Proact IT Group AB

STO:PACT

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Operator]

Reporting the Q2 results today. Very good results. So we're happy and proud of being able to present a strong quarter. We'll get into the details here as we go along. Agenda will look very much similar to the way it usually does when we present our results. It will give us super high-level introduction to Proact. For those of you who do not know us, an equally high level view of the market and what happens in the market. And then we'll focus on our development, including the financial results of the quarter.

So, starting with Proact. We're 28 years old by now, we're operating in 13 countries across Europe. We have a large and very loyal customer base of medium and large-sized enterprises, private and public across Europe. We're turning over just short of SEK 4 billion on a yearly basis, and we continue to grow both revenue but also our number of employees. We're now over 1,200 through the latest acquisition in Germany here just a few weeks ago.

And if we look at the marketplace, we've talked about this a couple of times. There are some macro trends in terms of the technology market that are driving our business, but also our strategy. Most importantly, our customers are very focused and continue to be very focused on transforming their own business in order [Technical Difficulty] lot of focus on business outcome in terms of their IT investments.

So the digital transformation is very much ongoing. Proact, as you know, is a company that's very much focused on data, so helping customers to manage and get value out of their data and their information. And the good news here is that when you look at most of our customers' transformation initiatives, it is very much geared around exactly data. Data is the gold mine, if you will, of our customers, this is where they can make better decisions, they can increase the level of automation, they can improve customer experience, they drive innovation through a lot of different initiatives. So data is very much at the core of our customer transformation, and it happens to be our area of expertise. So, we like and believe that this trend, and it's a long-term trend, is very beneficial to us.

The second trend there is a bit of a technology trend, and it's increasing in importance. It's the trend that we call multi-cloud, which means that our customers will be using a number of different type of cloud deployments or cloud architectures. They will build cloud solutions in their own data centers in certain cases. It could be because it's getting a better performance, better cost efficiency or they want to make sure that data is stored in their own facilities for better control and compliance. It could be that they let companies like Proact run cloud solutions for them because we are local, and we can do it in very close collaboration with our customers, and we're specialized in the services we deliver.

And they will go to the large so-called hyperscalers or public cloud providers like Microsoft and Google and Amazon because they have great scale or specialize in certain capabilities such as, of course, Microsoft's Office and productivity solutions or Google's analytical solutions, for instance. And we believe strongly that our customers, the enterprise customers of Europe will run in what we call a hybrid and multi-cloud mode, which means they will do all of these types of cloud solution depending on the different use cases.

So customers will live in a world where they have IT and cloud solutions in their own premises. They will be using Proact, and they will be using Microsoft and the trick in the key here is to make all these variants to work together and integrate very, very well and, obviously, an area where we invest heavily.

And last but not least, the perhaps less positive trend of cyber threats where a lot of our customers are spending quite a bit of effort and concern and attention to securing the data and securing their IT environment from [indiscernible]. A little bit more short term in terms of what's going on in the marketplace, the semiconductor shortage has been a challenge for Proact since last quarter of last year. As you remember, it's obviously been a problem in the general industry a little bit longer all the way since the beginning of the pandemic. We continue to see challenges also in the second quarter, where we have been seeing volatility and delays in deliveries because of supply shortages. We were hoping to see improvements towards the middle of this year and going into the second half of this year.

We don't really see those improvements yet. We don't see them being worse either. We see it being at roughly the same level. All that said, we know that all the big manufacturers of both equipment, but most importantly, semiconductors are making huge investments to improve the situation. The war in Ukraine continues, of course, to be a global challenge and tragedy and it increases the uncertainty in the global market, and we see obviously a lot of side effects of that, including inflation, which obviously is not only driven by the war, but maybe triggered by the war.

These are 3 macro dynamics that we see in the marketplace. Nothing new, but they continue to impact our business and maybe more importantly, they continue to create a little bit of volatility in our business.

You know this already, we have a very complete portfolio of services where we help our customers get value of their data, to help them store their data. We connect their data through networking solutions. We protect their data through security and protection solutions. And then ultimately, we help them drive value out of that data through things like artificial intelligence and big data analytics platforms.

