Volue ASA

OSE:VOLUE

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q1

[Trond Straume, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Volue's presentation of the results from the first quarter of 2022. My name is Trond Straume, and I'm the CEO of Volue. Together with me today, I have Arnstein Kjesbu, who is our CFO. Camilla Thorrud Larsen, who is heading up our optimization business, will also be joining. She will provide more insight into our offerings for the Power industry. There will be opportunity to submit questions throughout the presentation and we will hold a Q&A section at the end.

Volue, with this heritage, has been pioneering Greentech for decades with focus on industries critical to society. Our research work started in the Power industry more than 50 years ago. And we're now 1 of the largest software companies in Norway.

Creating Volue in 2020 has helped us become a front runner with digital coverage along the clean energy value chain from monitoring using sensors to realize cash in trading. At the core of our value offering is our platform. We measure success by how the platform is utilized by our customers, led by more than 30 billion automated calculations in the cloud. We execute more than 25 million trades every year on behalf of our customers.

Our market inside service for power professionals holds 150,000 price curves, excess of 650 billion times annually. Our sensor platform collects 120 trillion data points from our 4,500 installations. These numbers increase every year, and this is how we retain 99% of our customers. Volue is active in 3 segments, all with relevance to the transition to renewable energy.

For the Energy segment, we decided to expand from a dominating Nordic position in 2013, and into Continental Europe. Since then, we've worked to expand our platform into Thermal, Solar, Wind and Batteries, et cetera. This is important to our customers as they continue to operate their existing assets, while expanding capacity in new asset types. For our power grid business, we enjoy a strong market position in the Nordics with decades of experience supporting our customers building probably the strongest grid in Europe and now tested through the EV revolution. We believe we can expand our footprint on the back end of our market position in the Energy segment.

With our Infrastructure business, we have so far focused on SaaS transformation in our home market with more than 900 customers in the Infrastructure Construction business, and covering 84% of the Norwegian population with our Water and Wastewater business. Combined with ongoing expansion to Sweden and Denmark, we believe in further increased profitable growth in Scandinavia.

Now let's look at some of the key developments in the Volue Group in the first quarter. Looking at the financial performance in the quarter, we delivered recurring revenues of NOK 185 million, which represents 13% growth compared to last year. SaaS revenues ended on NOK 66 million in the first quarter, which is a strong 40% growth compared to the same period last year. We continue to grow our operating revenues to NOK 286 million, which is 12% higher than Q1 2021.

The Energy segment was the largest growth driver with 26% revenue growth. We delivered an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16% in the quarter, which is a reduction compared to the same period last year and in line with our strategic decision to invest in long-term growth.

Looking at the subsequent events, we released our second ESG report on the 1st of April. With 2 acquisitions completed, we started 2022 with a fully integrated sales and marketing team. We have more than 2,200 customers predominantly in Europe and with minimal exposure to Russia. We achieved a record number of 900 deals in the quarter and with no impact from the turbulence in the world economy. In February, we delivered on an important goal for market expansion by opening an office in Tokyo, Japan.

As renewable energy is being installed on the race to carbon neutrality, production capacity becomes unpredictable and weather dependent. This means that we need to regulate power consumption to avoid shortage of supply, for example, by large-scale optimization of EV charging.

Volue's Spark program is our response to address the 200 million power assets becoming part of the energy system. We believe this represents an attractive growth opportunity for our Power Grid segment, and you can read more about this program on volue.com.

We ended 2021 with a strategic breakthrough contract in Iberia by winning Iberdrola, the largest energy producer in Spain. In the first quarter, we replicated the success in the Nordic home market by closing strategic contracts with 2 of the largest renewable energy producers in the region. We also closed a record contract within water and utilities, cementing the new business model for infrastructure.

Looking at our SaaS transformation, we continue to progress with transformation of our business models, providing increased recurring revenues and less one-off deals. Changing to a SaaS model usually leads to a dip in overall revenues for the targeted products. In volume, we put 3 different measures in place to help mitigate this dip. First, to introduce new functionality exclusive to customers on a recurring model; second, to increase the price point on the old model; and third, to enforce the shift in business model for existing customers.

