Pexip Holding ASA

OSE:PEXIP

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q4

[Trond Johannessen, executive]

Good morning, and welcome to this presentation of Pexip's fourth quarter results. My name is Trond Johannessen and I'm the CEO. Together with me here at Lysaker today, I have Asmund Fodstad, our Chief Revenue Officer; and Oystein Hem, our CFO. Together, we will take you through the highlights of the past quarter and what we are focusing on going forward.The standard disclaimers apply as usual.Now to the highlights of the quarter. In our opinion, we have delivered solid Q4 results. Q4 revenues came in at NOK 285 million, which is 10% up year-over-year. Total ARR came in at USD 102.8 million, which is $3 million up quarter-over-quarter. EBITDA came in at NOK 59 million with a corresponding cash flow of NOK 28 million. A big part of this development can be attributed to connected spaces, where we had a $2.7 million ARR growth in the quarter. This area is benefiting from a positive market trends from the HP|Poly relationship and partnership and improved competitive dynamics together with product enhancements made in the quarter.We have delivered on our 2023 targets. ARR growth came in at 3% or 7% if we exclude legacy areas. We had NOK 113 million adjusted EBITDA and NOK 105 million free cash flow in 2023. Also during the quarter, Pexip launched its new Video Platform as a Service concept. This new platform is targeting embedded video solutions for highly regulated organizations.On the capital distribution side, we will recommend a dividend of NOK 1.1 per share to the 2024 AGM. This consists of an ordinary dividend of NOK 0.6 per share and an extraordinary dividend of NOK 0.5 per share, totaling NOK 1.1 per share. We are also now introducing new financial targets and looking at our markets and the position we have. We believe that Pexip should be able to deliver consistently a growth rate above 10% in its ARR base and minimum 20% EBITDA in the medium term. And medium term in this context means something like a 2-year time frame.2024 will be a step on the way towards this midterm target, although we'll, of course, try to get as close to it as possible. But our outlook today is somewhere in the range of 5% to 10% ARR growth and 13% to 18% EBITDA margin for 2024.As usual, let me take a few minutes to recap what we do at Pexip and the opportunities we see in the markets we serve. Pexip is a technology company, built on a unique technology platform. Centralized data processing or transcoding is at the core of this unique platform and this enables interoperability and flexible deployment, which makes us able to provide market-leading offerings in the markets we serve.Our technology is also what attracts partnerships with some of the world's leading technology companies. As you know, we work closely with Microsoft, Google, HP and others. The technology is also well-suited for AI applications and we are working closely with NVIDIA to enable some interesting features in this area.Pexip's mission is to make seamless video communication available to all organizations, regardless of technology platforms and security requirements. We have 2 main solution areas: Connected Spaces and Secure & Custom Spaces. Let me spend a few minutes on the market opportunities we see in each of them. First, Connected Spaces.Connected Spaces is about video meeting interoperability when several video technologies need to work seamlessly together. Here, we work with the major videoconferencing players to enable seamless connections to their services from any physical meeting room. I think it's fair to say that we are recognized as a technology leader in this space. This is a space where only Pexip and Cisco provide solutions today after HP|Poly partnered with Pexip and BlueJeans decided to shut down their service.With recent new developments, Pexip is also providing solutions for service attached endpoints such as MTRs in this area. And with this, we are expanding our total accessible market and we are no longer dependent on traditional SIP endpoints to grow our business, as illustrated on this slide. We can now grow as number of video endpoints grow and this is estimated to happen with something like 15% annually in the years ahead.Our ultimate goal can be illustrated like this. As a user of a meeting group, you should not have to think about what type of equipment you find in that meeting room or what type of video meeting you are invited to. You just want