Smartcraft ASA

OSE:SMCRT

Good morning, and welcome to the SmartCraft Q4 Presentation. My name is Gustav Line, and I'm the CEO of SmartCraft. Today, we'll take you through, first of all, a brief introduction to SmartCraft before we talk about Q4. And then Kjartan, our CFO, will talk about the financials, and we will then have a summary and then finish off with the Q&A. And as usual, you can log questions in the web tool that we will answer at the end of this session.

For those of you that are not that familiar with SmartCraft, we are a software provider, delivering SaaS solutions to the construction industry, mainly focusing on standardized solution for small and medium enterprises. We have a strong foothold in Norway, Sweden and Finland, and we have now also entered into the U.K. We have a customer base of more than 13,000 customers. So it's a good position for further growth, both in our existing regions, but also in new regions.

So what's really happening in this industry and why do they need software for -- from someone like SmartCraft? Well, first of all, even in good times, these customers have really low margins. And you can imagine how tough it is when the market has turned sour like it has recently. They also have a high level of conflict with their customers, a lot of conflicts related to quality and also to payments and what has been agreed in the different projects. Unfortunately, this industry has also the highest levels of accidents and deaths. And the conflicts and the accidents and deaths is the reason why the public authorities have also asked for more documentation related to quality and health and safety. So low margins, high level of conflict, a lot of accidents. And on top of that, the companies have to deal with a lot more documentation.

So what we do is to deliver solution to make sure that these companies are in control of the people out in the field that they are control of the materials they order and also manage to capture the necessary information out in the field when -- so that's automatically updated on the different projects. So this way, we have good control of what's happening on the projects and the company can focus on what they're really good at instead of doing a lot of manual work with the administration.

So moving on to Q4. In Q4, our annual recurring revenue grew by 25% to NOK 482 million. That was lower than what we expected coming into Q4. We had a strong order intake at the beginning of the quarter, which slowed down at the end of the quarter. We also saw an increasing level of churn and also an increasing level of downgrades in the last 2 months of the quarter. I'll get back to that in a minute. Our adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx margin ended at 24%, which is lower than last year. But bear in mind that we acquired 2 companies last year, which also dilutes our margin as these companies come in with a much lower margin than we have in the rest of the group. We also invested in a development project that I'm going to talk about a little bit later as well. We have a history of delivering a strong operating cash flow, and we do so also in Q4. Our operating cash flow grew by 53% to NOK 48 million.

So moving to our sales and our organic growth. We had an organic growth of 8%, which is the lowest we've had in my period as a CEO. And the growth is slowed down due to 3 factors. First of all, we see an increase in churn of 2 percentage points year-over-year. And if you look at the graph to the right, you can see that our churn level, which is normally at around 6% is now at 9%. And the increase in churn is mainly due to bankruptcies, because the industry is challenged. The second reason why our growth is slowing down is that, we have a lower level -- a higher level of downgrades from our existing customers because they have less projects to work on and they also, in some cases, need to lay off staff due to the downturn in the industry. That's also affecting us approximately 3 percentage points when you compare it to last year. Last year, the inflation was much higher than it was this year. So we also see a difference in price increase compared to what we had last year. And our strategy is to make sure that we win as many customers as possible. And at this point, we want to keep our price increases at a moderate level in order to be very competitive in the market. We could, of course, when we choose to also increase the prices, but we haven't done so for 2024. It's more or less in line with inflation.

So moving to sales and marketing. For us, we are in a massive market with a lot of potential. And it's important for us to keep up a strong momentum in the market even when the market is tough. And in Q4, we create a lot of exposure in the market, actually NOK 52 million sort of visibilities, which is quite a lot. We also have a lot of activities from physical presence with customers to trade events, to digital marketing, even to radio adverts, we also did some radio adverts in Q4. These activities lead to more inbound sales leads than we've had before, but also more sales meetings. And I'm pleased to see that the conversion rate from sales meeting to sales has increased from 35% in Q3 to 44% in this quarter. So all in all, we actually have won 11% more new customers than we did last year, a year ago same quarter.

