Link Mobility Group Holding ASA

OSE:LINK

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Good morning, and welcome to the Second Quarter 2024 financial results presentation for LINK Mobility. My name is Morten Edvardsen, CFO and Head of Investor Relations. And this morning, I am joined by Thomas Berge, CEO and we will together present the results. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. Please post questions online during the presentation and under the Q&A session. Thomas?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

Thank you, Morten. The second quarter of 2024 is another strong quarter with growth rates in the high end of expectations. LINK is the leading and largest CPaaS player in Europe. We started out more than 20 years ago in the Nordics and have been part of building the messaging market in the Nordics to one of the most advanced messaging markets in the world. LINK is using this experience to fuel the development in less penetrated markets in Europe. Our strategy is dedicated to providing digital communication products to the enterprise market for them to interact with their end customers.

We approach the enterprise market through a strategy of local touch points with our clients. We have numerous sales reps, customer service and customer success employees on the ground winning new contracts and supporting existing clients in local language and culture. This setup is creating a larger reach than many of our competitors who have a more regional or centralized approach to the market. LINK's more than 50,000 clients serviced by our 29 offices in 19 -- or 18 countries, sorry, are a result of the successful implementation of this strategy over many years.

Group revenue during the last 12 months was recorded at NOK 6.9 billion. LINK has grown significantly over the last years with a revenue CAGR of 21%. Profitability has always been a key priority. LINK is growing the business while generating profitability and net positive operating cash flow. In the current quarter, adjusted EBITDA is reported at NOK 666 million on an LTM basis, up from NOK 613 million reported end of last year.

LINK's business model is sticky, scalable, diversified and growing with the local commercial approach focusing on customized communication needs for enterprises to interact with their end users. The business model is, in our view, exceptional in the industry and very difficult to copy or replicate. LINK has spent more than a decade building up a strong local presence, winning and operating thousands of enterprise clients with bespoke solutions, enabling unique communication preferences for clients. LINK has sticky customer relations documented by revenue term below 2% and a recurring business model with an underlying historical net retention rate of approximately 110, as shown in the top left graph.

The uniqueness in the customer relationships is a direct result of LINK's local representatives always being available to provide personalized support in local language and build meaningful relations. LINK is operating in a growing industry, as seen by the differences in the penetration rates in mature and less mature markets on top of additional demand for more advanced CPaaS products. The company has significant increased sales on new contracts with more advanced products over the last quarters. This growth translates into improved profitability as the scalable business model enables large new volumes and revenues to be onboarded with only limited OpEx increases.

LINK's local business model provide versatile and diversified revenue streams from the many products, customers, industries and markets where we operate, giving a solid foundation for future growth. The difference between total churn and enterprise churn on the top left graph is made up of aggregator clients in the Global Messaging segment. Global Messaging is more volatile compared to the Enterprise segments with a churn rate that varies more over time. Churn is stable and low for LINK's core focus area, the Enterprise segments, which also generates most of the margins and profits.

The second quarter was a strong quarter with high organic growth momentum, continuing the solid performance that the company has reported over the last 5 to 6 quarters. LINK has reported an elevated contract backlog since the beginning of 2023 from a historical level of mid-NOK 20 million to around NOK 40 million per quarter. High contract backlog improves the growth momentum as the contracts are implemented and customers are invoiced. Revenue is reported at NOK 1.8 billion or an organic growth of 17% in fixed currency.

Western Europe experienced another impressive quarter, driven by high demand for OTT channels and the solid growth from new contracts, resulting in 11% revenue growth and 16% gross profit growth in fixed currency. Performance in the Nordics is also improving with a 5% revenue growth but a 10% gross profit growth. Gross profit growth outpaced revenue growth due to higher growth momentum on more advanced solutions like Marketing Platform, with much higher profitability than legacy products.

Central Europe reports revenue growth of 31% and a gross profit growth of 14% in fixed currency. This is driven by a strong growth momentum on existing customer. Central Europe experienced in Q2 a significant volume increase from one very large client driving revenue growth but with a smaller impact on gross profit growth. Global Messaging report revenue growth of 23%, while the gross margin contribution was lower due to customer mix effects.