to walk into a meeting room and join a video meeting. It should be 100% seamless. This is what we are working to realize for all users of meeting rooms out there. We call it any to any.Also in this area, we have recently announced a new partnership with Lenovo. And here, Lenovo will integrate the Pexip solution connect for Teams Rooms into their MTR endpoints to enable an improved experience for all their customers using Teams Rooms to connect to other meetings than Teams meetings.In Secure & Custom, we provide a full-fledged video meeting solution that can be self-hosted or placed in the private cloud. Pexip is often used as a complement to, for example, Teams for organizations with strict security or privacy requirements, often imposed through national regulations. In this area, we have many partnerships, including the one with HP|Poly. We also provide integrations with numerous other software solutions, for example, within secure chat to enable even more comprehensive collaboration solutions for our customers.We also partner with NVIDIA to enable secure use of AI functionality for really security-conscious organizations. One use case here is AI-powered translation services. Within the custom area, we recently launched Video Platform as a Service to enable even more custom solutions. And here, we're targeting a part of the market that used to be served by Twilio before they shut down their service.The market for video solutions to be deployed outside of public clouds is developing favorably. This goes both for self-hosted and private clouds. More and more countries and organizations put in place regulations and policies that prevent them to use public clouds for all their data storage.And in this space, the competitive landscape is also quite clear with Cisco's on-prem meeting server and Skype for business server being the main incumbent players in the self-hosted and sovereign cloud segment. Poly and Avaya have partnered with Pexip and sell our solutions to their customers. Pexip is, as far as I know, the only provider that really currently invests into improved functionality and user experience in this field.The easiest way to describe what we deliver in secure spaces is to show a picture like this one of how organizations are actually using our solutions. What you see are screenshots of 2 organization's outlook calendars. Pexip secure meetings complement, for example, a Teams solution for organizations that cannot use a public cloud service for all their data or communication. Consequently, many organizations have 2 or more meeting platform options in their outlook calendars for the different types of meetings they have. We call it the 2-button concept.Here, you can see 2 examples, one being from the top level government in an EU country and the other being GKN Aerospace, a U.K. defense contractor, both having more than one meeting platform, one or two self-hosted ones and one in the public cloud to be used for different types of meetings and user groups. Personally, I think most large organizations will have a more conscious perspective on data control and privacy in the future, leading them towards a differentiated solution like this one with 2 or more buttons.I think it's fair to say that we have seen a step change in our financial performance these last quarters. There is still some way to go until we are at best practice, but we are really proud of the improvements we have made. For ARR, we have gone from negative changes quarter-by-quarter to delivering flat and now positive development.Our underlying ARR is at all-time high. For EBITDA, we have gone from hugely negative quarters to now being consistently positive with an almost NOK 300 million improvement from 2022 to 2023. Cash flow has also gone from negative to positive. And in 2023, our cash flow was NOK 367 million better than in 2022. We're not done, but we're definitely moving in the right direction.And with this as background, let me just take a moment to summarize how we performed vis-a-vis our stated targets in 2023.For EBITDA, we said we would do NOK 100 million to NOK 150 million, we delivered NOK 113 million. For cash flow, we first said NOK 40 million to NOK 60 million, then we increased the target to NOK 85 million to NOK 100 million. We delivered NOK 105 million. For ARR, we said flat to positive. We delivered 3% or 7% for the underlying. So we're happy to report that all 3 target ranges were reached or exceeded.Now let me hand it to Asmund for a sales update.

