Crayon Group Holding ASA

OSE:CRAYN

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q2

[Melanie Coffee, PR & Media Relations Director]

Good morning. My name is Melanie Coffee, and welcome to the quarterly earnings for the second quarter. With us on the call today is CEO, Melissa Mulholland; and our CFO, Jon Birger Syvertsen. Melissa?

[Melissa Mulholland]

Welcome, and thank you for joining our Q2 earnings call. It's a pleasure to be here with all of you today. I'm going to take you through the company and where we've grown over the past 20 years and also will focus on our Q2 results. The company was really founded and built around software asset management, and that is really critical to our ability to deliver customer value, services and the ability to grow together. Today, we are a total size of 2,500 employees, and I'm proud to say that of that 2,500 employees, we also have 2,000 certifications across multi-software providers, which is a phenomenal achievement, further demonstrating our capability to deliver technology to customers. We have 80% global market coverage across 37 countries and are publicly listed with a market cap of NOK 12.6 billion. But I also want to just mention on the right-hand side of this slide, you can see just the strong international growth story that we've had over the past several years, and that is really built upon the expansion in -- outside of the Nordics, across the world in regions such as APAC, EMEA, Central Eastern Europe as well as North America. And you can see that compound annual growth rate at 19%, including our Q2 results. Now just to give more orientation around Crayon as a business. As I mentioned, we're really focused around that software asset management, which is really all about how to reduce IT spend and cost, which I'll talk more about today, but that's been real critical because it enables us to deliver really strong customer engagement. We have over 95% customer retention, which is a consistent metric that we have year-over-year, and that further shows that customers are at the forefront of our business model. To support the customers, we really also focus on how do we continue to add more business value, which is where, what we call value-added services. So for example, delivering managed services through the cloud becomes an important lever and expanding our relationships with our customers. We invest in technologies such as areas such as cloud migration, data modernization, app development and AI because these are areas that customers are increasingly asking for more support in. Now to focus on our Q2 highlights. There's 3 core points that we'll walk through today. The first is what we're seeing in the market in terms of trends and outlook that further accelerates the growth for Crayon as a company. The second is really rooted in our foundation as a customer-centric business that will continue to remain this way. And then lastly, just our continued strong performance in the market. Now to orient you just around what we see in the industry today, the global IT spending is increasing. Well, this may not surprise you, given this has been a topic across many years that we've seen growth. This is further exacerbated by the pandemic. Companies increasingly need to support their employees, but also their customers in a digital infrastructure and environment. And there are 3 areas that we see continued growth. The first is around data center optimization and also, I'd say, migration into the cloud. Second is around enterprise software. And the third is around IT services, where we see increasing need for long-term engagement with managed services. With this growth opportunity that we see in the market, it well positions Crayon in exactly what we do as a business, putting our customers and our partners' needs first. Now doing a deeper dive into just that all-up IT spend, when you look at it from key challenges that customers face in the environment today across security, but also managed cloud spend governance, compliance, these are areas that Crayon is well positioned in the business model that we have. Security, by no surprise, continues to be a threat to customers' environments as more and more people are putting their data into the cloud, and this is an area that we will continue to focus. But I think what is great to see just in terms of the all-up trend is the 79% focus on managing cloud spend. This provides Crayon a great opportunity to further accelerate on the cloud economics capability that we have as part of that software asset management practice that has been established for the past 20 years. So this really positions us for further growth as we look into the year ahead. Now to take a regional pivot at it, what you'll see is that we have strong trends in the market, according to Gartner, where they see continued growth across each of the regions. But I do want to emphasize APAC. In Asia Pacific, we see 15% to 20% growth around managed services, also around cloud infrastructure. APAC is a fast-growing market for several reasons. The first is due to just slow pace at which customers and partners have moved into the cloud environment relative to areas such as North America, but also in Western Europe. Also the population size is quite immense, so this provides