Datagroup SE

XETRA:D6H

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Operator]

Welcome to the DATAGROUP SE conference call on the figures of first quarter of the financial year 2020 to 2021. [Operator Instructions] The presentation is also available for download in the Investor Relations section on DATAGROUP's website. I would now like to welcome Mr. Peter Schneck, Executive Board member of DATAGROUP and responsible for Investor Relations, mergers and acquisition and legal.

[Peter Schneck]

Thank you very much, Sara. Yes, dear ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, dear representatives of banks, analysts and of course, my colleagues from DATAGROUP. A very warm welcome from my side to all today's DATAGROUP conference call for the presentation of the Q1 figures for the year 2020, '21 I'm delighted to present you a tremendous start in this new year. And I think by going to the figures, you will support my view on Q1. So Q1 is another proof of our success. As you can see here, we have a jump by revenue of 31% from EUR 82 million in the Q1 of last year to EUR 108 million in this year. Of course, this is heavily also driven by Portavis, but I will come to this later on. But of course, also by a very good organic growth. Then the EBITDA, as a consequence, also a jump of 57% from EUR 9.5 million to EUR 14.8 million, which reflects an EBITDA margin of 13.7% for Q1. And finally, the EPS from last year, EUR 0.17 at that time, an increase of 141% to EUR 0.41 for Q1. And of course, I would like to point out that this EPS figure is the best EPS figure of the last 5 years though that I hope, of course, we will still improve on this one, and we'll work on this, but I will also come to this a little later. Yes, what is the reason for this tremendous increase and very good Q1. As most of you, as long-term shareholders already being familiar with DATAGROUP, you know that the Q1 typically is not such a strong Q in our history. Over the past years, Q1 has always been a little weaker. And of course, one of the reasons has been that it's -- just before Christmas times, there were not so many activities, and it was the start of our new business year. So that's why the coming quarters were the stronger ones. And this is also reflected in last year's quarter, where we, of course, had the impact of DATAGROUP O.N., which was an asset acquisition that we have done at that time. And, of course, also some of the missing revenues that we saw already at ALMATO. And this was just to remind you before the COVID lockdown even started. So this is one of the reasons, of course, we have to see -- we started at a lower base. So the comparison base is a lower one. But nevertheless, of course, Q1 is one of the strongest Qs that we ever had in the history. And one of the reasons is, as I mentioned before, of course, we have, for the first time a consolidation of Portavis, which is a major impact on those revenue figures. And then, of course, in consequence also on the EBITDA figures. The other reason is we had a very positive special impact of COVID like, for example, we were able to win some new customers as the vaccination centers in Baden-Württemberg, which allowed us to have a real sales peak and you will see this also later on when we talk about trading, where there's an increase, but at the same time, also on the service side, both with good margin. So this is one of the reasons why we have an untypical situation. And of course, why, and we will come to this later on. I'm still convinced that this is a very strong and very good quarter. But I hope that it will not just go on like this and just multiply it. I think we have to bear in mind that this is an exceptional well Q1, and there will be some effects that we will not see in the coming quarters. But I will refer to this later on. Yes. The fantastic start, as I said, all over, all our market units have performed better than we had budgeted and expected. This is an effect that we see through all the units, there is no exception to this one. Even DATAGROUP FIS, as you will see here, has done better against our budgeted costs in our plans than we had forecasted. So this is a very nice positive effect on this one. As you all know, we had this EUR 12 million provision for the coming 24 months built in last year. And of course, we had some provisions that we have used now, but much better or less used than we had originally planned. So this is a very nice impact. And then, of course, we also had a very good progress in FIS. We were able to reduce the number of external consultants faster than we had forecasted or budgeted which, of course, also had a very positive impact on our cost structure. The M&A activities. I know that some of the analysts and also shareholders have asked me several times, whether in this COVID times, we will continue with M&A, yes or no. Yes, we will continue with M&A. Yes, this is part of our DNA, as you all know. So 2/3 of our growth is coming from M&A, and this is why we're still continuing this path, and the pipeline is well filled. I'm working already since many months, I must say, on one acquisition that we hopefully will announce in the coming weeks and maybe hopefully even on next weeks. A shareholder meeting to be finished and then hopefully accomplished, but there are also some other targets that we're talking to. So there will be M&A acquisitions happening also in this running year. Then, as I mentioned before, the sales activities have gained very good momentum. Other than in the lockdown number one, where most of our customers were, I would even say a little surprised with this situation, and it was not so easy to access our customers we have now under lockdown 2, a totally different situation