[Åsmund Fodstad, executive]

Thank you, Trond. Good morning, everyone. And let's look at the commercial side and sales in Q4.I'm happy to say that we had a very strong quarter for Connected Spaces in Q4. Number one, we see growth in all regions and vertical that is a strength in itself. Secondly, Pexip keep on winning Fortune 500 customers as our technology is by far the best and our products and solutions appeal to large customers, who almost by definition have multiple technologies and need a platform to support it.Thirdly, we see good traction from the HP|Poly partnership and of course, BlueJeans sunsetting their solution. We pick up a good chunk of their customers. And lastly, SIP point-to-point, which is part of what we call the next-generation video interoperability, we have our first Fortune 500 wins in the quarter, underlying that Pexip keep on being very relevant in this space also going forward.Let's look at the one of the wins from Q4 with exactly that in mind. We won one of the big 4 audit and consulting firms, a Fortune 500 that more than doubled their capacity with Pexip in Q4. And why is that? Well, number one, they have multiple technologies internally.They have Google, they use Microsoft, they have Cisco and they also have HP|Poly. But just as important, they use all these technologies externally. As hybrid working basically has become the new standard, meaning that every meeting is also now a video meeting, this consulting firm has not only adopted that, but taken it to the next level. They have invested in personal video units for all senior directors and above.And also all video meeting rooms are now video-enabled. Their employees simply just want to meet their customers, their clients, their partners and colleagues, not thinking about is this a Teams meeting? Is it a Google meeting? Is it Zoom or a combination of it? And this is where Pexip exactly shines. When we want to put multiple technologies together, it's a great example of our one-touch-join and our interoperability solution. Just click the green button on the screen and Pexip make sure it simply just works. This is exactly what this customer bought from us in Q4.Moving on, looking at Secure and Custom. These segments continue to be growth segments for Pexip, 13% in custom and 22% year-over-year in Secure. We keep on winning major accounts in these segments in Q4, both in the defense sector and within several government institutions globally.Let's have a closer look at our offering in these 2 segments. For Secure, Trond spoke about the 2-button concept. But for secure meetings, Pexip also offers a complete solution in the defense space. Number one, defense classified meetings. These are for secret level and above. They are 100% on-prem or in a private cloud and we very often replace all Cisco or Microsoft technologies in this -- with these solutions.Secondly, integration with video tools like mobile and wearables, typically applied in the battlefield and can again be deployed in an [ air gap ] environment, which are, of course, important for the defense sector.Thirdly, with Pexip unique video interoperability and secure meeting solutions, we have products that basically delivers from the strategic planning via the command center to the tactical operation, everything on the same platform. And lastly, as Pexip technologies integrates well with other solutions, we have several partnerships for the defense sector, making the Pexip solution even more unique than our competitors. With the current geopolitical situation, the need for secure communication will keep on growing and we are well positioned for these markets.Lastly, for the Custom space. In Q4, Pexip launched our new Video Platform as a Service. It's a brand new technology platform for Pexip targeted for integrating with current or new workflows. Typical verticals would be health care, bank and finance and government to citizens. In the true Pexip Secure spirit, VPaaS offers that no personal identifiable information is being stored.And dependent on your requirements, you can choose where you want your tenant to operate. Is that in Germany, North America and so on. VPaaS also offer to have multiple streams of video and content going at the same time, like X-rays and people in a health care situation. And VPaaS also works great when bandwidth might be a constraint.As with everything we do in Pexip, it's easy to integrate, easy to adopt and easy to use. And we are proud to have our first beta customers on the platform and are looking forward to expand this throughout 2024.And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Oystein for the financial updates.

[Øystein Hem, executive]

