to profitability, the international markets collectively delivered NOK 321 million in EBITDA on an LTM basis. which clearly demonstrates the scalability and margin improvement potential in the international markets. As recently at year-end 2018, we had a negative margin in our international markets in aggregate. While today, we are at 18% positive margin. Again, we have been able to achieve this improvement while we have also improved profitability in the Nordics, delivering a continued strong EBITDA margin of 35% in the Nordics over the last 12 months.
The EBITDA margin of 30% plus we see in the Nordics is what we see as representative for our business model when operating at scale. Although some of our international markets are today operating at a similar level of margins, at a whole, we are still only at 18% EBITDA margin for the international business, which clearly indicates the potential for future profitability improvements as we continue to scale our international footprint.
Looking at the margin development per region. We clearly see the trend of improving margins as the business scale in the international segments. The Nordics continued to deliver strong margins. While in Europe and U.S., we have delivered significant margin improvements in Q1 with stable margins in APAC and the Middle East as we continue to scale and grow the business in those markets.
Now looking at the breakdown of gross profit by market cluster and the growth rates, we're seeing a strong growth rate of 23% in the Nordics. But just as important, 11% of this is organic growth. And this level of organic growth demonstrates that even in a mature market, Crayon is in a position to continue to drive gross profit growth ahead of the market growth in the region.
In Europe, we see 27% growth, all organic. In the U.S., we see 28% growth -- gross profit growth, again, all organic. While in APAC and Middle East, we see 195% gross profit growth, obviously driven by a significant inorganic component from the Rhipe acquisition. However, important to note that even in the existing Crayon business, there's a 34% organic gross profit growth, clearly demonstrating the growth momentum in the APAC and media regions, which was also a key part of the rationale for the Rhipe acquisition.
On the EBITDA side, we're seeing year-over-year improvements in absolute EBITDA in the Nordics at slightly lower margins, driven by strong growth in the service business. The operating leverage in the Nordics remained strong in Q1 as an NOK 80 million gross profit improvement translates into a NOK 26 million EBITDA improvements.
Europe delivered strong EBITDA growth, also demonstrating a strong operating leverage, while the U.S. also demonstrating EBITDA growth despite investing significantly in new resources to continue to drive growth. APAC and the Middle East see strong EBITDA growth, obviously clearly driven by the contributions from the acquisitions. But also here, we're seeing operating leverage as we continue to scale the business across the region.
For Crayon, generating a strong cash flow from our underlying business is obviously a key financial objective. And for a high turnover business like Crayon, working capital is a critical part of our cash flow results. As a management team and as a business, we invest significant time and efforts into driving working capital improvements. And it is thus very positive to see that these efforts across the organization are paying off.
Before diving into the Q1 working capital, it is important to keep in mind that our business is seasonal. And as a consequence, the relevant comparison for working capital is always year-over-year. However, independently of the seasonality, Crayon has a consistent track record of negative working capital, which is attractive as it implies that working capital is a source of funds and not a use of funds.
Starting with the working capital in Q1, we have accounts receivables of NOK 4.9 billion, while accounts payables to vendors also amount to NOK 4.9 billion, resulting in a trade working capital of minus NOK 77 million, which is a reduction and thus an improvement of NOK 110 million compared to March 31, 2021. Even in an environment with increasing cost of capital, we are able to maintain and improve our working capital position, which we see as a strong result.
Furthermore, we have other working capital, which includes things such as payable public duties, taxes, other short-term receivables and payables totaling minus NOK 153 million, resulting in a net negative working capital of NOK 230 million on March 31, which is an increase of NOK 261 million year-over-year.
We see this as a very strong result as we're continuing to retain the working capital improvements of the past 2 years and continue to drive business growth with a negative working capital. With the difference in working capital year-over-year, driven by the difference in the Q4 starting points for 2021 and 2022, respectively. Cash flow from operations in Q1 was minus NOK 328 million, and this follows the same seasonal pattern as the net working capital on the previous page as changes in the working capital is the major driver for variability of the cash flow between quarters.
And with the strong Q1 2022 results, contributing to a better cash flow than the comparable Q1 2021 results. However, in order to look across the cyclicality of the individual quarters, it is helpful to look at the development of the liquidity over the past 12 months.
The waterfall below illustrates how the net cash position and liquidity position has improved significantly. In Q1 2021, we had NOK 1 billion in cash. During the last 12 months, we had an adjusted EBITDA of NOK 649 million, while the change in net working capital had a negative impact of NOK 483 million, as seen from the cash flow statement.
