Bimobject AB

STO:BIM

Earnings Call Analysis

BIMobject Reports Steady Growth Amid Strategic Shift to Platform-as-a-Service Model

BIMobject reported a solid quarterly performance, with a 7% year-over-year growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and a 5% increase in net sales. For the first time, the company achieved positive net income and EBITDA of SEK 1 million, showcasing improved operational efficiency. Strategically, BIMobject is transitioning to a Platform-as-a-Service model to support the construction industry's digitalization and sustainability efforts. The management is focused on expanding its offerings and enhancing international market readiness, supported by a strong cash position of over SEK 200 million, ensuring a robust foundation for future growth.

Strategic Shift and Revenue Growth

BIMobject is undergoing a strategic transition to a Platform-as-a-Service model, enhancing its appeal to stakeholders in the building industry. In the third quarter, the company reported an 8% year-over-year increase in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), which now comprises 80% of total net sales, reaching SEK 34.6 million. While other revenue streams showed variability, overall net sales grew by 5%. This strong performance underscores the effectiveness of their new strategy and positions them well in a challenging market.

Cost Management Amid Investment

Despite the growth in revenue, BIMobject faces rising costs, particularly in personnel and external consultancy fees, which increased by 6% and 16% year-over-year, respectively. The company remains committed to strong cost control while investing in product development to drive future growth. For the quarter, EBITDA was recorded at SEK 1 million, indicating a positive trend despite a slight EBIT loss of SEK 0.8 million, showcasing their path towards profitability.

Market Dynamics and Growth Challenges

The building sector is experiencing mixed activity levels, with BIMobject seeing lower churn rates in the Nordics but challenges in other regions, particularly the U.S. and EMEA markets. Market indicators suggest increasing interest in BIMobject's solutions, but the timing of growth remains uncertain due to economic conditions and varying levels of digitalization in target markets. The company acknowledges these challenges but is optimistic about opportunities as interest rates decline.

Sustainability as a Core Value Proposition

Sustainability remains a driving force in the construction industry, with increasing regulatory pressures demanding compliance and transparency. BIMobject is strategically positioned to assist manufacturers in providing accurate climate impact data. Their initiatives in developing environmental product declarations (EPDs) and connecting product data with construction projects emphasize their commitment to enhancing sustainability in building practices. This trend not only meets regulatory demands but also aligns with growing market preference for green buildings, enhancing investor appeal.

Investment in Future Growth

BIMobject's management has signaled a strong focus on international expansion and product scalability over the next three years. The company plans to further elevate its solutions to serve diverse stakeholders more effectively. While the past quarter has seen a good start in the Nordics with over 6,000 registered projects on the Prodikt platform, more needs to be done as they aim to solidify their growth trajectory. Plans to increase the workforce in response to development demands indicate a proactive approach to scaling operations.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Lisa Norlander, executive]

Hello, everyone, and welcome. We are really happy to have you all with us here today. We are about to listen in to the presentation of our Q3 report that we released this morning. And we will soon hear a presentation about the report itself. And as usual, we do a Q&A session at the end of this call. So you can go ahead and send us your questions to the e-mail address that you see now on the slide. So [e-mail] and we will pick up your questions at the end of this call. So [e-mail] is the e-mail.



So on the call today, we will hear a prerecorded presentation of the report itself. And this is -- we recorded this yesterday because we had the opportunity to be joined by our Chairwoman of the Board, Pia. And Pia was not able to be with us on the live call here this afternoon. So instead then, we will have a recording of the presentation and then followed by a live Q&A session here.



So before we get started, I will also introduce our panelists. My name is Lisa, and I'm your moderator for the call today. I am joined, as always, by Martin Lindh, who is the CEO of BIMobject Group. Hi, Martin.

[Martin Lindh, executive]

Hello. Hi.

[Lisa Norlander, executive]

And we're also joined by Per Goransson, who's the CFO of BIMobject Group. So welcome to the call.

