Nordhealth AS
OSE:NORDH
US |
Fubotv Inc
NYSE:FUBO
|
Media
|
|
US |
Bank of America Corp
NYSE:BAC
|
Banking
|
|
US |
Palantir Technologies Inc
NYSE:PLTR
|
Technology
|
|
US |
C
|
C3.ai Inc
NYSE:AI
|
Technology
|
US |
Uber Technologies Inc
NYSE:UBER
|
Road & Rail
|
|
CN |
NIO Inc
NYSE:NIO
|
Automobiles
|
|
US |
Fluor Corp
NYSE:FLR
|
Construction
|
|
US |
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc
NYSE:J
|
Professional Services
|
|
US |
TopBuild Corp
NYSE:BLD
|
Consumer products
|
|
US |
Abbott Laboratories
NYSE:ABT
|
Health Care
|
|
US |
Chevron Corp
NYSE:CVX
|
Energy
|
|
US |
Occidental Petroleum Corp
NYSE:OXY
|
Energy
|
|
US |
Matrix Service Co
NASDAQ:MTRX
|
Construction
|
|
US |
Automatic Data Processing Inc
NASDAQ:ADP
|
Technology
|
|
US |
Qualcomm Inc
NASDAQ:QCOM
|
Semiconductors
|
|
US |
Ambarella Inc
NASDAQ:AMBA
|
Semiconductors
|
Utilize notes to systematically review your investment decisions. By reflecting on past outcomes, you can discern effective strategies and identify those that underperformed. This continuous feedback loop enables you to adapt and refine your approach, optimizing for future success.
Each note serves as a learning point, offering insights into your decision-making processes. Over time, you'll accumulate a personalized database of knowledge, enhancing your ability to make informed decisions quickly and effectively.
With a comprehensive record of your investment history at your fingertips, you can compare current opportunities against past experiences. This not only bolsters your confidence but also ensures that each decision is grounded in a well-documented rationale.
Do you really want to delete this note?
This action cannot be undone.
52 Week Range |
22.3
39.7
|
Price Target |
|
We'll email you a reminder when the closing price reaches NOK.
Choose the stock you wish to monitor with a price alert.
Fubotv Inc
NYSE:FUBO
|
US | |
Bank of America Corp
NYSE:BAC
|
US | |
Palantir Technologies Inc
NYSE:PLTR
|
US | |
C
|
C3.ai Inc
NYSE:AI
|
US |
Uber Technologies Inc
NYSE:UBER
|
US | |
NIO Inc
NYSE:NIO
|
CN | |
Fluor Corp
NYSE:FLR
|
US | |
Jacobs Engineering Group Inc
NYSE:J
|
US | |
TopBuild Corp
NYSE:BLD
|
US | |
Abbott Laboratories
NYSE:ABT
|
US | |
Chevron Corp
NYSE:CVX
|
US | |
Occidental Petroleum Corp
NYSE:OXY
|
US | |
Matrix Service Co
NASDAQ:MTRX
|
US | |
Automatic Data Processing Inc
NASDAQ:ADP
|
US | |
Qualcomm Inc
NASDAQ:QCOM
|
US | |
Ambarella Inc
NASDAQ:AMBA
|
US |
This alert will be permanently deleted.
[Audio Gap]Nordhealth Q4 2022 presentation. Just to introduce ourselves again for those who have got missed, I'm Charles MacBain, I'm the CEO of Nordhealth. Mari?
I'm Mari Orttenvuori, and I'm the CFO of Nordhealth.
