New Work SE

XETRA:NWO

Earnings Call Transcript 2021-Q1

[Petra Von Strombeck, Chairman of Executive Board & CEO]

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Q1 update. I hope you and your families are safe and healthy. This is Petra speaking and next to me is Ingo. A little over a month ago, we had our capital markets briefing at the end of March. Today, we're here to talk about our financials since the start of this year. At this point, I'd like to note that we consider Q1 '21 to be fully COVID-affected, which is in contrast to the first quarter last year, where initial negative effect of the pandemic weren't observed until the end of that quarter. So we still see our new business negatively affected but look forward to the second half of the year when the pandemic is expected to ease. So what are the key messages for the first quarter? First of all, we managed to stabilize the business with almost flat year-on-year revenues. That's good. And when looking at our key bottom line figures, which in Q1 this year don't really differ between reported and pro forma numbers, we posted a strong increase in EBITDA as well as net income. Ingo will talk about the drivers later. And when looking to our core operational stats, we continue to see strong growth, both in terms of same-platform members and also when it comes to the number of workplace insights on our second C-destination, kununu. For our B2B E-Recruiting segment, the key messages that we stabilized the slight net customer loss, which we experienced last year while adding a few new net customers during the first quarter this year again, which is promising. So let's look at the key financials in a bit more detail. Our pro forma service revenues are down slightly year-on-year, but as mentioned earlier, this is not an apples-to-apples comparison, given that the pandemic only hit Q1 last year towards the end of the quarter and Q1 this year is fully affected. So Q1 revenues came in at EUR 68 million. Looking at our bottom line KPIs, the EBITDA and net income were posted with a significant increase compared to last year, resulting from cost reductions in Q1 and the spillover effect from a small-scale restructuring carried out during Q3 and Q4 last year. Let's move on to our C-destinations, XING and kununu. Even though our top line is just stable, the operating KPIs in our B2B segment are still healthy and continue to look promising. Let's start with a look at our business networking destination xing.com. Our member base continues to see steady growth, climbing to 19.3 million as of the end of Q1. That's an increase of around 1.6 million net new members during the last 12 months, i.e., 290,000 members in Q1 compared to 478,000 in Q1 last year. This doesn't reflect the underlying growth in Q1 as we performed a onetime adjustment in Q1 and thus eliminated around 160,000 members from our member base. If we adjust for the Q1 cleanup, organic net member growth stood at 454,000, which is pretty much in line with what we saw last year. We'll continue to actively work on expanding our footprint and help our members achieve a better working life by guiding them not only through the crisis but also through their working lives, enabling them to discover opportunities in content, get valuable industry insights and even provide them with transparency about jobs and employers that nobody else can offer. And when it comes to providing transparency, our second important C-side destination, kununu, comes into play. Kununu is really growing well, both from a financial angle and from an operational perspective. Kununu continued focusing on its mission to create workplace insights that matter. Compared to Q1 last year, users, i.e. website visitors, added 1.2 million additional workplace insights, consisting of employer review, salary data and cultural insights. That's an uplift of 31%. Overall, kununu hosts more than 5 million workplace insights at the end of Q1. During the first quarter, we also crossed the 1 million salary insights mark for around 40,000 employees. As most of you know, discussing salaries isn't a done thing in a lot of companies. Nevertheless, it's important that staff are paid fairly and kununu's salary data can help employees and job seekers determine their market value and judge whether they are being paid fairly. Unlike other salary databases, on kununu, employees can view salary ranges for certain roles within a specific company. The combination of kununu employer reviews, corporate culture information and salary data enables employees to build up a much better picture as to where a company is a good fit for them. Kununu's vision is to empower people to choose the right place to work with workplace insights that matter. And we are on the right track to ensuring that every job seeker in German-speaking countries refers to kununu before deciding whether to accept a job offer. We also have big plans for the XING platform this year, and our teams are working at full speed to deliver the largest app relaunch in the company's history. We note that many people are not happy in their jobs. This trend has even increased through corona, one key reason that people cannot be who they are at their workplace. They have to play a role. Also business networks have not helped there. They offer a big stage that only a few are willing to climb and play their role. But this completely new app, XING will focus and stay, of course, the big stage for those who want and need it, but we are not just focusing on reach. The new XING app is about quality content. We will also provide distinctive areas for communication for the many who are looking for safe and dedicated communications in smaller circles. Furthermore, a new tool, the XING guide will support and assist members to help them to better navigate through the most relevant moments in their career by giving them personal advice on how to best use XING for their needs, how different and diverse they might be. So it's all about personal relevance. The app will also provide an updated job section where member can find ratings of employers by their employees. This is how job searchers can find the job that fits best to their life's wishes and needs. And