[Per Goransson, executive]

Thank you.

[Lisa Norlander, executive]

And as mentioned -- sorry, as I mentioned, in the recorded part, we were also joined by Pia Engholm. And Pia has been the Chairwoman of the Board since May this year, but she is a familiar face to us because she's been serving on our Board since 2021. And outside Pia's engagement on BIMobject's Board, she is known as an entrepreneur, angel investor and Board professional.



So let's get started with today's presentation. And again, just a reminder, send your questions to [e-mail], and we will pick them up at the end of the call. But now to the recorded presentation.



And now for the presentation part, we will start by hearing from Pia. So Pia, I leave the word to you.

[Pia Engholm, executive]

Thank you, Lisa. Hi, everyone. Great to have you all here today. As we've mentioned before, the increasing regulations around sustainability and data reporting have really put BIMobject in a great spot to take advantage of this window of opportunity. We've seen early wins in the Nordics, showing that we are definitely moving in the right direction. So now we're shifting to a Platform-as-a-Service model, which makes it easier for shareholders in the construction industry to create and access digital product information. And with that in mind, we have decided to ramp up our investments and move into a growth focused pace to secure this leadership position.



I'm very pleased to see the strong level of involvement from various Board members as they collaborate closely with management. And I want to give a special shout out to Martin and his team for all their hard work this past year. They have made real progress with our new strategy and products. And while it might take some time to see the full results, I am confident that we are on the right track.



So now I'll hand over to Martin to update you on our progress.

[Martin Lindh, executive]

Thank you, Pia. Thank you for that, and a warm welcome, everybody, to this Q3 report presentation that we're going to hold today. We'll start off by some quarterly business updates. And for this quarter, there are some regular financial highlights. We did have a continuous growth in our ARR of around 7% in constant currency. We also had a turnover growth on the net sales reported figures of 5%.



This was also another quarter of profitability in terms of EBITDA, the second we've had so far and slightly better than the one we started with last year in the same quarter. Then further on, we have seen a continuous growth in our monthly downloading users. This has been a bit lower in recent quarters, but we have regained a momentum there for this quarter. And we also have a remained strong cash position in the company with a bit over SEK 200 million in our liquid assets.



In terms of events in the company, we didn't have any significant press releases that we shared in this quarter. However, we have had a lot of work internally. First off, there's been a lot of continuous integration work on our platform technologies. And this is partly in the wake of us acquiring Carbonzero in the end of last year. And the whole year, we anticipate to work quite intensely with this and also a bit in the next year. Then also, we've been working quite hard on the development of new solutions and also piloting them in the Nordic markets as well as we have gone through a strategic review, which Pia just mentioned, and entering a new chapter as a company, but more around that a bit later.



If we look at the quarter-by-quarter performance from a little bit longer perspective, we can see how the net sale has developed. We have had a little bit of up and down in terms of the quarterly growth, but the overall trend is looking good. We are steadily growing our business, although we, of course, want to grow even faster and even more.



When it comes to the profitability of EBITDA, as I mentioned before, we have now the second profitable quarter in our history. And worth noting here is that the third quarter is a quarter where we have some positive effects from salaries and so forth. That's why you have this sort of like cyclical trend in the profitability of the company.



In terms of the liquidity, we have a strong cash position, as I mentioned, and also a good cash runway lasting several years ahead in the current base that -- which is the result of much of the work that we have done the last couple of years in streamlining our cost base and all of that. But this is, of course, quite handy to be in this position. And then I'd like to come back and talk a little bit about the market and what is happening there.



We started off last quarterly presentation on this theme, and I will come back to it because this is quite important for us, the different events that is happening in the market and the movement we see in the market.



All right; so, let's start with some of the key challenges of the building industry. First one being digitalization. Today, only a bit more than half the projects are BIMobject in our industry. And of course, it's a bit too low. It's growing every year, but that penetration needs to increase faster and more.



