Q-Free ASA
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Q-Free ASA
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Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of the fourth quarter and preliminary full year results from Q-Free for 2022. My name is Thale Kuvas Solberg, and with me today to present is also our CFO, Trond Christensen. There will be opportunities to ask questions in the live chat that is available in the Q&A, and we'll do that at the end of the presentation.
As communicated in previous quarters, Q-Free is in the midst of transitioning from a project-based revenue stream to a reoccurring business model. And I'm therefore very pleased to announce that we do see in the fourth quarter a 40% increase in recurring revenue. That is a 30% increase in annual recurring revenue. And today, they're now more than 32% of our revenue in 2022 is now recurring.
We also do see a strong revenue in fourth quarter, meaning a double-digit organic growth for the year. And we have a solid cash flow from operations for more than NOK 62 million in Q4. The backlog is NOK 1.4 million at the end of year, which represents 1.5x annual revenue. We'll get back to more on the financials later on in this presentation with our CFO. But first of all, I want to take you back to actually spend some time on the macro trends that we see and some of the customer needs that we serve.
We do see still a more so increasingly global traffic challenges that Q-Free is part of solving. Congestion has an annual cost of more than EUR100 billion in Europe alone. And we do see increasing emissions. Now latest Portugal being sued by the EU for having higher emissions than allowed. And that actually accounts for more than 15% of total global emissions from road transportation.
In accidents, each year, nearly 1.3 million people die and more than 50 million people are injured in traffic. And why is this important for Q-Free? Because we're part of actually solving some of these challenges. We are part of making sure that we have more sustainable cities and communities, and is also part of solving some of the issues that we see from a sustainable development point of view.
In Q-Free, we divide our products and services into 3 categories: the products that help flow of traffic; the products that actually assist on having ensuring cleaner societies; and also ensuring safer roads. So we do ensure that our products help on reducing accidents and fatalities through enforcement can make sure that we have better flow, reducing emissions from stop-and-go traffic and reducing non-bottlenecks and using tolls for tax carbon emissions, which we see is more and more important in cities across the globe.
Having these products, we can also -- leveraging and sharing data and ensuring also that with leverage of new technologies to solve these problems going forward. Q-Free today consists of 2 major business units, tolling and traffic management. We have more than NOK 900 million in revenue. We help more than 50 reference markets, and we have been listed on the stock exchange since 2002. We have countries -- well locations in more than 14 countries. And today, we have almost 340 employees worldwide.
We have a lot of experience in this market. This is our core business. We have deep domain knowledge and history of innovation. We've been in the DSRC market for more than 35 years. And we have more than 20 years of HMS experience. We were actually the first company in the market with multilane free flow and ALPR as a service. And we're also the first in market with embedded web services and web-based management tools. This is the core of our business. We are best-in-class in performance, and we have a flexible scope and open technology, ensuring that we can partner with other companies going forward.
So where are we today? We are really both in Europe, Americas and Australia and Thailand. Our main focus has been previously in Europe, but we do see an increase also in America. And now more than 65% of our employees are situated in Europe, about 25% of our employees are in Americas.
For those of you who have been following us for a while, you know that we've been through a transition, ensuring that we went from 5 different business units and business areas to actually scaling it down to the 2 main areas that we have now, which is tolling and traffic management. We've used the previous years to ensure that we've built sustainable products going forward. We have enforced our existence in existing core markets, and we have built on our reputation as a prime mover in traffic technology.
We have used the last year to scale our products, ensuring that we do standardize the products and also targeting new target markets. We have started in this previous presentation, we went from a product-based revenue stream to an annual recurring revenue, and we do see this as the way of going forward.
Going from here, we will focus on continuing scaling our products and standardizing our solutions. But having this platform to build on also gives us the opportunity to expand, expand using the software platform to create new products and services alone or together with third parties and also utilizing partners in the whole value chain from production in delivery and maintenance.
