Smartcraft ASA

OSE:SMCRT

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q3

[Gustav Line, executive]

Good morning, and welcome to SmartCraft Q3 reporting. My name is Gustav Line, and I'm the CEO of SmartCraft. For those who do not know SmartCraft, SmartCraft is a leading provider of SaaS solutions to the Nordic market, Nordic construction market.

Throughout the presentation today, you are able to post questions online, and we'll finish with the Q&A. And in this presentation, you will not only meet me, you'll also meet Hanna, and she is the Country Manager of Sweden. And you will meet Christian, who is the CTO; and you will meet Kjartan, who's the CFO.

So let's switch to the presentation. We're pleased to continue our strong growth journey with a 16% organic growth in Q3, with the corresponding strong margins and strong operating cash flow. We also observed continuous high activity among our customers. They give us feedback that they are very busy, and this is also evident in our transactional revenue that increases by 19% for the quarter. And transactional revenue is typically incoming and outgoing invoices.

And we also have a good sales pipeline going into Q4. In Q3, 97% of our revenue was recurring, and we report a continuously low churn at 5%. I believe our numbers show how solid we're as a company. We have strong growth, high margin, strong cash flow, high level of recurring revenue and low churn. These factors in combination show that we are in a good position to strengthen our position in the market.

We operate in a large underpenetrated market. Our customers are mostly SME construction companies. And when times are good, our customers lack people and resources and need to maximize where they can. In challenging times, our customers focus on cost and margin. Either way, they need SmartCraft. And additionally, there are 4 trends that drive demand. There is a global shortage of skilled workers. And there is a long tail of service needs, both in private and public sector. And our customers are mostly focused on renovation, upgrades and maintenance of existing buildings.

And the demand for digital documentation has increased every year, both from public offices, but also from consumers. And as a lot of younger people are entering the workspace, they also demand more modern and digital solutions. So there are some really great trends in our favor. So with our strong position as a company, a great underpenetrated market and strong trends driving demand, we stay very positive about our future.

We are in a NOK 10 billion market in the Nordics, of which most SME construction companies have not yet used digital solutions for their mission-critical needs. And we see several ways to increase revenue. We have a strong sales culture, and we will continue to win new customers by excellence in sales and marketing. We see an opportunity to upsell and increase net retention revenue. We do this by moving customers to higher price brackets, new modules -- with new modules and features and also with price increases. We also have an opportunity to cross-sell. Still early days, but we're pretty sure that the effects will come from the cross-sells.

And also, we have an opportunity to extend value chain. By this, we mean looking into new branches and extend beyond our customers to their customers and partners. And we can also expand geographically in existing regions. We are doing this. We are expanding from Finland to Sweden, and we are expanding from Sweden to Finland, and we are looking into more initiatives to expand in our 3 regions.

We also have a strong focus on existing customers and to keep churn at a low level. And we have several initiatives to help customers get on board and to automatically help them in their daily work. We do things like monitor user patterns and will act when needed. And with our low prices at an average of NOK 7 per user per day, we believe there is an upside potential to increase our low prices in the future.

Our main focus is the Nordics, where we see great opportunities for growth. We are in dialogue with several companies in our region and in new regions. We look for additional functionality to be able to widen our portfolio and to cross-sell to existing customers. We also look to buy companies to increase our customer base as we believe size matters in the software industry. However, we are selective. We want to buy companies with either SaaS software or at least a really good understanding of how to drive the SaaS business. And we want to buy companies that either have commercially proof of concept or are very close to breaking through. And we want to buy companies that are unique, that are not too generic and have something special to offer the market. And we are allergic to customization, and we do not want to buy companies where we need to do a turnaround. We see that prices, when we want to acquire companies, are getting more to a more realistic level, but we are picky and will only pursue the right targets at the right price.

I think the latest acquisition of Inprog, is a great example of our acquisition strategy. Inprog is a fairly small company that we acquired in October. And I think it's a nice addition to our existing SmartCraft electro portfolio. It is quite unique. It's made by electricians for electricians. It's a specialized project management tool for people in the field, and it's a really good intuitive app that gets a really good praise from our customers. And we believe that with Inprog, we can, like we have done with other solutions, we can get synergies in both development and cross sales. And again, the company is pretty small, but it's showing a good progress when it comes to revenue and results.