We provide services around this. We host and manage services on behalf of our customers, our cloud services. We provide consulting services, both what I would call upfront, so strategic consulting in terms of helping customers design their solutions and drive value out of their IT investments as well as installation and training consulting. And we provide technical support to our customers to make sure that their systems are performing at the maximum level.

So, we have a very complete set of services that are very much designed together with and with our customers at the center. Just one thing I do want to highlight, we mentioned a number of times, and it's the -- this hybrid cloud and multi-cloud world. This is very clear where the world is going. And I think a lot of customers and maybe also a lot of people not directly involved in the IT business think that our solution makes things easier for our customers.

We believe it's the other way around. The options are more than ever. The pace of technology is higher than ever and the type of skill and expertise that you need in order to make a hybrid cloud and a multi-cloud deployment to work is more scarce than ever. It's more difficult to find the right people and skilled people than ever. So, our customers need help to make the different types of cloud solutions to work for them. And this is an area where we think we have a great position, and we're building a great set of both skills as well as product offerings to help our customers in this world as well of the hybrid cloud.

All that said, let's talk about the quarter. I touched on it. It's been a very, very strong quarter for us. We see great revenue growth. As you can see here, on 31%, including very good organic growth, which is fantastic, 21%. We see growth across our service line and system sales are growing, our cloud sales are growing. And we have growth also in our support and consulting services. It's a very strong quarter across the board with regards to our revenue here. TCV, you remember, TCV is a metric of new contracts for our cloud services. It's the contract value, the length of the contracts for cloud services, good growth here. We closed contracts to a value of SEK 141 million, which is almost double compared to the same quarter last year.

And we also communicated since a few quarters back, something we called annualized recurring revenues, it's the full year or the 12-month revenue of our managed cloud services and support services. It's last quarter's -- this quarter's, second quarter's revenue for MCS and cloud services multiplied by 4. So, we're running at SEK 1.4 million on a yearly level right now in terms of recurring contracted revenue, which is a 23% growth from last year. So here, we see good growth partly organic as well as through acquisitions, primarily of the acquisition of ahd in Germany in October of last year.

And then last, financially, the EBITDA growth, obviously very strong, up to SEK 82.1 million, a growth of 78%. So we're very happy with the financial performance of this quarter.

A little bit maybe taking victory out of advance. We signed the acquisition of sepago in the quarter, and then we actually closed the deal on July 1. It is closed now, but in formality, I guess, it's closed in Q3. Sepago is a German consulting house, which are very much specialized in helping customers to transform their business into cloud solutions and the public cloud, in particular, they're very skilled and highly certified with Microsoft, which is crucial to our enterprise customers as well as Citrix, which is another important provider of Technology Enterprise Solutions. We'll get back to this field a little bit through the presentation, but very positive acquisition strategically super important.

On the negative side, still a little bit of gross margin pressure on our services side, primarily in our Nordics & Baltics operations. And then, of course, as for the last couple of quarters, uncertainty in the marketplace here with delivery challenges as well as general inflation concerns, of course. But overall, a very strong quarter that we're very proud of.

So Sepago, I just want to go a little bit deeper into this. It's a 20-year-old company. They are headquartered in Cologne in Germany. They also have small satellite offices in Hamburg and Munich. They serve just like we do enterprise and public customers of mid- to large sized in the German market. They have about 100 customers. And they provide cloud consulting services, so strategy consulting, workplace design, infrastructure design and security services.

They are a very strong partner to Microsoft in the German market. They are Microsoft Gold partnering with a high degree of technical certifications and accreditations from Microsoft. And like I mentioned, there are also strong Citrix partner. Citrix is a provider of also workspace technologies for helping customers to deploy efficient workplace solutions to their employees. Strategically, we see a lot of our customers playing, as I mentioned already a couple of times today in a public cloud and a hybrid cloud environment, and it's important for Proact to be able to advise our customers how do you do the transformation and how do you do the transition into public cloud? And maybe, frankly, most importantly, how do you make everything coexist? How can you run certain things within your own premises like managing your data because data is sensitive. While at the same time, being able to have the benefits of a Microsoft productivity solution or a Google solution. So the ability for us to help our customers design the right infrastructure and run and deploy those infrastructures is super important.