Thank you, Asmund. Let's start, as usual, with our annual recurring revenue development. We grew the ARR base with $3 million in Q4 to $102.8 million. Our underlying ARR, excluding legacy revenues, grew $3.4 million. Self-hosted grew $1.6 million, while Pexip-as-a-Service grew $1.4 million, showing that both business areas are growing healthily. This is the best quarter-on-quarter development in the last 8 quarters, which we're obviously happy with.In terms of geographies, the U.S. continued to deliver strongly and increased the ARR base with $1.9 million in Q4 alone. This is the largest and most competitive video market in the world and showing that Pexip's offering is highly competitive, especially amongst large organizations.Looking at the development in the 2 business areas. We see that Connected Spaces and legacy, combined grew $2.2 million. This is from substantially better new sales compared to previous quarters, but also with a positive net upsell. This is from both license additions, as Asmund talked about as well as the effect of the price increase that we've seen come through throughout the year.Excluding legacy, we have a net retention of 98% for the quarter. Secure & Custom also had a better new sales quarter in Q4 with $1.2 million in sales to new customers. Upsell was lower this quarter and we continue to have a very low churn in this segment.In total, Secure & Custom grew 2.4% this quarter or about 10% annualized, which is a healthy quarterly growth, but a bit lower than the 20% per year ambition that we have for this segment.Moving over to the P&L. Revenues continue to grow and in Q4, they were at NOK 285 million, up 10% from Q4 last year. Q4 is the strongest revenue quarter for Pexip as we have more software contracts that renew in this quarter. Compared to last year, we delivered about NOK 25 million less in prepaid multiyear software contracts. That had a positive effect on the revenues in Q4 last year, meaning that the underlying revenue growth is actually somewhat stronger than the 10% we show. We're continuing to show a clear improvement in profitability with substantially better EBITDA than in the same quarter last year. We're glad to have positive adjusted EBITDA in all 4 quarters of 2023.In Q4, adjusted EBITDA amounted to NOK 59 million, up NOK 37.5 million from Q4 of last year. For the year, we landed at NOK 113 million, up NOK 297 million from 2022. This is an improvement, which is a combination of NOK 126 million in higher revenues and NOK 170 million in lower cost, showing that the improvement in profitability is a consequence of both growth and better cost development.Double-clicking on cost, we have a pretty stable overall cost base compared to Q1 and Q2 this year, with Q3 being seasonally lower due to the vacation period. Other operating expenses continued to improve and is substantially down 33% compared to Q4 last year. Underlying salary costs are stable and we continue to drive a reduction in staff throughout Q4 and we exit 2023 with 304 employees, which is about 8% less than what we started the year with. That puts us in a good position for 2024 and the cost development in this year as well, although some of the reduction will be counteracted by salary increases as a consequence of inflation.Looking at cash flow. The resulting cash flow for Q4 is a net positive of NOK 28 million, benefiting from strong revenues and EBITDA in Q4, while having a negative working capital effect as a fair amount of the invoices that we send out in Q4 are due now in Q1. In total for the year, we closed at NOK 523 million and with a free cash flow of NOK 105 million, coming from NOK 178 million in operating cash flow and negative NOK 51 million in investing cash flow and a negative NOK 22 million in lease payments.In summary, we have a positive development on both revenues and gross profit. In addition, we continue to improve on the cost side, giving us an adjusted EBITDA improvement of NOK 37 million. This quarter, we have a higher depreciation and amortization costs, the majority of which is related to the impairment of the Skedify goodwill. We have exercised a cost reduction in this business area, which will put it in a cash-generating mode for 2024. However, with this cost reduction, we also make the future growth outlook in this business area more uncertain. And as a consequence, we have chosen to impair the goodwill related to the acquisition, which we did in 2021.Looking at the full year P&L. It shows the same trends as Q4 standalone. Revenue is up 15% from 2022 and salary and personnel as well as other OpEx have both substantial cost reductions, leading to an improvement in unadjusted EBITDA of NOK 348 million. That being said, we are still at a negative operating profit, in part due to the high depreciation and amortization cost, which is substantially above the comparable cash cost for 2023. This is why we have a strong positive cash flow for the year despite having a negative operating result. Still, it shows the importance of continuing the profitability focus into 2024, which we intend to do.And with that, I pass the word back to Trond.

[Trond Johannessen, executive]