Secondly, it's around the productivity. Over the last 2 decades, the average productivity increase in our industry is around 1%. That is far too low and also in comparison to other industries, of course. Finally, it's around the climate impact where our industry generates about 40% of the global emissions in the world. So it has a very substantial impact on our society and our planet.



And going a little bit deeper into the climate area here, I think one thing that is very good to start at is to understand a little bit how it's connected and what is driving the industry. And the first thing here is the 2% -- 2-degree target that has been set. We should not increase the global average temperature by more than 2 degrees.



And in order to do this, a lot of countries has made targets that they need to meet. And here's a couple of examples of them. And they have set both a target for 2030 as well as a target when they -- a year when they need to be carbon neutral. And looking at the targets by 2030, you can see that it's fairly ambitious targets where, for instance, Sweden has a target of being 63% below the 1990 values as a benchmark.



And also Sweden has an ambition to reach carbon neutrality by 2045, a bit earlier than some of the other countries. But in totality, everybody have similar targets and a similar time for when they need to be carbon neutral. Now connecting this again to the construction sector, you can see here for different countries, they have different impacts.



And on the green part here of these different bars, the different countries, that is what is coming from the construction sector. And quite important here is that there are 2 main drivers of carbon emission from the construction sector. Here, we have the dark green color, which is representing embodied carbon, and this is what comes from the products used when building a building.



And then also second part here, the slightly lighter green is the operational carbon, and operational carbon is used for heating of buildings and so forth. And we'll take a look at an example of what that looks like for a building. And here, we can see that this is a representation of a building or like the carbon emission that is related to a building.



So here, you can see a graph where the orange bars, this is the first bar here, the very high bar is when the building was built. And all the material that comes into the project, you can see that has a substantial impact. Also, you can see more orange bars. So after 15 years, there is a renovation made, and then also after 30 years, a new renovation with some new materials coming into the building.



And then in the blue bars here, this is the operational carbon emissions. So this is for the heating of the building. And as you can see, these bars, they get lower and lower for every year. And this is because that we are continuously improving our energy mix. So we anticipate that buildings will be heated with greener and greener energy and thus having lower and lower emissions over time.



But quite importantly here is the embodied carbon, and this is where product selections comes in and accurate product information. So to make a sound choices as possible when we build a building, because it's going to last for quite some time. So that's why we need to make very smart choices already for it now. But let's move on.



Another part then what is happening is that in order to meet these targets, a lot of regulations are being rolled out. And the European Union here is super progressive and have done a quite remarkable work. They have really understood how this is all connected and how it's working together. And they also have quite some initiatives that they're rolling out, taking the industry a little bit by surprise, but it's coming now a little bit year-by-year, more and more stronger regulations and more of them as well.



You can also see in other markets like the U.S. that there's also similar regulations and that they're moving in the same direction, but they are also not as fast as Europe. And you will have it more on different building certifications that are making certain segments of the market being greener than others. And you will also have certain states that are more progressive than others as well.



And of course, this might change a little bit given the election that is coming up. But I think that for every year that we're moving until 2030, the pressure will increase, and we will see that even if there might be some political wins, everybody needs to move in the same direction.



And then also another example of what's happening in the market, but this is just also a further evidence or like insight into what it's looking like. This is a little bit looking at the transaction volumes of buildings, and this shows a little bit of the activity, what is important also for the investment sector here. And you can see that for every year, the green buildings take a larger part of the transactions we see in different markets and also has a certain degree, or a part of the transactions made in the sector.



And this is important because green buildings or like building better buildings increased the value of the buildings and is, therefore, also more interesting for investors and so forth. So it has a very positive trend there.



And so we, as a group, we are in quite central position to meet this need that we anticipate in the industry. And the need, a couple of sort of bullet points on what the need for the industry to make very informed product selections based on accurate product information. So, there's a lot of information around products that is becoming more and more complex. It's not only design and functionality and cost. There's also other parameters like availability and climate data and many of these things that need to be in consideration of the totality of a building project. And some of these, we want to be really strong at, to facilitate these decisions, so that the accurate decisions are made.



