Crayon Group Holding ASA

OSE:CRAYN

Earnings Call Analysis

Crayon's Q3 Growth Amid Market Demands and AI Focus

Crayon Group has reported a robust performance in Q3 with a 24% increase in gross profit, amounting to over NOK 1.2 billion, driven by strong market demand for digitalization and rapid AI transformation. Despite a global footprint in 46 markets, the Nordics stood out with a 20% growth in their Consulting segment. PS-DBM in the Philippines holds an outstanding $45 million receivable, yet to be paid. The U.S. market saw a gross profit increase of 19% and a reduced negative adjusted EBITDA margin to -8% from the previous -13%. The guidance for adjusted EBITDA margin was lowered by 1% to 18-19%. With investments in personnel through 2023 and improvement in net working capital prioritized, Crayon focuses on growth by leveraging market trends, operational efficiencies, and cloud services like Microsoft Copilot and Google Duet.

An Insightful Quarter for Crayon Highlighting Growth and Opportunities in AI

Crayon's Q3 2023 Earnings Presentation, led by CEO Melissa Mulholland and CFO Brede Huser, showcased a robust fiscal performance and strategic positioning in the rapidly evolving AI market. Kjell Arne Hansen, Head of Investor Relations, opened the earnings call, setting the stage for a detailed financial and market analysis.

Solid Financial Performance with Significant Gross Profit Increase

Crayon reported a significant year-on-year gross profit increase of 24% to over NOK 1.2 billion, indicating a strong market momentum and growing investment in digitalization across various sectors. The company's efforts are focusing largely on the impending transformation brought by AI technology advancements like Microsoft Copilot and Google Duet. Adjusted EBITDA reflected a similar upward trajectory, with a 27% rise to NOK 143 million, underscoring Crayon's commitment to profitability through operational efficiencies and cost management.

Persistence on Capital Efficiency Amidst Slight Net Working Capital Improvement

While Crayon's net working capital in Q3 was below expectations, slight improvements in Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) indicate progress towards capitalizing on personnel investments made throughout the year. Management stresses the importance of continued growth, profitability, and working capital improvement as their top priorities, hinting at deliberate strategies focused on collections, contract terms, and payables.

Global Growth Fueled by Strong Performance in Varied Segments

All markets experienced strong gross profit growth in Q3, with particular strength observed in the Nordics where Software & Cloud Direct and Channel businesses expanded significantly. Consulting in the Nordics, driven by Norway and Iceland, showed robust growth, although profitability was weighed down by the ramp-up time of new resources. The APAC and Middle East regions followed, with gross profit increasing by 17% and significant gains in Consulting, particularly in India.

Awaiting Large Receivable in the Philippines Amid Overall U.S. Market Progress

Crayon is pending a significant receivable from the Philippines government, amounting to $45 million, with the timing of payment yet to be defined, although the validity of the claim remains undisputed. The U.S. market has been developing as expected with a 19% increase in gross profit, despite currently standing at a negative EBITDA margin which has improved since the previous year.

Expense Management and Investments Paying off

Crayon observed a strong increase in profitability within the Software and Cloud Channel businesses and is continuing efforts to increase efficiency and control costs. The company delivered on its growth guidance of 25% and adjusted its EBITDA margin guidance to 18-19% from the previously stated 19-20%.

Harnessing AI Potential and Cloud Optimization

Looking ahead, Crayon is well-positioned to leverage the growing AI sector. With anticipated wide-scale adoption of Generative AI and Crayon's partnership with leaders like Microsoft and Google, the company is at the forefront of advising and supporting customers through AI and cloud transitions. Crayon's expertise extends to custom AI solutions, cloud migration, and cloud cost optimization, catering to the rising demand for efficient and scalable technological infrastructure.

A Prudent Financial Approach to Sustain Growth

CFO Brede Huser highlighted significant financial aspects like an adjustment of NOK 7 million for M&A costs and the accounting impact of share-based compensation. Other financial expenses saw a year-on-year reduction, and net income improved markedly by NOK 67 million compared to Q3 2022.