Continuing a little bit on this topic. Actually, our number of new customers in Q4 was the highest we've seen since Q1 2022. And for our biggest or the brand, Bygglet, which is carrying the highest revenue in the group, they actually had the highest level of revenue in new sales than they have had ever actually. So it's a very good sales month for Bygglet. And the underlying growth rate, if you sort of -- so take away the downgrades and the churn, the actual underlying growth rate for SmartCraft is actually higher in Q4 2024 than it was a year ago. So the momentum we have in the market, the customers are really interesting to buy, but we are being held back by churn and downgrades.

Moving on to the margin to explain a little bit some of the initiatives and decisions we've taken when it comes to our margin. We did 2 acquisitions in 2024, and those dilute the margin by 5.8 percentage points. Also, we have decided to invest in a strategic initiative that I'll talk about in a minute, which started to take effect on the cost side in the second half of 2024. That lowers our margin in Q4 by 1.9 percentage points. If we didn't do those activities, our margin in the rest of the group actually increased compared to last year in Q4.

So moving to the first topic, the 2 acquisitions. When we acquire companies, we basically go in, review the companies, and we look at 3 things we can do. We work to see how we can make them focus better, what are they really good at, what is the core of what they do, and then we make them do more of what they're really good at, the focus part. Then we see how they can become more efficient, making sure that they utilize SmartCraft best practices and they have the right tools for the job and so on. And then precision, they also see how we can manage to hit the right target groups with the right message, both in sales and marketing. So this way, we drive value, but most importantly, we also make sure that these companies increase recurring revenue. And in the short term, when we increase recurring revenue, we typically drive down revenue and margin in the short term and convert that to recurring revenue.

So moving to Locka that we acquired in April '24. At the time we acquired the company, they had about 50% recurring revenue. And in the last quarter of '24, we had an annualized ARR growth of 42% in the quarter. And -- but at the same time, we also had a negative EBITDA for Locka of NOK 2 million. So as you can see, we grow the ARR, but it has a consequence to do this shift as well. And Locka, we still have improvements to do. We think the EBITDA definitely should be higher than the minus -- to have a negative contribution.

Clixifix, on the other hand, is continuing the strong growth that they had when we acquired them. And we've also seen that the margin has turned from negative earlier on to positive figures. So both of these companies will be included in organic growth from Q2 2025.

So the other thing that is pulling the margin down is the decision we did to speed up SmartCraft Spark, which is a disruptive solution for electricians. And the thing is, SmartCraft Spark is our initiative to build a complete ecosystem for electricians in all our existing markets. And we've started introducing to the market an offer and calculation tool. And the thing is with Spark, it's built on SmartCraft Core and SmartCraft Core is a platform with a lot of capabilities. And then in order to utilize those capabilities, we built SmartCraft Spark on top of those, which is for electricians. And by doing this, we get joint tech stack, which reduces development complexity because we are developing on something that already exists. We can also unite our sales and marketing resources instead of having several teams selling solutions for electricians, we will now have similar teams. And it's also easier for us to price optimize and upsell to customers. So in order to speed up this initiative in a market we think is super exciting, we added 4 developers in second half of '24. And as a -- we also managed to soft launch a solution already in November '24. And in January, we had 20-plus paying customers. And to the right on the slide, you can also see some great feedback from these customers. So, so far, this project has been a great success. Revenue will come in the future, not in the short term, but it's a great initiative to move SmartCraft forward, but also to disrupt the industry with great solutions.

We operate in a market with massive potential and especially after going into the U.K., that our total addressable market has increased a lot. The good news is that, very few of the companies that we address actually have a good solution for these mission-critical tasks, people, material and documentation. And that's why we sort of continue to push hard in order to reach these customers and building up a strong pipeline.