Secondly, it is also important for the industry to have all actors moving towards digitalization. This is, of course, becomes problematic if you have a group of stakeholders working together and some are more digitalized than others, and they have a problem of sharing the same information. And also, this goes to the third bullet here, which is for collaboration and coordination. This is also often quite a big problem in the industry, leading to low productivity and similar problems. And we believe that in order to make this transition happen, it needs to be made in a way where each stakeholder that are on this transformation journey can succeed both individually as well as collectively. We believe that is super important.



And in the Nordics, we have deployed some of our new solutions. And we are on a good path there. We are now serving many of the stakeholders in the industry, and we have started to connect the notes in a way where we have a lot of the major Swedish property owners on frame agreement and working with our solutions. We have now more than 6,000 registered projects on our Prodikt platform, working actively in making product selections on that platform.



We're also supplying the majority of the largest Swedish distributors with information and is connected to our data service that we provide. And also, we have received a recommendation by many of the stakeholders working with us for BPMs to join our platform, supplying more product information that is needed to make better and better decisions. So we're quite happy about that. We're not done in the Nordics yet. There's so much more to do, but this is a very good learnings we have made from this period where we have tried the solutions in this market.



So the solutions that we are bringing to the market at the moment, it's bimobject.com, which is our more traditional platform, which contains a lot of BIMobjects that are manufacturers specific and can be downloaded by designers in the industry. It's a very global platform. We also have the Prodikt platform, which is deployed in the Nordics now, but it's a Prodikt platform where you can do smart project selections and you get great information about the sustainability parameters of different products, and you can also do analytics of projects. And this will allow you to make multiple evaluations and adapt your planning throughout the building projects.



Then we also have the BIM Manager, which is an early-stage application that we have developed, really trying to help the designers making it easier to work in a native environment. It's compatible with Revit at the moment. And you can upload your files, you can work with them and in a lot easier way. We also have our BIM and LCA solutions, and this is really helping the industry to become digitalized. So with the BIM solutions or BIM services, we help manufacturers digitize their products into BIMobject that we then, of course, place on bimobject.com, for instance. But we also help them to calculate accurate values of their products in terms of climate impact. And that is something that we call EPDs, environmental product declarations that we do for the products as well. So this is a third-party verified document stating what the climate impact is in the set of categories.



Furthermore, we have data connection solutions. So taking our data services or database, you can say, and connecting it to the industry. An example of that would be what we're providing to the distributors, which is connected data. So if you have a project, a building project and you, at some point, have the contractor that needs to go to distributor and buy their goods, they will on the receipt being able to see the climate impact of the goods that they purchased and in some cases, also connect it back to the Prodikt platform to confirm the purchases that has been made.



So a little bit coming back to the strategic direction, which Pia mentioned. So over the years, what we have done is now increase basically the solutions we have. We have also increased our target groups to now covering multiple stakeholders. So what we see is a very natural shift, I would say, where we're moving to becoming the world's leading Platform as a Service provider, making the building industry smarter, faster and greener by connecting building projects with reliable product information.



And kind of similar to the vision we had before, but there are some important changes here. And I think we'll talk a little bit more about them in the next page. But we believe that it's quite important to have a set of solutions to address the problems of the industry. We have seen that when we only had bimobject.com, it's also a particular problem, but it's not sufficient enough. It's like if you have a more comprehensive solutions and connect them, you can have a much more powerful impact.



And if we go to the next page, we'll see here on the -- what makes us a bit different from many other stakeholders in the market is that we have certain problems in the industry. We have the problem of digital data. We have a problem of regulatory compliance, with inconsistent data and also sometimes generic data. And these are kind of important problems, especially this on generic data that solutions today work a lot with average values for different products. And then you don't really know which product to choose from in the end. If a window has a certain value, well, that's great, but which windows should I select. And this has particularly been important in Sweden, where it's actually penalized in the climate declarations that you make if you don't know which product you are building with, then you're penalized with another 25% increase in the climate values that you report for that product.