Thanks. So in terms of agenda, there'll be 5 different sections. We'll start with a general company update. Then we'll go into more specifics on the Veterinary business units, then the Therapy business units. Then Mari will go through a financial update, and then we'll leave some time for Q&A so that you can ask questions. And we'll take all the questions at the end. So if people want to ask questions, please feel free to raise your hand in the Zoom.So company update. So starting always of the mission, right, our mission at Nordhealth is to acquire and build great software that help empower health care professionals to save time so they can focus on delivering great care and growing their business.Now looking at the Q4 2022 KPIs, a help slide on most quarters, we grew 30 -- ARR, Annual Recurring Revenue, 31% in 2022. 16.4% of the AR growth came from organic growth. Our customer acquisition costs or as we say, CAC, to new recurring revenue ratio was 1.2. This measures the efficiency to which we're recruiting new customers.Our organic net retention rate was slightly lower than previous years at 104% million. We'll go into more detail on what's driving that into different business units. We ended the year at EUR31.8 million in signed ARR. This was slightly lower than the forecast as we decided to focus more of our energy on profitability instead of growth. But it's a small miss versus what we had forecasted originally at the beginning of the year, given the trading strategy.Our recurring revenue was at EUR28.2 million for the full year 2022. The ARR per share increased to EUR0.4 per share. And our organic ARR gross churn, right, remains quite low at 3.3%. The -- this churn number is something, which is probably one of the more unique things about this business.Now going into the quarter-over-quarter. In Q3 2022, we started the quarter at around 30.7%, right? We're recruiting around EUR900,000 of new customers. Then we also were able to upsell our current customer base of around EUR400,000 and had a churn of around EUR200,000 thereby ending the quarter at 31.8%. What's interesting about this growth is that 72% of new customers came from cloud products. And that at the end of the year in 2020, 46% of our ARR were from our cloud products versus 39% if we looked previously.Looking from quarter-over-quarter, last year's Q4 2021, we started -- we ended the quarter at 27.4%. We recruited EUR3.4 million in ARR from new customers. We were able to upsell those customers with around EUR1 million. And our price increase was -- matched our churn, right? So we had a very low price increase this year as we usually base price increases based on the previous year's inflation.So what's interesting about this chart is that new customer acquisition actually accounted for 76% of the growth, and that is the hardest part of our business, right, acquiring new customers. The upsell part is normally much easier, right, given that you've already had the customer make this big change.And we will see net retention, right, to go up and down depending on release of new products and so on. However, net retention was slightly disappointing this year, right? And the drivers of that are that there are fewer less growth in the individual customers that we have, the online customers, right? So fewer users, right? And we have also not absolved as many add-ons as we had previous years. And the final part is that our price increases were quite low in 2022. Interesting to note is that EasyPractice grew 39% year-over-year. And that trough grew 20% year-over-year.Now zooming out a little bit, right? So to try to understand the growth, right? Our cloud ARR, right, we've been growing at 35% year-over-year in 2022. And you can see that we've still been growing quite fast at 75% per annum since 2018. So we had a good track record. And some years are -- like, for example, 2020 were a bit less -- there was a bit less of -- we didn't do acquisitions. And you can see in 2022, the impact of the combined acquisitions and organic growth.What's particularly interesting about this chart and we'll dive into it a little bit deeper in the Veterinary BU is that the Veterinary cloud grew by 61%. So diving a little bit deeper into the numbers to really understand the drivers because when you look at the averages or totals, right, instead of clouds of picture little bit. A couple of interesting things to note, right? One is that even excluding migration, our cloud Veterinary growth is 46.2%. So very, very high, right? Similarly, on the Therapy side, we're growing around 20%. And what is slowing us our growth -- our total growth down is that our Hosted software that we bought that were not growing when we bought them, are still not growing until we are able to migrate them. And you can see that trend in the Veterinary side where we grew 2.1% excluding migration and also on the Therapy side.On the Veterinary side, you can also see that we have started the efforts to ramp up migrations in 2022, right? We've migrated 300,000, and we're looking to focus on migrations much more in 2023, both on the Veterinary side, migrating all the customers to Provet Cloud and on the Therapy side by migrating all the customers to new version of EasyPractice.Another interesting part is the churn rate, right? You can see that there's quite different churn rates depending on the segment that we're looking at. Our cloud customer churn rate was around -- for Veterinary was around 3%, right? Our Hosted was 1.4%, right? Then the Therapy cloud churn rate was 6.4%, right? And that's a number which is -- we have to take a look at a little bit deeper and split it, basically the