Gross profit is reported at NOK 379 million or an organic growth of 12% in fixed currency. Profitability was positively impacted by a higher growth on the more profitable OTT channels like RCS. Adjusted EBITDA is reported at NOK 180 million or an organic growth of 16% in fixed currency, higher than gross profit growth due to LINK's scalable business model.

In the current quarter, LINK closed the acquisition of EZ4U, a Portuguese messaging company. LINK has a solid portfolio of M&A opportunities consisting of profitable and accretive targets both within Europe and outside Europe. I will go into more detail later in the presentation.

The Enterprise segment had a strong quarter with NOK 41 million gross profit growth year-over-year, which translates into an organic growth rate of 12%. Gross profit growth is driven by high activity across several sectors and increasing volumes deriving from high-margin OTT traffic like RCS. All enterprise regions are delivering a gross profit growth rate of 10% or higher. Global Messaging experienced a revenue growth of 22%. Gross profit growth was lower reported 4% in fixed currency. Gross profit margins for Global Messaging varies with the attractiveness of routes and customer mix. Different routes have varying profitability dependent on market pricing and our ability to access lower COGS than market average, which varies over time.

The graph at the bottom of the slide displays the margin impact from the segments. Margins declined slightly in Q2 due to Global Messaging and customer mix effects in Enterprise regions. The small decline in margins for the Enterprise region is due to unusual high volumes from one high-volume, low-margin customer in Central Europe. Underlying customer margins and customer pricing are stable with no material price reductions. LINK has a significant improvement in new business wins over the last 2 years based on the renewed focus and changes in commercial execution initiated in 2022.

The graph on the right shows the estimated annualized gross profit on new contracts signed since 2022. The numbers are extracted from our CRM system, and the estimations are based on contractual arrangements and specific dialogue with clients. As the graph shows, gross profit from signed contracts has increased significantly since Q4 2022 and stabilized at the high NOK 30 million range. Internally, in LINK, we have a target of achieving NOK 40 million plus in gross profit from new contracts per quarter, except for Q3, which will be lower due to summer vacation.

In the current quarter, we had an all-time high on new contract wins with NOK 48 million in expected gross profit or 33% higher than same period last year. Isolating the new contract for advanced conversational products named CPaaS in the graph, the current quarter is all-time high with NOK 16 million on estimated gross profit. We observed more traction in market demand on advanced mobile marketing solutions combined with bots and WhatsApp RCS. We also see more demand for marketing automation and CDP in the Nordics.

LINK signed 802 new contracts in the current quarter. Historically, about 75% of the gross profit is recorded in the P&L after 12 months. We expect a higher contract backlog to benefit gross profit growth gradually. The more advanced CPaaS contracts take longer to scale volumes versus legacy products but, of course, results in immediate and higher license revenue. LINK has a healthy sales pipeline in addition to the new agreements won.

To give more flavor on new contracts with the more advanced CPaaS products, a further split on the main CPaaS products is provided on this slide. MYLINK Marketing is our marketing automation and CDP solution. OTT are the new channels, mainly RCS, WhatsApp and Viber combined with different software solutions on top of the channels to enable 2-way dialogue and more feature-rich content. The other CPaaS bucket is populated mainly with bot solutions and security products.

New contracts on the more advanced conversational products have increased year-over-year with NOK 10 million expected gross profit contribution in the current quarter or 167% growth. The OTT channels are in high demand. RCS and WhatsApp combined with chatbots and other software solutions are growing rapidly, especially in Western Europe. The main use cases are mobile marketing and customer support use cases. LINK's marketing automation solutions so far launched in the Nordics only. We expect the growth momentum to increase significantly in the future as we launch in more countries.

LINK is further enhancing its SaaS solution with a product road map, including AI content creation to help our clients to automate more of the campaign activity. RCS is a feature-rich channel that we expect significant growth from going forward. RCS can be viewed as SMS version 2 as the channel is invented in the SMS app but with all the functionality and features that we're used to, for example, WhatsApp or iMessage. RCS has been on the market for several years, but until now only been available or compatible on selected Android handsets.