And here, we get either 5 additional employees that are very, very specialized into this area. So strategically, super important. As with all our acquisitions, we put a lot of focus on values and cultures. It's important in our operation that our teams work together and that our acquisitions are part of our operations. So we put a lot of effort in these acquisitions as with all our others to really think through what we're going to be able to work together. Do we look at the future in the same way? Do we manage our people in the same way? And it's great to see that also in sepago, that's true. They're very, very skilled in these areas, which is important. And they have a very systematic approach to how to help customers to transform and drive their digital transformation with a cloud-first kind of strategy.

Last and frankly, not least, they are complementary in their locations. And Proact -- for those of you who followed us for a while, a few years ago, we were strong in the Bavaria area with headquarters in Nuremberg and had less presence in the western and northern part of Germany, which is relatively regionalized, but now we have very good coverage across Germany, from Nuremberg up through Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Munich, Cologne and Hamburg. So we have a very good presence across Germany now, which is great.

Just a little bit on the numbers. The purchase price on a cash-free, debt-free basis was EUR 12 million. And then there is an earn-out construct where the sellers can get an additional up to EUR 4 million over the next 2.5 years if they meet certain -- both EBITDA targets as well as some other performance targets. So there's an earn-out structure here, which means -- and sorry if we're a little bit more difficult to analyze this particular acquisition. But it means that the multiple here is a little bit more difficult to analyze because it all depends on how the earn-out plays out and the EBITDA results over the next few years. But it's in the order magnitude of 5 to 6x EBITDA multiple, which we believe is good but fair purchase price for a company like this. They will contribute to our yearly revenue of about EUR 15 million. And it will be also a good positive margin contribution to the company. They're running above 10% EBITDA margin. And I can't be more specific like that, but it's above 10%.

So super good acquisition from a strategy perspective, but we also feel that we've made a good contribution into our business, a fair valuation and a very strong fee that we can get benefits of -- definitely in Germany, but also in other parts of our markets.

And there are a couple of other things I just want to highlight. We've been certified by Microsoft as 1 of only 5 partners in Europe as advanced specialized -- what's called advanced specialization for networking services, 1 of 5 micro partners that can deliver advanced networking solutions, which is great. We have launched a couple of new products, a Container-as-a-Service product we call PMCP and the new networking service, which is software-defined and helping our customers through artificial intelligence around their networking more effectively.

In the Swedish market, we've got really good customer quality feedback through the Radar survey. Radar is a Swedish research IT market, research firm and will continue to be in top when it comes to customer satisfaction, which, of course, is making us super happy. And similarly, our Conoa acquisition, the company we acquired in Sweden a little bit more than a year ago, have been rewarded Partner of the Year of a company called Mirantis is one of the market unique providers of cloud-native development platform. So another important recognition of our skills here in the quarter.

So just a little bit more on the Proact managed container platform. It's a service we provide our customer, which we call a Container-as-a-Service. So containers is an application development technology that allows customers to [indiscernible] much faster, develop applications and in a much more robust and reliable way deploy them to their end users. It's a very kind of typical and modern way of developing applications. Most customers are doing this or are quickly trending towards developing their applications as container based. We now provide them with an infrastructure platform where everything that they need to run, containers is available. The hardware, the complete software stack to be able to run applications, including then deployment, support, consultancy to make this fly for them and technical support. It's a key term solution for our customers to deploy container platforms without themselves having to do all the development of the underlying platform.

Customers can now focus on their own business. which applications to develop and really, really speed up the time to market for those applications. And we believe this is great business value to customers and they can put the focus on where they really add value, where they get business outcome, and we take care of the underlying infrastructure. It's certified and this becomes a little bit maybe technical niche, but there are some very well-established foundations and certification organs in the -- our organizations in the business.