even further growth opportunity to accelerate within APAC. And to touch on this, as you may have seen, Crayon entered a binding proposal with Rhipe. As previously communicated, this transaction is pending Rhipe shareholder approval. Now for those that may not know who Rhipe is, they are a leading global company, but really a strong presence within APAC around channel. And we see this potential acquisition is giving us a strong customer footprint to further capture growth within this market all up. Now just to close on around the strategy that we have as a company. We continue to be focused on our strategy from day one that was established in 2002, which is always putting our customers' needs first. To do that, it requires the best talent to be able to do that. People first is absolutely essential. As I always say, people are our greatest asset, and we continue to focus on our culture and our people and ensuring that they have the skills and the ability to deliver the customers' needs. Increasingly, we are seeing that the IT environment is diversifying, and customers need different software providers to support their evolving business models. So it's important for us to continue to stay relevant and also cloud agnostic as we build up more and more these diverse capabilities, and we'll talk through some examples today. And then lastly, services continues to be a key element of our strategy as a company. Now I'm pleased to share some positive news that Crayon has been named a leader by Gartner for the second consecutive year around our software asset management practice. Now when Crayon was established in 2002, we quickly realized that selling software was not just about what customers should buy, but it was really understanding the problems that customers needed to solve -- to be solved. The way that we deliver this was through developing our software asset management practice and really identifying through an assessment process key customer issues. This methodology continues to remain core to the company, even as we look at areas such as data and AI, but also cloud migration. We always start with a customer assessment. Now fast forward 20 years, later, we have a team of 2,500 people who have really built consulting expertise, but also IP that has further illustrated our ability to demonstrate world-class solutions. I'm incredibly proud to be part of this company, and this further indicates just the results that we have. You'll see in this slide here that Anglepoint, which is a company we fully own, continues to be a global leader as well. So combined, I'm really proud to say that we've been able to achieve these results. Additionally, I also want to share that we have been recognized by Microsoft for Partner of the Year awards in Crayon Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, but also Portugal. Now this is important to recognize that as part of our international expansion, these markets weren't -- as they're fairly new, especially when you look at Crayon Saudi Arabia as well as the Philippines. But even more importantly, I think it's about the work that was recognized by getting this achievement. Crayon Saudi was founded 3.5 years ago and was awarded Partner of the Year due to its strong financial growth. But I'm also proud to share with you additional reasons for why they achieve these results. Tying into our vision statement of driving technology for the greater good, the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia turned to Crayon to enable remote learning during COVID for 6 million students at kindergarten age through Grade 12. Crayon was tasked with creating and implementing an end-to-end virtual learning solution. Now normally, this process would take 6 months to develop, but the team did it in 3 days. This is an excellent example where we are putting our customers' needs first. We were able to be agile, but also be able to respond quickly to their environment, and I'm really proud of the team. In Crayon Philippines, we won the Partner of the Year for the second time in 3 years. It was founded in 2018 due to heavy investments in building that technical competency. Over 1/3 of the employees are actually cloud architects, and in that skill set enabled the company in the Philippines to be able to develop a Windows Virtual Desktop solution. It helped a company called Inspiro, a network of 32,000 customers across 51 locations, to immediately shift to remote work during the pandemic and utilize cloud solutions to deliver uninterrupted business value. Additionally, Crayon Philippines was also recognized because of a 2-year public sector agreement worth over $120 million, so continued innovation there. And then lastly, Crayon corporate accounts, Portugal, was recognized for its enterprise value and continued growth. So proud to say and share these results with all of you. Now jumping into Q2 results. I'm really pleased to share we have continued strong growth at 32% revenue growth, 22% gross profit and 49% EBITDA, which is further accelerated by services. To take a deeper look into it, I'll now walk through each of the business areas that we report on. The first is our Software & Cloud Direct business, which has achieved 17% gross profit growth with a 94% retention rate. We had some significant customer