Thank you, Oystein. Outlook and targets. We promised to get back to you with some updated financial targets. In the markets we serve with the position and partnerships we have, we believe it is a realistic medium-term target to consistently deliver above 10% ARR growth and minimum 20% EBITDA margin.Medium-term in this concept can be interpreted as approximately a 2-year time frame. We are coming from a 2023 with 3% ARR growth or 7% growth in the underlying business and an 11% EBITDA. 2024 will be a step on the way to the medium-term targets. And we will, of course, do everything we can to get as close to them as possible.However, if I were to give you my outlook for 2024 today, we are looking at somewhere in the range of 5% to 10% ARR growth and an EBITDA margin range of 13% to 18%. The reason we believe that our sales will continue to accelerate is related to the markets we serve.Looking at our business overall, we are generally optimistic with a positive market outlook across the business areas. The current market trends are positive and present opportunities for Pexip. For Connected Spaces, the key drivers are the hybrid work mode mentioned by Asmund, the HP|Poly partnership, BlueJeans exit, Pexip's unique product and FedRAMP authorization, in addition to the growth in video devices in general.For Secure & Custom, the growth in the private cloud market, the geopolitical situation and our strategic partnerships are the main drivers. As usual, we will give you some insight into how we think about our ARR development in the current quarter. And in this -- here, our best estimate for Q1 is that we will end the quarter somewhere in the range of $103 million to $106 million in ARR and that's comparable to $102.8 million that we had leaving the fourth quarter.Now to capital distribution. At our Q3 presentation, we introduced a new dividend policy of 50% to 100% of free cash flow in addition to an extraordinary dividend of NOK 0.5 per share. Based on this, our recommendation to the AGM in April is to pay a total dividend of NOK 1.1 per share. That consists of NOK 0.6 as an ordinary dividend and NOK 0.5 as an extraordinary dividend to be paid together with the ordinary dividend, most likely in early May.Finally, before we go to Q&A, Q1 will be presented on May 6 and the AGM will be on April 12. I guess that concludes the formal presentation and takes us to Q&A.

[Øystein Hem, executive]

Thank you, Trond. I think on the line, we have both Jorgen from Pareto as well as [ Anne ] from Carnegie with us. Jorgen, do you want to kick us off?

[Jørgen Weidemann, analyst]

Secondly, could you sort of guide us on what you think on the legacy ARR, what you see or how that's going to contribute to the year that you've guided now for '24?

[Øystein Hem, executive]

Thank you. For legacy, it's now $3.4 million in that base. So in the grander scheme of things, it has a small impact on the total. I do expect that to continue to decline, although probably at the same rate as it has this year as it's not an area we invest in from either a product point of view or a sales point of view. That being said, it is -- once these solutions are embedded, they have shown to be fairly sticky with the customers that use them.

[Jørgen Weidemann, analyst]

Okay. Great. And then I couldn't see any guidance on free cash flow this year. Could you tell me something about what you expect there?

[Øystein Hem, executive]

Yes. We expect the cash to continue to have a strong cash flow conversion and in line with what we have shown this year in terms of the cash conversion from EBITDA. So the main areas that we then do spend cash on outside of EBITDA is a CapEx level, which we expect to be at the same level as this year as well as leasing, which is also fairly stable on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Then on the other side, we, of course, within the EBITDA, have a substantial part related to share-based payments, which then adds to the cash flow compared to EBITDA.

[Trond Johannessen, executive]

So it should be relatively easy for you to convert the EBITDA to cash flow based on a quite stable development. So we will help you along the way.

[Jørgen Weidemann, analyst]

Yes. Great. And a final question, if I may. Could you sort of tell me more about the conversion of these partnerships? What in your '24 guidance come from partnerships? What come from sort of a recovery of the video conference hardware market? And sort of where do you see the opportunities and the sort of downside?

[Øystein Hem, executive]

So I think what we see and Asmund, feel free to chime in. We see a mixed picture here on -- especially the HP|Poly partnership has contributed significantly and we expect that to continue to do so going into 2024. Remember, we're only 7 months into that partnership leaving Q4.So it's really this year, which is the ultimate test. Then we also see a underlying improvement in demand through other partners, which in part is due to a recovery in, I'd say, the video endpoint market as well as certainty for customers on what's their strategy for offices and hybrid work going forward.Once that is known, you can start to invest and plan for it in addition to BlueJeans leaving the market and improving the overall competitive dynamics. So there are a lot of positive drivers here and separating out sort of which is most important is difficult, but I would say all 3 contribute well into that guidance. Yes. Go ahead.

[Åsmund Fodstad, executive]

I just want to add as well that with the technology solution and then the products that Pexip also have in Connected Spaces, we are also in a stronger position, both with the installed base and new customers. So that resonates in combination with the partnerships that you spoke about.