When we look at the 4 different markets, I'll take you through them quickly. The Swedish market looks to have improved after 4 interest rate cuts. We see in Finland that has been really quite hardly hit by the downturn in the industry has now started to improve. We can see that new construction projects that have started are now surpassing projects that are being completed. So that's -- it sort of seems to have bottomed out and is now improving. Norway is still experiencing a very tough market. It's gone from tough to tougher, I would say, in Q3 and Q4. And with the high interest rates, this doesn't seem to have any sort of immediate signs of recovery. We also see that the U.K. market is becoming a bit more challenging, especially in Q4. And they still have quite high interest rates. The government says that they want to build a lot more houses. They want to double the house building over the next 5 years. But at the same time, they've also imposed some taxes that sort of is counteracting that initiative. So all in all, it's a little bit bland, maybe a bit more challenging market in the U.K. as well.

So key takeaway from my first part of the session, we do see strong demand from potential customers. I did say that the underlying growth is actually quite strong, but the growth is hampered by churn and downgrades and also the fact that we have lower price increases this year. We do work hard to increase the ARR on the acquired companies, but it will put pressure on the margin in the short term. And SmartCraft Spark, which doesn't carry a lot of revenue for some time, is super exciting and it's going according to plan, but it will carry a negative effect on the margin in the shorter term.

So with that, I want to give you the word to Kjartan, and you can take it from there.

Good morning. So Gustav said a bit about the Q4 metrics. Let's also talk about the metrics for the full year. Of course, ARR, same NOK 482 million. EBITDA margin for the full year 2024, 37% and cash flow, NOK 179 million. Churn, of course, 9%, still considered the highest we've seen so far. But all in all, a 27% CAGR since 2019.

Our ARR grew by 25%, which is high, but it's also combined with M&A. So you see in the top right, we have NOK 54.7 million coming in, in Q2 in M&A, which gives us in Q4, 8% organic growth. As Gustav said, we are hampered by downgrades and churn. And we also had the price adjustments that we did every December. Last year, we had price adjustments of between 8% and 10%. This year, inflation is lower, and we have price adjustments in the range of 3% to 5%.

So revenue -- total revenue grows at a high rate, which is, of course, also contributed by the recurring revenue share. We are at 94% in the quarter, a bit lower than last year, but that's related to a lower share in the acquired companies. So the mid-90s range is acceptable. We're aiming for the mid- to high-90s. The margin as well -- quarter-on-quarter -- year-over-year, a bit down. We're at 24% EBITDA minus CapEx. But as Gustav said, we have the dilutions. We have the effects from investments. And when we consider the investments because we always have a focus on the short-term pain versus the long-term gain. So long-term future growth will, most of the time, prioritize the short-term EBITDA effect. But, of course, when we do investments, R&D CapEx increase, we are at NOK 13.6 million in Q4, and that's 10% of our revenue.

Looking at Sweden. Sweden, of course, acquired Locka earlier in the year, so they have a very good growth in total revenue. Organically, recurring revenue grew by 11%. Here as well, of course, as all segments, churn and downgrades are hampering growth, and we have the price effect -- price increase effect. There are positive signals in the market. We have the interest rate cuts, and we have an increase in the housing construction market. As Gustav said, Locka onboarding take a toll on both EBITDA and growth. Locka is a longer transition going into SmartCraft than the previous acquisitions we have done. This was known by the time we bought them. And, of course, as Locka was in the state they were in when we acquired them, we expect the onboarding phase to be 18 to 24 months long. Locka is still operating at a low margin, but has a very good growth in ARR in the quarter.

In Norway, we see a challenging market. There's a lot of delayed decision on sales and growth is hampered by churn and downgrade and price adjustments here as well. We have, of course, the SmartCraft Spark, soft launch in late November and revenue will first be recognized in 2025 as the solution has a free trial period of a month. So in January '25, we'll start seeing revenue coming in, but it will always be a delay given the free trial period.