CapEx had a negative effect of NOK 93 million, while acquisitions net amounted to NOK 2.5 billion and tax and interest amounted to NOK 162 million, while new equity in total has increased cash with NOK 686 million and the new bond loan contributed NOK 1.8 billion in cash.
Finally, currency translation and other effects amounted to NOK 97 million negative, leading to a net cash position on March 31 of NOK 0.8 billion. In addition, the business has an RCF available, which leads to a total liquidity reserve of NOK 1.1 billion on March 31, which is in line with the liquidity reserve last year.
Before moving to the P&L statement, it is also important to note the change in accounting principles following the Agenda Decision from the IFRS Interpretation Committee on April 20, relating to the principal versus agent revenue recognition for software resellers. Based on this decision, Crayon will, starting with the Q1 2022 earnings, account for revenue from the resale of Software & Cloud licenses on a net basis, that is net for -- of related costs. This has no impact on our gross profit, EBITDA, operating profit or net income. However, as demonstrated by the chart, the revenue, the official recognizing revenue for the Software & Cloud segments will reduce -- be reduced and be in line with the gross profit.
The revenue for 2020 and 2021 have been restated according to IAS 8. The balance sheet, the equity and the cash flow statements are unchanged. We detail out information behind this policy change in Note 3 in the financial report. But it's also important to note that the historical comparable definition of our revenue are -- is shown as gross sales, and we will continue to update the market going forward on gross sales.
Now looking at the P&L. We have already covered the items down to EBITDA and the operating performance underlying this. Depreciation and amortization is up NOK 33 million year-over-year, mainly related to Sensa and Rhipe and the amortization on the intangible assets identified as part of the purchase price allocations.
Interest expenses increased primarily due to interest on our new bond issued amounting to NOK 22.5 million. Other financial income is driven by -- primarily driven by currency movements. This results net in a strong earnings per share growth compared to Q1 2021 with an earnings per share of NOK 0.86 compared to NOK 0.19 for the same quarter last year.
Looking at the balance sheet, we have already discussed the net working capital. Contracts and goodwill are driven by the purchase price allocations from the Sensa and Rhipe acquisitions. While other current receivables and public duties are driven partly by the reclassification of the payable from a net to gross basis.
Crayon also has a NOK 300 million bond loan maturing in November 2022, classified as current interest-bearing debt as there is less than 1 year of maturity on this bond loan.
Looking at the net interest-bearing debt. We're now following the Rhipe acquisition at the level of NOK 1.6 billion in what is seasonally one of the weaker quarters from our balance sheet perspective. This implies a leverage of 2.2 or 2.0 when comparing the net interest-bearing debt to the pro forma adjusted EBITDA, including the full year contributions from Rhipe, which clearly demonstrates that Crayon has a strong balance sheet, which enables us to continue to drive our M&A strategy.
Furthermore, as we continue to drive growth and margin improvements across the business, this will further support the deleveraging, both through cash generation and through reducing the leverage ratio as adjusted EBITDA continues to grow, providing Crayon with flexibility when it comes to executing on M&A or returning cash to shareholders as appropriate.
Having reviewed the Q1 2022 earnings, it's now time to turn to the outlook. For the last 12 months, we have delivered a performance, which is clearly in line with the outlook we've set for ourselves for 2022. We have delivered 35.3% gross profit growth over the course of the last 12 months, which is in line with the 35% to 40% outlook we're setting ourselves for 2022 with further upside during the year as we're getting the full year benefits of the Rhipe acquisitions during Q2, Q3 and parts of Q4.
Also important to note is that the organic growth rate in the quarter is in line with the medium-term guidance of around 20%. The LTM adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.2% sets us on a continued trajectory for delivering on our 2022 outlook as year-over-year, we have delivered margin improvements also in Q1. On the net working capital side, we're performing over the course of the last 12 months, in line with the expectations set for ourselves during 2022, with a net working capital to gross profit ratio of 17.4%, in line with our 2020 outlook.
Meanwhile, the CapEx over the last 12 months is NOK 93 million, which sets us in line for the 2022 outlook of NOK 100 million as we continue to include the -- and reallocate the CapEx from Rhipe by offsetting the synergies by accelerating investments in the platforms across the business.
With that, we conclude the formal part of the Q4 -- Q1 presentation and move to Q&A.