Apple has not opened up for RCS on IOS or iMessage. This has held back the adoption significantly. RCS has been difficult to explain to our customers as only a portion of end users can be reached, namely the ones with compatible handsets, which is unknown for our clients. It becomes too unclear what communication what end users will see, which is a road block for RCS adoption so far. This is about to end as Apple has communicated that they are opening up RCS this fall through selected mobile operators and will be gradually rolled out to the rest of the mobile operators in Europe.

We expect material commercial traction on RCS for the future when we can reach all end users with increased security features and ease of engaging into conversational dialogue. RCS is rapidly growing as we speak, but we expect this growth to accelerate when the channel is available for most end users.

On the bottom left, some of the features with RCS is pointed out. Security is guaranteed through the verified sender ID, and our customers' branding and name will be clearly stated on top. Clients can add rich media files like picture, video, GIFs as well as QR codes. And many for quick responses can be added, and it's easy for the end user to respond and for the enterprise to answer back through LINK's bot solutions.

To exemplify the strength of RCS as a channel combined with LINK's software portfolio creating engagement and responses from the end users, we have included an actual use case from France. La Roche and LINK developed a digital skin care assistant based on LINK's bot solution to help customers of La Roche understand their skin type and skin needs and to trigger end user engagement regarding skin care. The system was made available through RCS and a more classical SMS web experience for end users who did not have access to RCS.

The functionality on RCS combined with LINK software resulted in a much higher user engagement on RCS. RCS reported 3x higher engagement rate than SMS due to a smoother and more user-friendly interface. The value for La Roche was increased brand recognition and upselling as well as creating a positive end user experience interacting with the brand.

In addition to organic growth opportunities, the company is well positioned for inorganic growth through M&A. LINK has the competence, the historical track record for value creation through M&A and a solid pipeline with potential M&A targets. Since 2015, LINK has closed over 30 acquisitions, of which the majority have been a great success, generating significant value creation. LINK has a target of growing 10% inorganically on adjusted EBITDA through acquisition. This target is in line with historical performance.

In the current quarter, LINK closed the acquisition of EZ4U in Portugal. With this acquisition, LINK has approximately 10% market share in Portugal. Our team in Portugal is working tightly with our Spanish team to take market share in Portugal and exporting new products from LINK's product portfolio to fuel growth opportunities. We are aiming to increase our market share in Portugal through organic growth.

LINK has a large M&A pipeline with profitable and high-quality targets. Bolt-ons in Europe are a priority, but we're also looking outside Europe. Valuations on private companies in our space have been reduced since 2021 and 2022, and we see a target valuation of between 6x to 8x cash EBITDA before synergies. The quality of the customer base, growth momentum of targets and synergy potentials are the main criteria placing the valuation in the managed range of 6x to 8x cash EBITDA.

We have 10 prioritized targets, most of them are located in Europe. These prioritized targets have an EBITDA target of up to EUR 30 million, EUR 40 million. We are using the term up to as we do not expect to close all of the 10 targets. Some most likely will not go through due to various reasons. It takes time to finalize acquisitions. The timeline regarding these 10 opportunities varies. Some are closer in time while others are further away.

The company is not publishing a detailed forward-looking statement, but rather pointing to LINK's stable historical performance and high cash generation. We expect LINK's European business to continue to display a high single-digit gross profit growth rate. Additionally, we expect adjusted EBITDA growth rate to be higher than gross profit due to our scalable business model. LINK has [ NOK ] 2.5 billion in cash reserves and a bond amounting to EUR 296 million outstanding after executed bond buybacks that need to be refinanced before the new date in December 2025.

The cash position will be further strengthened by time as the company historically generates approximately NOK 400 million in free cash flow on a yearly basis. The high cash reserves will be used for acquisitions and a significant repayment of the existing bond. Acquisitions will not increase net debt beyond the leverage ratio of between 2.0 to 2.5 to facilitate a low-risk execution of the refinancing of the bond in 2025.

That was my part of the presentation. Handing the word over to Morten and the financial section.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Thank you, Thomas. I would like to start with an overview of our first half performance and the way we look at the second half. We are very pleased with the first half performance, and we view it as being in the high end of expectations, supported by strong Enterprise performance. Year-to-date growth in our Enterprise segment have been 15% for top line and 12% for gross profit, positively impacted by a somewhat softer first quarter last year. Growth in adjusted EBITDA was 17% in the first half and reflecting the scalability in the business model where OpEx grew at a lower rate than gross profit.