This platform is certified by those organizations, Cloud Native Foundation. And it's a productization we've been able to do through the acquisition of Conoa. So the combination of Proact's operational capabilities together with Conoa's DevOps and container capabilities have been put together and together. We then develop this end-to-end platform. The graphs in the diagram here shows the business value to customers. We believe that they will speed up the time to business value, get more business value out of this than the alternatives. We know from experience that they will do this themselves. It will be a challenge to get the right skills and expertise in and it will take some time to design a platform like this. Time that is then taken away from actually doing the application development. And we believe that we will save them several quarters, if not years, of time to market for application development. So great business value to our customers.

And then, the second product will launch a little bit more traditional, if I may say so. It's networking product but using state-of-the-art technologies. So it's a packaging of 3 categories of products. It's WiFi solutions, helping customers connect the people in the office. It's a local area networking solution, so being able to connect all the different parts of an office service and laptops and whatever they have in this office or in the data centers. And then maybe most importantly, a wide area networking, which then connects customers' cloud solutions to their core network to their edge computing or office facilities. So, it's really the solution that helps customers run highly geographically distributed IT infrastructure with public cloud, core networks, their own facilities and potentially an edge computing and sensor solutions way out in the networks. And this is all software defined, which means that it's automatically configuring the networks, adjusting the resources to where they have the workloads, optimizing the network capacity at any point in time.

And we use AI algorithms to make sure that customers can use their existing hardware infrastructure in a clever way. So it's a complete service. It's an as-a-service delivery from Proact that helps customers do their connectivity to their data better, while also being able to leverage existing hardware infrastructure, networking infrastructure in a clever way. So another good as-a-service product, we believe, into the marketplace that we launched this quarter.

So with that, I want to hand over to Linda to go a little bit deeper into the [indiscernible]. So over to you, Linda.

[Linda Holjo, executive]

Thank you, Jonas. So if we go to the highlights reiterating, I think some of the things you said. We have the revenue growth of 31%, where systems is slightly stronger than services, 39% versus 21%, but strong growth overall. And that, in turn, is leading to the large growth in adjusted EBITDA to SEK 82 million, 78% growth and a margin of 7.1%. And we also have the profit before tax, which grows similarly to SEK 64.7 million, a 5.6% margin. So overall, strong financial results. And as usual, we will go a little bit more into the details. So if we start with the next slide, we have the revenue development. The organic revenue growth of the 31% was 21% growth. We have acquisitions contributing 7%, and that is primarily ahd then. And then also positive effects from currency with the weak krona affecting, so 3% growth there.

And the revenue then in turn or we also have the positive development in the closed cloud contracts, the TCV that Jonas mentioned, where we closed contracts to a value of SEK 141 million in the quarter. We had a good quarter also last quarter, if you remember. So we're continuing here at a high pace whereas in the previous 2 years after COVID started, we saw a long decision cycles from customers. So we have lower TCV in several quarters there. But now we see that demand is definitely coming back. So that's good to see that we're closing these contracts now. If we go into the services side, 21% growth, 6% organically. And the biggest growth here is cloud revenue, the managed cloud services. The ahd acquisition that we did is that they were or are a large managed services provider. So of course, that helps. But we also have good underlying growth this quarter.

Support Services also growing by 5%. Of course, part of it is connected to the systems growth. And then the consulting services, the growth of 13%, that is helped by acquisitions, but we do see good demand in all business units for consulting services. It continues to be a strong market for that type of services. The recurring revenues, as you see on the right-hand side continues to grow. The red one is rolling 12 line and then the blue one, it's also growing sequentially, a little bit more difficult to see to the SEK 1.4 billion that Jonas mentioned.

Systems, as you know, is more volatile on the top graph to the right, the dark blue there is systems. You can see it's volatile. And you can also see that it is a very, very strong systems quarter. We do see good underlying demand. We have organic growth in all business units. There are some onetime effects that makes this quarter have really high systems revenues. We do have the delivery delays still impacting, as Jonas mentioned, which means that we've built up a backlog of orders that we haven't been able to deliver.

We're pushing that in front of us. So we're not seeing any immediate -- or we haven't seen really an improvement, but we were able to deliver slightly more this quarter compared to other quarters. So the backlog of orders we've taken but haven't yet delivered is slightly smaller going out of this quarter than into this quarter. But again, it's still big. So when delivery delays, if they stop, it will have a further positive effect on our revenues at that time.