where we fortunately have been able to shift all our activities to a very successful sales result. And this is also shown in Q1 already, but I'm very confident that this will also continue for the coming Qs with this success story. Then as you all know, we had announced last year in Q1. So in the last calendar year, the new customer satisfaction view from Whitelane, where we have been rated and ranked highly on the third place. And of course, being one of the best mid-cap companies working in the IT business. So we're very proud of this. And of course, we also already achieved some other prices in this direction. So this confirms that we're doing the right way and that our customers support and love us. Additional corona-related revenues. Like I mentioned before, we won the vaccination centers here in Baden-Württemberg, which was a real peak on the trading, but also on the implementation side means on the services side, and this is what is reflected in the figures of Q1. So this is one of the effects where I would say, yes, we will still continue with some of the vaccination center work in the coming quarters, but not with this peak, as you've seen this now in Q1 because we have equipped them. We have put everything in place. And now we're talking about our normal CORBOX ongoing support, which will not be in this onetime peak, as you've seen this in Q1. Yes. Then the lockdown #2. From our point of view, I must say, it does not have any negative impact on the business operations. As you've heard before, we even see some very positive effects now in the -- on the sales side. The services from CORBOX, but also from our solution line, can be delivered as usual. We don't have any negative impact on this side. There is no reductions on the customer side. Customers are interacting with us, whether from home, from their home offices or whether in the offices there's even a higher activity than we had in the lockdown 1 where -- in some of the times before. Our strong customer base has helped us, of course, very much already like in lockdown 1. We see now that our business model is very strong, very solid one, irrespective of a pandemia like corona or COVID, we were able to even increase profitability on some sites, and we are very optimistic that we will continue this work the same way. Then very important is, of course, our own workforce. We were able to switch our workforce immediately into the home office mode or mobile mode, how we call this. Now up to 90% of all our team members are working from their home offices/mobile offices wherever in this world, they are located. We even have some team members that are working from foreign countries now and maybe enjoying also some other environments. And then, of course, what's our HR team, our whole team here has focused very much on the health protection for our employees and our customers. We have a weekly review of all our employees what the, in fact, status is if there is any potential infections that we could avoid that we see. So I think we're doing our best. And compared to some other companies we will benchmark with, I think, we're really some of the top runners having very low infections compared to over 3,000 employees. So we're very proud of this. And like I mentioned before, sales activities work really well. Customers have accepted this sales mode through virtual discussions. To be honest, in some cases, especially now in lockdown 2, it's even easier to get access to some of our CIOs and customer experts than it was before because they're not in the daily activities. They are now available. You can manage to get some dates with them through Teams and other technical solutions, which helps us quite a lot, and we have the full attention of those experts, so I would even say that this is a very positive development of this pandemia that the sales activities have switched a little bit into this mode and that our customers are now much easier to access than it was before. Now let's dig a little bit into the figures as we have released them this morning. So if we look at the profit and loss statement, we just selected some of them and I will go through it. So number one is, of course, something still to mention, as I did before. We have a 31% increase in our revenues that we're very proud of. But again, please always remember there's this consolidation effect of Portavis, which we acquired only last year then in Q2. And that's why in Q1, the effects were not shown. Then what you see is -- and I'm picking out now only some of the figures. I don't want to go through all of them, but I think the ones where we see major deviations, I think we should just tip on this one. The change of capitalized contractual costs. You've seen this for the first time in our reporting by the end of last year because we had here some effects from financial services, so DATAGROUP Financial Services from our ikb data. So these are transition costs that we were able to reduce, and that's why you see here a reduction of 70% to the year before. And as I mentioned already in some former presentations, we're, of course, working on getting this close to 0, but this will be shown also in the future. Then the next effect that, of course, I would like to point out is the material expenses that you see here, an increase of 54%. There are 2 effects in this one. One is, of course, again, driven by Portavis. So for Portavis, we also had some ABM machines that we were or that we had to acquire. So this is shown in these expense figures. And the second one is, of course, now the short-term expense that we had on the vaccination centers where we had quite some expenses to get the material. And of course, some of the equipment ready for our