So you have these problems. And then what makes us different is two things. First of all, we take the information of the building product manufacturers and we help them. So we help them to be compliant by providing climate data to their product if they so like, also making -- trying to make sure that the products will be compliant with future regulations. We also help them to optimize their climate footprint if they need to, so to get better and better climate values as well as having services that will improve sales and reduce costs.



But then what we're also doing is then connecting product information to solutions for AECs. And AECs is basically the other side of the industry, it's Architects, Engineers And Constructors. And we are working on solutions to do this in the right format at the right time. So basically, it looks a little bit like this that on the other side, you will have then the solutions that are used by the building projects.



And we have then solutions for them for product selections and all of that and making sure that they're also compliant and need information for these different regulatory frameworks that are being rolled out, but also to optimize their climate footprint by comparing and selecting different products and so forth for their building projects.



And also with the Prodikt platform, we help the stakeholders to collaborate and make smart product selection. So even if there's different people involved from different companies, they can still collaborate on the same platform. And the important thing here is, of course, to connect it, to connect both of these sites that are so dependent on each other. And this is where I find us as a company extremely well positioned to embark on this journey and move in this direction.



But with that, let's move on to some more financial reports from this quarter. So Per, I will hand it over to you.

[Per Goransson, executive]

Okay. Thank you, Martin. And here, we see the quarterly development per revenue type during the last year.



We showed it for a longer period earlier in the call, but last 5 quarters. Based on our ARR, we see stable growth in recurring revenue that is plus 8% year-over-year and plus 3% quarter-over-quarter at SEK 34.6 million. Currency effects was minus 1% in this quarter, both versus previous year and the previous quarter; and recurring revenue now stands for 80% of total net sales.



Underlying all different solutions are growing. Then we have other platform revenue such as nonrecurring campaigns, which bumped up to SEK 0.8 million in this quarter and is currently showing strong growth from low numbers.



On our services business, it was flat quarter-over-quarter and minus 7% year-over-year at SEK 7.6 million. That refers to customer projects where we primarily produce content on behalf of the customers, such as BIMobjects, EPDs and LCAs, that is life cycle assessments.



If we look on the cost side quarter-over-quarter, the seasonal effect from the summer vacation period is clear in Q3. If we compare year-over-year, we are seeing moderate cost increases. We still and we will operate with a strong cost control. But as we started to invest more in future growth, we do see cost increases in product development and new commercial solutions.



Other external costs increased 16% year-over-year, and it's primarily related to external consultants working on projects that is also capitalized for our own account. On the personnel cost side, it also increased plus 6% year-over-year, and that is partly also due to more employees.



And if we look at the full income statement, the quarter is overall close to the financials in Q3 2023. The main changes lie in more revenue from platform business and as well as the somewhat increased cost base, which is, again, in turn, also connected to the higher capitalization for our own account. EBITDA at plus SEK 1 million equals plus 2% of net sales and EBIT of minus SEK 0.8 million equals minus 2% of net sales and all slightly better than previous year. And bottom line, it's for the first time in BIMobject's history, a quarter with positive net income.

[Martin Lindh, executive]

Great. Thank you for that, Per. All right. Let's continue with some concluding remarks. So first off, we had a continuous growth in the quarter, despite some lower billing activities around the world. Secondly, we have positive traction in the Nordics, where we are testing some of our new solutions. And thirdly, we are entering as a company, a new chapter, which is with our eyes focused on growth and also investments into growth to secure that we have a robust platform that is scalable to international markets and ready to meet the changes we see are coming for the future. So, with that, this is the end of the presentation, and we are ready to open up for some questions.