wins this quarter, as you can see, exemplified on this slide. Barclays really achieved a global company with $52 million engagement. And AirAsia but also Bank of India are some key customer logos that we were able to achieve. What I think is important to emphasize around this business is that it has been historically very licensing-oriented based on our strong Microsoft footprint, but has expanded across multi-cloud providers. And we add additional cost-saving services on top to further support the long-term customer needs. We see the highest growth in this specific part of the business across U.S., APAC as well as Eastern Europe. Looking at our Software & Cloud Channel business, which is selling indirect to resellers, we've had a 4% GP growth. Now this is a business that is smaller in size relative to our direct business, and you can see here some great customer wins. So eFrontech, which is a CRM partner win in France, collaborated with us on our CSP indirect business reselling Dynamics 365, and they came to us for support around integration. Tamkeen Technologies, which is a service provider in Saudi Arabia, moved their supply agreement over to us. And the reason they chose Crayon was due to our IP and our platform called Cloud-iQ, which enables them to have a simplistic way to manage their all business with us. Moving to the services side. Our Software & Cloud Economics Service grew at 12% in terms of GP. We have some great customer success stories here, and this is tied into our cloud economics practice. In the case of TINE, who's been a longstanding Norwegian-based customer for us, we've continued to evolve the engagement with them. We've supported them on data, AI, cloud migration. But this specific quarter, I'm really pleased to share that we entered a managed service agreement with them over the next several years. Also in Germany with RWE, which is a large energy-based company focused on renewable energy, specifically wind and solar, they selected us to do their managed service practice and support them around securing cost optimization. On the Consulting side, which is a combination of our data and AI, but also our cloud managed services, you'll see that we have grown quite significantly at 46% in terms of all GP growth. The customer example here is Lithuania Railways, which I'll talk about momentarily, but want to emphasize really this growth is driven by strong U.S. market improvement in terms of key wins across data, app modernization and multi-cloud capability. We've also entered, increasingly this quarter, more managed service agreements, which tend to last 3 to 5 years, and then we are -- have a strong renewal plan that's continued to showcase there. Now just to jump into some key customer highlights. In the public sector space, which is our Cloud Direct business, we have won the Bank of India. But also in Australia, we have the Queensland Government, which was 120,000 new cloud seats, which, just for context, represent 70% of our all-up government spend. Now this is a key area where we continue to expand across the government public sector outside of the Nordics internationally, as I mentioned, and we're seeing growth here. And this is built based on our ability to take that consulting expertise that we've really built IP around over the past 20 years and ensure that we build confidence with these strong government public sector customers. On the Cloud Services side, this is an example of a company called Lithuania Railways, which came to us after announcing 2020 a multi-cloud public tender. I'm pleased to share that we have not only come in to support them on assessing what their needs were around migration, but also the deal expanded even further once we went through that strong assessment process that we have in today. So just to do a little bit more explanation. They came to us and were looking for support around SAP, specifically deployment on their ERP cloud platform. They asked for advice, should they choose AWS or Azure, and we were able to support them on the choice that was best suited for their needs, which was AWS. Upon further opportunity to meet the customer, we went through a data platform assessment and now are supporting them across their whole data platform modernization, which is supported across Azure. And this is an example where, increasingly, customers are looking for a multi-cloud environment, and we're able to be able to have the right skills to be able to support them with the decision to grow their business. And then lastly around data and AI, which is an area that we've continued to invest in data science expertise around the world, you'll see here that our industry coverage is expanding. So we've built over the past quarter with a global leading oil and gas company, supporting them around anomaly detection systems before their rig machinery, but now we're expanding that into how do we support even carbon-neutral solutions as part of our ESG strategy. We also are supporting Lithuania Railways, as I mentioned, and have found ways to expand that into text analytics and other key areas. We're expanding the team based on the capability and also the needs that we see to support our markets. Now with that, I'm going to transition to Jon Birger to walk through our financial review.