So the first question is from [ Thomas Tang ], and it's on capital allocation and whether we see an option to buy back shares in Crayon given the current market environment. And as I outlined in the presentation, we have a strong balance sheet, and we clearly have an opportunity for investments. And as previously communicated, plan A, B and C and the rationale for raising capital in the first place was to drive -- continue to drive growth in Crayon through inorganic opportunities. And that remains the overall priority. Should we, over time, see that sort of the opportunities are not materializing and that plan A, B or C did not work out, we would, of course, have to revisit the discussion on overall capital structure.
And then there's a question on the provision for bad debt and whether that relates to Russia and Ukraine, sort of I mean the -- to be clear on that, our business, both in Russia and Ukraine actually continues to perform strongly, perhaps surprisingly. But in both of those markets, sort of there's not an issue with the underlying business as such. There are -- we have, of course, bad debt provisions related to those markets as well, but we're not seeing sort of accelerated or massive bad debt provisions in either of those markets.
Then there's a question from Henriette at Arctic, first, on the Sensa acquisition and the impact on gross profit and EBITDA in the Nordics. And sort of as I outlined in the presentation, we're seeing NOK 42 million in gross profit from Sensa and NOK 5 million in EBITDA from Sensa in the quarter specifically.
And then there's a question whether we see changes in the competitive landscape in Europe post the Russia-Ukraine war with sort of -- with some of the historical peers, our competitors, such as Softline having strong ties to the Russian market. Melissa, do you want to address that?
Sure. Thank you. It's a good question, and I would say fairly complex in nature because if you look at Russia and Ukraine, as Jon Birger mentioned, we actually are seeing more demand in the IT market. If you think about a lot of companies that have stored data in data centers that no longer is a viable solution in markets like Ukraine and so we're well positioned to be able to support them through that transition.
Also, keep in mind that Central Eastern Europe was just established less than 3 years ago. So it's a very small market in total size relative to where we have a more mature and established business. Well, we are growing very strongly and healthy, and we, of course, see opportunity and continued opportunity in those markets.
Then we have a question from Christoffer at DNB on U.S. Basically, sort of -- the question is on whether the U.S. is lagging on ambitions for the quarter? What -- can you help us understand how you will accelerate this geo? And how fast should we expect it to accelerate? And finally, is a Rhipe-type acquisition needed in the U.S.?
We will continue to drive organic growth in the U.S. because naturally, that's where we started and have demonstrated results in doing so. But as to your point, we've really, I think, accelerated over the past quarter hiring, hiring sales capability and technical roles to be able for us to accelerate progress in the market. And ramp-up time takes 3 to 6 months depending on the role. So yes, we will continue to see growth and acceleration in the U.S. market. We are actively going through a process, a structured process through an acquisition in the U.S. Nothing to comment as of today, but inorganic growth is certainly something that is a priority for us.
Then there's a question from [indiscernible]. Do you see an increased wage inflation going forward and increased downside risk to EBITDA margins in the Nordics.
And I think this is a good question and an important question in the sense that sort of we operate in the same economy as everybody else, and there's always some level of basic wage inflation sort of varied by market to market, and that also applies to us.
And on top of that, there are certain -- and on the general inflation, of course, sort of we're seeing the same signals as everyone else with higher inflation across a number of economies. All up, we see that as a positive contributor to our business model in the sense that in an environment with higher inflation, the value of productivity investments in the economy is higher. And one of the key drivers of productivity improvements across industries and businesses is digitalization, which clearly fuels our business model.
We're also seeing sort of specific niche technical resources with wage inflation and sort of acceleration on wage costs beyond the general inflation. And again, that's typically driven by strong demand for those resources in question, which again is a positive to our business model. Of course, as in any business during types of inflation, there is a risk that sort of even though the long-term impact is clearly favorable and positive, there's the timing effects of input versus output, timing of input costs versus to what extent and how fast we're able to increase the hourly rates basically on services.
And there's -- we have a portfolio of contracts with various durations. All of them contains provisions for cost escalation but in terms of being able to take advantage of the demand environment, of course, there's a certain timing. So all up, we're seeing inflation as positive to the business model overall. But of course, with a set of challenges to navigate over the coming quarters in terms of maintaining and driving short-term profitability.
Okay. Thank you, Melissa and Jon Birger. And with that, we will conclude today's presentation. As previously mentioned, a recording of this audio test will be made available on demand on our website. For further information or questions, please visit our Investor Relations section on our website or do reach out to us via e-mail at ir@crayon.com. Thank you for participating, and we look forward to seeing you again for the Q2 results presentation on August 17. Thank you.