LINK is keeping the expectations for 2024 unchanged. The first half of 2024 reported a performance above full year expectations of high single-digit gross profit growth. If Q3 and Q4 is in line with growth expectations, LINK will overdeliver on a yearly basis versus expectations. Q4 is always a difficult quarter to estimate due to a higher portion of volumes deriving from campaign-related volumes.

Then to the second quarter financials. LINK reports quarter revenue of more than NOK 1.8 billion, a 17% reported growth year-on-year with only a marginal negative impact from currency of NOK 3 million. The revenue growth in fixed currency was NOK 262 million with contribution of NOK 181 million from Enterprise segments and NOK 81 million from the Global Messaging segment. Organic growth in the Enterprise segments and in the Global Messaging segment was 15% and 22%, respectively.

We observed previous market trends continuing in line with last quarters and are pleased to see the revenue growth in the Enterprise market remaining strong at 15%. Regional-wise, we see improvement in volume development in Northern Europe compared to last quarter. In Central Europe, we see recent extraordinary volumes for one client at lower margins, supporting a strong top line growth of 31%. In Western, top line growth is lower than in the first quarter from more normalized comparables and was reported at 12%. The solid growth rates are impacted by the continuous implementation of contract backlog and organic growth from existing contracts.

The Global Messaging segment continued to post good momentum, growing 22% in stable currency but was, as mentioned, impacted by higher churn in the quarter. Total volume reported for the quarter was 5.2 billion messages, representing a year-on-year growth of 23% and higher than revenue growth impacted by the extraordinary traffic volumes in Central Europe related to one large client with lower price and margin per message. Other messages continue to grow year-on-year with 11%, impacted negatively by a decline in legacy e-mail solution volumes, while OTT messaging grew 80% year-on-year.

Moving over to the next slide on gross profit. Gross profit is reported on NOK 379 million or a reported growth of 12% with a marginal negative impact from currency. We are very pleased to deliver another quarter with strong gross profit growth momentum in Enterprise segments at 13% and slightly above the previous quarter. As for top line, the quarter is supported by healthy growth momentum on both existing clients and contribution from new contracts or from new clients on the back of solid commercial results in terms of close won contracts and increased adoption of new channels.

Northern Europe improved growth trends from first quarter and delivered 10% gross profit growth in the quarter. The quarter-on-quarter improvement was driven by improved volume development and improved contribution from MYLINK Marketing licenses. Central Europe reported a 14% gross profit growth driven by top line growth and continued implementation of CPaaS solutions with global clients. The extraordinary low-margin traffic in the quarter drives a deviation between top line and gross profit growth for the region. Western Europe region again delivered solid gross profit growth of 17% in the quarter and above top line growth related to positive [ currency ] and traffic mix effects and contribution from increased share of OTT channels with especially RCS contributing.

Gross profit growth contribution from the Global Messaging segment was NOK 1 million or a growth of 4% year-on-year with fairly stable margin quarter-over-quarter. The lower graph shows development in the gross margin level in the Enterprise segment. In the quarter, we observed, as highlighted previously, extraordinary lower margin volumes in Central Europe, which impacts Enterprise margin negatively by 1.2 percentage points year-over-year, partly offset by a positive effect from growth on higher-margin channels and CPaaS software solutions. Underlying margin per client remained stable.

Then to the next slide on adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted EBITDA is reported at NOK 180 million, a reported growth of 16% or NOK 25 million. Growth is driven by NOK 42 million organic gross profit growth and partly offset by a growth in OpEx of NOK 17 million. The organic OpEx growth was 9% year-over-year and driven by inflation in salaries and other cost items in addition to impact from organic growth. From the lower graph, we observed that the adjusted EBITDA margin for the Enterprise segment expanded year-over-year in stable currency by 0.2 percentage points to 15.6% and as the slight reduction in gross margin was more than compensated for by lower OpEx to sales year-over-year.