[Jon Birger Syvertsen, Chief Financial Officer]

Welcome, everyone. As the CFO of Crayon Group, I look forward to taking all of you through the financial section today. As a reminder, all numbers are Norwegian kroners, unless otherwise stated. To summarize Q2 2021, we have delivered another record quarter. When reviewing the Q2 financial results, there are, in particular, 3 points I would like to draw your attention to. Firstly, this quarter decidedly demonstrates the scalability of our business model. In Q2, we delivered 23% gross profit growth, while in constant currency terms, we delivered a very strong 32% gross profit growth, which has translated into an extremely solid NOK 85 million year-over-year EBITDA improvement driven by expanding EBITDA margins in our international segments as the business continues to scale, leaving us with the last 12-month EBITDA of NOK 550 million. Secondly, we continue our trend of strong working capital performance and has a net cash position of NOK 1.4 billion and a total available liquidity end of quarter of NOK 1.6 billion. Combined with the new NOK 1.8 billion bond raised in July and the increased RCF, this leaves Crayon with a strong balance sheet, even after we closed the planned acquisition of Rhipe, which we still expect to close early Q4 this year. Finally, as a consequence of the strong demonstrated scalability, we are increasing the guidance for EBITDA margin for 2021 to around 20%, which clearly demonstrates our confidence in our ability to continuing to drive profitable growth. As highlighted, Crayon delivered a strong gross profit growth of 22% in Q2, combined with a very strong NOK 85 million EBITDA improvement. In total, this implies NOK 146 million increase in gross profit, translating to an NOK 85 million improvement in EBITDA, which clearly demonstrates the scalability. Also in light of the currency development, with the Norwegian kroner being particularly weak in Q2 2020, this is an even stronger achievements. In constant currency terms, the gross profit growth was 32%, while the EBITDA improvement would be an extremely strong NOK 106 million. It is also important to note that the Sensa acquisition was consolidated into the accounts for the full quarter, and this explains approximately 6 percentage points of the gross profit growth and NOK 8 million of the EBITDA improvement, resulting in an organic constant currency gross profit growth of 26% and an organic constant currency EBITDA improvement of NOK 98 million. In other words, the organic constant currency growth and EBITDA improvement is actually higher than the reported numbers. Looking at the geo breakdown of this growth. We see that the Nordics has delivered a strong growth of 17% and an EBITDA improvement of NOK 12 million. Sensa is obviously a major contributor to this, as approximately 2/3 of the gross profit and EBITDA growth in the region are driven by the consolidation of the accounts of Sensa. In terms of organic constant currency growth rates, we are looking at 8% growth in the Nordics and a NOK 9 million EBITDA improvement. The market and the market outlook in the Nordics remains strong, but it is important to keep in mind that for Q2 specifically, we're also measuring and comparing ourselves against a very strong quarter in 2020. Europe delivers 26% gross profit growth and a NOK 27 million EBITDA improvement, but we are seeing a constant currency here effect with 37% growth and NOK 33 million in EBITDA improvement in constant currency terms. Also encouraging to note is that our CEE expansion contributed a very meaningful 1/3 of this improvement.In APAC and Middle East, we delivered 26% gross profit growth and a NOK 30 million EBITDA improvement. However, in constant currency terms, this is significantly more impressive with 45% gross profit growth and a NOK 39 million EBITDA improvement. In APAC and Middle East, the major contributor to the growth in Q2 is Australia and Southeast Asia, as we are seeing a strong market momentum and a strong receptiveness to our business model. In the U.S., we are seeing a reported 28% gross profit growth and a NOK 17 million EBITDA improvement. However, here we are again seeing a strong currency effect. In constant currency terms, we're looking at a strong 53% growth rate and a NOK 20 million EBITDA improvement. Shifting focus to the business area dimension. We are seeing, again, strong performance across the segments. Again, across Software & Cloud Direct, we are seeing strong growth, despite the negative year-over-year currency effects in the markets outside the Nordics, which results in a total of NOK 50 million improvement in gross profit and an improvement in EBITDA of almost a similar magnitude. On Consulting, we're driving significant growth, where approximately 1/3 of this growth relates to the Sensa acquisition, while the remaining growth is a clear reflection of the outcome of our commitment to build a strong service business in parallel with our Software & Cloud business. Finally, Software & Cloud Economics delivered solid growth and profitability improvements across our markets, which is important, as Software & Cloud Economics Service represent the cornerstone of our customer engagement model. As you all know, Crayon has, for the past years, been on a journey from