Optimizing Working Capital and Addressing Financial Liabilities

Crayon's balance sheet indicates stability with unbilled gross sales amounting to NOK 1.3 billion. The company has been making strides in improving the delta between DSO and Days Payable Outstanding (DPO) and is keen on continually improving working capital management as a critical factor for financial stability. Accounts receivables saw a notable increase which was counterbalanced by increased accounts payable, highlighting areas for further financial optimization.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Good morning, and welcome to Crayon's Q3 2023 Results Presentation. My name is Kjell Arne Hansen, and I'm the Head of the Investor Relations. With me today presenting results for the quarter, we have our CEO, Melissa Mulholland and our CFO, Brede Huser. As usual, after the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. For those of you who are following the live event, you can submit your questions via the platform. And with that, I hand it over to Melissa.

[Melissa Mulholland, executive]

Thank you for joining our Q3 presentation today. I'm pleased to present our results as Crayon delivered over NOK 1.2 billion in gross profit in Q3, up 24% year-on-year, demonstrating growth momentum in the market. When we look across the 46 different markets we operate in today, we see a consistent need for companies continuing to increase their investment in digitalization and even more importantly, preparing their IT estate for serving the rapid transformation AI will bring to the workplace.

With the new availability of technologies such as Microsoft Copilot and Google Duet. These innovative technologies will create efficiencies in how organizations work and will be the next wave of disruption in technology, similar to the introduction of the personal computer. Customers are not reducing IT spend but rather are looking for cost efficiencies to free up investment to pursue improvement in processes and workplace.

With these market conditions, Crayon is in an optimal position to support our customers, given our licensing procurement strength, cost savings expertise and cloud services capability. Adjusted EBITDA was up 27% to NOK 143 million. While margin growth is stable for the quarter, the company remains committed to profitability improvements through operational efficiencies and cost control measures.

Capitalizing on these investments made in personnel costs through 2023 is a top priority across the organization. We have also been very clear that we have a high focus on improving net working capital. While we continue to prioritize our efforts, Q3 working capital was below our expectations. We have implemented measures, which has resulted in slight improvements to DSO.

But clearly, we continue to prioritize our receivables and payables processes. We will cover this in further detail in the financial section of today's earnings presentation. To deliver the growth ambitions for the company, while increasing profitability and net working capital, we remain focused on 3 priorities: first, continuing to deliver growth by capitalizing on the strong market demand and focus for companies to expand their IT and licensing needs.

Second, margin improvement by creating operational efficiencies to support continued growth and maximizing shareholder value; third, demonstrating net working capital improvement with continued efforts on collections, contract terms and payables. We delivered strong gross profit growth across all markets in Q3. And looking at the markets, demand in the Nordics remains solid. Software & Cloud Direct grew 21%, while Channel also contributed to the strong performance growing 24%.

The Consulting segment in the Nordics delivered a very strong quarter, growing 20%, driven mainly by Norway and Iceland. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the Nordics ended at 31% at the level of the same quarter previous year. The development is negatively impacted by weaker profitability in Consulting due to the ramp up time for new resources and investments made. In H2, we have slowed hiring in our -- of the business model. Gross profit grew 38% compared to the same quarter in the previous year. Growth was exceptionally strong in Software & Cloud Channel, with a gross profit growth of 78%, driven mainly by the Netherlands and the U.K., who both grew over 100%. Consulting also delivered a very strong quarter with 85% gross profit, positively impacted by strong performance in Eastern Europe. Adjusted EBITDA ended at NOK 23 million, reflecting a margin of 8% compared to 2% in the same quarter previous year. This improvement is driven mainly by growth in Channel.

Now turning to APAC and the Middle East. Gross profit ended at NOK 353 million, an increase of 17%, clearly demonstrating that the region is performing and that we continue to see synergies from the right acquisition as well as strength in India. Consulting grew 31%, driven by India, where we continue to see strong demand for AWS and Microsoft Cloud services specific to migration and cloud modernization. Adjusted EBITDA ended at NOK 53 million, corresponding to a margin of 15%.

In the Philippines, we have been awaiting a receivable of $45 million with the procurement department called PS-DBM that engages with the government across 70 different organizations, the commission of audit or as we call CoA, initiated an audit of PS-DBM, resulting in an outstanding payment. CoA's audit was conducted for the entirety of PS-DBM, not Crayon specifically. The annual audit report was released last July in 2023.