And then we also had, in particular, in NOBA, which you will see on that slide some larger deals delivered in the quarter. As you know, we have some larger customers in different countries. And when they put orders that will have an effect on an individual quarter. Last year, the second quarter, one of the explanations that was a fairly weak quarter was exactly that, that we didn't have any of those deals there, whereas in 2020, again, that was a stronger Q2 due to that effect.

So -- but good underlying demand as well in combination with some onetime effects. If we go to the next slide, we have the profitability.

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

And just one clarification there. Very good growth in all except the U.K., and we'll get back to the UK in a second.

[Linda Holjo, executive]

Exactly. Yes. Adjusted EBITDA then, very positive development. Also, as you can see on the graph on the right-hand side, and that is despite gross margins decreasing slightly. If we look at the gross margins, we do have the -- an increase in systems, a slight increase in systems margins. That's good that we're able to pass on price increases from our suppliers to customers here. But however, that's offset by decreasing margins in services. And in particular, this is in our business unit Nordic & Baltics, which is -- I will come back to that, that's something that we're, of course, looking into. We saw also decreasing margins there already last quarter. So now we're initiating some more actions to make sure we get on the right track there.

SG&A costs did increase in the quarter, 6% for comparable units, so excluding currency and acquisitions. That is, of course, a lot lower than our revenue growth. So still, we do see continued cost control. But when we have strong revenues, we will have increased costs for bonus provisions, commissions. And we also do see compared to last year that, that travel and entertainment is starting to increase again. So that is also impacting our SG&A costs.

But generally, since SG&A costs are growing a lot slower than revenues. The EBIT -- resulting EBITDA is very, very strong in the quarter. And the earnings per share and return on equity increasing for the same reasons here, the increase in EBITDA.

Okay. If we then go into the slides, per business unit. So Nordic & Baltics had a very, very strong quarter, as I said, and in particular, in systems, 51% organic growth in systems. Again, there is some several larger deals from customers that were placed and delivered in this quarter that is impacting as well as a good underlying demand.

Services is also growing organically 5%. So we do see a good demand in all of our services businesses here. and primarily the growth in cloud services in line with what the strong market demand for this type of services. And we also had very strong TCV development in the Nordics & Baltics, the largest growth in percentage terms here where they closed several interesting deals.

If we look at the EBITDA margin, then the margin increased as a result of the increased revenues, gross margins fairly flat, but then stronger in systems and weaker in services. And we did do investments last -- we started the investments last quarter in the services area here with -- to increase quality, innovate around our services and put this -- the ground for future efficiencies. We're seeing now that we're not getting as quickly the results we want. So we are doing an action program here now to secure that we get back on track and increase gross margins in future quarters and years.

Okay. If we go to the next business unit, that U.K. This is, in this quarter, the weak business unit, if you will. You can see here, it is the systems business, again that is weak. It's a 42% organic decline whereas services is increasing organically 2%, and we do see good growth in cloud services and consulting where support is declining and support is tightly related to system sales. It's a delay. So it's more related to that we had some issues or lower system sales last year as well. Overall, when we look at the systems business here, we do see quite okay or good demand.

We see that customers are buying, but this is the business unit where we had the biggest impact of the delivery delays. So here, we do see an increase of a delivery backlog. We've closed order at a good pace, but we've been able to deliver less this quarter than the previous quarters. Of course, that means that the EBITDA margin and EBITDA is impacting. So the EBITDA margin decreased to 3.9%. Gross margins are under control here, good cost control, but that drop in revenues, it's hard to mitigate completely.

So overall, a weaker quarter. You can also see on the right-hand side that, on the other hand, we had a better quarter last quarter. So we were able to deliver quite a lot more last quarter than this quarter. But underlying, again, good demand, good cost control. So we expect this to develop nicely going forward. If we go to our next business units that this business unit West. Good organic growth here, 10%. Systems, roughly flat, 1% organic growth, whereas services is growing quite a lot organically. Here, and you can see there's a longer-term trend here where we see that our market is transforming from a fairly systems heavy or a lot of systems demand to quite quickly increasing the demand for services. Of course, that translates systems, it's a onetime revenue effect right upfront, whereas the services is spread out over time.