EasyPractice, churn rates was around 14.4%, right? But excluding EasyPractice, it's around 2.8%. And even within this EasyPractice churn rate, what's important to note is that there's a big difference in churn rate between customers that spend over DKK250,000 per month versus those under -- and the majority is driven by those small customers, which are coming into the fully self-service, fully freemium model. Their they churn quite easy at the beginning, but once they are with us for a while, they stay for quite a long time. And we see quite similar churn rates in EasyPractice on our end and for customers that stay with us for a long time. And lastly, you can see the difference in and what's driving this sort of net upsell, including price increases, which is a bit lower than we forecasted because of the mix, right? So you can see on the cloud -- Veterinary cloud side, we had quite strong sort of net upsell of 15%, right? We had quite good net upsells will on the Therapy side with around 10%, but the legacy products, Hosted products that we're before migrating are not growing as much, and we cannot price them as aggressively as we would on our cloud products.Now we mentioned earlier in the presentation that we want to focus little bit more on profitability. And I want to sort of unpack how we look at profitability and by segment and what it is today, right? So what we did was we broke up the business into the different segments. We've got Veterinary cloud, Veterinary Hosted, Therapy cloud and Therapy Hosted, right? And I also further divided the Veterinary cloud and Therapy cloud into Nordics and International and EasyPractice.So what we see, let's start at the top here. What we see is that our gross margin, right, has wide fluctuations. What drives that fluctuation is because, for example, in Therapy Hosted, it's mostly Aspit, right? And in Veterinary Hosted, right? We have to pay some Citrix license fees, some Microsoft license fees, thereby driving up our cost of goods sold, right, and driving down our margin, right? What we see is that in the [ RM ] or in EasyPractice or the Nordics, we've got quite strong gross margin percentages on those products once they migrate to the cloud.Then if you look at customer service, right, you can see quite a different picture, right, on the different products. And on the Nordics, you can see the profitability from a cloud in the Nordics of 70% to 80%, which were -- and also, you can see on the Therapy cloud sign, where we've got around 87% to 85% contribution margins, which means after COGS and customer service. That's the reason why it's slightly higher on this side is that both the RM EasyPractice are actually Hosted on their own servers whereby we see the Veterinary cloud Hosted on AWS. And so the cost of hosting is the COGS for the Veterinary cloud, whereby it's in the sort of CapEx as you have mostly on the CapEx side for the Therapy business.Then in order to think about the real profitability of these business units, we look at what's called contribution margin, too, which is when we exclude maintenance that happens, so the amount of money that we spend to maintain the software. And the amount of money we spend on what we call business G&A, which is of the general managers of each of these products and some management on the product level or business unit level, right? And you see that, again, a similar trend that we're investing a huge amount in order to grow our Veterinary cloud business. However, all the other businesses are quite profitable on that land.At -- so as a whole, right, we're generating roughly EUR3.3 million in sort of contribution from the Veterinary business. And we're generating around EUR7.4 million of contribution margin from the Therapy business, right, which is roughly a 37% margin. Then what we have to do is -- and what's interesting about this is that on the business G&A side, we're not even on the maintenance development. As you grow, right, we've reached such a scale that actually those numbers will remain quite stable, right? So on the maintenance development side, that will make quite stable because we'll be migrating a lot of the development or maintenance from the legacy products to Provet Cloud and to EasyPractice. And on business G&A, which we talked in second business, general manager for each business unit for each product. So we'll see those remain quite stable or even potentially improve in particular -- and they'll definitely improve percentage of recurring revenue part, but we'll -- we might also see an improvement on the apps data.Then you've got the headquarter G&A, which is basically the 3 centralized teams that we've got, which are finance, HR and the IT team, right, in data security, which are costing us around EUR4.2 billion as a whole, right? For simplicity, we allocated it 50-50 between both business units. So what we're looking here is that the Veterinary business, the 4 growth costs, right, is roughly generating EUR1.2 million, and the Therapy business is generating about EUR0.3 million, right? We're predicting that the contribution margin percentage will -- should be going up quite a bit, right, as we scale customer support, as we migrate over the customers from the legacy distribution to digital solutions.What we're spending a lot of money on is on making sure we have a scalable product that can grow, right, and also that can support all those migrations. And secondly is that we're investing a lot on customer acquisition costs, in terms of sales, marketing and net professional services, which is normally onboarding revenue minus onboarding cost. What we're seeing is that we're spending over