For the product line infrastructure, such a shift has been executed over the last 12 months with good results. The share of annual recurring revenues has increased from 74% to 84% in the period. This means that we have let go of NOK 20 million one-off revenues, but NOK 120 million annual recurring revenues. Changing business models is a continuous process for Volue, and we believe the result is more business value to our customers and increased margins for Volue.

And for the section of results for the first quarter of 2022, I'll hand over to Arnstein Kjesbu, our CFO.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Thank you, Trond. I will now go through our financial performance for the first quarter of 2022. Volue had a good performance on building our recurring revenue base and especially our SaaS revenues in the first quarter. Operating revenues ended at NOK 286 million, this is a growth rate of 12% in Q1 with an organic growth of 10% compared to first quarter of 2021. Energy segment grew 26% and we especially see this uplift in recurring revenues with a good tailwind from our very volatile power markets.

The shift in business models for infrastructure and currency effects gives impact on the overall growth rate for the group. Volue continues to invest in scaling organization to meet the long-term ambitions. And this has partly influenced margins in the period. Adjusted EBITDA margin ended at 16%, somewhat down from last year.

We are currently taking on strategic investments to scale for further growth that impact our margins. Growth and scalability is core for Volue, for our business, and improving our margins over time, and we will keep to strengthen our product offerings and our SaaS platform. Yes, we expect the R&D CapEx level to increase going forward, somewhat up from the level we have seen in Q1, to capture new market opportunities.

Growing recurring is core for Volue as a software company, and the growth journey is based on uplift in our annual recurring revenues. The share of ARR is 65% in Q1. And in the quarter, Volue generated NOK 185 million in recurring revenues, creating a growth of 13% from the last quarter -- the same quarter in 2021. The growth in ARR is driven from all our segments.

In 2022, we see the SaaS growth on 40%, leaving our SaaS shares of 23% of total revenues for the last 12 months. This, we are pleased with. And the growth in annualized recurring revenue basis is mainly driven by new sales. As stated previously in the presentation, we have seen a strong sales in the quarter, and this gives an uplift in our base.

Since the IPO, our recurring revenue base has grown with 30%. This, combined with low share churn, is a proof point of growth path and profitability plan. At the end of Q1, our ARR-based annualized recurring revenue on a 12-month basis was NOK 766 million. In the base, we also see some growth due to sale on existing customers and price increases. The base was growing with 16% from Q1 2021. And during the period, we have almost seen no churn. This leaves our churn level at 1%.

Our margin and growth is coming from the Energy segment with a growth rate of 26% in Q1. We see a very strong volatility in the power market, and this creates tailwind for trading advisory and trading software part of the portfolio.

The power market's volatility creates increase in demand for our services. Our business outside of the Nordic is growing rapidly, and in the home market, we've seen strong development within the portfolio management as a service. Combined, this gives a strong growth in our SaaS revenues.

The adjusted EBITDA margin in absolute numbers is improving following from good uplift in SaaS revenues and overall sales, whilst margin has decreased due to investments in the organization for further scalability, and we had a quarter with a strong sales closing and increased order backlog. Strong sales, we have an uplift in the recurring revenue base that will uplift our ARR revenues going forward.

Furthermore, we see a good market outlook. The order backlog is growing and Volue will increase capacity and delivery side going forward. The margin in the quarter has decreased from Q1 2021. The main reason for this is increased activities to expand our market footprint and building the organization for further growth. Volue invests quite significantly in addressing new markets with the Spark program, which impacts the margins. We expect the CapEx levels to increase going forward.

For our Infrastructure segment, we are pleased to see that shift in business models are progressing as planned, and we have managed to protect software revenues despite a large shift in the revenue stream. This gives an expected short-term impact on the revenue growth plan, but at the same time building shareholder value more quickly. The margins are partly weaker compared to Q1 2021. This is due to more spending move towards R&D investments. We continue to invest in our SaaS platform and the CapEx levels will slightly increase in the midterm range.