So in the longer-term trend, we see that revenues have been going down are now stabilizing and then starting to grow again. And we see that, of course, that our services are high in demand, and our cloud services are growing quickly. This is the business unit where we have the largest TCV, so the largest intake of contracted managed cloud contracts as well, that has been strong over a while. So the percentage-wise not -- yes, no better, but it's very strong here as well.

Here, we did, as you may recall, some issues on profitability late 2020, early 2021 to -- had an action program running for primarily the first half of 2021. And we see that we're now able to maintain our margins at a much better level than what we have done. So EBITDA margin is up to 6%, and it's both the revenue growth, but also then that we have significantly higher gross margins now than what we had when we were loss-making last year. So quite a good development here as well.

And then if we go to our -- yes, the last business unit in this overview, it's BU Central, Germany and Czech here, higher revenue growth because of the acquisition of ahd, which we concluded late last year, which almost doubled our size in Germany, but also organically good growth, primarily in systems, 78%. Here also, we were able to deliver some of the deals we've taken earlier. It was also quite a weak comparison quarter. So Q2 2021 had very -- we had so long lead times for customers to make decisions. So it was a pretty weak systems quarter.

But overall, healthy demand also for our support services and consulting services. And this is the business unit where we have decreasing cloud revenues, and that is because we did take -- well, organically decrease in cloud revenues, not including the ahd acquisition, they're growing quickly. We did in our Proact BU Central taking a lower level of new cloud contracts last year, and that continues to have an effect -- negative effect on our cloud revenues. Now with -- when we're integrating ahd, we expect to get quite a lot of good synergies out of that and including increasing revenues in our cloud business.

Strong EBITDA margin, however, we -- the organic growth, of course, helped a lot. Also the ahd acquisitions contributing profitability EBITDA. We also had quite low selling and administration costs in the quarter in BU Central, which led to quite high EBITDA margins. So those were the BUs. Then cash flow and good cash flow from current operations, SEK 130 million in the quarter, positive change in working capital in the quarter.

As those of you who follow us knows, the working capital is the big fluctuating area we have when it comes to our cash flow, very dependent on specific deals and whether customers pay at the end of the quarter or just after or if we pay our suppliers at or just after the quarter. But overall, positive this quarter, small investments in fixed assets, we don't invest that much. Typically, we lease most of our assets or most of our -- what we need for our managed cloud business. Then we had cash flow from financing activities, minus SEK 13 million. The leasing liabilities cost for those or repayments of those end up here, so minus SEK 28 million.

We paid out the dividend of SEK 41 million. Then we -- in the quarter, we increased our -- the utilization of our RCF in total by SEK 56 million in the quarter. So we're financing this sepago acquisition with that increase as well as from our own cash position. All of that money was paid out in July. So that's one of the reasons that our liquid funds are at a very high level end of the quarter because just after we paid out the EUR 11.4 million for the sepago acquisition.

And if we then have the next slide, that's the year-to-date cash flow, similar story, good cash flow from our current operations. Year-to-date, the change in working capital is negative and we have smaller investments in fixed assets again. Repayment of leasing liabilities is the main outflow when it comes to our financing activities as well as dividends. Year-to-date, we have a very small change in bank loans.

So overall, good cash flow development and a strong financial position. If we go to the next slide, very quickly, we'll also walk through the balance sheet. Our equity ratio ended at 22%. Our net debt is SEK 198 million, including leasing liabilities of SEK 224 million. It's increasing from last year, primarily because of acquisitions that we've done that we financed through increased bank loans. We have overall unutilized overdraft facilities of SEK 159 million and unutilized portion of our RCF facility by SEK 100 million. So quite a strong cash position.

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

Wonderful. Thank you, Linda. I think we usually go through our financial goals. So we're going to do that here as well. This is done rolling 12 months. Our top-level goal here is to grow our revenues by 10%, rolling 12, we're now above 11%, which is great to see that we're back to growth rates where we want to be. Our EBITDA margin is 6.3% on a rolling 12, still below our 8% target, but a good improvement from 2021. Net debt over EBITDA, as we mentioned, we're quite a bit below here, so we're in good shape from a debt and balance sheet perspective.