Moving on to an overview of the P&L. I will focus on key items below adjusted EBITDA, which I have explained earlier in the presentation. In the quarter, we reported nonrecurring cost of NOK 12 million, whereof restructuring and M&A costs were NOK 2 million and NOK 5 million, respectively. Share option costs recognized of NOK 5 million, where NOK 3 million related to program costs, including a NOK 3 million correction of previous periods related to terminations and NOK 2 million related to social security tax accrual increase. Underlying program costs, excluding the correction was just below NOK 7 million.

Cost of depreciation and amortization is reported at NOK 84 million, down from a comparable level of NOK 86 million last year, mainly related to currency effects. Net financial items are reported at negative NOK 6 million and includes a net currency loss of NOK 1 million. Net interest costs is reported at NOK 9 million, which includes NOK 38 million in bond interest cost, NOK 4 million in amortized transaction costs, partly offset by net interest from cash deposits and interest income on own bonds held totaling NOK 33 million in the quarter.

Other financial items included a positive correction of transaction price related to the U.S. divestment of NOK 4 million recognized in the quarter.

Then to the balance sheet. Noncurrent assets amount to NOK 7.2 billion whereof NOK 4.4 billion in goodwill. Main driver for year-on-year increase is own bonds held totaling NOK 843 million as of Q2, representing 20% of the total outstanding bond. Underlying noncurrent assets decreased year-over-year from amortizations and a smaller currency effect.

From second quarter, the seller's credit and earn-out related to sale of Message Broadcast totaling close to NOK 400 million have been reclassified to short-term assets under trade and other receivables. As due dates for settlement are in the second quarter 2025, these were considered long-term assets in the previous quarter. Cash reserves were reported at NOK 2.5 billion and expanding year-over-year from contribution from the USA by NOK 2.2 billion received in the first quarter and offset by buyback programs for own bonds and shares.

During the quarter, LINK acquired owned bonds totaling EUR 52 million equal to NOK 593 million. And in the same period, LINK acquired owned shares for NOK 141 million. Cash consideration paid for EZ4U in Portugal was NOK 40 million in the quarter. Reported receivables, excluding receivables related to the U.S. sales increased by NOK 205 million, and payables increased by NOK 124 million year-over-year and was impacted by currency adjustments of negative NOK 31 million and NOK 30 million, respectively.

The underlying increase is driven by organic growth as well as timing effects related to collection and payments, where cutoff for the second quarter was less beneficial for receivables. Included in the receivables are NOK 30 million in deposit interest due in the second half of 2024.

Net interest-bearing debt is reported at NOK 922 million calculated in accordance with our bond agreement and gross debt related mainly to the one outstanding bond fully maturing in December 2025. Quarter-on-quarter, net debt was up NOK 223 million, mainly driven by the share buyback program, negative FX effects on cash deposits and EZ4U cash consideration paid. Receivable, seller's credit item of NOK 109 million related to the sale of the U.S. business is not considered deductible for net debt calculation according to the bond terms, hence not included. Leverage was 1.4x proforma LTM adjusted EBITDA end of the second quarter.

Further, to an overview of key operational cash flow items. Figures are excluding the U.S. historically, except for bond interest, which are included in full for historical periods, also reflecting the financing cost of the U.S. during LINK ownership. Cash flow in the quarter was impacted by a working capital build of NOK 61 million related to cut off timing of the second quarter and resulted in a negative working capital on an LTM basis of NOK 30 million. This includes NOK 35 million in received interest on proceeds from sale of the U.S. Hence, the underlying last 12 months working capital impact is negative NOK 65 million and expected to normalize over time.

Taxes paid was also at a higher level in the quarter and related to historical periods and improved net income across the footprint. CapEx was stable quarter-over-quarter at NOK 34 million, and bond interest and lease payments paid in the quarter was NOK 76 million in total. This results in a negative free cash flow of NOK 16 million for the quarter. Last 12 months cash generation is supported at NOK 270 million after CapEx, interest and lease payments. This includes interest paid for financing the U.S. business in the second half of 2023 of approximately NOK 30 million and the underlying negative impact of working capital, excluding interest received of NOK 65 million.

As certain interest receivables are paid out annually. We have outstanding interest related to first half, representing NOK 30 million to be received during second half this year. Adjusting for these items, the normalized cash generation was close to NOK 400 million on an LTM basis. LINK's financial policy remains of net debt not exceeding 2 to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA with the outstanding eurobond to be refinanced when viewed appropriate.

