New Work SE

XETRA:NWO

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q3

[Operator]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Montega welcome to the New Work SE earnings call regarding the Q3 figures of 2022. Thank you very much for your interest in dialing in.

You will now hear a presentation on the respective figures by the CEO, Petra Von Strombeck; the CFO, Ingo Chu; and the Head of Investor Relations, Patrick Moller. The floor will be open for upcoming questions following the presentation.

I'll now hand over to you, Petra.

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our Q3 results update. Thank you for joining us today. Without further ado, let's dive into our business update for the third quarter 2022.

As you all know, the German economy is currently experiencing turbulent times. But while bad news are distributed everywhere, we have good news to share with you today. Currently, we experience a relative decoupling of the economy and economic factors on one hand and the employment index and job vacancies on the other. The workers shortage remains one of the most pressing problems in the German labor market. Demographic change is having an increasingly dramatic effect and will be a central challenge for companies here in the long term. We have positioned ourselves very well in this environment with our recruiting solutions on the one hand, and access to talent on the other.

So let's start with a summary. We are very happy with our current growth momentum and it's all developing according to plan. The Q3 highlight was again our core B2B E-Recruiting business. We are experiencing a very strong labor market, which continues to drive demand for our Employer Branding and Recruiting solution. Looking at our 2 main operational KPIs on the C side, we are posting healthy growth both at kununu and XING.

Let's have a closer look at our financial KPIs. As you can see, revenue continues to grow in Q3, up 9%. It's lower than last quarter but expected as comparative figures for the previous year were significantly high. Pro forma EBITDA is only slightly up when we consider last year's Q3 but this is largely due to different spending seasonality. When we look at our full year target of around EUR 104 million EBITDA, we are definitely on track. Pro forma net income is up 112% compared to Q3 last year. This is mainly due to lower G&A as opposed to last year as well as a small tax effect that Ingo will explain during his financial [ detail ].

Let's move on to our update for our operational KPIs. We are running, as you know, 2 market-leading C destinations with kununu and XING. Both destinations help us address talents in the German-speaking markets, which is an important lever for our different B2B HR solutions.

Let's have a look at XING. XING is the #1 job network and biggest talent pool in terms of registered professionals in the German-speaking region. As of the end of Q3, we had 21.3 million registered professionals, up EUR 1.4 million versus last year and more than 300,000 in Q3 alone. We are still in the process of relaunching the XING user experience. Remember, our aim is to help our members better navigate and master the changing role at work. Last quarter, for example, we worked on improving our talent pool further by working on our skills algorithms as we know that members who have added skills to their profile enjoy 9x more recruiter visits in contrast to members without skills listed on their profile.

Moving on to kununu. kununu is a steadily growing platform and continues to be by far the leading destination for employer insights. As a reminder, these insights are split into employer ratings, salary data and cultural information. In total, users added 32% more additional highly valuable insights than last year. So we have seen excellent growth in terms of search for content on the kununu platform that helps talent navigate and find the best-fitting employer based on their personal preferences.

In Q3, kununu further continued its salary campaign, which enables them to provide our users with more than 2.3 million salary data points on 10,000 of employers. This is, by the way, a level of detail that nobody else provides. kununu will remain one of our core investment areas in 2022 and beyond as we see an ever-increasing need for employer transparency in times when talents are scars and will become even more scarce going forward, which brings me to the following snapshot comparing the Business Climate Index with labor demand index in Germany.

We see 2 important indicators here for the German economy. While the Ifo Index has been affected by rising inflation which is chocking up consumption, the demand for talent measured by the BA-X index remains at a high level. The 2 indicators seem to have decoupled from each other, even if we see a slight decline from the all-time highs in the BA-X index. My reading is that the shortage of labor is more dangerous for the economy than the shortage of demand. It's no longer like in the past when every economic turndown immediately dragged the entire labor market down with it. This structural development has a positive effect on our recruiting and Employer Branding business.

And here we go. As you can see, we've been able to maintain our previous quarter's growth momentum even with a worsening economy and slightly declining workforce demand index. We added 390 net new B2B SaaS customers for our different HR solutions in Q3 alone. That's more than we added last year in total. With that we grew to our total customer base to 14,100, which as a reminder, is around 10% of our addressable market estimated at 130,000 companies.

As a result, we grew our E-Recruiting revenues by 20% in Q3. This is a sequential decline compared to the previous quarter. But remember, reflect this already given that last year's comps were up strongly in the second half and quite weak in the first half. The growth was driven by most of our B2B products, including Employer Branding and XING TalentManager, but more strongly driven by our onlyfy 360 bundle offering, which is a package deal that bundles most of our branding and sourcing tools. With that, our B2B HR solutions account for almost 70% of total group sales now.

Speaking of onlyfy, you may have heard about our newly introduced B2B brand as well as our new product offering that we launched recently. Our new talent acquisition platform, onlyfy one, helps companies find suitable candidates quickly, easily and efficiently, and facilitates recruiting by not only automating processes and simplifying complex procedures, but also by supporting HR managers, thanks to AI.