EUR12.7 million in -- on the Veterinary side on growth, and we're spending around EUR2.6 million on the Therapy side of the growth. And that's what's really driving our sort of negative cash flows currently. What's nice about this business, we can also decide not to as bad as much, right? We've got quite a bit of flexibility in terms of deciding how much profitability we want to have. And the way we measure that is by looking at the customer acquisition cost payback period.Then what we can see is that in 2022, we look at later, we had some sort of nonrecurring items, right, in terms of restructuring and also because of the fact that we are able to have EasyPractice as our next sort of platform for Therapy, we were able to no longer invest in the new platform, right, for Therapy. So that we know is a great development.Talking about the restructuring a little bit. So we actually went through a restructuring in Q4, which you can see now in Q1, right, where we went from a -- we ended Q3 with around 404 people and now we're around 377. As you can see, there has been a lot in R&D because the fact that we no longer need to develop a new platform for Therapy, and we saw reductions there. And then we're seeing some reductions in sales and marketing, customer service and mostly in professional services as well, right?Now on the Veterinary business unit. So from a business perspective, right, Provet Cloud ARR outside the Nordics more than doubled to EUR2.7 million, right, which is 122% growth year-over-year, right? While this is a good performance, right, we are looking to continue to improve that. And every quarter, we're seeing improvements in the sort of the leading indicators to show that we are continuously growing. We also signed 2 enterprise customers in Spain, which will work for around EUR350,000 ARR. And in Q1, we had our first Danish customer go live on Provet Cloud, which we're very excited about. So that's the beginning of the migration has started for -- from Novasoft to Proved Cloud.From a profitability standpoint, -- we're going to be setting end of life for 2 of our Nordic legacy vet PMS by the end of the year. Second is we are looking to -- and we are currently finalizing the move from a country management structure to a centralized support onboarding and sales structure. This will bring us not only cost efficiencies, but also cross efficiencies to have one clear owner for that process, given that what we've seen is that when you're entering your market, it's great to have lots of local knowledge, be quite agile, right? And when you're recruiting, you don't want to have to recruit too many managers in that market. However, the flip side of that is that it reduces efficiency because every country comes up their new process. So what we've decided on is to shift to a functional structure to optimize efficiency over local flexibility. And lastly, we're doing a lot of work on the Provet Cloud UI refactoring and also we're implementing our design system in Provet Cloud. Those 2 efforts should be -- should enable us to, one, reduce the amount of support and amount of implementation we have to do for new customers and current customers. And second, it should also help us develop faster, right, because these new tools will enable us to not have to reinvent the wheel every time we come up with new components.So breaking down the ARR growth year-over-year for Veterinary, you can see that we grew 19.3%, right? We had strong growth in new customers, right? Net upsell as well was quite strong of price increases, right, but still not as strong as we would have liked, given that the Hosted part of the Veterinary business did not yield as much upsell. What we're seeing is that as well, the organic churn is 2.3%, right? And we pro forma this that we included that for us. You can see the performance of the whole business.Now on the Therapy side. From a Therapy business updates, EasyPractice grew 39% year-over-year. So they actually beat their earnout. We're really happy about that. We paid out the fuller amount, but they actually beat that -- they are not target quite significantly, which we're very happy about. Second is that we are localizing EasyPractice for Norway, focusing on one specialty at a time, right? And third is that the first customer has actually migrated from us to EasyPractice in February 2023. So we should see specialty-by-specialty the migration happening over the next 1 to 2 years.On the profitability side, right, we shut down the Mathilda project, which is a project which was meant to replace the RM as the -- and Hosted as a new platform. And we really focus all of those efforts on the practice, right? This should bring us more speed in terms of going to market. And the second part is that from the RM and Hosted, given now that we've got a clear visibility over when those customers will be able to migrate, right, we can focus on the efficiency and customer satisfaction for those products, while the customers remain on those products.Now looking at the growth in ARR year-over-year, right? Growth for Therapy was slightly more subdued at 13.4% as we're focusing on our current markets only. We're not expanding to too many new markets that they find. And what we're seeing is that we're able to recruit EUR1.5 million of ARR from new customers, right? Price increase insurance canceled each other out and churn was around 3%. The other interesting thing is that on the net upsell, it is quite low for Therapy as the majority of the Therapy customers are on legacy solutions. If we are able to migrate them, we'll be able to sell them many more add-on products.Mari, for the financial update.