Then to my final slide with an update on the buyback programs. As communicated previously, we have bought back EUR 54 million in bonds in the quarter, and total holdings in owned bonds is now 20% of the total bond or EUR 74 million. If you look at the total buybacks made, we have acquired bonds at a discount to [ power ] of 2%, representing attractive average yield to maturity of 4.6% compared to euro deposit interest level, now below 3.5%. Annualized interest on owned bond holdings represent EUR 2.5 million. The cash impact was close to NOK 600 million in the second quarter and nearly NOK 850 million for the total buybacks executed.

Share buyback program, we have, as of the second quarter, bought back in total 9.5 million shares out of the 17 million frame. Average price per share is NOK 19. The cash effect related to the second quarter was NOK 141 million and, in total, NOK 180 million for the total program. The treasury shares held are to be utilized for employee incentive programs.

That completes the financial section. Now we open up for Q&A. Please post questions online.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Yes. Then when we start with the Q&A. We start off with 5 questions from Jesper Stugemo in Handelsbanken. The first one, looking at the churn, it's stable for enterprise, but with total churn increasing to 2.9% related to Global Messaging. Could you give some flavor on the trend here? Do you expect the churn to increase additionally from the Global Messaging customer base? And what are the reasons behind it? Thomas?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

Yes, I can answer that question. Thank you, Jesper. The churn on global messaging is normally quite low, but it can be more volatile depending on how certain customers -- customer usage basically. The reason for the elevated churn in Global Messaging in the current quarter is due to the fact that one client has stopped using us for messaging. This was -- this time, it was driven by LINK. We didn't want the business. So we basically stopped the connections. I would expect this to be the same for the next quarter and also the following quarter, and then it would gradually sort of flow out of the business because the customer was basically shut down.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Yes. Second question. Given the elections and Olympic Games in France, was there any particular traffic boosting the results in Western Europe in the second quarter? And do you expect any extraordinary messaging traffic to be supportive for Q3 given the two events?

I think for -- I can take that one. In France, we have some agreements related to this. We don't expect it to sort of have a material impact, but there will be some volumes related to both of these events.

The third question, can you explain the extraordinary low margin traffic related to Central Europe with a large enterprise customer? What kind of use case it is related to? And should we expect a similar trend in Q3?

I can take that one. Specifically, this is related to a large client within the sort of retail industry, and it's campaign-related. They drove additional very large amount of volumes during the second quarter. As mentioned, it's related to campaigns. So it's -- we wouldn't know for sure what kind of a campaign, I think do they expect to run in the third quarter.

Question 4. Q2 has historically been a good cash flow quarter, supported by working capital. In Q2 '24, changes in working capital contributed to NOK minus 69 million, and hence, operating cash flow was softer year-on-year. Can you give some more details on this and if you expect it to rebound in Q3.

I would say, as we've said before, we expect no working capital to sort of be our neutral impact over time. In the second quarter, we saw the cutoff being basically on a Sunday, which is not favorable typically for receivables. So we have a capital -- working capital build up. But underlying, we don't see any sort of risk there, or we expect it to normalize over the next few quarters.

Then last question is from Jesper. In your view, what is the probability that Apple will start to support RCS for ATP in second half 2024, beginning of 2025?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

I can take that one. Probability based on the information we're sitting on. It's very, very high. Exactly which mobile operators, they will start within the first tranche. There -- we don't have an exact answer to that and also how quickly they will roll out in the second and third tranche to other mobile operators in Europe. But the probability that Apple will start supporting RCS by the end of 2024 in Europe, we need this very, very high.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Yes. Then we have one question from [indiscernible] in ABG. What types of use cases are driving the increased demand for OTT and in which countries do you see most growth?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

We see most growth in Western Europe, especially France and Italy. Spain is following and U.K. We are starting also to see a pickup in Austria. The use cases are mainly mobile marketing and customer support use cases when you are doing more conversational messaging on the OTT channels. The border between notifications and what is customer support gets blurred. It gets mixed basically. So mainly, it is customer support messages and mobile marketing messages.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Then we have four questions from [ Petra Cromsley ] in [indiscernible] Markets. First one is, can you say anything on price versus volume on the gross profit growth? I can take that one. I think the overall mainly the gross profit is driven by volume growth. And what we typically see on the price per message that we're just really seeing extraordinary volumes in Central Europe. We see an underlying increase in the average price per message, and this is driven by price increases in the Nordics, as we have alluded to before, and then also some impact from the higher share of OTT messages. So that's basically the -- this thing.