So what are some of the market highlights from the fourth quarter in 2022? This is just a quick snapshot to give you an insight into what is happening in Q-Free the last quarter. In traffic management, we did deliver to California, North Carolina DOT the MaxTime, which is the largest urban state-wide contract so far for Q-Free. We did this week ensure that the traffic run smoothly during Super Bowl because we have delivered the MaxTime Adaptive to Glendale in Arizona. And we also got some major contracts in the U.K. for the traffic Department of Transportation, where Q-Free is the main contractor. We did also launch our connecting mobility platform in traffic management, which I will come back to soon. That was our major highlights for the Q4 in traffic management.
In tolling, we did successfully install our projects in north of Spain. We finalized the Ascendi renewal project in Portugal. And also finalized the Great Belt project in Denmark and Tromso Bypakke. We did also launch our new standardized operating back office for tolling. All of this gives us an opportunity to work together with our customers and scale on our products.
To underpin this, we did also make some changes in our management team during the fourth quarter. We have now in tolling and traffic management senior management. And for our traffic management department in the U.S., we did move our CTO up to being the EVP for traffic management, ensuring the focus on technology also going forward. We have introduced a new CTO in traffic management and also myself came on board during the fourth quarter, working on scaling and market presence.
Sustainability is more and more key to what we do. It's a high focus in Q-Free. And also, we already awarded some nominations for social sustainability and the way we think about sustainability going forward in the product development. I didn't mention Kinetic Mobility, and it's a true example of the way we think about product development going forward. Kinetic Mobility is a cloud-based traffic management platform that unifies 3 of our areas, urban, inter-urban and infomobility offerings in one single off-the-shelf system. It brings together products and allows the customers to have one platform to also use all of our product offerings, and we'll expand on this going forward. It's a true example of a SaaS platform for the future.
But we also use some time on where is the future in the ITS area. We're part a pilot, it's called the MODI project, which is financed by the EU. It's a European cross-border flagship and where Q-Free can showcase our technology, the opportunities in micro positioning, access control, charging, user charging, et cetera.
What you see here is an example where it's an accelerated introduction of kinetic and cooperative and automated mobility, ensuring that we do understand how logistics in the supply chain can be made more efficiently with autonomous driving going forward. As an example of where autonomous vehicles are driving across 4 national borders and 4 different harbors. And for us, it's a showcase of the technology that we have and the future proof of our technology going forward.
So what is the outlook for our business? What's the outlook for the ITS industry? We do see it's a market opportunity, which is driven by changes from our customers and also regulatory forces. We do see a tendency to move from manual tolling to electronic tolling, which is really core of our tolling business. We see growing infrastructure needs that needs to be covered tolls as state budgets are stretched, and the taxes that used to be from gasoline is now declining.
Not least do we see a political push towards a net zero economy, where cities and communities are forced to reduce traffic, forced to reduce air pollution through pricing mechanisms, such as congestion charging, road user charging and ensuring better traffic flow. Again, this is what we do in Q-Free. And also because more people are moving towards our cities, higher urban and inter-urban traffic requires an improved facilitation and control of this traffic flow and digitalization of this process is key, and this is where our traffic management unit comes in.
At the same time, given this push for change, it also opened some new markets. And we are constantly focusing on how do we both grow our existing Q-Free markets with ongoing projects and upgrades, but also new potential markets for Q-Free products and offerings. What you see here is some of the changes that we see in the marketplace. Our ATMS is constantly moving into new U.S. states, but ALPR service is moving into different countries across the globe. And we're now seeing changes both in the tolling mechanisms in France and Croatia and other countries.
Summing this up, the outlook for the ITS industry and Q-Free is definitely bright. And we are in a mission for doing our change to a more sustainable tomorrow. We are now heavily investing in technology, ensuring that we can have scalable solutions going forward on an open cloud-based platform, which supports third-party equipment as well. And we do see still the double-digit ARR growth year-on-year.