CoA recommended PS-DBM to pay the original amount of $37 million and seek approval from NEDA. NEDA is the National Economic and Development Authority for the remaining amount. Following the audit, the next step was to reconcile the extensive number of invoices with PS-DBM. Together, Crayon Philippines and PS-DBM accounting department have completed the reconciliation of outstanding invoices. Upon completion of the accounting reconciliation, we conducted a management meeting with PS-DBM in Manila in October, and we're joined with Microsoft. We were informed that PS-DBM has sought further clarification from CoA per the requirement to substantiate payment. CoA is expected to provide its response to PS-DBM's clarifying questions. Validity of the claim remains undisputed. Timing of payment yet to be specified. CoA continues to engage PS-DBM to ensure and monitor implementation of its audit recommendations, including processing of the outstanding payment of the original amount. To be clear, the validity of the claim remains undisputed while the timing of the payment is still yet to be specified.

Now transitioning to the U.S. market. Gross profit increased 19%, to NOK 150 million, driven by solid growth in services. Adjusted EBITDA ended at a minus NOK 12 million, a margin of negative 8%, an improvement from negative 13% in the same quarter previous year. The performance in the U.S. is developing as planned. We continue to ramp up sales capacity and strengthening sales leadership as well as a clear and more focused go-to-market strategy.

HQ adjusted EBITDA of minus NOK 60 million includes NOK 24 million in termination costs for a long-term marketing commitment that was not aligned to our business focus and as a result, not delivering the ROI expected. Now transitioning to the business areas. We delivered a solid growth across all segments, starting with Software and Cloud Direct.

We delivered strong growth at 20% with 40% EBITDA margin, which is in line with normal seasonality with Q1 and Q3 being the smallest quarter for our EA business. In addition, Q3 is the smallest quarter for the EA business, accounting for less than 10% of all EA agreements. The seasonality impact results in more sensitivity to other adjustments, including FX, which accounts for a negative NOK 4 million in Q3.

Transitioning to the Software and Cloud Channel business, we had an incredibly strong performance at 31% on gross profit and 52% on EBITDA, driven by strength in Australia, India and the Nordics with a focus on attracting ISVs across Microsoft and AWS. In looking at the Consulting side, gross profit in the Services division grew by 26% to NOK 567 million. Adjusted EBITDA before Admin and Shared services margin ended at 6%, which is a reduction from 12% in Q3 2022.

The reduction in margins is driven by ramp up time for new resources, measures to improve efficiency and implement price increases to reflect increased cost levels are ongoing. Price increases remain challenging in a competitive market with increased resource availability. Consulting margin ended up 5%, which is an improvement from 1% in Q2, driven by measures to increase efficiencies, which continues to be a focus. Further improvement is expected as new resources continue to ramp up.

Last quarter, we increased our guidance on gross profit to 25% and continue to remain confident that we will deliver based on strong customer demand for Software and Cloud licensing. Regarding adjusted EBITDA margin, we are lowering the guidance by 1% from 19% to 20% to 18% to 19%. This is a reflection of the growth performance. We have been growing very fast.

And now it's time for the market to catch up, and we will prioritize our efforts on maximizing utilization of consulting roles and finding continued efficiencies to drive margin improvement. To reflect the performance year-to-date, we are also changing our net working capital guidance to plus/minus 0%, while keeping our medium target unchanged as we see clear improvement potential.

Next, transitioning to the market, with the hype of AI, it is important to look at the growth potential of new technologies such as ChatGPT and Generative AI. Starting with the left-hand side of the slide, we can see that global spend continues to accelerate at a projected 27% compound annual growth rate. And looking at this from an industry perspective, we can see that the spend base is diversified across all major industries as we look for ways to drive efficiencies and business productivity through data in AI.

And assessing the hype of adoption, it is staggering to see the traction made as it took only 5 days for ChatGPT to adopt 1 million users, whereas it took 2 years for Twitter and 10 months for Facebook. According to Gartner, by 2025, 50% of Board of Directors of the world's largest companies will use Generative AI for ideation, scenario planning and decision optimization, which is up from less than 1% in 2022. This further augments the rapid pace this technology will have on companies and how Crayon is well positioned to help guide customers on this transition to AI.