The second question, can you explain the difference between CPaaS share of new business wins compared to the one-way SMS messaging? As we present, we see strong growth in the CPaaS space, and that's been happening over the last few quarters. So we see a ramp-up driven by the demand for especially RCS and WhatsApp channels. While on the SMS side, we're still delivering strong results, especially in the second quarter, and that is not linked to upselling to existing clients, which we are usually very successful on given that most of our clients are still having only one use case. We are addressing upselling commercially and see great success on that.

Will we expect the CPaaS share to sort of further growth given the expected increased demand, especially with RCS, as mentioned previously.

And the third one, when we will see other messages account for a larger share, and what does that mean from a gross margin perspective. I think given the increased backlog that we're building in CPaaS that would impact the -- should impact the volumes within other messages going forward as these contracts are implemented. And as we also shown in the presentation, these solutions have higher margin usually. So that should have a positive impact on the margin going forward.

Then the fourth question is, can you explain the correction on the MB transaction price again? That was related to working capital adjustments. So it's just small adjustment to the purpose based on the SPA that we have. And that's been received in the second quarter. It's approximately NOK 4 million.

Then we have 5 questions from Kristian Spetalen in Arctic. First one, do you expect to make any front-loaded investments in CPaaS given the current and expected traction in this area?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

No is the quick and easy answer. Our product investments into CPaaS, it's based on developers, and it's not something we can very quickly sort of scale up or scale down. So we have a product road map which we're following, which we feel works very well with the market demand and also changes on RCS and Apple happening. So we feel that we're well positioned with the current road map, and don't see any need to do any front-loaded investments here.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Second question, can you provide some color on the geographical distribution of new agreements?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

We are operating in so many markets, so having a detailed commentary on each country here will probably be a little bit -- it would take too long. Generally speaking, we see a good momentum in more or less all markets when it comes to new agreements. If we point to some markets which have a very high performance, it would be Italy, shows a strong performance, France same and Spain. We also see good momentum in Poland. And we're starting to see an improvement or growth in Norway too.

So the other countries, they are on the general level delivering good growth in Q2, as we said, was all-time high, NOK 48 million in on contracts or -- in the current quarter. That's very, very high, and we're super happy with the results.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Third question, should we assume a similar Q3 to Q2 given no specific comments and continued strong momentum on new agreements? Or any comments on the development through Q2 and into Q3?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

I can start, at least Q3, when you look at new agreements, that is going to be lower than Q2 because of some vacation in the Nordics. July is basically business is closed and new contract signed is very low. And then when you get into August, the same happens in Southern Europe. So I would expect Q3, when it comes to one contracts, will be significantly lower than what we saw in Q1 and Q2.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Yes. Number four, could you provide some color on the 3 M&As currently in DD process, geography, size and valuations?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

Yes, I would very much like to do so. But due to competitors and sensitivity, I don't want to go into the specifics of geography. What I can say, they are in Europe. The size, it's a nice bolt-on size, around EUR 10 million, EUR 15 million in revenue on two of them, one is slightly lower. And valuations are within the -- well within the range that has been signaled as a target range.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Yes. Then we have another question on the targets in DD. I think you answered that, Thomas. That we'll want to [indiscernible].

Three questions, I'm just trying to unpack some of the drivers behind the strong performance on new contract wins. If we look back at the prior 2 years, Q2 contracts, we have always been below the level achieved during Q1. But in Q2, you won 802 contracts, the same level in Q1. So what is changing in your operational environment that is contributing to the increased contract wins?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

Yes. No. We have more than 100 salespeople in LINK, which is very competent and has shown the strong performance in Q2. Why we have seen an increase in quarterly signed contracts? It's mainly due to three things. It's commercial execution and power case. We did a lot of changes during 2022. So we have a much tighter execution with sales plans that are being followed. And we are seeing also the results of that with a higher win rate.