also the content will be accessible in a more personally relevant way. We are planning to launch late state of the new app to the first 200,000 members by end of this month, which will allow us to get a broader user feedback so that we can iterate on the app. We'll keep you posted on the big launch, of course. Speaking of big, a few weeks ago, we hosted our flagship event, the Virtual New Work Experience. A lot of people out there are asking themselves what the new work is the new normal. Our mission is to accompany the world of work, help share it and, of course, support our members and community. Right now, we are seeing sweeping change through our business and society as a whole. This is why we teamed up with pioneers and visionaries from the world of business society, culture, science and HR to analyze the current state of the New Work movement and to deliver an outlook of what's to come after the crisis while providing attendees with guidance and new perspectives. The aim of the New Work Experience event was to provide a compact yet comprehensive overview of the discussions currently taking place within society, culture, business and science and offering honest appraisal of the New Work movement both during the ongoing pandemic and beyond. Over 6,000 new workers attended the free program with almost 1,500 participants joining the master classes. Subsequent feedback about the event was positive across the board. This shows that we successfully tuned a leading analog event about the future of work into a digital format. Thousands of people joined the morning stream and watched speakers such as -- oops, sorry, anthropologist [indiscernible] to psychologist [indiscernible] deliver their inspiration and ideas. The afternoon session hosted more than 40 digital interactive master classes offered by author [indiscernible] and Austrian Labor Minister, Martin to name just a few. The afternoon sessions were reserved for the 1,500 ticket holders, which sold out within 48 hours after going on sale. All in all, the event enjoyed a total audience reach of 30 million across all channels and we are more than happy with how it went. Naturally, we're already looking forward to being able to meet up in person in Hamburg for the New Work Experience next year. Before I hand over to Ingo, let's have a look at the operational performance in our B2B E-Recruiting business for a second. As you know, the most important indicator of future revenue development is performance, i.e. net growth of our B2B E-Recruiting subscription customer base who sign up to a 12-month subscription package for our various branding and recruiting solutions. And as you all know, the growth momentum stopped immediately with the onset of the crisis at the end of Q1 last year. And since then, we have even lost a few customers on a net basis throughout last year. The reason you see slightly different quarterly figures for last year compared to previous reportings in last year's presentation is that we slightly modified our internal definition of subscription customer. Accordingly, this has to be reflected in our external communication. And as a result, you can see the 2020 figures retroactively adjusted based on the new methodology to make them comparable with the first quarter this year. And what you actually see is that the customer losses stopped during this quarter and even grew again slightly. This is quite a positive signal and we also expect a stable base in Q2, in line with the easing of mandatory measures and hope to see early signs of recovery in the second half of the year. Some of you are likely to remember the next slide, the outlook from our Capital Markets Day briefing. Thanks to our positioning as a leading C-destination for professional networking and employer branding, we are still in an ideal position to benefit from an easing of the pandemic and the subsequent economic recovery. As a result, we are confident about reaching our '21 goals and returning to double-digit top line growth post-COVID. And with that, I'll hand over to Ingo for a deep dive into our financial results.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Thank you, Petra. Hello, everybody. This is Ingo and I'll talk about our Q1 numbers in more detail. So last quarter, we had an overall stable development and we are well on track to reach our outlook for the full year. So let's start with a look at the key message points. Number one, our portfolio of C-destinations, especially XING and kununu are growing. That's important as it's the basis for our business. Number two, our revenues are stable, slightly down. However, they are better than planned. Number three, EBITDA came in at EUR 24.9 million, driven by lower cost. Number four, operating cash flow came in at EUR 39.7 million. And number five, we confirm our guidance of a full year EBITDA of approximately EUR 90 million. I'll give you more details on the following chart. Now if you look at the P&L, revenues came in at EUR 68 million. That's down 1% year-over-year, but as I said, slightly better than planned. As you know, with Q1 '21, we are comparing a full -- COVID full lockdown quarter to a basically non-COVID Q1 in 2020. So revenue-wise, we are on track and I'll give you some more color when I talk about revenues in more detail. Reported EBITDA amounts to EUR 24.9 million, that's up year-over-year. Reported EBITDA equals pro forma EBITDA and this quarter, there are no extraordinary effects. EBITDA development is driven by significantly lower cost versus previous year. Here, you can see the effects of our restructuring and the cost management last year as well as lockdown effects, which also lead to cost savings. EBITDA margin is at 37%. Please do not extrapolate Q1 EBITDA and Q1 margin. We are confirming our guidance of a full year EBITDA of EUR 90 million. As you know, our long-term outlook continues to be very positive. Demographics will drive scarcity of talent and thereby demand for our solutions. Addressable markets are large and they leave sufficient room for growth. That's why we continue to invest into our long-term growth as we continue to see significant room for value creation for us. Depreciation amounts to minus EUR 7.3 million. That's