And then our return on capital is still quite below the target, and that's because of our successful acquisition pace, which is great. Still, it's a little bit improved since 2021. And last but not least, we have done the dividend paid out as expected, and we're right at the top end of that target range that we're shooting for and the dividend was flat year-over-year at SEK 1.50, which was paid out in May.

And then let me end with just a summary here, and then we'll open up for questions. So definitely strong growth in the quarter, both organically and through the acquisition of ahd primarily. We're happy to see the high demand for our managed cloud services and that we grow our ARR, our annualized recurring revenue. The acquisition of sepago in Germany is super interesting, and we're very excited about it because it brings some very strategic competencies and skills and, frankly, capacity because they have a lot of consultants into Proact.

And we're seeing our improvements in profitability. I think we mentioned it a couple of times here through the presentation that we're seeing good demand in the market. We have still a backlog going into the third quarter. So the results is not because we've delivered out the backlog that we've been pushing in front of us since Q4, but rather because of underlying good demand. It is a volatile business, the systems business in particular.

And Linda, I think you've highlighted a couple of times that the system growth is going up and down in our quarters depending on big deals, and we had a few of those in Nordics & Baltics this time. It's an important thing for you to remember that the systems business, in particular, is volatile, but a strong quarter nevertheless.

With that, let us open up for questions and you can raise your team's hand, and then we'll let help us unmute you in a proper order.

[Linda Holjo, executive]

Yes. So [indiscernible], could you please unmute?

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. Sure. Can you hear me?

[Linda Holjo, executive]

Yes.

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

We do.

[Unknown Analyst]

Nice. And one question regarding the margins for the system revenue. I mean, sometimes when you have high system sales, the margin is basically hurt quite a lot. That was not the case today. I mean what's the difference? And what can you make -- what can you do going forward to make sure that you will imitate this quarter rather than some of the previous ones?

[Linda Holjo, executive]

So well, one of the thing that happens is when we have larger deals, you are right. some of them are quite competitive, and we're forced to have lower margins than usual. And sometimes that's not the case. And it also depends on the setups we have within individual suppliers if we get kickbacks from them for specific deals that will help. So unfortunately, that is a little bit volatile and depending on which customer and the competitive situation. But we tried to replicate this, of course, and continue increasing margins.

I don't know, Jonas, if you want to add something?

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

No. I mean it's been a focus of ours for a long time, and this is one of the things I think we're good at. But you're absolutely right in that. It will depend on customer. It will depend on the actual solution and the components of the solution, and we are going to see some deals with good margins. So we're going to see some deals with pressure on the margin, and we'll continue to see, I think, some fluctuation. But overall, it's one of our largest focus there when it comes to gross margin. So it's an area where we're actually doing good.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. And also, you had quite healthy organic growth in the recurring revenues. And I think it's the third quarter or something that you have that. However, before it was quite difficult for you, I assume, regarding -- considering the numbers. I mean what have you done there? Or are the market getting better? Or could you explain a bit what's driving the growth?

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

I think market is probably the primary driver, and we talked about this a number of times, primarily during lockdown times, during Covid. Customers are more difficult to engage with when we cannot meet physically. And remember that our core markets and the largest market when it comes to our managed cloud services are outside of Sweden, where lockdowns were much tougher than at least a few of us who live in Sweden got used to. So the fact that restrictions are gone and COVID is maybe not gone, but at least not impacting us from a business perspective has helped. We have improved our portfolio. We've launched products and upgrade our portfolio along the way here, and we did 2 more this quarter, as you know. So that's helping.

And last but not least, this is another area where we put a lot of thoughts in terms of our internal skills development and how we develop our capabilities, selling MCS services. So I think the market is the primary underlying driver, but obviously, we work hard internally on it as well.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. You touched upon this a bit, but I want to ask regarding the administration costs, particularly. They increased by almost 10% relative to the first quarter. Is there anything special affecting those numbers? I suppose that traveling as such are mainly related to sales cost rather.