We are constantly working with partners to be part of our product development, a delivery model and the value chain and ensuring that we have those strategic alliances going forward. In ESG, for us, it's part of our DNA, and it's part of the license to operate within this industry. So that is also a prime focus for us going forward.
And with that, I want to give you the hand over to our CFO, Trond Christensen, which will give you an update on the financial updates for the company for the fourth quarter and preliminary results for 2022.
Good morning. We'll have 4 main key takeaways from this quarter. It came in pretty strong. We have shown, firstly, a very, very strong growth in recurring revenue at a 40% growth year-on-year. We did significant deliveries in fourth quarter, resulting in NOK 305 million for the quarter and ending up at that digital growth for the full year. We still have a very solid backlog, like Thale mentioned earlier, NOK 1.4 billion, which is currently at more than 1.5x our annual turnover, securing a strong future. And we had a quarter where we were able to present a very strong cash flow from operations of NOK 63 million in fourth quarter. We'll go a little bit more in detail on these issues.
This is our key results came in fairly strong with an EBITDA of NOK 30 million for the quarter, which is pretty good considering the macro conditions around the world. This is a combination of a slightly favorable development in macro figures as well as very strong performance of our teams in both divisions with significant deployments of both software, hardware projects and basically every line of business we are in. We are perhaps especially pleased that we managed to deliver a double-digit organic growth for the quarter, even if we are in a very strong transition mode in moving our -- some of our revenue from projects to more recurring models to then have a growth of 10% in nominal figures, is very strong.
44% increase in revenues for the quarter compared to the same quarter last year. It's a mixed picture, but basically very strong in all lines of business that we are in. We had some significant software deliveries in traffic management that helped a lot on that segment. And in the tolling division, we had good project deliveries on some major projects in Southern Europe, but we also had a significant improvement in the supply chain situation that made us be able to shift very high volumes of physical products. So altogether, a very strong revenue development in the fourth quarter.
As I mentioned initially, we keep building our base of recurring revenue. 40% growth from fourth quarter 2021 to fourth quarter this year. As we have mentioned numerous times during the last few quarters, this is a wanted and looked for and definitely intensive change in our business model. I think it's important to mention now since we've had a very strong growth for the last few quarters that it will vary a little bit from quarter-to-quarter depending on deployment of projects, et cetera. And also, it's very important to emphasize that we are not going to shift to being a 100% recurring or SaaS company. We are still going to be highly engaged in product sales in both tolling and traffic management. We are also investing more into those areas, developing new products, and we will definitely also still be delivering more traditional projects all over the world. So it will not be a 100% shift, but we see that the share of recurring revenue is strong, and it will be a key success factor for Q-Free in the years to come.
To see here, we are now in a growth situation on both our divisions. For the quarter, the growth was strongest in the tolling segment. That's driven by both projects and product sales. But of course, product sales, which is perhaps more dominant in the tolling division, we'll always give higher numbers on the top line, but also traffic management, very strong this quarter. Some hardware deliveries also there, but they also had some significant software deliveries in the quarter, which definitely helped lift the top line.
And both divisions also have annual growth rates. And in sum, it gives us a double-digit growth organically for the year. And as I mentioned initially, in a year where we have focused a lot on transition to recurring and more long-term revenue models, that's a solid figure, especially when we look at the macroeconomic situation in the world today.
EBITDA, back on double digits, 10% EBITDA margin. Of course, this is not at the level that we want to be long term. But all in all, with the challenges that we've had on supply chain and everything happening in 2022, we think that's a fairly solid conclusion to the year, which we are content with. And we will, of course, keep building our long-term business model to improve this further.
Segment details, NOK 30 million altogether for the fourth quarter, ending there at NOK 86 million EBITDA. Both segments have done good in fourth quarter. Tolling is a little bit down compared to last year, very much of it related to supply chain issues where it's been hard to get the products through the supply chain and where our margin has been very much affected by both the component situation, but also the transport situation throughout the year.