Volue's plan is to increase our profitability towards 2025. The main element for increasing our margins as a growing SaaS company is growth through economy of scale. So what is the main drivers for why profit and cash flow will improve towards 2021, in line with our targets. The shift to SaaS will increase profitability with a centralized technology services and capabilities within the Volue SaaS platform. And we are doing significant investments to meet market opportunities and profitability increase by getting more and more services upon our SaaS platform. The features shown in the right corner shows our typical profitability over time related to SaaS offerings. While we are investing in sales and marketing, and building the organization for scale, and we will see scalability as an integrated organization towards 2025 that improves our margins.

But most of all, we are expecting our market footprint and meet increased addressable market that will give profitability by up sales and growth in new markets. So in the short run, we have several activities that impact the short-term profitability. Investment in scaling the organization, particularly in sales and marketing, the SaaS journey and shift in business models, and also several new business development activities that is taken into the financial accounts.

As a proof point of why we see increased profitability over time is that we already see an uplift in the contribution from our products, meaning the contribution before sales, administration and marketing. Since the creation of Volue, we are focused on realizing synergies and scalability, and we are really pleased to see an increased product profitability of 24% over the last 12 months. This has, in turn, enabled us to invest more aggressively for long-term growth.

Then I will give the word back to Trond, who will go deeper into the industry development and the strategy.

[Trond Straume, executive]

Thank you, Arnstein. The purpose of Volue is to help our customers with the transition to renewable energy. Traditional energy production like thermal and nuclear are being phased out in favor of renewable energy, such as solar and wind. These new asset types are nonregulated, meaning that the production capacity is weather dependent. In addition, renewable energy is being installed where climate and political conditions are being met, not necessarily within geographical reach, for critical demand.

The consumer side becomes more unpredictable in a world that is ever more dependent on electricity. This means that the load on the grid is creating problems. The result is volatility in the power market, creating more opportunity and more risk for the power industry. Our customers are now talking about the need for wall-to-wall digitalization across processes and disciplines to manage this transformation.

For a company like Volue, who's been serving a conservative energy industry for decades, this represents a shift change. Helping power producers, distributors and industrial consumers manage this transition is what we do, and we know how to do it. So here we are in the world ever more dependent on electricity. We closed down nuclear and coal power plants to deliver on our goals for the green transition. The new energy sources are in large part weather-dependent solar and wind assets. Gas prices are rocketing as geopolitical challenges lead to shortage of supply.

The power industry has been widely recognized as stable and predictable and conservative for a century. However, a number of factors and colliding incidents creates a concern for governments and regulators. The consumers are left with unprecedented high power prices. In Volue, we have Europe's largest team of power market analysts. They see increased risk of power blackouts in certain weather scenarios with low wind and solar production in combination with low temperatures. This is a risk that is being predicted to last for the next 10 years. And we were all shocked by what happened in Texas last year, but this can be a reality in Europe too. When the balance between demand and supply gets out of control.

In fact, the power industry battles this balance every single day. And here's a typical nightmare example. This is from Germany in April last year. Due to differences in supply and demand, customers were facing imbalance cost of up to EUR 1,730 per megawatt hour. It's a disaster for the holder of the imbalance and a unique opportunity for the companies prepared to capitalize on a volatile market.

Even for Volue, having Europe's largest analysis team, it is hard to give an exact guidance for the energy market. And the explanation can in part be described by these 2 charts. The green shift triggers a close race between the increase in supply and demand with periods of shortage of supply. Also bear in mind that the new production capacity being fed into the system, by and large, is weather-dependent renewable energy sources. In many ways, you can say that our end markets are experiencing what we think is the perfect storm, a storm that is projected to last for decades.

It is interesting to hear from our customers how Volue helps drive top line growth. And today, we focused on delivering 5% improvement. And to the left, you see a larger utility who recognized 5% improvement, translating to NOK 40 million increased revenues annually. Another example is a smaller utility who achieved a return on investments in 3 months and saw 3% improvement in the first quarter after go live.