[Linda Holjo, executive]

So it's -- yes, I guess it's always a fine line between sales and administration that you will have MDs and senior people in management, et cetera, that do help a lot with sales. So we do see part of the travel cost there also when it comes to, well, both sort of bonus programs, sales commissions, those types of accruals end up -- some of that end up in administration as well. So that is an increase. Those are the primary effects. And then we have a little bit of growth in headcount to sustain when we grow the company as a whole, but that's not the primary one.

So it does have an effect here, whereas if you look at -- I was mentioning where low SG&A costs in Central that was, in particular, sales costs that were low because it's fluctuating a little bit depending on the sales commissions, et cetera. So you don't see that increase as obviously for the entire group because of that affecting in Central.

[Operator]

Next up is Daniel Thorsson, if you're able to unmute.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Daniel from ABG. I start off with a question on cloud revenues here. We see improving organic growth in cloud revenues in the quarter and order intake also slightly better than I expected at least. Is that any Q2 isolated effects? Or do you see stronger sustainable momentum in the market?

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

No, I think it's more sustainable. We've always talked about our market being in growth, in general, and that services is growing significantly faster than the systems business. This is just continuous. I think we now had 3 quarters of good order intake on the cloud services, and we'll continue to focus on keeping at this level.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Are there any larger deals in cloud in this quarter? Or is it mainly in systems where you have larger deals?

[Linda Holjo, executive]

So I was going to say -- so cloud -- the TCV number will always have some larger deals. But we will always have larger deals there. But as Jonas was saying, it's 3 quarters in a row, so we expect to continue closing larger deals. So it's not that volatile as systems.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Yes. Fair enough. On the hardware side here, how do you find yourself being positioned in the pricing power playing out here regarding pricing to customers, but also COGS to suppliers. I guess we will see potentially increased cost for hardware going ahead there?

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

We've Seen already, frankly, a couple of high -- not high, copper price increases since the last, let's say, 12 months. And we're -- I think we've been better and expect in terms of transferring those price increases directly to our customers. So we continue to maintain good gross margins on the system sales despite the fact that our vendors have increased pricing primarily then due to semiconductor shortages historically.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

How much of the organic growth in the quarter was price-driven? Can you say something on that?

[Linda Holjo, executive]

I think the challenge we have, we discussed to measure prices that we deliver individual solutions to all customers. So there's almost nothing that's like-for-like. So the supplier has always changed their versions, et cetera. So it's very hard to measure pricing specifically. I don't know, Jonas, if you have anything?

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

No. It is an area where we have little transparency ourselves because each deal is customer unique and the configurations are unique. So I wouldn't be able to give you a clear view on that.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Right. Fair enough. A question on sepago then 100% of revenues or service revenues. How much is related to cloud and what is non-cloud out of that? I may have missed it.

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

The vast majority of revenue is consulting revenue.

[Linda Holjo, executive]

They do have some that, I believe, we will classify as systems, which is sort of licenses resell. So it's not 100% services.

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

There's some software retailing as well. That's correct.

[Linda Holjo, executive]

Yes, yes.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Okay. The majority is non-cloud services, but there will be some system revenues as well. Did you say that?

[Linda Holjo, executive]

System and professional services will be -- primarily professional services or consulting and then the rest will be systems.

[Daniel Thorsson, analyst]

Okay Excellent. Last question was on the cash flow actually. You talked about working capital a bit here, but that is explaining the difference year-over-year, and it seems to be receivables going up a bit. Is that explained by larger system sales potentially booked in the end of the quarter, but not yet paid. Or do you see any underlying development in working capital this year?

[Linda Holjo, executive]

No. That is -- that's definitely the explanation that the larger deals will impact. Yes.

[Operator]

[indiscernible]

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

We are as always available if you want to follow up one-on-one or later on when questions pop up. So just let Linda or myself now. We will get back into this forum in October 25, maybe. Linda?

[Linda Holjo, executive]

I think so. Yes or -- yes, 25, I guess. It sounds like a long time from now.

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

It does indeed seem like a long time, but thank you so much. Enjoy summers, and we'll see you in October.

[Linda Holjo, executive]

Thank you.

[Jonas Hasselberg, executive]

All right. Bye-bye.