a Nordic company to an international company, and we have by now come a long way on this journey. The dark blue bars represents our international business. As recently as 2018, Crayon had NOK 560 million in gross profit from the international segments, representing 38% of the total gross profits in the company. Today, this gross profit is more than doubled over the course of 2.5 years driven by strong organic growth across the portfolio. Despite the strong growth rates and M&A additions in the Nordics, our international markets now amounts to 49% of the gross profit in the company. Furthermore, the international markets collectively delivered NOK 206 million in EBITDA over the last 12 months, which is a significant improvement of NOK 230 million over the same 2.5-year time period. As recently as year-end 2018, we had a negative EBITDA margin in our international markets in aggregate. While today, we are at 16% positive margin. Again, we have been able to achieve these improvements while we have also improved profitability in the Nordics, delivering a continued strong EBITDA margin of 34% in the Nordics over the last 12 months. This page clearly demonstrates the strong EBITDA improvements we have seen in our international business over time as the businesses outside the Nordics have scaled. This is, of course, extremely encouraging to see, as this is the result of the strong efforts put in across our markets in continuing to drive and grow the business, despite all the challenges imposed by the pandemic. And it is a strong testament to the strength of the local organization we have built across the different markets. We have continuously iterated that the EBITDA margins we see in the Nordics of above 30% represents the potential of our business model in a mature market operating at a relevant scale, and the margin developments over time across our portfolio reflects this. However, going forward, we will continue to invest in additional resources to drive growth, which implies that we will continue to see margins below the long-term potential across the international markets. 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 very encouraging to see that these results, these efforts across the organization is paying off. Before diving into the Q2 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 over 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 Q2. We have accounts receivables of NOK 5.2 billion, while accounts payables to vendors amounts to NOK 5.4 billion. This results in a trade working capital of minus NOK 113 million. While we have other working capital of minus NOK 803 million, resulting in a net working capital of minus NOK 917 million on June 30, which is a reduction of NOK 446 million compared to the same time -- point in time in Q2 2020. During this comparison, it is important to reflect on the fact that in Q2 2020, we have payment -- we had extended credit terms from multiple suppliers as part of the COVID-19 support programs in place. If you look at the underlying credit and collection performance on the receivable side, we have actually improved further in Q2 2021 with a reduction in the DSO numbers measured by accounts receivables relative to revenue. And as such, we are extremely satisfied with the working capital results of Q2 2021. Cash flow from operations follows the same seasonal pattern as the net working capital of the previous page, as changes in working capital is the major driver for the variability of the cash flow between quarters. As we illustrated on the previous page, the improvement in working capital from Q1 to Q2 was smaller in 2021 than it was in 2020, leading to a lower cash flow from operations in Q2 this year compared to last year. However, in order to look across the cycles, 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 Q2 2020, we had NOK 1.7 billion in cash. During the last 12 months, we had an adjusted EBITDA of NOK 520 million, while the change in net working capital had a negative impact of NOK 489 million as seen from the cash flow statement. CapEx had a negative effect of NOK 81 million, while acquisitions net amounted to NOK 123 million, and tax and interest amounted to NOK 69 million, while new equity in total has increased cash with NOK 63 million, and currency translation and other effects amounted to NOK 95 million negative, leading to a net cash position on September 30 of NOK 1.4 billion. In addition, the business has an RCF available, which leads to a total liquidity reserve of NOK 1.6 billion on June 30. After the close of the quarter, Crayon secured financing for the Rhipe acquisition through a NOK 1.8 billion bond loan and an increase of our RCF facilities with NOK 650 million, which, in light of the strong cash position, implies that also after the acquisition of Rhipe, Crayon remains in a strong liquidity position. We have already covered the items down to EBITDA and the operating performance underlying this. Also relevant to note is that we have excluded the NOK 14 million benefit of the forgivable government loan in the U.S. from the adjusted EBITDA, which implies that even after adjusting for share-based compensation cost, adjusted EBITDA is lower than the reported EBITDA. Depreciation and amortization is in line with plan. Depreciations increased