Transitioning this further to the opportunity Microsoft Copilot and Google Duet have for Crayon. Let me share the overview of what this translates to for our customers. Starting with Copilot, we are privileged to be one of 50 selected partners and one of the few global partners to participate in the launch of Copilot prior to it being publicly available on the price list.

Already, we have exciting wins with one customer purchasing 10,000 Copilot seats day 1. While there is much anticipation of the financial impact, I will reaffirm that it may take time to see this effect fully. With that said, let me explain what these solutions mean to Crayon and our customers. In looking at this graphic, it outlines key differentiating aspects to leveraging Copilot and Duet in a customer's environment.

The first step is to provide advisory support just as we do with our customers today and have always done since day 1. We help them assess using Copilot as a stand-alone and/or what features and additional data sources are required. Secondly, we assess the compliance and governance requirements to access data and information.

It is critical that businesses ensure their role-based access controls and governance are up to par as well as identify gaps in their current setup and how to prevent unintentional over-sharing of information that guarantees a best-in-class experience.

Third, many cases require custom work to be addressed to tailor the specific needs, which our AI team of advanced expert support, Crayon's Data and AI Center of Excellence develops connectors to integrate key data sources outside of M365 and plug-ins to unlock additional features to Copilot. Some use cases may require the additional expertise from custom work that our team can provide.

Transitioning to the next step and one that is very critical is regarding cloud. Innovative workloads such as Copilot and Google Duet require businesses to maintain their data in the cloud. For example, Copilot applies data and outlook online, teams, OneDrive and SharePoint. To access these features of Copilot and Duet, it is important to support migrating customers that do not have their data fully in the cloud.

Crayon's migration and modernization practice helps customers modernize their IT estate and utilize cloud technologies. We have aligned the industry best practices to ensure swift migration to the cloud. Lastly, cloud optimization or what I would say, cost optimization, Crayon's business model. Considering the big investment required to start with Copilot, Crayon's cost optimization practice helps unlock additional features and resources to drive further innovation. Right now, Copilot is only available to customers holding enterprise agreements. The minimum buy-in is 300 licenses, which run at $30 per month with an upfront investment of at least $108,000. This can be very costly for customers.

And many are looking for ways to create further efficiency in our software spend to offset further investment to take advantage of these innovative solutions to create productivity improvements for their organization. Crayon continues and is well positioned to support with not only advising on Copilot and Duet, but also guide the customer through every step of the implementation process, including how to assist with the investment on cost savings.

To share a customer win, I'm pleased to give an example of a digital transformation engagement Crayon supported with ZF, which is a global technology company supplying systems for passenger cars, commercial vehicles and industry technology, employing over 165,000 employees worldwide. ZF was challenged with the need to fully take advantage of technology advancements on cloud and AI for improving internal productivity.

To assist with this need, we became ZF's trusted adviser in the innovation journey. Our solutions simplified the processes by translating high-level strategies into executable road maps, optimizing technology costs while implementing FinOps solutions. We continue to work deeply with ZF to derive relevant processes and help them find additional ways to improve operations.

Transitioning to the last customers case study of today. This is a Google example. We recently announced a global partnership with Google Cloud. This is a reflection of our continued commitment to supporting customers with any cloud provider. The customer highlighted for Google on AI is a company called Brunvoll based out of Norway. Brunvoll is a global leader in design, manufacture and support systems for propulsion, positioning and maneuvering of advanced seagoing vessels.

They were challenged with an existing solution that had limited scalability potential due to an on-premises deployment. With this, there was a considerable amount of major -- or I should say, manual labor needed to maintain existing systems as well as existing legacy technology that required modernization.

To support Brunvoll with this challenge, Crayon created a scalable data platform to deliver efficient data ingestion and governance on Google Cloud. In doing this, create real-time data ingestions using Pub/Sub and Dataflow. We moved multiple vessel data sources and analytical tools on this new architecture.