[Trond Johannessen, executive]

And in general, our whole strategy is to be partnering with the key technology companies in the industry. So there is no strategy for Pexip that does not include partnerships, one way or the other, either with these technology giants or with other -- other companies that either complement our solutions so that we work together with. So the partnerships is an integrated part of everything we do.

[Unknown Analyst]

I was just wondering, looking into 2024, do you expect to see any increased traction due to the BlueJeans exit? Or do you think the majority of the possible customers have already switched platform by now?

[Øystein Hem, executive]

So the platform is scheduled to be closed in -- during Q1. And so I expect most of the customers to then have either transitioned or may they plan for it. So we expect to see some positive impact of that also in Q1. Then going forward, I think going from what was essentially a 4-player market as we went into 2023, which is now essentially a 2-player market with Pexip and Cisco, that will be a more long-term benefit that will help us go both in '24 and beyond.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. Great. And then I was also wondering if you could talk a little bit about some specific initiatives you've been taking to improve the costs through the quarter. Do you expect a lower overall cost base going forward?

[Åsmund Fodstad, executive]

I think we are at a level where we are not at best practice when it comes to profitability. Our target is to become better and move towards best practice, having a midterm target of 20% EBITDA margin. That will have to come partly from growth and partly from maintaining a solid and healthy cost base.So there will be -- don't expect any large kind of earthquakes or big restructurings, but that we are consciously managing our cost base to make sure that we get the most out of every dollar we spend, that's a part of our strategy. So I think that answers your question, but kind of a responsible and healthy way of managing the resources we have.

[Unknown Analyst]

That's great. And just a very general question, but we were wondering what are some key investment areas for 2024? If you could touch on that?

[Åsmund Fodstad, executive]

I think the 2 solution areas we have both have opportunities to invest and to develop our solutions further. Within Connected Spaces, we have a market-leading product no doubt within Secure and Custom. There is more to be done to make sure that our product is even easier to use, even better user experience for all sort of secure meeting users out there. So I think you will see that we will continue to invest into that area and into the VPaaS platform so that we can try to take as much of the Twilio, old Twilio business and related custom business as possible going forward.

[Øystein Hem, executive]

We also had a few questions received by e-mail, one of which was related to the impairment of the goodwill from Skedify, which is in part a consequence of one of those sort of cost reduction actions that we have done.The Skedify acquisition was an acquisition we did to drive synergies between what was a booking tool with adding video to that. Throughout 2022 and 2023, we've seen that realizing those revenue synergies is harder than we thought. And as such, we found it prudent to then resize the team so that that unit is on a stand-alone basis, cash positive and now going into 2024.That's good for the profitability, but it also reduces the growth outlook for that team. And based on a conservative valuation of that, we found that the goodwill was then partially impaired and we chose to write that off completely and now exiting Q4. That was one of the questions received.Then the other question that I received is -- I'm paraphrasing. The dollar revenues are now approximately the same as in 2021. Could you please explain which changes you've implemented to drive growth into the future? And where will that growth materialize in both segments and geographies?

[Åsmund Fodstad, executive]

Excellent question, a pretty big one.

[Øystein Hem, executive]

That was a big one.

[Åsmund Fodstad, executive]

I think that's what we're trying to illustrate with this whole presentation is that we are positioned in markets that grow, both Connected Spaces, we see growth opportunities based on the drivers we talked about today and also in the Secure & Custom, where the geopolitical situation, the growth in private clouds and the fact that we, in both these areas now have very clear market position. Our products are well positioned in the market. They are understood, both by customers, by partners and by everyone else in the ecosystem.And this sort of attracts also inbound interest from the different companies and potential partners. So I think the investments into growth has been largely just clarifying where we play, where we're going to be the world's #1 in these areas that we focus on and just executing on it. So we -- the opportunities are there and we will continue to go after them.

[Øystein Hem, executive]

Perfect. With that, we close the quarterly presentation. Thanks a lot for your attention and for listening. And a big thanks also to Jorgen from Pareto and Anne from Carnegie for joining the webcast. Thank you all.

[Åsmund Fodstad, executive]

Thank you.

[Trond Johannessen, executive]

Thank you.