up year-over-year compared to last year's pro forma depreciation. You know this includes nonoperating depreciation for PPA assets from acquisitions of approximately EUR 1 million. Depreciation is up year-over-year due to higher rent and higher depreciation from internal software development. The financial result is minus EUR 0.1 million, it includes a positive nonoperating effect of plus EUR 0.1 million from book profits on our investments of our cash. And if we take that out, financial result would be minus EUR 0.2 million as mainly accounting only noncash cost for discounting lease payments and future earnout liabilities according to IFRS. Reported net income amounts to EUR 12.1 million. That's up year-over-year. And if you take out the extraordinary effects, net income would be EUR 12 million. That's up year-over-year. So while revenues are stable, bottom line is up due to lower cost. However, as I've said, please do not extrapolate. We do confirm our guidance of a full year EBITDA of EUR 90 million. On the next chart, you can see the profitability by business unit. These are reported figures, and as a general rule, you will see the effects from our restructuring last year and our cost management. Let's start with the B2C segment. In Q1, the B2C segment contributed EUR 11 million in segment EBITDA, which is up year-over-year. Margin is up as well. Here, you can see, in particular, the effects from the restructuring as many new venture activities were included in the B2C segment, of which we decided to stop or rightsize some.The B2B E-Recruiting segment contributed approximately EUR 26.8 million to profitability, that's up year-over-year, and return on sales is up as well. The B2B Marketing Solutions & Events segments contributed EUR 2.6 million to profitability. That's up year-over-year and margin again is up as well. Now in this segment, the situation is twofold. You will remember that in 2020, this was the segment most strongly hit by COVID, given that Marketing Solutions is a transactional business and the Events business depends on off-line activities. Now this year, Marketing Solutions is recovering nicely. The reasons are an increased online marketing spend overall as well as new formats that unit is offering such as video. The Events business, on the other hand, is still suffering from the lockdown and is clearly still impacted by COVID. On the next slide, you can see our revenue development by segment. Again, please remember that year-over-year, we are comparing basically a full COVID quarter this year with a non-COVID quarter last year. B2C revenues came in at EUR 24.8 million. That's slightly down 4% year-over-year. Again, the reason is the InterNations business. You know that InterNations revenues are basically paid memberships offering access to off-line events, which in a lockdown scenario, are directly impacted. Our XING paid membership business has developed in a stable manner in Q1. As we've said in February, on a full year basis, we are cautious with revenue development in B2C as InterNations depends on the end of the pandemic, and with XING growing our active member base as a basis for monetization in E-Recruiting is more important than the direct C-side monetization. Now let's have a look at our E-Recruiting revenue development. B2B E-Recruiting revenues amount to EUR 38.1 million. That's slightly down 1% year-over-year. The good news is that, that is better than our plan. And that if you look at March individually, we already have returned to year-over-year growth. The same goes for April actually. And also billings and customer figures, as Petra has shown you, which drive future revenues, look very promising. Nevertheless, there is still uncertainty about how we will get out of the pandemic so that on a full year basis, we stick to single-digit revenue growth in this segment in 2021. Finally, let's look at the B2B Marketing Solutions & Events segment. Revenues amount to EUR 5.2 million. That's 13% up year-over-year. As discussed, this was driven mainly by the recovery of Marketing Solutions business while the Events business is still suffering from the lockdown. On the next chart, you can see an overview of our cost structure. These are reported figures. In Q1, personnel costs before capitalization amount to EUR 35 million. That's an equivalent of 51% of revenues. Costs are down year-over-year, which is basically due to the restructuring and cost management.If you look at marketing, in Q1, overall marketing costs amount to EUR 7.5 million, that's 11% of revenues and that's down year-over-year. As usual, we've had our Q1 branding campaign, which this year was a little bit smaller. On top of that, during lockdown, of course, there are no marketing events, lowering cost. So last cost line is other operating expenses. As you all know, it includes external services, legal, audit, consulting, payment processing, server hosting and other costs. In Q1, other operating expenses before capitalization amount to EUR 7.9 million or 12% of revenues, which is down year-over-year. Drivers are savings across the board, especially in the FTE-related other costs such as travel and entertainment as well as in consultants. On the next slide, you can see our cash flows. Operating cash flow, excluding organizer cash, amounts to EUR 39.7 million. That's up year-over-year, driven by higher EBITDA. Cash outs for operating investments amount to minus EUR 10.6 million. That's up year-over-year. The increase includes CapEx for our new headquarter. You will find the corresponding incentive payment, which we received in another cash flow line. Cash out for interest paid, FX and rent amounts to plus EUR 1.7 million. And this exactly includes the cash-in of approximately EUR 3 million as a lease incentive. With that, cash flow before dividends and before organizer cash amounts to EUR 30.8 million. To sum it up, for Q1, our revenues are stable, slightly better than planned. EBITDA came in strongly due to lower costs, and we confirm our guidance with a full year EBITDA of around EUR 90 million. So that's it for the numbers and we are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And we will hear first from Sarah Simon with Berenberg.