In the Finnish market, we are glad to see growth has turned from negative to positive, back now roughly 2% organic recurring revenue growth, and we expect the improvements to continue. We previously said we will expect a rapid bounce back because of the project composition on revenue. As we have a large customer downgrade, that rapid bounce back will likely be a bit slower, but we still expect improvements to come. Here as well, we have good market signals going forward and trade fairs have proved a good customer revenue pipeline.

On the cash flow, which is the highlight of the quarter, we see a 53% growth in Q4. We have always had a strong cash flow, and we are cash positive in all quarters. The increase in Q4 is a result of our continuous improvements in our routines and processes. And it's likely on Q1, we will not see the same increase because we're shifting in invoicing from a seasonally strong Q1 throughout the year.

On the balance sheet, we are still a very strong, solid balance sheet, and we're currently holding roughly 2.6% shares. And as you might have noticed this morning, we announced a new share buyback program.

All right. So let me wrap this up before we go to the Q&A. So we think we are in a very exciting market, and we will continue to be -- do a lot of great marketing activities and sales activities in the market and explore new ways to get more customers. And we will also see how we can capitalize on SmartCraft Core, like we talked about, firstly, with SmartCraft Spark. We will, at the same time, see how we can realize synergies and also make sure we utilize the people and our solutions to the best and be prudent on costs. And we will continue to do acquisitions. We would mostly look to do acquisitions in the U.K. That's where we have our biggest focus at the moment, but also have an open eye to the Nordic market. So I think you should expect revenue growth and margin to be more or less at the level we are at now in H1 and to see a gradual improvement in H2 as the construction market recovers. But given the fact of the momentum in the business, we think that the medium-term financial targets stay firm at 15% to 20% organic growth, and we expect the margin to increase as we scale the business further.

So with that, Kjartan, shall we do the Q&A.

Thank you very much, Gustav and Kjartan. There are questions coming in from the webcast, and there's still opportunity to post questions for those of you who have any.

So first question, you have talked about the churn effect during the quarter. What initiatives are you taking to reduce churn?

Yes. Of course, churn is now 9%, which is 2%, 3%, 4% higher than we've seen before. The major increase in churn is related to bankruptcies. And more than half of our churn is bankruptcies. So it's not that easy for us to mitigate risks on bankruptcy. Of course, the effectable churn we have, we always do actions towards. And yes, our customer success team is working hard on what we call the effectable churn.

Maybe also say that one of the things is that, if companies don't -- if they use good solutions on the project management and manage to get the invoices out in time, that's a good sign that then they will also be more efficient and hopefully also have better margins if they do this in a good way. We know that. But we also monitor to see if customers don't get -- start to digitalize their business. And we also follow up to make sure that they start using the tools when we have sold the tool to them. So that's a bit of a warning sign if there's a red flag and they haven't started to use the solution. We first contact them digitally and then we contact them physically as well to find out if everything is okay. So we do our best.

We have a lot of good initiatives, like Kjartan said, on the effectable churn, the ones that basically maybe don't manage to digitalize, but we also have focus on the ones that might go bankrupt in order to help them to digitalize.

Perfect. One question on SmartCraft Spark that you talked about. Do you have any thoughts or estimates about the ARPU uplift potential either in kroners or in percentage terms when converting or recruiting customers to SmartCraft Spark?

Yes. We haven't -- we recently launched Spark, and we haven't disclosed any financial metrics related to Spark. So I'll keep it more high level for now. But when we look at Spark and the transition from existing electrician customers and acquiring new customers, we see that we have an uplift in average revenue per customer. In the longer term, right now, we have launched the basic version. More full version functionality will come in 2025. So it will be an increase going forward. But all -- in those cases where we transition a customer from an existing solution into SmartCraft Spark, there will be an uplift on revenue.