As a result, we created a scalable data platform solution, allowing Brunvoll to scale to a large number of vessels within 3 years. This created significant improvements on data resiliency and lowering maintenance efforts. And lastly, it also demonstrated confidence with Google that helps facilitate our global partnership. Now with that, I'm going to transition to Brede for the financial review.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Thank you, Melissa.

[Brede Huser, executive]

Thank you all for attending today, and I look forward to taking all of you through the financial section of this Q3 earnings presentation. As we have already covered many of the items, I will only highlight a few important elements in the P&L. Adjustments for the quarter of NOK 7 million consists of M&A costs and the accounting impact of share-based compensation. The interest expense is largely unchanged compared to last quarter, while increased interest costs compared to last year is largely due to the increased market rates.

Keep in mind that interest expense also include interest for office leases capitalized under IFRS 16 of around NOK 8 million. Other financial expense is NOK 17 million, significant reduction year-on-year due to lower FX exposure and impact. Net income is minus NOK 13 million, which is an improvement of NOK 67 million when you compare it to Q3 '22. The balance sheet, I would like to highlight the following line items. Other current receivables include unbilled gross sales of NOK 1.3 billion, mainly related to 1 month accrual of consumption-based sales.

This is sales for a period where we have a claim but not yet invoiced the client. The invoice is based on actual consumption. We verify consumption, then we produce the invoice. To be clear, this is a gross number that needs to be compared with gross sales of NOK 9.5 billion in Q3. Unbilled gross sales as a percentage of gross sales is 13.7%. This is stable. This is a stable development and fully in line with the same quarter previous year. Other current liabilities include accruals of NOK 1.2 billion, which is mainly accruals for cost of goods sold related to consumption-based sales.

Other interest-bearing debt of NOK 1.791 billion consists of the RCF drawdown of NOK 500 million; supplier financing of NOK 541 million. This has no impact on our working capital and must be seen as a normal financing solution and overdraft facility of NOK 103 million. Overall, liquidity is strong. Different financing solutions, we have improved flexibility and efficiency in optimizing the cash balance across geographies and thereby reducing interest expense for the group.

In this slide, we illustrate how the delta between DSO and DPO impacted trade working capital. On average, the delta is around minus 6 days, while we in Q3 had a positive delta of 3 days, meaning that the DPO was 3 days less than the DSO. I will go through the detailed drivers on the next slide. Compared with Q3 '22, DSO improved from 63 to 60 days, reflecting our continuous effort to improve collection.

However, we still have significant process improvement potential on both DSO and DPO. Optimizing and managing working capital requires focus and attention, strong routines and processes across the global organizations. Our objective is to manage ingoing and outgoing payments in the different markets to ensure we, over time, create negative net working capital. When managing working capital, improving collection is one thing. We also need to optimize and streamline the process before the invoices are issued. Managing the invoice process is key, along with deal governance, timing of signing, credit terms, et cetera, which are all important drivers of working capital performance.

The last step in the AI process is ensuring efficient and timely cash collection. On the AP side, we need to ensure we are payment compliant towards our key vendors. That gives the right focus in the ongoing dialogue, and it also has financial benefits for Crayon. Working capital performance is one of my top priorities as CFO. We firmly believe our midterm guidance is achievable, but it will require constant follow-up and process improvement. When looking at the Q3 '23 performance, keep in mind that working capital is seasonally weak in the third quarter. In this quarter, net working capital ended at NOK 905 million compared to the same quarter in the prior year, performance was negatively driven in particular by accounts payable.

Accounts receivable ended at NOK 6.4 billion, an increase close to NOK 1 billion compared to the same quarter the previous year, while accounts payable ended at NOK 5.3 billion, an increase of NOK 100 million compared to Q3 '22. Other working capital ended at minus NOK 187 million. When comparing this quarter to the same quarter last year, trade working capital was impacted by 2 significant elements. NOK 200 million relates to the outstanding receivable in the Philippines.

The full amount of NOK 450 million was in accounts receivable. However, approximately only half of the related payables to Microsoft was settled at that time. The second thing was a change in one large public sector deal in Western Europe, which gave a negative impact on trade working capital of NOK 350 million when you compare it to the same quarter last year. This was a 37-month contract entered into in 2020. That means that the first 2 years, it had 12-month contract terms with invoicing end of August.