Now let me take you through some important changes that will help us to grow the company going forward. I'd like to divide our journey into 2. The first part of the journey was building the foundation, establishing SmartCraft as a strong Nordic leader with a solid financial backbone. We have established that. We have also proven the ability to drive successful consolidation. And now we have a portfolio of great best-of-breed SaaS construction solutions. And we have had a great -- we have had an IPO with some really good investors on board. And as you can see and having followed us for the last quarters, we have established a great financial track record, underpinned by high growth and strong cash generation.

SmartCraft 2.0 is just a name that I like to use is sort of the next phase of our journey. And that part of the journey is all about scale, synergies and growth. We have established a new leadership team, and we will continue to do targeted acquisitions, which is part of our strategy. And we have now established one marketing organization in order to really strengthen the SmartCraft brand. And as you will hear a little bit more about in a few minutes, we also look to synergize product and technology development and connect the dots between our solutions.

And one example of this is how we collaborate and align in the electro domain. So we've done some changes in order to synergize, but also be able to scale going, forward. And Vivienne Karlsen is recruited as Country Manager in Norway. She starts the 1st of December. So we're really looking forward to that. And Hanna, Timo and Katja are working in SmartCraft, and they have stepped up in their new positions. So by doing these changes, we're not really adding a new management level, this will just make us more agile with the same resources.

So now let me give the word to Hanna for her to talk a bit more about how we will work going forward.

[Hanna Konyi;Bygglet AB]

Thank you, Gustav. As Gustav said, my name is Hanna Konyi, and I am the former General Manager for Bygglet, which is the largest company in the group. But going forward, I will take on the responsibility as a Country Manager for SmartCraft, Sweden. SmartCraft is acting in a business where organizational success is more or less enabled by tech innovation. Therefore, we always aim to make methods more efficient in order to create the right business culture, approach and speed, so we can support rapid value creation to remain competitive.

We have started to align ourselves within our geographies. We see that this will give us even more opportunities to increase coordination and collaboration and avoid working in silos. For example, looking at sales, it will enable us to coordinate our efforts to keep our strong growth. And making the products better and more valuable to our customer is the focal point of our solutions. Of course, we follow our competitors, but we care first and foremost about how our products can be improved. We will take the methods that we know works and implement them in every solution to increase the scalability.

The market drivers are strong, and it is a market that needs to be made more efficient, and we have a plan. We have already started with aligning marketing and finance within the geographies, and we are seeing results already. Interest in getting all business processes in place is something we are working on right now, and we'll keep on doing that. Thank you. And now I will hand over to my colleague, Christian, who is the CTO for the group.

[Christian Saleki, executive]

Thank you so much, Hanna, and good morning, everyone. SmartCraft is on a mission to digitalize the construction industry. And for us to get there faster, we focus a significant part of our product development on features for quick onboarding, as well as features that help maximize the usage of our solutions, both of which are often seen as enablers that increase the speed of the digitalization.

We have also started to organize our workflows according to domains, starting with electricians, as Gustav also mentioned. Domains are about mapping a user's journey throughout their workday with a digital tool that provides value and comfort along that journey. In a way, domains can be seen as an ecosystem for a certain type of users. So in this example, an electrician. And why is this important? Well, let's look at it from a customer's perspective and allow me to introduce Bob electrician.

With our latest acquisition of Inprog in October and El Verdi in June, we now have 5 solutions approaching Bob. All of these solutions are great and appreciated by our customers. But there is a clear benefit in aligning these solutions with a sharper focus towards electricity, making it even simpler for them to choose us as their partner. In short, domains help provide the right type of focus for our product teams. It also helps other business functions such as sales, marketing and customers' success to align tightly with the product.

But most importantly, it provides clarity for the user and helps customers such as Bob to choose SmartCraft solutions in a simpler way than ever before.

The second area we have been focusing on is to improve collaboration across our R&D teams. Today, we tend to occasionally build similar features for the same user groups and therefore not use our R&D teams in an optimal way, utilizing our capability-based platform, SmartCraft CORE to better serve the electrician domain is an important step in this direction, as resources and functionalities can be shared across development teams and solutions in the SmartCraft Group.

SmartCraft CORE is already in use by our Cordel solution and more than 2,500 daily users are now on board this platform. And since 5 of our solutions cover different parts of electrician workday, we are organizing them according to a domain that focuses on connecting the dots where it makes sense.