Thank you, Charles. Okay. So looking at the final quarter and also the full year numbers a little bit in more depth. There has been a steady growth in recurring revenues quarter-over-quarter. Our fourth quarter recurring revenue grew by 25% from the previous year, amounting to EUR7.4 million. On a full year basis, our recurring revenues grew by 20% and we're at EUR28.2 million and represented 91% of the total revenues of EUR31 million.Our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx was negative EUR3.4 million. We recognized approximately EUR0.5 million of one-off items, which consisted of restructuring expenses, which we incurred in the reorganization during the final quarter. On a full year basis, our adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx is negative EUR11.8 million. For comparability, it's actually good to acknowledge that the Q3 result was positively impacted by holidays. Those accounted for pretty much the difference between the Q2, Q3 and Q4. But overall, we have continued to make significant investments in our core platforms in all of our markets. And especially, as you already saw, we have been investing to expand our business in our Veterinary growth markets, which has increased our customer acquisition costs as well. But we expect to start seeing now a more positive trend in EBITDA minus CapEx as of the first quarter of this year as our headcount as of today has decreased by some 23 employees since the end of the year, that are due to both this strategic shift in Therapy unit as well as the reorganization in the Veterinary unit.When looking at our reported revenues, as already mentioned, the recurring revenue share of the total revenues was 91% for the full year. Overall, the growth in both Hosted and cloud recurring revenue is steady quarter-over-quarter. There's some fluctuation within the variable revenues as those fluctuate as our customers' revenues fluctuate.The share of the recurring cloud revenue of total revenue grew from 30% in the first quarter to 34% in the final quarter. And likewise, the share of recurring Hosted revenue decreased from 47% to 44%. Nonrecurring revenue has grown along with the number of implementations growing, but also that includes a better one-off license revenues as of the second quarter onwards.Implemented ARR in the third quarter was EUR29.3 million, whereas in the fourth quarter, that number was EUR30.6 million. So that is demonstrating the number of implementations that we have made during the final quarter, that being the EUR1.3 million.Then to the profit and loss statement. Our full year revenues grew by 53% and amounted to EUR31 million. And fourth quarter revenues were up by 32% year-on-year. Organic growth in recurring revenue year-on-year was very good. That was 38%. In the previous year, that number was 22%. But the high level of activity in our recruitment and also the acquisitions completed during the year have increased our cost base during the year as well. Fourth quarter EBITDA was negative EUR1.6 million, and year-to-date EBITDA was negative EUR6 million. But the net increase in our headcount in '22 has been 143 employees, which has more than doubled our employee cost on a year-on-year basis. But also to remember that the final quarter reported personnel cost numbers, they include EUR0.5 million of restructuring costs.Also with regards to personnel costs, we have a capitalized personnel expenses in '22 amounting to EUR3.9 million. And in the previous year, it was about EUR2.5 million. So there has been approximately a 55% increase. So we have not been quite as aggressive in the capitalization as in the previous year. Adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx margin was negative 38%. But as already mentioned, we expect to start seeing a more positive trend in this margin as of the first quarter this year.Then on to the balance sheet. The changes in the balance sheet between the years, they are mainly driven by the acquisition of EasyPractice and Vetera.Now despite of the acquisitions and other investments in the product development, in particular, our cash position remains strong at EUR39.3 million, and that is comprised of cash and money market funds. The acquisitions completed during the year were mainly paid out in cash. And as a result of these acquisitions, the goodwill has increased to EUR57.8 million Also, we acquired a minority share in PetLeo as part of the Veeva acquisition, which is reported on the balance sheet under other shares. The increase of the current liabilities is mainly due to the EasyPractice earn out that amounted to EUR4 million. But as Charles already mentioned, that earn-out was met, and we have paid it out in January.Also, the earn-out debt relating to Sanimalis acquisition that dates back to 2019 was also there out during the year -- during the first quarter. Then on to the cash flow statement. So as we have already seen, the negative EBITDA minus CapEx, our operating cash flow also is reflecting that trend and operating cash flow has been heavily impacted by the investments in terms of customer acquisition costs and product development recruitments in particular.Amount of depreciation and amortization has increased as goodwill has increased due to the mentioned acquisitions and also the Aspit acquisition that was completed in 2021. We have some quite significant fluctuation in advances received between the quarters as Aspit invoice takes place biannually in advance. So therefore, we see a positive impact within change in other provisions at the end of the second and the fourth quarter. That means that the revenue is not shown as income as the revenue is not yet recognized, but it is shown as a positive cash inflow within the change in other provisions. Also, the EasyPractice earnout of EUR4 million is impacting this line change in other provisions. And therefore, there is a big difference to the previous year when looking at -- on a full year basis.Cash flow from investing activities includes the capitalized R&D expenses and cash payments related to the acquisitions, which were then financed through proceeds from money market fund.And finally, cash flow from financing activities. In the full year, this consists of the repayment of long-term debt of Vetera, which they had on their balance sheet at the time of the acquisition, also the repayment of the Sanimalis earnout debt and also we made a repayment of a short-term debt of Vetera. So those are these change in debt during the year.