The last period was a 13-month period with invoicing end of September. So last year, the funds was received before quarter end. This year, the funds was received after quarter end. To be clear, this was not a delayed payment, but a consequence of the contract structure as per the contract terms from 2020.

Net working capital in Q3 '23 in [indiscernible] is, of course, still impacted by the outstanding receivable in the Philippines, as Melissa explained earlier in the presentation. Overall, our efforts to strengthen collection is providing results with an improved performance, while unfortunately, this was offset by accounts payable limits.

This demonstrates the sensitivity towards quarter end balance sheet snapshot. Average LTM net working capital and share of LTM gross profit ended at 2%. To reflect the performance year-to-date, we therefore update our outlook for the full year to plus/minus 0%. Cash flow from operations is impacted by net working capital.

We have a strong cash position and have a liquidity reserve of almost NOK 1.5 billion, included undrawn credit facilities. The net debt EBITDA ratio ended at 3.2%, still a significant headroom to the bank covenants. And with that, I hand it over to Melissa for the closing remarks.

[Melissa Mulholland, executive]

Thank you. To conclude, we continue to see solid growth across all markets, given the resilient demand environment with investment in IT. Second, we are well positioned to benefit from the long-term market opportunities such as Copilot. Lastly, we remain committed to continued efficiency measures to increase profitability and net working capital. Additionally, we announced today that we will be initiating a share buyback in connection with the company's employee share programs. It runs as of today until completion and/or December 31st. We will now transition to Q&A.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Thank you, Melissa. We have received quite a number of questions from the analysts and investors, and we'll try and go through them in an orderly fashion. We'll start off with some of the more technical ones. We have a question from Oliver Pisani, basically, I think what was the one-off reported under HQ that you mentioned in the presentation?

[Melissa Mulholland, executive]

As a reminder, HQ adjusted EBITDA of minus NOK 60 million includes NOK 24 million in termination cost for a long-term marketing commitment. This was not aligned to our business focus from the restated amount and as a result, not delivering the ROI that we expected.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

I'll follow up with one more question from [ Peter Kingsley ] on the performance in APAC and MEA, even though it's up Q-over-Q, it's still down year-over-year. What is the underlying growth in Asia? So perhaps you want -- Melissa you want to give some comments on the performance in APAC.

[Melissa Mulholland, executive]

Certainly. So for APAC as a whole, including the Middle East and India, all up for the quarter, we saw an improvement on the Channel business. As a reminder, for Q2, we did see a one-off with the Channel business for India. But as committed, we saw a pickup in Q3. What I will specifically comment on in terms of lower performance is on the services side of the business. And this is an area of focus as we look at optimization of those service resources and making sure that we drive improvement in utilization in the market.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Thank you. And then there are several questions in different shapes and forms on the net working capital performance in the quarter, specifically also related to the DPO. Brede, maybe you want to go through and repeat some of the drivers behind the performance in Q3 and also the initiatives that we have seen to improve working capital going forward.

[Brede Huser, executive]

Sure. As I mentioned in the presentation, there are 2 significant events that influenced trade working capital. The one thing was the Philippine receivable. Last year, the full amount of NOK 450 million was reflected in accounts receivable, but only half of that was settled at that time this year, and the full amount is still in the accounts receivable, but we have paid Microsoft in full.

The other significant event was a change in the one large public sector deal in Western Europe, which gave a negative impact of NOK 350 million compared to last year. So to repeat, this was a 37-month contract, which we entered into in 2020. So that meant that the first 2 years had 12-month contract terms with invoicing end of August and the last period was a 13-month period with invoicing end of September. So the effect was that last year, the funds was received before quarter end, and this year, the funds was received after quarter end.

So it was not a delayed payment, but it was a consequence of the contract structure that was signed in 2020. And in addition, we have some other minor call it, one-offs, we had, for example, Microsoft was late in sending us credit notes. So we weren't able to net out when we paid Microsoft [ in ] a month and that was just below NOK 100 million. But if you look at, call it, what we can do, the process related to AP is long, it starts.