Also maybe adding that SmartCraft Spark is also addressing mostly in the first -- on the first level now, new customers that we don't have.

One question on price increases. I think you touched upon it, but could you perhaps reiterate the approximate price increase range that you imposed in December?

Yes. A bit different from segment to segment. But overall, we increased prices in the range of 3% to 5%.

Very good. And then there's one question about cyclicality. If you go back to '23, 2023, your presentations, you talked about how the cyclical exposure was limited due to your software being more like a need to have solutions for craftsmen. Would you say that you are surprised about the market souring this much so late into the cycle?

Yes. The cyclicality, of course, it's less cyclical for us than, for instance, in an enterprise market. But yes, we see that the smaller customers are affected somewhat by lower activity in the -- as they are subcontractors for typical larger sized companies and construction projects. So we do see the cyclicality coming in. I wouldn't say it's such a surprise, although we're seeing the cyclical effects as a combination to other like churn and downgrades coming in as well. So the result now for Q4 is both cyclical in terms of sales, but also cyclical in terms of churn, which is hitting us on both ends.

All right. Very good. How do you see OpEx development from -- developing into Q1 and Q2 when comparing to the level that you reported for Q4?

Yes. We -- in the short term, we continue the development investments we have, which affects in Q4 about 1.9 percentage points on profitability. So we do have the same investments in at least Q1, Q2 of 2025, I would say, likely going forward as well as we can develop more. But at the same time, the dilution from the acquisitions, that will be -- that was something we'll work on and increase or reduce the dilution but increase the margin.

So, Locka as a company with now a lower recurring revenue share is likely to be a bit more fluctuating on the margin. And over time, we will also transition Locka to a more SmartCraft structure, but it will take a bit longer time to do so. So, I would say roughly stable margin going forward in the short term, but increasing in the long term.

Can you comment on the momentum that you see on the commercial side, I mean, sales, churn downgrades, et cetera, into Q1 so far?

Very sort of high level, I would say we are more or less -- I think the interest in the market is actually very good, but the challenge of the churn and the downgrade is a bit early to say actually. It's still a bit early days. So I think we should assume that it's more or less at the same level that we have seen in Q4.

Perfect. Can you provide an upgrade of your AI strategy and how that aligns with your business goals? Are there any specific risks, opportunities from AI, would you say?

Yes. We have -- we're utilizing AI in development like a lot of other companies, we've done that for a long time. But most importantly, we're utilizing AI in customer success when we support our customers. And we have had a project going on for some time where we basically use AI to find the right and the best answer for our customers' requests. But we're still doing quality assurance before we let the customers get the answer directly themselves. So today, the AI is giving our people the first answer, and then we're passing that answer on after a quality check to the customers. So we think when that is up and running really well, we can both professionalize and also make sure that our customer success people can sort of do other things that will be more valuable to the customers. So that's the first level, and that's what we're focusing at the moment.

There's one technical question on the bankruptcies. Do you record or see the bankruptcy churn with a lag, i.e., do you record it and see it upon renewal rather than when the actual bankruptcy occurs such that perhaps there would be some sort of bankruptcy that was built up during '24 that was visible towards the end of the year?

To some extent, yes. The technical part of it, we include all revenue in ARR as long as the period has been paid for. So when the payment period stops, then we also stop the ARR. So if a customer churns on a 12-month basis, which is -- it's more often the shorter payment customers that go bankrupt. But in the event a customer go bankrupt in January '24 and have paid for the whole year, that would be visible in the ARR in December, yes.

Very good. There are no further questions from the webcast right now. So I'll hand the word back to you, Gustav.

Okay. So, again, we are super excited. I mean, we are very focused in this market. There's a lot of potential. There's a bit of headwind now that will calm down. We will get into smoother waters, and then we will get back to higher growth as well. So we are very excited and very motivated to continue that journey. So thank you very much for joining in, and speak to you later.