By taking a more holistic approach where our solutions provide an ecosystem for electricians, we can better support our customers throughout the different processes in their workday. With a domain approach, our ambition is to enriching our existing solutions for electricians with functionality from SmartCraft CORE. This will increase our ability to capture scale in the context of product and technology development. We expect to see the results gradually over the upcoming years.

Now this concludes my part of the presentation. I will now hand over to Kjartan Bo, our CFO, to go through the numbers with you. Thank you.

[Kjartan Bo, executive]

Good morning, everyone. We'll start off with a little history and looking at the aggregated revenue for the last decade. As you see, our revenues have grown nicely in the last decade, irrespective of macro conditions, and this is both before and after the IPO. This is also in line with our medium-term guiding going forward.

If we take a closer look at Q3, total revenue has a solid growth of 16% year-over-year. This includes a decrease of nonrecurring revenue of 35%. Recurring revenue has a growth of 19% and is now at a record high 97% share. The recurring revenue share is expected to stabilize around this level, and we do not plan to eliminate all nonrecurring revenue.

The adjusted EBITDA margin in Q3 is 39%. This is an increase of 2 percentage points compared to 37% last year. And as we have changed the way we accrue holiday pay, with similar principles in 2021, it's an increase of 4 percentage points, up from 35%. As in Q2, there are additional personnel costs relating to recruitment to better scale the organization. These costs are not expected to be recurring and comes in addition to the more regular recruitment costs.

We still have a lower margin in the latest acquired solutions, but we do see improvements. And as always, we are confident in our ability to increase the margin in the acquired companies up to the group level.

We have increased the capitalized amount of development from 4.7% last year. Q3 is normally a period of lower capitalization due to the summer holiday. And additionally, we have vacant developer positions as we are selective in our recruitment. For the full year of 2022, we expect capitalization at around 7%.

We continue our high sales conversion, and we have a strong pipeline going into Q4. SmartCraft experiences a prolonged sales cycle as our customers are experiencing a high level of activity, but at the same time, the future visibility is somewhat lower as they are constantly told to expect more challenging times. The high level of activity is evidenced by both our growth in transactional price revenue and a reduction in churn.

We maintained a high ARR growth in Q3. Total ARR grew by 17% and 16% organically. ARR is ending Q3 at NOK 304 million, passing the milestone of NOK 300 million. As before, we have a solid financial position. We are net cash positive. We have a negative net working capital that contributed to the operating cash flow. And SmartCraft has a positive cash contribution from operations every quarter. In Q3, cash from operations activities increased by 43% compared to last year.

Now our financial targets stay firm, and we guide at 15% to 20% organic growth in the medium term. The adjusted EBITDA margin is still expected to increase due to scalability and synergies.

Now Gustav, let's move on to the Q&A.

[Gustav Line, executive]

Actually, not yet, we have to have the most important slide, make sure to follow us for the latest news on these different channels. And now let's move to the Q&A.

[Gustav Line, executive]

So we got some questions from a few people. And one is from Gustav Froberg from Berenberg. And basically, I'll read the question. SmartCraft's cash flow was strong in the quarter and the company balance sheet looks healthy. Could you tell us more about your M&A pipeline and provide us with an update about how you would like to invest this cash in the next 12 months?

So good question. And we talked a little bit about M&A, Gustav. And I think the way we look at it is that the market is better now for SmartCraft than it was a year ago and also what it was like half a year ago. So I think now we see more companies that have sort of lowered their prices. We see less of the financial players sort of bidding for companies and sort of increasing the expectations at the targets. So we have more meaningful conversations with meaningful targets to put it that way. So we expect to be able to continue our M&A journey and add, like we have talked about earlier on, 1 to 2 acquisitions a year. This year, we've done 2 smaller add-ons, but I think they are quite strategically important.

Anything you would like to add to that, Kjartan?

[Kjartan Bo, executive]

No, I think you summed it quite well. We see the prices being a bit more realistic, which is positive for us in the longer run.

[Gustav Line, executive]

Yes. And also, we will, of course, also evaluate if we should invest more of our -- organically as well, but that's something that we will take -- carefully evaluate.

There's a second question as well from Gustav, which is, do you expect employee costs to be higher or lower than in Q3 in the fourth quarter this year?