implementation. Yes, then the gross profit went up by 16.8% to EUR 68 million, as you can see, but I think there's not so much that I have to explain on this one. Personnel expenses went up by 10%, mainly driven by Portavis. So this is the effect that you see here. There's no increases that we have done to our team members due to Portavis, I must say, we are in a position that at this time, the salary increases are not a topic that is discussed with our unions or with some of our team members. So I think everybody is happy to be part of the team and to see how this pandemia goes on. So that's why there's no real increase on this side. Then, of course, the EBITDA, jumped 71%, as you can see here, and I mentioned already some of the reasons for this one. And of course, what you see on the bottom line is the EPS, which is, like I mentioned before, the best one that we had in the past 5 years. So it increased by 141%. And I think if we would have been able even to gain some of the advantages from the referred taxes, the EPS could even look better. So there's some potential for the future, I would say, to stay in a good line with the EPS, as you can see it here now. Now the other thing to mention, I think, as you can see here, as a side note, the organic growth went up by 10%. The vaccination center is one of the reasons, but we were also able to gain 6 new customers and 7 new upselling customers just in Q1. So this has been tremendously good for our team. As I mentioned before, Q1 is typically not so strong, and that's why this is really an exceptional effect because of the pandemia as we can see as of today. Yes. Now looking at the key balance sheet figures. As you can see here, we have the reduction of the goodwill due to the PPA of DATAGROUP O.N. Here, we did some -- we had to reopen the asset deal that we have done at that time, revalued the customer value and, of course, has reflected this then in these figures. And that's why we have here this slight change in goodwill. Then we have, on the long-term liability side, as you can see, almost 30% increase. What are the reasons for this one? As you can see below, I think the one to pick out first is the pension provision. This is mainly driven to 99% by Portavis, so these are the pension schemes that we took on, and they are good for about EUR 40 million, as you can see here. So this is really a Portavis effect. The same applies to the line above, which is the financial leases. Also here, we are in a situation that we're talking about Portavis effects. We have the lease agreement, which under IFRS goes into the finance lease. And then, of course, we had some finance lease obligations from Portavis that we took on, and it's one we have here as well an increase of the 38%. And the reduction on the financial institutions, the liabilities by 13%. This is driven by some reductions in the area of EUR 7.5 million. We reduced our promissory note loans. As you know, we are always working on this one, and this has been successful, so that's why you see this reduction. And then, of course, this sums up to this 29% increases for the long-term financial liabilities. On the short-term liability side, you see, first, an increase by 36% on the financial institutional liabilities. This is, of course, driven by the fact that we have some of these note loans that are moving now from long into short-term obligations. This is the main effect here. And then, of course, the finance lease effect that is here is, again mainly driven by Portavis. Yes, other than that, I think what is another positive point to mention is the cash and cash equivalents. As you can see, it increased by 54%, mainly also driven by Portavis that we had kind of EUR 30 million cash net in this whole context that we received, especially for pension scheme. So this had this very positive impact on our fees. Yes, I think the others, you will -- you might touch. I think the last one that I would like to mention is the equity ratio that went down. You all know the reasons for this, we had last year with DATAGROUP Financial Services quite some losses and, of course, also the risk provision, which, of course, runs against our equity ratio, but I'm very optimistic that by not inversing now the dividend, but of course, also some other measures that we're planning on that we will get back to a kind of normal equity ratio and what I consider as normal equity ratio would be in an area of 25% that we will not have by the end of this year, for sure, but this is something that we're working on, and it is some of our targets. Yes. Then the cash flow from the operating activities, I think there, we have some more explanations that are required because there, we have, of course, some major changes, as you can see by the figures, though that the figures itself as an amount might not be that heavy. But I think the first change that you can see is the major increase by 146.7% in the net income for the period, which is, of course, as I mentioned before, driven by all the positive effects that we had now in this Q1. But now then if we go a little lower. You see already an increase on the receivables or liabilities to shareholders related and associated companies of 473%. So this minus is an increase, which means that we were giving a kind of loan to an associated company of ours and of course, this has had the short term effect, but I can confirm that meanwhile already, this money has been paid back. So this was a kind of short-term loan for one of our associated companies. Which, of course, would have had a very positive impact also on our cash flow operating activities, which basically you have to add to the EUR 3 million on the bottom line. Then you have a decrease on the next line of inventories, trade