[Lisa Norlander, executive]

Thank you. So, we had a few questions coming in the e-mail, and we will cover those now. And if you have a late question to send in, send it in anyway, and we can get back to you via that same e-mail. But let's start with the first one here. Given the uncertain market environment in the building sector, what is your view on your ability to grow? And when would that growth come?

[Martin Lindh, executive]

Yes. Thank you for this. I think it's quite a good question. And this is, of course, something that is also very difficult to answer to. But we do see clear indications of a large interest of our solutions, also in other international markets. And that level, it depends on which market it is and also how far they have come with different regulations and all of that. And then also want you to remember that even though demand is there, it also is quite many steps for us as a company to take before we have a product sold into other markets.



So, there is a kind of substantial development effort going on internally that we are working with, which is also part of this strategy to make sure that we have a nice international scalable solution. So, we will come back to this, but I think timing is hard to predict. But we -- what we will do is to come back with different steps we're taking into our -- not least in the quarterly presentations that we are holding on a regular basis.

[Lisa Norlander, executive]

Thank you, Martin. And a related question on that is how ready are your products to expand into international markets?

[Martin Lindh, executive]

Yes. And this is -- yes, it's quite related to the previous one. But you can say that it varies. We have now several different products. I think one of the most important thing, is to -- I mean, we do have an integration projects we're working on internally to connect everything, and this is basically the base of everything. And then, of course, we're also preparing products to go in international markets. And then there is a bit of a degree of complexity here because you have a lot of different standards and regulation standards and different formats, you can say, in different markets. But this is a technology that we are putting into place. So, I think you can say it will be different from different products as well, of course.



But what we are presenting here is a 3-year strategy. So -- and this means to, within this period, being able to achieve a different growth pattern for our company. And of course, that also then means that we need to bring out products well in advance of this in order to succeed with that growth ambition.

[Lisa Norlander, executive]

Thank you. And to another topic, how has churn and acquisition of new clients developed so far in Q4?

[Martin Lindh, executive]

Yes. Thanks for this. Yes, the churn is something that we are working with. And it's a pain for all companies, of course, you want to retain your clients as to the largest extent possible. And for us, we have and are still experiencing a higher-than-normal level of churn. And by normal, I refer basically to the period before we had higher interest rates and thus also a higher building activity. Today, it's a bit lower in certain segments. But if we look at different regions, we can say that the U.S. market, we have very strong activity and had for quite some time. But still, we see some type of uncertainty there as well. So, we see that churn is also slightly higher there than it was before. EMEA markets, we see a slightly lower activity levels also when it comes to new sales. But there, we also have a slightly higher churn than we had before. However, in the Nordics, we see a lower churn, and that is very positive for us to see.



So overall, I would say that churn is still a challenge, but it's something that we now have had for quite some time, and we still managed to grow, which feels kind of good that we are doing. And also, we see that interest rates are coming down. So that means that hopefully, things will be better in the future. But when that actually will have an effect on the industry and all of that, there's always some delays into it. So, it's hard to say. But of course, we are happy that interest rates are coming down.

[Lisa Norlander, executive]

Thank you, Martin. Next question. Are you planning to continue to increase the number of employees in the coming quarters?

[Martin Lindh, executive]

Yes, also a good and understandable question. I'd say that given the substantial development efforts that we have ongoing, we are basically, we're building quite a lot of important things in our platform. We do see a need of increasing the number of employees in select areas. We still also will continuously be sort of prudent in our approach to how we run the company and also try to optimize costs wherever we can. But the demand for development is quite large at the moment. And also, therefore, we do see a need of hiring.

[Lisa Norlander, executive]

I believe that was the last question we had on the call. So, we will be giving you some minutes back here of your Friday afternoon.



Thank you to everyone who's been listening into the call. Thank you to our panelists, and we will meet you all in our Q4 presentation. So, thank you for today, everyone. Bye.

[Martin Lindh, executive]

Thank you.