Thanks, Mari. Now up to the guidance, right? So for 2023, we've decided to shift guidance from ARR to recurring revenue as we believe that recurring revenue better attracts the cash flow, right? So with this great emphasis on profitability, we thought that this was a better way to be able to show our sort of focus on additional profitability. So we're looking at a 15% to 20% growth in recurring revenue in 2023 versus 2022. And secondly, we are also guiding that in -- we are looking for EBITDA minus CapEx breakeven by Q1 2025.Then on the financial calendar, we'll have the Q1 2023 results presentation on the 16th of May. And also, we're also announcing a Capital Markets Day that we will hold during Q3 2023, and we'll be sending the date out in the next few weeks for the exact date and time.
Thank you. Now off to Q&A. The best way to ask questions is probably for attendees to raise their hands, and then we allow you to talk.
I had a couple. And the first one is looking at your guidance for 15% to 20% growth in 2023. I mean given that we have quite high inflation, so you should have higher than usual price hikes. You are focusing more on migration, as you say yourself, and you have the CVS contract going -- coming online as well. Isn't there a scope for even higher growth than this? And what are the dynamics behind that guidance, if you could elaborate a bit?
So let's go to your question and break up the different parts. So the first part is on the pricing. Pricing impact, right, we did both a pricing change and pricing model change for some products, right? So we're expecting that pricing will lead to a 6% to 8% additional growth, right? Then on CVS, right, it's really hard for us to exactly know how fast and how soon they will start the full rollout. And so that's why we're sort of being a little bit conservative on this one in that we do not want to make sure that we put artificial pressure based on the rollout that we can't control, right? So that's -- those are the 2 main parts. And then third is on the migration. Our strategy is that we want to get as much of the legacy products over to Provet Cloud, right? And the way we're doing that, we already increased the price of the legacy products quite a bit. And so now they are on par for the same level of features as they are today. And then once we've migrated them, then we can start upselling that. But we're looking at sort of pure migration in this year. Does that answer your question, Oliver?
All right. Yes, I think so. And then on the cost side, you're doing a restructuring now. So a number of FTEs is falling. How should we think about net hiring going forward? Do you need to onboard additional talent? Or are you basically where you're expecting to be for the next couple of years?
So as we announced last quarter, there's no significant headcount growth that we're expecting overall, right? The -- there are some increases in salary costs and so on due to inflation, right? And for that, for most of it, we're following the Finnish trade unions, collected by new agreements for the majority of our costs are linked to that, which is around 3.5% and 1% one-off, right, for this year.Then on the longer term, right, as we migrate, right, a lot of the resources will be able to shift either to the legacy products to the cloud products, government support, maybe implementation, right? And secondly is that we will be able to centralize our development on fewer products, thereby, we might also see a reduction in headcount, but that only happens when everyone has migrated. So there's a big difference between like having 90% migrated and having 100% migrated because we have 100% migrated all those costs that we had historically on the people side can also go away.The second thing is that there's a lot of fixed cost now to run these Hosted operations, right, for example, the servers, right, also all these licenses, right? Those go away as we reduce the amount of customers. So from the people side, no significant -- headcount growth maybe even a decrease in some areas, right? And then from the -- on the other operating cost side, right, we don't -- or we foresee that the costs will go down for the Hosted products.