receivables and other assets from minus EUR 6.7 million to now a positive at EUR 3.3 million, which is an improvement of 150%, although that it shows a negative sign here. But this really has to be seen as a positive effect, and this is, of course, related to DATAGROUP Financial Services. So to outline this, I think the cash flow on the bottom line that you see has an improvement of close to 400%. So we're coming in Q1 from minus EUR 1 million cash flow to now EUR 3 million positive, which is an improvement of close to 400%. And please bear in mind that you would have to calculate even the EUR 5.8 million in addition to this one as well as the EUR 800 million, as they are mentioned in the year for the BFL loan that had to be repaid. So this altogether would bring us to a positive cash flow in the first quarter, close to even EUR 10 million. So this is how you have to read this slide. And I assume that you will have some questions on this later on. Yes. Then the cash flow from the investing activities. The first one that I would like to pick, although that it's not a big figure, you see a change in the inflow from sale of property, plant and equipment from EUR 800,000 down to EUR 162,000. So a change of 8%. This change is really driven by one sale that we've done on equipment. So nothing to worry. And I think easy to explain. Now the next one that I would like to outline, and I think this is very positive. We have significant decrease of CapEx. As you can see here, in the Q1, we're down at EUR 1.1 million, which is a decrease of 68%. This is the lowest CapEx that we had in the past 8 years. So these are the figures that I just checked so far, maybe even longer than this, but I can confirm for the last 8 years. Though I still would like to outline we have planned for this year on a lower level, the CapEx, but the CapEx still in an area of up to EUR 18 million, so EUR 1-8 million. I'm sure that there will be some investments still to come. And if they will be in an area of the EUR 18 million after this Q1, I don't know. But at the moment, I would say it's very promising that we will not exceed the EUR 18 million, which means we will be still in line with our reduction of CapEx and of course, come back to the normal level as we had this in the past years, we would like to be in an area of 4% to 5% of CapEx ratio. We're now in Q1 at a CapEx ratio of 1.9%. So this is a real major improvement. Then the next slide that I would like to point out is the cash outflow for investments in financial assets. There you see an outflow of close to EUR 1 million. Where is this coming from, since we did not have this in the last quarter? This is just driven by Portavis. Portavis acquired or purchased shares as a security level for the pension scheme. So they have a certain obligation to invest and secure the money and this is what you see here as a cash outflow. So overall, the net cash used for investing activities is down by 31%. Those figures show you also that we have done no payment for any acquisition of a new company in this quarter. Like I mentioned before, we have one in the pipeline to come. So I'm very confident that there will be some outgoing money in Q2. But here, we had no payments for acquisitions as well as no earn-out obligations or anything like this. So this all stays in line with what we had planned. Yes. I think another point, of course, our share has developed very positive now after we recouped a little bit, and we've seen that the Q1 is on a positive way. So thanks for your trust into DATAGROUP, and I hope that we will come back to the strengths that we've shown this last year at the same time. And another point that I, of course, still would like to stress is because I've seen in some of the analysts' reports that obviously, this was not taking into consideration. Mr. Schaber has increased his shares to from former 51% to close to 54%. And I think this shows that Mr. Schaber strongly believes, as we all do in this very prosperous future of DATAGROUP. I think we've overcome the challenge that we had with DATAGROUP Financial Services. We are very confident that the provision that we have built is enough and will be sufficient on covering the cost that we envision for the coming -- remaining now 18 months. And we see that this is a very positive sign that the market is really gaining momentum that we are even taking advantage out of this lockdown 2 now, as we've seen in Q1. We're very optimistic that it will continue this way. I've seen already some questions coming in, whether this will be for the coming quarters, the same level. I hope so, but of course, I cannot promise. Bear in mind that Q1 had the positive impact of Portavis and of course, the vaccination center and some other special projects due to COVID. So this might not be repetitive effects. But overall, the market is promising. We're having more sales activities than we had last year at the same time, again, before COVID. So these are all promising signs. And I think with our CORBOX idea and CORBOX model as well as some of our solutions that we have in our portfolio, we've shown that even in difficult times, we have a very strong backbone in our organizations, and I'm very confident in looking forward to the coming quarters. And of course, then to the next sessions where I hopefully can present you some more positive news we've seen this now in Q1. And now at this point, I would leave it up for any questions to you. So please feel free to ask raise any questions, whether you've done this already through the question box or if you, of course, raise your hands. So I think Sara will take on. Thank you very much for your time and for your patience, and I'm looking forward to your questions now.