Now we're looking to find the next 5%, 10% in total. In conversations with executives, we're often challenged if we can provide evidence upfront before commitment. Our answer is that we only need to realize 0.5% improvement to provide ROI in 12 months. In that way, it's an easy value-based sell.

Let's have a look at our offerings. In Volue, we help our customers with optimizing power production and maximizing profit in power trading. We do this through our sophisticated platform of products. And to tell you more about this, Camilla will talk more in details about the challenges power producers face and what we do to help increase the yield on their assets.

[Camilla Thorrud Larsen, executive]

Thank you, Trond. I'm very glad to get the opportunity today to speak more about what challenges a typical customer of Volue is facing, and how our solutions help them every day in the process of planning, bidding and trading power in an optimal way. Like you have seen, Volue offers a range of products and services. And now I will speak a bit from the perspective of a typical customer for the Energy segment in Volue. And that will be a large European utility, which has a power generation portfolio consisting of various asset technologies. That will be wind, hydropower, solar, storage technologies and thermal generation, like, for example, biomass fuel power plants.

The objective for these power producers would be to optimize the use of their assets to maximize profits. And this is actually quite a difficult problem and not something you, by any means, could do by hand. Each of these assets in their portfolio can have quite complex characteristics, and we also need to take into account a multitude of different constraints and restrictions. These constraints could be related to the physical system itself, like ramping constraints, meaning how fast you can increase or decrease your power output. Or it could be regulatory constraints. For example, for hydropower, you need to ensure a minimum flow of water in the rivers at some times.

All these details must be considered to answer the questions to how much you could and should produce, from which of the units in our portfolio, at what time, and for what price. What is the value of your production. This actually constitutes a large complex decision-making problem, which can only be solved accurately using advanced mathematical optimization methods capable of maximizing the performance of your overall multi-asset portfolio.

As a power producer, you typically monetize production in the power market, a power market which is growing in complexity, like Trond was speaking about. New market mechanisms are put in place. More volumes are moved to the short-term markets, and the market's time granularity increases. These changes happen so that the power system can accommodate increasing shares of intermittent renewable energy and still keep the balance between supply and demand. So as a power producer, you are faced with these complex markets. You also need to be able to select and use the markets which are more profitable for your particular portfolio, depending on what type of assets you have. You need to be able to effectively access those markets to place bids and offers, do trades at the right time.

Moreover, you need to know that the bids and offers comply with applicable rules and regulations, so that you don't miss out on any opportunities based on mistakes. Volue provides a platform of products, which solves the difficult problem of maximizing profits from a multi-asset portfolio in a multi-market environment. Our product suite represents a central part of our customers' overall IT landscape, critical for their business. We provide state-of-the-art optimization models for production planning and bidding, which can handle large multi-asset portfolios. We emphasize high performance, and we use advanced mathematical optimization methods and algorithms to ensure that calculation times are low.

Our optimization models allow for highly detailed modeling of all asset types and can take into account very complex and advanced constraints and restrictions. This differentiates us from our competitors, which typically would focus on detailed modeling of 1 asset type and then treat the rest in a simplified manner. Our approach of obtaining a high level of detail across the entire portfolio of various asset technologies gives more optimal results and also implementable results, which is quite important, optimal production plans which are really feasible to run. This eliminates the need for time-consuming manual adjustments afterwards, which is a very big advantage and perhaps also a necessity in today's power markets where everything goes fast and decisions must happen even faster.

Volue also provides trading solutions for all relevant physical markets across Europe. These solutions do not only provide our customers with a route to market for their production. Built-in smartness supports the bidding process, ensure compliance, and lets our customers apply advanced trading strategies in the short-term markets. With our trading products, trades can be executed quickly, effectively and automatically.

Another thing that separates Volue from its competitors is how the trading products are seamlessly integrated with the production planning system and the optimization system, and how it all is underpinned by a robust and scalable data management solution. Because it's no longer possible to view optimization and trading as 2 separate processes, simply because the new market structures leave no time for that.