That's very clear. Then a third one, if I may. On the M&A side, how do you think about further M&A? I mean given both today's operational status for Nordhealth, also the market environment, the M&A market?
Yes. So we're always open and we're always looking for good targets, right? Currently, we haven't seen yet targets come at the price that we've liked given the new reality, right? There, however, slowly the buyers and sellers' expectations are certainly matching, right? But that we have not been successful in the -- being the winners in those bids because our bids were much lower than the ones that ended up winning so far. So we're still sort of looking for acquisitions. We're still open to acquisitions. It just has to be at the right price, especially given that in terms of capital allocation, where we're trading at today, right, it's much cheaper and much safer to buy back our share at our current valuation, right, than it would be to acquire some of these other players. And unknown unknowns, which you always have when you acquire third-party companies versus acquiring our own shares are not there as well. So from a risk-reward standpoint, it's -- we haven't done anything if that makes sense.So please feel free to raise your hand if you have and we can allow you to talk.No other questions from others. Oli?
Yes. I'm online, right. I'll get back on it then. Previously, we've talked about the U.S. expansion. Would you be able to give a status update on that today?
Sure. So in U.S., as we saw from international, we continue to grow in the U.S. And I believe that -- you can see in our backup slides, you can see the growth in the U.S. We roughly doubled the ARR in the U.S. We also grew in Spain quite nicely as well. The U.S. in terms of cost, we actually have done a big restructuring there. And we are focusing increasingly on outbound and building the pipeline. Now we've got a product that we can sell. And we're seeing every month an improvement in the number of leads that we get and the conversion of those leads. So the competition in the U.S. is quite strong, right, between [ Sheppard's EasyBet ]. So it's probably one of the strongest markets in terms of competition. What we're focusing on for 2023 in addition to sort of improving our sort of CAC payback period on the individual sales is going after the enterprise customers. So looking to close an enterprise deal in the U.S. will be what we are aiming for in 2023, and it takes a little bit of time to be able to get those. So the actual signing and rollout of this will probably be in 2024, but that's one of the goals for the U.S.
That makes sense. And then I was looking at your product development expenses. And I see a lot of it is focused on the Veterinary side, but you have a quite modern cloud product there. So would you be able to be a bit more specific on exactly what it is that you're focusing on when it comes to that development?
Sure. So on the Veterinary side, there's a couple of different projects that we're focusing. One is that the -- we're going for a big UI refractory, which has 2 implications. One, it's upgrading the current Provet Cloud user interface and user experience. But secondly, it's also from a technical standpoint, refactoring the front-end. Currently the front-end back-end are tightly integrated, thereby slowing down developments. This sort of refractory will enable us to go faster as we can develop. That's the first thing.The second thing is that -- we are refactoring quite a lot of these sort of core workflows where we're looking to -- instead of having 5 clicks, we have 3 clicks, right? So we really want our value proposition in the market to be efficiency and speed, right? That's the -- one of the main things that's when we did customer interviews that came out of it. So we're refocusing a lot of our efforts on really making our software the most efficient for basic workflows.And then the third part is we're going after quite a few new countries at the same time. We're going after Spain, the U.K., the U.S., right? And we've got also enterprise customers, which are looking to -- for development. So that's the third bucket. Those are sort of 3 buckets of restructuring of developments that we're focusing on the Provet Cloud side.Once the first 2 are done, right, that's sort of once every 7 to 10 years, we have to do those, right, then we can focus all those efforts into sort of new add-ons, right? And we've already started some of those, for example, digital whiteboard, right, our Veterinary mobile app, right, our Nordhealth Pay solution, which we're continuously expanding, right? So those add-ons will be able to reassign a lot of the resources from the refactoring on to these new products as well, so it's like completed.Any other final questions/comments, please feel free to raise your hand.Okay. Well, if not, thank you very much for your time, everyone, and have a wonderful day.
Thank you. Bye.