Kjartan that has got you written all over it.

[Kjartan Bo, executive]

We do have some recruitment costs in Q3 that we don't expect in Q4. At the same time, we have a couple of new recruitment. So that will more or less weigh up for the recruitment costs we're not taking in Q4. So overall, around the same level in Q4, I'd say.

[Gustav Line, executive]

Good. Then we got a question from [ Anders Bjorkstal from Solarstein Capital ]. And this is for you, Christian, so sharpen your ears. For electricians, are you planning to have one customer-facing brand rather than 5 individual brands? Can you share a real life example to help us understand what will change for the customer and how this is planned to lower friction of add-on sales?

So just to answer the first part of the question regarding the branding. This is something we're looking into. Today, we have some strong brands, and we will see how we brand our solutions going forward. We haven't got the exact recipe, but it's something that is definitely on our table these days. So I don't want to be too precise on that, but that's something that hopefully is going to be very good and clear for all our customers.

So Christian, maybe you could answer the technical part of it.

[Christian Saleki, executive]

Well, to start with, excellent question. And of course, we like to kind of make sure that we have the business as usual under control, while searching for low-hanging fruits where we can provide clear value for the end customer. So that's a journey that we continuously take on within the R&D teams and the product teams. And the same thing will be done in the electrician domain. So what we are doing essentially is trying to figure out how we can provide the best type of value for our end users. And where we find those, we connect those dots to make the value delivered. But as of now, it's a bit early to say what exactly will be done. The acquisitions are quite fresh, but the work is in progress at the moment, and we hope to give you some more details in upcoming sessions.

[Gustav Line, executive]

I think also getting back to the slide that we have earlier on. But it's important that we have some very strong brands and we have some -- with some different functionality. But we see the opportunity to have a platform, where we can still maybe utilize the same user interface, but where the engine is more from SmartCraft CORE, right?

[Christian Saleki, executive]

Yes.

[Gustav Line, executive]

So we will synergize also in the user interface where it makes sense. But at the moment, it's more about changing the engine rather than the user experience. Is that right, Christian?

[Christian Saleki, executive]

Yes, precisely.

[Gustav Line, executive]

Good. We also got some questions from Oliver Pisani from Carnegie. And he says, slow organic ARR growth in this quarter compared to recent quarters. Do you see Q4 trending? How do you see Q4 trending so far?

Kjartan, would you like to give any flavor on that?

[Kjartan Bo, executive]

Yes. We -- it's a bit early to say anything about Q4, and we do guide in the medium term and not the short term quarter-to-quarter. So let me sum it up by stating our guiding, I would say. We guide medium term, still 15% to 20% organic growth.

[Gustav Line, executive]

Yes. I think what we also said earlier on is that we have a good pipeline going into the quarter. We see a lot of activity with our customers. They are a little bit concerned when they read the newspapers, but they have sort of full order books. So it's a little bit early to say. We stay positive both in the short-term and medium-term.

There is another question from Oliver, will SmartCraft CORE require a period of higher development CapEx?

Good question. And maybe I should answer that, if I can -- if you may, or if you want to answer that?

[Kjartan Bo, executive]

No.

[Gustav Line, executive]

So we're not planning that, that will grow our CapEx. If you want to say anything else?

[Kjartan Bo, executive]

Yes. Gustav is right. We don't plan on increasing CapEx.

[Gustav Line, executive]

It's more about utilizing the resources we already have in smarter ways in order to synergize.

And then we got also ABG entering the scene with Oystein Lodgaard. Do you see potential to enter into any new customer segments such as machine entrepreneurs and others with your existing solutions?

And Oystein, that is something we are evaluating. We know that there's plenty of do -- of things to do in the areas we are already in. But when we see there's a good fit in a branch that is close to where we are, then we will evaluate that. And that's how we talked about extending our value chain a little bit earlier on. We are looking into some of those areas.

Yes. And then Oystein also asked a question. You currently don't have any project management solutions like Cordel or Bygglet in the Finnish market. What is your plan here to expand one of your existing solutions to this market? Or do you look for M&A opportunities?

And the answer to that Oystein is that we are evaluating both, both expanding but also acquisitions.

I think that would be all the questions for today. So thank you very much for joining this session. I really appreciate it, and thanks for the enthusiasm in the Q&A as well, and wish you all a great day, and stay tuned.