[Sarah Simon, Analyst]

I've got a few questions. Firstly, for Ingo. In terms of the cost savings that you regard as kind of temporary rather than based on actual restructuring and headcount reduction, can you give us an idea of the quantum on a full year basis or on the basis of Q1 just so we can get a feel for that? Second one was you've redefined XING network member numbers and B2B customers. On the XING member numbers, does that have any impact because now you're essentially saying to B2B recruiters, you've got slightly fewer members to look through. Is there any impact on the pricing? And on the B2B subscriber side, what is the definitional change? And do we need to sort of think about that in the context of revenue modeling? And the final question was, as you said, you're investing in long-term growth and new products, and you talked at the Capital Markets event about returning to double-digit growth with more gaining share of customer wallets and so on. Can you give us more color in terms of what these new products are that you're investing in?

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

So I'll take number two and number one, and I guess, Petra take number three. So in terms of XING, I'm not sure acoustically whether I really understood your question but your question was like we have fewer net member adds this year -- in this quarter, and does that affect our pricing possibilities and also our possibilities on the E-Recruiting business? First of all, no, we don't expect this to be impacting our E-Recruiting business. In fact, the reason why our gross adds or our net member adds are lower is that as we've done with the E-Recruiting customers, we've also done it with the members. We basically refined our accounting method, and we have a onetime effect of approximately 160,000, which we took out of our base, which previously we had counted but we don't count anymore to be more precise there. And so if you take that out, basically, our net member add growth rate is on previous quarter's levels. Now if you look at...

[Sarah Simon, Analyst]

Sorry, Ingo. Can I just ask, the 160,000, is this just people who haven't been at all active or is it something else?

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

No, no, it's something else. It's basically, if you want the details, it's -- you always -- you never have really 100% exact data for each and every member. And there were some members where it's open, what their exactly geography they belong to and they were counted within the DACH region. And when digging deeper, we thought, well, actually, they don't belong to the DACH region. So we took them out, out of our overall member base. So that's it. It doesn't have anything to do with activity, okay? And then if we look at the B2B E-Recruiting business, is also -- basically it's a much smaller impact and it's also the refinement of the accounting method. So basically, previously, the accounting method was we had -- we counted, in part, according to the types of products. But for some parts, we didn't have the granularity, and we basically took a proxy of the size of the order value. And if the size of the order value is higher than X, we assumed it was a subscription business and not a transactional business. We've refined the accounting method and even for the small part where we had to use the proxy previously, now we can take the exact order that they've taken, and there were some actually higher ARPU transactional customers, so we took them out, okay? And it's just a very small order of magnitude. So for your modeling, that should have no impact at all.

[Petra Von Strombeck, Chairman of Executive Board & CEO]

And coming to your last question, this is Petra speaking, about the new products on the B2B side, maybe just to frame it, we showed on the Capital Markets Day that we will expand, over time, our product range also to the retained part of talent. But that's more a midterm vision we have. For the time being, we still see a lot of growth potential in our employer branding products, for example, and the current set of products we have, plus the newly launched XING Talent Service that we launched last year, which has a very positive track record so far. So we will invest in our current portfolio and then step-by-step increase the product branch further.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

And then to your first question and to the comment or my comment, please do not extrapolate the Q1 EBITDA to full year EBITDA, I mean, the drivers behind that is not -- that basically means that on average, EBITDA -- quarterly EBITDA in Q2 until Q4 is lower than in Q1. That's not driven by revenues going down, just to be clear on that. We rather expect revenues to increase from our Q1 basis in the coming quarters. And so it's rather investment and cost-driven and that's across all board. You know that our biggest cost line is personnel. So yes, we do believe -- we do -- we will invest in personnel. You know that restructuring last year was not a restructuring to reduce our cost base in order to increase our profitability, but it was a restructuring basically to free up funds that we can, in some places, that we can invest in other places where we expect a bigger return, okay? And so you have a phasing there. You basically, in Q1, already have the effects of the cost phasing but the investments will come later on.