year-over-year due to investments into IP and ERP systems in previous periods and a slight increase in capitalized lease cost under IFRS 16, while amortizations are higher than in Q1 2020 driven by an increase in intangible assets as a consequence of the Sensa acquisition. Interest expenses increased year-over-year as the Q1 2020 numbers -- as the Q2 2020 numbers was positively affected by -- to an amount of approximately NOK 1.5 billion on a gain on a foreign currency hedge, together with a slight increase in the interest cost for IFRS 16 adjustments. Altogether, this results in a pretax results of NOK 184 million in the quarter, which is a strong improvement compared to the NOK 102 million in Q2 2020. Income tax expenses is slightly lower than in Q2 2020 as more of the profit is generated in markets with lower tax rates and historic tax losses, and this leads to a net income in Q2 2021 of NOK 165 million for the quarter, which is a very solid demonstration of how our capital-light business model implies that improvements in business profitability translates into improvements, both in cash flow and earnings, given Crayon flexibility to continuing to pursue organic and inorganic growth across our global business model. When it comes to the balance sheet, we have already discussed the net working capital. Intangible assets increased year-over-year driven by the Sensa acquisition, leading to increases, in particular, on contracts and goodwill. On the liability side, we're seeing a small increase in lease liabilities, while public duties increased from a combination of underlying business growth and a reclassification of liabilities leading to a like-for-like increase in public duties and other receivables of NOK 140 million, as we are booking this on a gross basis in Q2 2021 going forward as opposed to a net basis historically. This is also detailed in the notes to the financial statements. Other short-term interest-bearing debt increases with NOK 43 million driven by an increase in our local facilities in India. Crayon also has a NOK 300 million bond outstanding maturing in November 2022. Again, the new bond and the increased RCF to fund the Rhipe acquisition is not included in these numbers. This, combined with a cash position of NOK 1.4 billion, leads to a net interest-bearing debt to EBITDA on June 30 of minus NOK 1.7 million, indicating a strong financial position indeed. Cash flow is critical to us in Crayon as delivering a net cash flow, which can finance acquisitions, investments and/or dividends or share backs are a critical part of shareholder value creation. Cash flow from operating activities in Q2 reflects the change in net working capital. As previously demonstrated, the change in working capital is less positive in Q2 this year than in Q2 last year. And as such, the cash flow from operations is lower than in Q2 2020. However, the net working capital effects are partly offset by the underlying profitability improvements in the quarter. Cash flow from financing activities in Q2 is primarily related to the forgiveness of the government loan in the U.S. Our cash flow from investing activities is driven by the investments into ERP system in Cloud-iQ, as we continue to invest in these platforms to build a scalable business model. The cash outflow of NOK 122 million related to business combination is the net cash effect from the closing of the Sensa acquisition. Having reviewed the Q2 financials, I will take all of you through our updated outlook for 2021. As indicated in the introduction, we continue to see a strong growth momentum across the markets we operate in. In Q2, we delivered 22% growth year-over-year, which results in the last 12-month growth rate of 24%. Again, it is worthwhile to note, the constant currency growth rate for Q2 was 32%, indicating a strong underlying momentum for the business model across markets. And as a consequence, we continue to reaffirm the 2021 guidance of our reported gross profit growth of 20% to 25%, including the Sensa acquisition, but obviously excluding the Rhipe acquisition, which we still expect to close in Q4 this year. As we have demonstrated by the strong scalability during the quarter, we continued to perform strongly in the international segments, as the scalability of the business continued to improve. And as such, we increased the guidance for the full year 2021 EBITDA margin to approximately 20%. The average net working capital for the past 4 quarters is currently minus 23.8% of the last 12-month gross profit, and we maintain our guidance of 20% to 25% as we expect to be able to sustain the current levels of working capital performance going forward. Finally, CapEx for the last 12 months is at NOK 81.5 million. And for the full year 2021, we maintain the guidance of NOK 80 million to NOK 85 million, as we continue to see opportunities for investments into our platforms such as the new ERP system, our Cloud-iQ platform and other globally scalable service offerings in order to drive growth and improve margins. As to the medium-term guidance, we are only revising that on an annual basis. And as such, we have not updated the medium-term guidance for this quarter. This now concludes the formal part of the Q2 presentation, and we now open up for questions from the audience.