Power producers today are facing a hugely complex process of capturing and processing data and forecasts, optimizing production towards multiple markets at the same time, and execute trades in the various markets at the right time. And this process repeats continuously throughout the day, 7 days a week, all year around. Every time something changes, whether it's market data, weather data, or you do a trade, it triggers the need to replan and reoptimize your portfolio. It becomes obvious that to extract the full value of your asset portfolio, you need a system which not only provides you with optimal decisions and the ability to trade, but also provides you with the necessary performance and automation required to identify and capture new opportunities in time. And this is exactly what Volue provides.

Thank you. I will now hand back to Trond, who will take us through the summary and outlook.

[Trond Straume, executive]

Thank you. That was Camilla Thorrud Larsen, recently awarded the most influential woman in the power industry in Norway. That concludes industry development and strategy. And if you would like to learn more about Volue and what we do to create customer value, there will be an opportunity to attend our Capital Markets Day on the 21st of September.

Now let's shift our focus to summary and outlook. Our services are very sticky as we are ingrained in the customers' business process and value creation. And providing an integrated value chain in the cloud is the answer to our customers ask for wall-to-wall digitalization of the value chain. And for us, this also opens opportunities to cross-sell and upsell our capabilities, fueling growth. The foundation for 2022 is strong, and we continue to deliver on our strategy of international expansion. Our order backlog is strong and the market remains healthy and attractive. Combined with the integration of ProCom and Likron, we believe we will continue cementing our position as the leading provider in Europe.

As we did for 2021, we've set some priorities and ambitions for 2022. An important goal for us this year is to invest in market expansion outside our European home markets. And we want to achieve that, whilst maintaining a healthy EBITDA margin in line with Q4 2021. At the core of our growth strategy is to grow our recurring revenue through our ongoing SaaS transformation. The energy market is quite fragmented, and we believe there is an opportunity to take a leading position in a much needed market consolidation.

We operate in attractive end markets undergoing transformation, and we focus our investments in scalable growth. And as we continue to pursue synergies within the Volue group, we see there are many opportunities for increased operational efficiency. We remain quite bullish about the future, and we're looking to exceed NOK 2 billion in revenues by 2025.

And there are 3 reasons why we believe in growth. First of all, our end market is growing. Our customer spend on advanced software solutions is growing as a consequence of the green transition and market changes. Second is European growth. We now have a solid footprint in the European market, and we continue to invest in sales and marketing outside the Nordic region, which still represents our largest source of revenue. Lastly, we believe Volue has a great opportunity to realize synergies by selling our expanded portfolio of offerings.

Looking at our recurring revenues, we see that SaaS contracts holds double the amount of recurring compared to a traditional contract. This is because we take a larger responsibility when operating software with an associated SLA or service level agreement. As we progress with SaaS transformation, we believe in an uptick in margins with EBITDA levels towards 30%. An important driver for the IPO was the opportunity for structural growth and using the Volue share as currency. We operate in a highly fragmented market of smaller and specialized players, which not necessarily can fully support their customers on their much needed transition to sustainable energy.

When we look at the landscape, we see 2 categories of players. One is established companies with a solid revenue stream, but maybe with a somewhat dated technology stack, but offered to a decent customer base. The other category is younger companies with great technologies, great people and IDs, but without a significant revenue stream and market penetration. We find these 2 categories of companies attractive for M&A, 1 for market access and the other to strengthen our capabilities along the value chain.

We believe that Volue, with its size and market reach, can bring value to the industry by acting as a consolidator. So to summarize, we see the shift to green noncontrollable energy sources lead to increased volatility and complexity for our customers, requiring more advanced software solutions. We in Volue help our customers with wall-to-wall digitalization of the clean energy value chain. Our ongoing SaaS transformation leads to growth in recurring revenues and uptick in EBITDA margins. And our 2025 goals of exceeding NOK 2 billion remains. Thank you for your attention, and we'll now open for Q&A.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

There are some questions in the chat. I will start with a question when it comes to the SaaS transformation. Can you elaborate on the short-term drag on the growth from the SaaS transformation and when do you see this drag ending?