[Operator]

The first question, we have 4 questions from Mr. Knut Woller. The first question being, does DATAGROUP expect the strong growth in the trading segment to continue in the coming quarters?

[Peter Schneck]

Yes. Like I mentioned before, I'm very optimistic, yes. But I hope that not everybody is now saying, "Oh, we can just multiply it by 4. Please don't make this mistake or even by 5 or heard by some of the analysts, they said, oh, we can multiply it by 5 because you always had a weak Q1." This year is totally different. So please bear this in mind. But overall, I think we will not have in every of those quarters now the vaccination center effect, but we have some other projects to come. I think it will level down. It will not be on the 10% organic growth level. As you all know, we're targeting for the 5%. And I think on this level, it is very confident, to say that we will stay on this level.

[Operator]

The second question is the reversal of contract liabilities contributed around EUR 2.5 million to revenues in the first quarter. Which segment has benefited from this? And what is the margin of these sales?

[Peter Schneck]

Yes, I think Mr. Woller is -- okay, he's reading the contract liabilities, and maybe I first have to explain what is included in the contract liabilities. The contract liabilities include, of course, down payments from customers. So installment payments that you do upfront, it includes the payments for any kind of transition projects. But it also includes bonus accruals for customers. And what we're talking here about is not a release of any kind of sale or contract liability in the typical sense, as Mr. Woller is referring to, I think it's -- what we're talking here about is really Portavis had the -- in their agreements with our customers the kind of bonus accruement obligation, which they do over the year, which doesn't go into -- and it is not counted, of course, into the sales effect, but has, of course, a cash effect. So when we talk here about this effect, this is really just bonus reverse payments from the last year that we're showing now in Q1. So what you have here is we're not talking about a real revenue. That's why there's no margin attached to this one. And of course, it's just an accrual that we have done for the customer. So it's not a release and it's not the effect, as Mr. Woller is assuming. So this is something that we had planned for and that is part of our normal contractual obligations.

[Operator]

Third question is, what would the operating cash flow have looked like without the reduction of contract liabilities in the first quarter?

[Peter Schneck]

Don't pick me now on the figure exactly because I don't know it off my head exactly by the digit, but it's in the area of about EUR 2 million as a positive impact on the cash flow, if you would have not paid this amount. But again, this is really potential because we have the contractual obligation. So this is nothing unusual.