[Melanie Coffee, PR & Media Relations Director]

So as Jon Birger said, this the Q&A section -- session, and so we'll start with the -- our analysts.

[Jon Birger Syvertsen, Chief Financial Officer]

There are no questions from the analysts at this stage. We will move to questions from the audience. Melissa, the first question is on the retention number. Is that based on logos or revenue? And I can even address that, and that's based on the revenue, not number of customers, which fundamentally is what we drive for. But on that -- but we would see a similar number if we were to measure it on logo. Then there's a question on the gross profit growth for -- in terms of guidance. How much is organic? How much is M&A? Rhipe is not included in the guidance. Sensa is, and we have reported in the notes to the financial statements the breakdown and the contribution of Sensa over the past quarter, which is approximately NOK 42 million in gross profit and NOK 8 million in EBITDA. And that's basically sort of given Sensa is relatively stable, most service-based service business, we expect similar contributions for the quarters for the rest of the year. Then we have a question from Christoffer. Do you want to take that, Melanie?

[Melanie Coffee, PR & Media Relations Director]

Okay. Christoffer, do you have a question that you would like to go ahead and ask?

[Jon Birger Syvertsen, Chief Financial Officer]

We're unable to hear the questions by voice, so I suggest you just provide them by the usual chat, and we'll make sure to address them there. Question on -- if we can have some flavor on what led to the strong EBITDA margin in APAC and Middle East. And Melissa, do you want to start by sort of describing the business condition that led to the strong result in the APAC and Middle East?

[Melissa Mulholland]

So regarding APAC, we had a strong services growth all up. And additionally, I would say, we also -- you could see strong EBITDA margin partially in the aspect of headcount. So we know that we need to increase, I would say, the recruitment of people and resources. So that's an area where we are expanding our recruitment efforts. So you'll see that illustrated in the EBITDA margin.

[Jon Birger Syvertsen, Chief Financial Officer]

Yes. No. And I think, again, it comes down to the scalability, which is really the fundamental. Then we have a question from Kristian from Arctic on whether we can elaborate on the declining gross margins in software, and whether that is an impact from Sensa or sort of a fundamental nature. First of all, I think this is a recurring theme, which you have seen in our financial results over time that the ratio between revenue and gross profit is reducing, which I think sort of, although we don't guide specifically on revenue precisely because we measure our value creation by gross profit and revenue. We would, everything else equal, expect that ratio to continue to decline as we are increasingly stepping up into the enterprise segments across more and more of the markets outside the Nordics. And to illustrate this dynamic, what we are seeing is that as we mature in the different markets, we are in a position to work and have the references to work with public sector, to work with larger enterprise customers. This leads to a dynamic where we end up with business, which has clearly more revenue per unit of gross profit, but also much bigger EBITDA contribution per unit of gross profit. Then working with the smaller customers, which might have a higher gross profit to revenue ratio, but still in terms of gross profit per unit of resource. We are seeing positive -- we are seeing a very favorable trade by working with the larger customers. Then there's a question on negative for expense contribution gross profit for the full year 2021. Of course, I don't have a view on future foreign exchange rates, which differs from the market fundamentally speaking, and there will be some minor headwind also in Q3 and Q4, assuming that the exchange rate stays at the constant levels. But Q2 was clearly the -- if you look back on the history of exchange rates over the past year, the delta was significantly larger in Q2 compared to the current exchange rate than it was in Q3 and Q4. Question from Oliver on the margins being stronger than both the analysts and the guidance have expected, despite the gross profit in line. Mix, just good cost control or what is the dynamic here? And why were we all underestimating the EBITDA margins?And I think there's -- it's a good question, and it's worthwhile spending some time on. I think, first of all, clearly, sort of the scalability and how we have delivered and how we've been able to scale as -- and driving profitability for that has also, of course, been a clear ambition, but we're also very happy to be able to demonstrate this in the numbers the way we're currently doing. Obviously, there's also an element here, which we addressed in Q1, where, of course, we are targeting growth, and we are continuing to invest. We're continuing to drive growth. We have not yet seen the lightening of restrictions imposed on us as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and all the measures taken around the world to combat that. And as such, we are still in an environment where we are, perhaps, adding slightly less resources than what we had in an ideal state we would like to do and which we're clearly driving to accelerate as we're coming out of the pandemic. Now the good news is, of course, that as -- that effect is offset by the fact that we're seeing bigger scalability, and we're being more efficient in ramping up the resources than what we have been historically. So as such, we are -- and that's also why we're, as a consequence of these results, increasing our guidance for the full year 2021. There's a question from the audience on the next steps in order to close the Rhipe acquisitions and whether there are any concerns. And fundamentally, the process and the process steps are very much the same as we outlined in the presentation beginning of July of the acquisition, which is where both the materials and the replay is available. But in short, this is a structured process under a scheme of arrangements where the partners are jointly -- where Rhipe is preparing a structured booklet that will be approved by the court, which then goes for shareholder approval. And assuming that shareholder approval -- or that shareholder votes get a minimum of 75% of the votes in an -- being represented by at least 50% of the shareholder, the acquisition will close with 100% of the votes. And we have no concerns as such around the ability to close. And the process remains on track, and our outlook on that is identical to what it was in July. And we note that we've continued to progress in line with the time line indicated. There's a question, which I think is relevant. What do you make of the timing of the large insider sale ahead of the Rhipe acquisition? Did you discuss this before as it came to while you were raising the bond? So it seems all then, would you expect further divestments? And the question is in reference to the sale of -- from OEP of 1/3 of their shareholding, which happened at about the same time as the bond process. And I think to be clear, first of all, this clearly demonstrates the fact that -- the independence between the Board and the larger shareholders. As I think it was clear during the process that those 2 processes were running in parallel by accident and not by design. As to your point, the timing is -- the timing of doing those 2 processes in parallel would be rather old. And as a further intent of OEP, I don't think that's really a question for OEP and not for management. But we do know that OEP has entered into lockup provisions on the remaining -- remainder of their shares following the sale. Then let's just make sure we cover all the questions. Some of them are duplicates. We have a question from Christoffer. With software gross profit growth in the Nordics was very low, can you share some thoughts on why and how we should think about this going into H2? Melissa, do you want to address that?