[Trond Straume, executive]

So over the last 12 months, we've really focused on solid transformation, especially in the infrastructure business. And what we've seen is that when we start doing the SaaS transformation, we typically stop selling one-off license deals. And that provides a short-term effect of less one-off revenues. However, we keep building the annual recurring revenue base. And if we look at what we reported this quarter, we are seeing a shift for the infrastructure business from 74% to 84% recurring revenues. And we've been successfully able to replace NOK 20 million of one-off deals with NOK 20 million of annual recurring. So there is a drag, but we're building a much more resilient business overall.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

One more question when it comes to commercialization. Can you say something about the outlook for commercialization on your initiatives within distributed energy resources/Spark?

[Trond Straume, executive]

Yes. So we launched our Spark program recently. And what we're seeing is that in order for the European continent and for the world, for that sake, to provide a robust energy system, not only traditional energy production assets needs to play a role, but we also need the consumer end of the life cycle to play a part to be able to regulate and stabilize the total energy system. For us, we invest strategically in this. And what we're seeing in selected countries in Europe, and maybe Norway being the front runner, is that we see a huge increase in the installed base of EV chargers. Really shifting load on the grid on a pretty dramatic level over time. And we believe that we, with our Spark program, can help mitigate this shift and this unpredictable load by enabling millions and millions of consuming devices into the energy system and providing that as a flexible resource.

In terms of revenue, we see this as a long-term revenue growth, but the market is huge, and we keep investing, and we're quite persistent on our faith in that future market.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

We have some more questions here when it comes to growth plans. Can you give some more details on the growth plans outside of Europe, geographic segments, et cetera?

[Trond Straume, executive]

So as I talked about earlier, until 2013, our primary focus was the Nordic home market. We expanded into Europe and that has been quite successful now with 2,200 customers in Europe, and we're covering 40% of the players on the European power exchanges. Over the last 12 months, we've been looking into new regions where we can take our products. First and foremost, we have seen an opportunity to enter Japan. In terms of market size and from a production capacity perspective, Japan alone is 1/3 of the size of the whole European continent. So that remains a super attractive market for us. We're also looking to other regions in Asia and also in North America. But for now, our main focus outside Europe is predominantly Japan.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Thank you. We're about to end the section, but there is 1 question about margins. The margin is going down in the quarter. Can you say something more about why the margin is going down now?

[Trond Straume, executive]

So if you look at the margins, we've been quite consistent in our long-term growth plan for the company. We have a huge installed base, we have a decent amount of recurring revenues already, but we see this opportunity to work hard to shift more of our revenues into Software as a Service revenue, providing a more resilient business for us and more value for our customers. So that remains an important focus.

We're also investing heavily in market expansion. So we talked about Power Grid being predominantly a Nordic play; Infrastructure being predominantly a Scandinavian play; and so far, for the Energy market, we have been focusing on Europe. We believe there is a huge opportunity with all the global drivers to take a position outside our home markets, because we do believe indeed that our value proposition and the business value that we bring to our customers is as valid in new markets as the ones we're playing in today. So for us, it's really investing in growth and investing in the future.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

There is 1 last question. There is some turbulence in the market following in Europe from Ukraine war and also we've seen fluctuations, for instance, in the stock prices in the world economy. Does Volue see any impact for the business following directly from the Ukraine war?

[Trond Straume, executive]

No, we have very little exposure to Russia. In fact, minimal exposure to Russia. And in that way, we are -- we are, of course, touched by what is happening, but from a performance perspective, we don't see any impacts in the short term. Of course, it's not possible to predict the future. But we haven't seen anything and we're not anticipating anything.

[Arnstein Kjesbu, executive]

Thank you. Then there is no further questions. So then it's about to thank for the section.

[Trond Straume, executive]

Thank you so much. Thank you for your attention. Have a good day.