[Operator]

The last question is, what tax rate do you expect in 2020 to 2021?

[Peter Schneck]

Yes, this is a very good question. I think the tax quota has increased dramatically over the past year. And one of the reasons, of course, has been DATAGROUP Financial Services because they had there some losses where we had to pay taxes on basically and couldn't really take advantage or raise, yes, I mean, raise the advantages of the deferred taxes. I think if we find -- so the answer is, at the moment, if we don't do anything on this topic, the expected quota will be in an area of about 40%, even higher than 40%. So if you just look at Q1, it would have been 41% tax quarter. But of course, we are working on gaining the advantages of this -- these tax advantages, and it's basically deferred taxes. So if we are able, and this could be potentially the case to acquire an organization by DATAGROUP Financial Services, then we can gain an additional positive impact from these deferred taxes, which then, of course, would have a positive -- from our point of view, a positive impact on the quota and reduce the quota, and of course, also then have some other very positive impacts on EPS, as I mentioned before.

[Operator]

The next question is from Lukas Spang.

[Lukas Spang]

Also some questions from my side. In the 10% organic growth, you mentioned also in the report is this for all other companies besides Portavis? Or is it excluded, for example, for some companies, which are in a transition phase, like in the past.

[Peter Schneck]

Okay. So the 10% is without Portavis because Portavis is not considered in our consideration here. So it includes all companies, except of Portavis because Portavis would have had a tremendous increase, of course. So we're really talking about all the other entities that we acquired. It also includes already DATAGROUP work.

[Lukas Spang]

Okay. Great. And then you mentioned extraordinary negative effect in the Q1 and the previous year. Can you quantify this effect?

[Peter Schneck]

I think all of -- I think I have to give this question back to the back office because I'm not. Okay. Yes. I mean, the effect -- the only effect that we had, this was DATAGROUP O.N., which was in an area of about now this is difficult for the Q. I think it was about EUR 800,000. ALMATO, I can't really -- the figure. I don't know off my head. But I would say that since this was still before, it should be in an area of EUR 1 million that we're talking about in total now with DATAGROUP for Q1.

[Lukas Spang]

Okay. And then on the business and the vaccination centers, can you quantify this on your revenue side, which you had in Q1?

[Peter Schneck]

Mr. Spang, as you know, we're never disclosing any figures of customers in this case. I mean, this is -- even a public customer. And honestly, I know that the amount that we're talking about is close to EUR 5 million. But it's not all in Q1. So I don't know now what the -- what the accrual is for the other -- for the coming months to go. But I also know that there will be some additional business attached to this because when the original contract was signed, the idea was that it would be installed, would be running and would be running much faster. Now as you all know, the situation is that the vaccinations were not available, which has a positive impact for us because it -- the project goes a little in the length. And of course, requires more time than originally planned. So I don't know what the future impact will be on this one. And I also don't know if we cut this EUR 5 million into now Q1 and Q2, how much is still in Q2. But this was a real short-term project. So the impact you will see in Q2 than the remaining one? And then everything for Q3 and 4 will be new contract extensions on top.

[Operator]

Next up we have two questions from Tim Wunderlich. First is the same as the question that was just answered. How big was the revenue impact from vaccination centers in Q1? And the second question is, how big was the average day loss office in Q1?

[Peter Schneck]

In Q1 of the running year or in Q1 2019 because at that time, we had no loss. We didn't -- I mean we haven't seen it at that time. So if we're talking about this year, we're talking about a loss that is in an area -- so Q1 2020, '21 that was planned in an area of EUR 1.7 million, and we have been even a little better than this by -- EUR 200,000 better than what were really had budgeted. So it would be down EUR 1.5 million still as a loss.

[Operator]

Next up we have a question from Andreas Wolf.