[Melissa Mulholland]

Yes. So it's been part of our strategy to increase, I would say, services relative to the software business, so this is in line with expectations. Additionally, I would say that over the years, Microsoft has had a heavy emphasis on what is their Q4, which is our Q2. And I would say, generally across the board, we saw less push to drive EA renewals, and that is very consistent to Microsoft strategy, as they're looking for more services-based revenue coming through, so that we have that recurring revenue. So this is in line with expectations within what we're seeing globally.

[Jon Birger Syvertsen, Chief Financial Officer]

And then there is another question from Christoffer. When you say you have signed a managed service agreement with TINE, can you help us understand what is typically covered by this agreement?

[Melissa Mulholland]

Yes. So this is a managed service relative to our Cloud Economics Services. So we go in and support them on cost optimization and then provide managed service regarding, for example, reporting, capabilities to support them on a monthly basis. So this is something that is part of our business model as we expand more and more into the services-based business.

[Jon Birger Syvertsen, Chief Financial Officer]

Then I think we have a final question, which is sort of -- which is a good question. I think it's a good opportunity to talk about our go-to-market model and whether we see a change in the selling process and the client relationships post the CEO change. And whether we can put any color to whether the larger accounts is in direct relationships with the change in management and why this wasn't done before.

[Melissa Mulholland]

So with me joining in the company, I would say there isn't a change in regards to our go-to-market and our sales engagement model because this has been strong for us over our 20-year history. What I would say is you're seeing more increased global logos is that there is an increased focus around how we expand more into the enterprise space, but also differentiate and scale as we expand internationally in markets, for example, growing in international outside of the Nordics as well.

[Jon Birger Syvertsen, Chief Financial Officer]

Good. Any further questions? I have one final question on the constant currency organic growth in software. And we don't report or separate the constant currency effect on business areas, as it's fundamentally driven by geographies. But clearly, sort of given the fact that more of our international gross profit is software as opposed to services, you will see sort of the majority of the constant currency effects of the software and cloud side.

[Melanie Coffee, PR & Media Relations Director]

Okay. And with that, we would like to thank everyone for their time, and we look forward to joining you again on our third quarter earnings, which is October 26. Thank you, and have a good day.