[Petra Von Strombeck, Chairman of Executive Board & CEO]

And we also expect to increase travel and entertainment costs during the year once the pandemic is over, which are almost nonexistent now.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Yes, that's true. Like all the lockdown-induced -- the lockdown-induced used cost savings that we had. With a decreasing pandemic, of course, at least to some extent, will go up again. Let me just give you one big example. So last year in Q1, we had a kickoff where we -- basically, the whole company from our location, met in one location to start the year. We didn't have that at all this year.

[Operator]

We will now move to our next question. It will come from Nizla Naizer with Deutsche Bank.

[Fathima-Nizla Naizer]

I have 3 questions from my end. Firstly, on the B2B E-Recruiting customer numbers, Ingo, can you remind us how many customers do you have? How many do you classify as paying subscribers in that segment? And you mentioned that it's stabilizing in Q1. Could you tell us which of the subsegments saw potentially customer additions compared to the second half of last year? Was it kununu sort of paying members coming on board? Was it XTM? Was it XING 360? Some color there would be great. And secondly, on XING Talent Services, which you introduced in second half of last year, how has the take-up of that been in Q1? And is it encouraging when you think of the rest of the year? And my last question is on 2022, in fact. And I know it's very early days but stable revenue in 2021. What would be a realistic sort of assumption when you think of next year based on the trajectory you're seeing? In the sense, could you go back to double-digit growth already? And any color you can give us on that would be great.

[Petra Von Strombeck, Chairman of Executive Board & CEO]

This is Petra. Happy to answer your questions. First of all, the B2B segment, actually, we saw an increase of customers mainly in all segments, but the strongest trend is certainly in employer branding and active sourcing. And your question concerning the XTM, please note that it's the very early stage of the product. We only launched it last October, and it's a service product that needs further refinement. And we will continue to develop the product exactly to customer needs and then scale it further. So there is no major revenue impact to be expected, although we are scaling it, knowing that our revenue levels in the B2B segment are already quite high and it's a new product. And concerning your last question, well, as you know, the pandemic and the end of the pandemic and the uplift of the macroeconomic effects and the economy are still quite uncertain. So this is why we basically guide that after the pandemic, we see that we come back to double-digit growth, but the exact timing is exactly the question because we don't know how long it will take. And every single time we have thought so far that this will be the last lockdown or whatever else happens, it came differently, and this is exactly why we are being a bit softer on that outlook. Sorry for that.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Yes. Let me -- it's exactly as Petra said. Let me reiterate what we said on the Capital Markets Day. And we said post-pandemic, we want to be double-digit again. And it will also be possible -- or at least that's our ambition to be growing in the range of 20%. And then when we were asked about 2022, in particular, we said that in a positive scenario, it could be double digit but not 20%, okay? So maybe this gives you a little bit guidance and how you do your realistic scenario is up to you.

[Operator]

We will now take our next question, and that will come from Simon Bentlage with H&A.

[Simon Bentlage, Analyst]

My first question would be on the B2B segment. I'm wondering if you could confirm that you're seeing a positive customer trend also in early April. And then maybe also regarding to the B2B segment, can you provide us with a breakdown of Active versus Passive Recruiting? I think that would be helpful. And then just lastly on the B2C segment. You mentioned that you're planning a sort of soft launch for the app in early May. Can you give us some color on when you expect the full launch of the app or relaunch of the app? That would also be helpful, I think.

[Petra Von Strombeck, Chairman of Executive Board & CEO]

Happy to take the first part of your question. So for B2B, yes, we confirm the positive trend in the early April figures. And let me also answer the B2C question concerning the app relaunch. First of all, the final launch will depend on the results of the tests we do. So eventually, we have to do an iteration, learning from user feedback. And so the launch date that we envisage actually depends on the results of the test. And second, I hope for your understanding that for competitive reasons, we do not really want to give up that launch date in advance. Thank you.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Yes. And if you look at the B2B E-Recruiting revenue split, if you take out the bundled products because in the bundled products, there's everything. I would say that order of magnitude for you to assume for Passive Recruiting is around 20% as a revenue share.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]With no additional questions in our queue, I will turn the call back over to your host for any additional or closing remarks.

[Petra Von Strombeck, Chairman of Executive Board & CEO]

Well, thank you very much for your interest. See you all at our general assembly on the 19th of May, and have a great day.

[Ingo Chu, CFO & Member of Executive Board]

Thank you. Bye-bye.

[Petra Von Strombeck, Chairman of Executive Board & CEO]

Bye.