[Andreas Wolf, Research Analyst]

It's Andreas Wolf, Warburg Research. Also related to the vaccination centers, obviously, they had a strong impact, if I understand you correctly on the head start. Were these revenues mainly reselling related because here, we had, obviously, a solid momentum or were those more service-oriented. That would be helpful maybe just to get a better impression or a better feeling on how we should look at it? And then on ALMATO, is it right to assume that this business has recovered compared to the last few quarters? Yes. If we look at the related software providers, there is a mixed picture. I guess from players like NICE and Blue Prism. But maybe you could clarify or provide some insights here. Yes, that's basically it.

[Peter Schneck]

Yes. Mr. Wolf, thank you for your question. So if I start with question one, the vaccination center. The -- on Q1, and now I want to separate this a little bit. On Q1, you've seen a tremendous increase on the trading side, which shows you that, of course, there was a lot of reselling it -- how you call this with margins that we typically don't like so much. But in this case, the margins were okay. So they were very good, to be honest. So I would say that 60% was really trading and 40% services. And now in the second quarter, it will switch now services only. Because, of course, in the first quarter, we've done the implementation, the installation of the hardware in the different centers and setting this up. And now we're basically just running and operating the system. So in Q2, you will see mainly services only. Of course, there will be a little bit of hardware, but I think this will be something that is below the radar. So this will switch into more service-related revenues. Your second question regarding ALMATO. Yes, ALMATO has recovered. ALMATO is on the revenue as well as EBIT side, much better than they have originally budgeted for the Q1. And of course, please understand that I'm not disclosing here any EBIT figures on the different levels also for competitive reasons. I know that there's always at least one competitor in our conference call. But what they were able to do is, again, a lot of good projects with the retail companies. So they have developed a bot that allow us to improve some of those retailing organizations to basically faster see what their -- what the stock is and to improve the stock management so that the store manager sees much faster what reality is and can, of course, reorder. And the second major impact has been, they have launched last year in summer, a new product in the workforce management level, which is called ARGOS. This is a product that they have taken on from DATAGROUP O.N., so DATAGROUP O.N. didn't see the future for this one. And of course, it was very old fashioned. And what ALMATO has done is they have worked on the GUI, and of course, structured some of the codes a little different with their usual bots, which has really improved now this product, and they had in the last, I mean, I must say, in Q1, they had an exceptional well sales run, I must say. This was really a home run, I want to say so, where a lot of customers were even spreading the word and we were contacted by customers in installing this new workforce management. And if you're interested in this one, I think on the ALMATO site, you will find the latest workforce release. They've just launched a new -- I think this was in January now, a new magazine from ALMATO, which is mainly focused on workforce management.

[Andreas Wolf, Research Analyst]

Okay. And then a quick follow-up on DATAGROUP volume, if I may. What is the current situation here? Do you already see an improvement from the customers side?

[Peter Schneck]

Yes. DATAGROUP O.N., we still see a good development. To be honest, we still are struggling with using the full capacity of the team. We still have some team members that are under technical unemployment. We want to say so in German Quotabyte, which is a governmental tool in Germany to basically bridge this area. So we have some team members still in this area, but including this tool, which is good, I think, until the end of this year. We will be able to be in a very positive rank. It will not be the EUR 1 million EBIT as we were targeting for last year, but it will be on the way to this.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We have no further questions. And thank you all for participating in the conference call. The call will be made available afterwards on DATAGROUP's website. Mr. Schneck, you have the last words.

[Peter Schneck]

Thank you very much for your time and for your patience. Please, like always, I can only offer you together with Claudia. That we're always available if you have any further questions, please contact us via e-mail or via phone. Let's arrange some conference calls, so that you get much better understanding on our figures. I think we're working on improving transparency so that you as shareholders, analysts, banks have a much better understanding of our great organization. And yes, I'm very optimistic that next time we meet, I will continue the success story and, of course, explain you what the next steps are and what we're standing at this point. And I hope that I will see some of you or hear some of you during the shareholder meeting, which is taking place next week Thursday, sorry, on the 4th of March. So please be invited and join us. Thanks very much, and take care.