Our operating expenses, it's going a little bit up and down from quarter-to-quarter, but we are very confident that we have good control on the underlying OpEx. We're not kind of flushing out anywhere. We are, of course, feeling the burden of the inflation like everyone does. The OpEx in Q-Free is very personal oriented. So of course, expectations for salary increases and the labor market is highly affecting our OpEx, but we are confident that this is under good control. And for the full year figures, I would like to remind you that we have some one-off expenses, perhaps especially in third quarter, which we mentioned in our report then. So if you adjust for that, I think our OpEx development for the year is quite acceptable considering the macro figures.
Order intake was not the biggest in fourth quarter. But since we are engaged in a few very large contracts in addition to our bread and butter business, this will, of course, vary a lot from quarter-to-quarter. We had a few very strong quarters earlier this year. So the order intake for the year is at a very strong level, and we still have a very good backlog, which is NOK 1.4 billion, which is more than 1.5 years turnover. And also, I need to remind you that we have quite a few frame agreements where we have been awarded the volume for certain customers, but we do not report that as order backlog until we get actually call-offs on frame agreements. So all the figures we report as backlog and order intakes. Those are actually solid contracts that we do expect to be delivering on.
As I mentioned, very strong cash flow from operations. We had a negative development in our working capital in third quarter. We were able to turn this around and reach some milestones, and did some invoicing and collect some cash on the major projects in fourth quarter. That helped us a lot.
We are investing quite a bit these days. We are investing in new products that are being developed, physical products that will be available in the market moving forward in both divisions. And as a part of the transition to more recurring business models, we are also investing more in off-the-shelf standard software. So it is affecting our cash a little bit these days, but will give us a long-term, more stable profit in the future. Yes, and on financing side, we are, of course, feeling the increased interest rates and some fluctuation in exchange rates, et cetera, but not anything worse than other ones. So our cash situation altogether improved during the quarter.
Our balance sheet, no major changes. We still have a very solid 45% equity ratio, which is, I think, very solid compared to similar companies and well within governance demands. Our balance sheet has expanded a little bit throughout the year. But since most of our business is in other countries than Norway, we are, of course, very much affected by fluctuations in currency rates. And we have been able to pull down our working capital ratio slightly during the last period.
Interest-bearing debt keep staying at a good level. It was a little bit up in third quarter due to the fluctuations in working capital. We are back down again to the level we had in second quarter in 2022. It's now at a net interest-bearing debt of NOK 157 million, which gives us a gearing of 1.8, which is also very modest for similar companies. So this is a fairly healthy level in our opinion.
So that's our main headlines for the quarter. We'll now see if there are any Q&As that we should answer to.
So yes, there is a question on addressable market opportunities. We have on some occasions. We have shown this a little bit more specifically. So it's a question about that. I don't know if we want to comment on that, Thale.
Well, we do follow the addressable markets. We have an overview of the opportunities that are now arising, both in the traffic management sector as well as in our tolling division. With regards to actually putting that in the outlook, we did have more of an overview of opportunities that are going forward. We do see some of our European countries have a new refocused on tolling segment. We will, of course, come back to that also in the fourth -- in the first quarter for 2023. We are reviewing the strategy, and it's reinforcing the strategy that is now in place, and we'll come back with more details on the addressable market and the strategy updates for next quarter.
Then we have a question on our CapEx, where the question is that our CapEx has been increasing lately. And if we could elaborate on that.
It's a mix in there. Yes, as I mentioned, we are putting more efforts in research and development. We are developing new products, both physical products in both divisions. But also quite significant investments in more standardized off-the-shelf software. Thale has already mentioned the Kinetic platform, but we also have some initiatives in tolling. We won't go too much in detail on those. So yes, we do expect that CapEx will be slightly higher moving forward than it has been traditionally.
However, I should mention that at least the last couple of quarters, we have also had a couple of special issues. We have invested some money into a new ERP system for all global Q-Free, which are currently in the rollout phase. But we have also CapEx related to some actually physical tolling systems, roadside equipment, where we have long-term rental contracts with our customers that will generate recurring revenues for many years, where we have CapEx in both second -- sorry, both the third and fourth quarter, and we will have some also moving into 2023 on that. So yes, we will have higher CapEx than we have traditionally had, but it's a little bit special high in especially third and fourth quarter.