It starts with the contract we signed with our customers. So there are things we can do with our own contract. And when we sign the contracts, which day in the month, in which month matters, and of course, we invoice the customers, and we must look at the process of how and when we invoice. It's important to invoice, call it at a correct point in time, which means as fast as possible, especially with regards to consumption base.

So if we can reduce the -- call it, invoice time with 5 or 10 days, it will positively impact. And of course, we have the cash collection where we have processes to improve. And then we have the cash flow itself. It's -- we are present in 46 countries. So there are improvements we can make to increase utilization of available cash on a global level. And of course, work to reduce the external factors like late credit notes and so forth.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Thank you. And then there is also a follow-up on that from Kristian Spetalen. His calculations using gross profit growth and net working capital guidance implies some NOK 1.4 billion in working capital release in Q4. Is this a ballpark correct figure? And does it include or exclude the payment from the Philippines?

[Brede Huser, executive]

That's -- ballpark correct figure, and it does not include payment from the Philippines.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Then there is a question also on the Philippines. Maybe to you, Melissa, is the collection time frame in terms of weeks or months, referring to your comment in the presentation.

[Melissa Mulholland, executive]

It's a great question. At this point, we don't have a time line to provide. However, we know that we are making progress, and we'll certainly alert the market as soon as we have more information to share.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Thank you. Then, we'll move over to some of the more market-related commentaries. Maybe this one also for you, Melissa. What is your addressable user base from Microsoft AI in terms of eligible seats?

[Melissa Mulholland, executive]

Well, as a reminder, for Copilot, it is based off of enterprise agreements today. And on top of it, there is a minimum threshold of 300 seats. Our addressable market will depend on the availability of extension to CSP, which would expand the addressable market for us over the next foreseeable period. And when I say period, that depends on when Microsoft launches and makes it available. Time line around that is to be determined, but we have not provided that visibility as of yet until Microsoft produces a launch date.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Thank you. Then there's a question from Martin Jungfleisch in BNP. The implied Q4 margin based on our guidance [ is then ] -- the implied adjusted EBITDA margin is 23%, which is a 300 basis points increase year-on-year. What will be the big driver.

[Melissa Mulholland, executive]

The big driver in terms of margin is, of course, our operational efficiencies and continued improvement around the ramp time of our resources. As I would like to remind everybody, we did deliver a strong gross profit performance. But as I stated earlier, certainly, we need to improve on adjusted EBITDA margin. That is the focus and commitment of the company and will be the priority certainly now and going forward. So to do that, we are taking measures to drive more efficiency amongst specifically the services resources to increase utilization, and this is a top priority as well as, of course, net working capital.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Thank you. Then there is a follow-up also on the direct business performance, seems to slow a bit in Q3, which could potentially impact [indiscernible] and HQ gross profit. Could you please share some light on this and whether or not the understanding is correct? Maybe that's one for you too, Melissa.

[Melissa Mulholland, executive]

Yes. Thank you for asking the clarifying question. So on the direct business, as a reminder, we delivered 21% -- 20% on gross profit performance. Now this is actually a good quarter when you compare to prior Q3. Last year, we had a higher seasonality due to some specific deals in the Nordics, which inflated that number. So the year-over-year effect is important to look at. If you look at the prior year, you would actually see that we're in line with seasonality. The other aspect that I just want to remind everybody is that the EA business for Q3, this is one of our smallest quarters just in terms of seasonality. So for the enterprise agreements in the direct side, it's best to look at Q2 and Q4 as having a higher seasonality impact because Q3 only accounts for 10% of all of our EA agreements.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Thank you, Melissa. And I think we have more or less covered all the questions. There is also -- sorry, there's one more question on working capital that -- Brede that would also want to address.

[Brede Huser, executive]

Well, I can just take a quick comment. For me, as CFO, net working capital is obviously a priority #1 and the results on the net working capital this quarter makes this, call it, we are -- or forces us to deep dive into the net working capital, make the process improvements that we can. So it's basically all hands on deck.

[Kjell Hansen, executive]

Thank you, Brede. And with that, I think, we have covered the questions. As always, feel free to reach out after the call to me directly or [e-mail]. And Melissa, over to you.

[Melissa Mulholland, executive]

Thank you for joining the quarterly presentation with us as we always appreciate your attendance and look forward to the next quarter ahead.