When it comes to the priorities, we have decided to prioritize a little bit differently when it comes to new and existing customers. We need the mix. Existing customers has the high win rate than new customers, but at the same time, we cannot just sign existing customers. We need to sort of replenish the customer list with new customers also. So we can sort of do future upselling activities to them. We are -- have a very strong focus when it comes to which products. We try to focus on the products that we see market demand for. And also, there's been lot of changes in follow-up here.

Thirdly, we operate in 18 different countries. And we see that the different countries, they have strengths which are a little bit different. So we have done a lot to facilitate cross-country learnings here so we can sort of piggyback on the strengths of one country and import that into another country, where we see sort of market demand makes this relevant.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

The second question from Vinay is also on the large enterprise client in Central Europe, which is the same as Jesper's. I think We answered that one.

The third one is even with the strong performance in the first half, you haven't upgraded guidance for the year. Is this because you're taking a more cautious view on the outlook? And what would you need to see to upgrade guidance?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

As Morten said, somehow the fourth quarter is -- has a different seasonality than the other 3 quarters. There's more campaign activity. H1, we overperformed compared to performance that we communicated when we entered 2024 or that we expected. We have decided not to change it to be a little bit conservative. If we continue as we have done the first 2 quarters in 2024, there will be an overdelivery of course, in regarding the communicated expectations. But as I said, we have decided not to change it due to the uncertainty around Q4 also.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Another question from [indiscernible], ABG. You mentioned some macroeconomic uncertainty in Europe. Could you elaborate on which end markets are showing signs of weaker demand? This does not appear to have impacted the numbers in Q2. Do you expect the impact in second half '24?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

I'm not -- I don't think I mentioned macroeconomic uncertainty. So far in the second quarter, that was more for 2023. We said so far in 2024 that we see market conditionings improving as the interest rates have stopped increasing and businesses are reverting back to a more normal behavior. We don't expect any macroeconomic uncertainty, and the impact of that in H2 2024 in the current conditions and in the current environment, no.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Including that is starting to improve and there are still some smaller impacts in [indiscernible] countries, which is starting to prove us [indiscernible].

Moving on. We have a couple of more questions here. Can you speak to other markets beyond Western Europe experiencing higher growth in CPaaS solutions?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

Yes, we see growth momentum in Norway and Sweden. We're rolling out a marketing automation system there. We're also seeing good market demand in Austria, Bulgaria and a large demand for OTT channels for quite a long time. As why? They were more opportunistic in pricing and communication rules for their channels. So that's a short answer to that question.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

Okay. And there's another one. Can you elaborate on how your CPaaS products varies compared to competitors? Or is your advantage cemented in the local sales teams?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

I think it's the second one. We don't see no material difference between our CPaaS products and competitors. It's more that we are able to sell the more advanced products with our local approach. It's more difficult to sell advanced products, and you're more dependent on the face-to-face interactions between your sales representative and the potential clients in order to explain the client what kind of value the product is going to give to them. So it's the second, I would say.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

And we have a question related to agreed size, some numbers with deals in the due diligence stage. I think we commented on that, Thomas.

And there's another question here. What do you expect to change in terms of doing commercial deals when RCS is rolled out on iPhones in Europe?

[Thomas Berge, executive]

As we said, we would expect -- we expect when RCS can be -- when you can reach on RCS most end users, we expect a pickup in growth. The way RCS is designed, each mobile operators need to launch it, and we need to sign a commercial agreement with each mobile operator. So I would expect a pickup in the growth momentum, but it's not going to be immediate. We need -- it's going to be over time as more and more mobile operators launch together with Google and Apple, that solution.

[Morten Edvardsen, executive]

And I have a follow-up question from [indiscernible] in [indiscernible] Markets. You gave a range on gross margin on CPaaS gross profit business wins, what will be the same gross margin on the ATP contract wins?

I think that's usually reflective of the variance in our customer size and use cases. So this would range from low single digit to very high margins, it varies quite a lot across the different deals. As we've say, we -- the average enterprise margin is around 26%. So that's the range. But the size of the client and the magnitude, the messaging impacts the margin. So it's quite a broad span when it comes to the contracts.

That is the question we had so far. We can give it...