Then we have a question regarding our outlook session. If we repeat our growth targets, but also saying that we are in the process of reviewing our strategy to encompass the market and product development within IPS and aligned strategy to relevant targets. The question is, basically, does this mean that the growth targets might change as a result of this?
The original strategy that has been put in place was mostly based on our traditional project-based revenue stream. What we do see is the change in recurring revenue and the growth rate there. Also, on the product development, we are focusing more scalable products, and that was originally the base of the strategy put in place. That is why we now are reviewing the strategy and also coming back with more specifics on targets. However, our growth targets are in place. It is a strong ITS opportunity in the world with regards to both the ESG that we see now, the focus on more sustainable cities. So this is definitely a double-digit growth target still going forward.
Then we have a question on our gross margin since this is a bit low during this quarter. The question is whether this is due to deliveries of tax? And if so, if it means that the gross margin on tax is worse than before.
It's a lot of truth to that question, [indiscernible]. Yes, we have very high product sales in fourth quarter. We were able to push out a lot of tags, and that does, on average, have a lower gross margin than other products that we are delivering. There were some kind of counteractive effects in fourth quarter because we also had some good project deliveries and very good software deliveries, which has a high margin. But in total, it was the tag sales, that kind of pulled down the margin a lot. So product mix, yes, but it's also worth saying that the gross margin on tax have been particularly low during both third and fourth quarter. This has to do with the supply chain situation. Components has grown a lot in price. We have a lot of deliveries where we are responsible for transport and transportation has for a lot of the year been very expensive. And we have also, in some cases, have to choose more expensive ways of transport to satisfy the customer.
We think this is a temporary effect. We see now very clearly that the transport market is getting better. The freight cost is going down. The component cost is going down. We also see that component availability is getting better, which makes it, yes, we don't always have to run around buying expensive places. We can spend more time, get good sourcing on our components. And also it's been an effect ever since the pandemic that we have been delivering tags on contracts that have been strike at a lower price level than the component situation has reflected. So we will expect that to improve as we move into 2023, where we have a better supply chain situation, and we are moving to newer contracts. We had a kind of reality of the world and everything happening after the war in Ukraine has also been reflected in the prices in the market.
So we will have some lack of that also in first quarter, perhaps a little bit into the second quarter before it's more normalized in the third quarter.
Question, can you talk about the outlook for 2023 for tolling and traffic management given the macroeconomic situation? And are there any subsegments where you see a shift in demand?
I don't know if we have any further comments on that, Thale. I think you touched a lot of it already.
Yes. We do touch on it. What we do see though is the stronger demand on cloud-based SaaS systems for some of our customers because it's also more focused on the information security, and that's probably some of the areas where we do see a shift in subsegments and also allowing them coming with our product platform-based SaaS solutions, it's more of an interest in the marketplace for those kind of solutions than we have seen previously.
Yes. And then the final question is, what's the reason for the high tax expense in fourth quarter?
It's a mix. And this is a field where professors with big academic titles in IFRS standards could have some fun. To some extent, is, of course, an effect that we're having good profit in some countries where we have to -- in some countries where we do have to pay some taxes, whilst we, in some other places, have some deferred tax losses that we can utilize to not pay tax in those territories.
Under the current accounting standards, there are very strict rules for when you can actually put that deferred tax asset based on deferred losses in the balance sheet. So we have done some reassessments and some adjustments. So this is more of some minor adjustments based on IFRS standards more than it is expressing some future cash effects. So it's more theoretic accounting than reality, but that's the life of IFRS reporting.
So I think that's our last question. So...
Yes. And with that, I want to thank you for joining us this morning, listening in on the Q4 2022 results for Q-Free. And I wish you all a good day. Thank you.