In the labor market that is evolving from a supplier market to demand market, HR customers need to adjust their recruiting. Our products offer all the HR customers need in 1 tool and enables what we call new hiring. New hiring is about finding the perfect match, i.e., people who fit the company both culturally and professionally. We want to make this easier. This approach is reflected in the name onlyfy, with a combination of only, the one-and-only candidate and simplify, we simplify that.

That's why onlyfy one also offers some unique features. For example, HR managers receive recommendations pursued by talents from the XING network, which has over 21 million members, while they are still creating a job profile. They can then write to these candidates directly via the system and invite them to apply. The tool offers AI-based support in creating job advertisements and enables them to be published on many different channels as well as the integration of social media. Job seekers on the other side also benefit from simplified processes by being able to apply via WhatsApp or simply with their XING profile among other things.

Transparency in the application process as well as feedback at every step ensures a smooth candidate journey. This gives recruiters time to concentrate on what's important, the people. This makes our new SaaS solution especially suitable for small and medium-sized companies that are often not yet sufficiently digitally positioned in recruiting and have fewer resources for an elaborated talent search.

onlyfy one has been available since September and is continuously being expanded upon with new models. The existing products will be continued under the new brand name onlyfy. These are the onlyfy TalentManager, the onlyfy TalentpoolManager, onlyfy Job Ads, onlyfy Talent Service, onlyfy Employer Branding Profile and onlyfy 360.

Speaking of job ads, new functions have been added to the solution to enable companies to achieve greater reach and more applies with onlyfy job advertisements. Job advertisements will now also be distributed on other relevant job platforms as well as on social media channels. We introduced our new HR offering at [ Zukunft Personal Europe ] in Cologne two months ago.

For the first time since the outbreak of the pandemic, Europe's largest HR trade fair took place again here in September this year in the usual manner. More than 16,000 visitors came to Cologne. Among the approximately 500 exhibitors, one in particular stood out, us with onlyfy. You could hardly walk as [indiscernible] advertising process in and around the fair as well as the impressive 320 square meter booth, the starting signal for onlyfy.

And we've already received our first award. I'm happy to tell you that the research house Techconsult carried out a survey among more than 300 companies and HR departments, measuring the best HR software manufacturers, which is where our onlyfy solution received the [indiscernible] award.

I would also like to share some more concrete feedback from our HR clients that work with our different solutions every day, and it shows that we are on the right track. As you can see, our customers are very happy. Our customers value the different solutions, and they help them make their work easier, automate different tasks, type of people they're really looking for or increase their reach to present themselves as an attractive employer.

This is it from my side, and I'll now hand over to Ingo.

[Ingo Chu, executive]

Thank you, Petra. Hello, everybody. This is Ingo, and I will talk to you about our Q3 numbers in more detail. As we've said already, we are well on track in executing on our new refocused strategy.

Let's start with the key message points. Number one, we are growing our talent access to our C-side brands, XING and kununu. And as you know, that's good because it's the basis for our monetization [indiscernible]. Number two, revenues came in at EUR 78.7 million, growing 9% year-over-year. Number three, EBITDA came in at EUR 27 million. Number four, operating cash flow came in at EUR 16.6 million. And we are confirming our pro forma EBITDA guidance for the full year of around EUR 104 million.

Let's start with our P&L. As you know, all numbers are after IFRS 5. That means the Events business is taken out of current and previous year's numbers. Given that this is just a small business, the effects on numbers are negligible and they do not change the big picture. Now over to the P&L. Revenues amount to EUR 78.7 million, which is up 9% year-to-year. The key driver for revenue growth is E-Recruiting, which confirms our refocused strategy which builds on selling recruiting [ and the programming ] solutions. But also our smaller businesses, such as Marketing Solutions or InterNations are growing.

Reported EBITDA amounted EUR 27 million. That's slightly up year-over-year. Reported EBITDA margin came in at 34%. Pro forma EBITDA equals reported EBITDA. Compared to last year, margin came down from 37% in Q3 2021 to 34% in Q3 this year. We've talked about margins and year-over-year margin development already. As you know, we are in an investment mode and in investment mode, our target margin is below 30s.

Generally speaking, any headroom that we get from revenue development we will sensibly invest in future growth. So it is an investment to the talent for the coming years. Depreciation amounts to minus EUR 7.1 million. That's down year-over-year. Last year in Q3, we had extraordinary write-downs in connection with the relaunch of the XING app of minus EUR 5 million. This year, in Q3, we did not have extraordinary platform write-downs. As I've said, for the full year, we expect a normal level of platform write-downs overall.

Reported financial result amounts to minus EUR 1.1 million. That's down year-on-year. In Q3, we had a book loss from revaluation of financial assets from our cash reserves of minus EUR 1 million. As you know, we invest our excess cash in low-risk asset classes. And last year in Q3, we only had a book loss of minus EUR 0.1 million from the revaluation of financial assets. If you take out these effects, pro forma financial result amounts to minus EUR 0.2 million, which is on previous year's level. And as you know, this is mainly accounting only noncash cost for discounting these payments according to [ FX ].

Reported net income amounts to EUR 14.3 million. That's significantly up year-over-year because of the different seasonality of our [ extraordinary ] platform write-downs as well as a minor positive tax effect. Pro forma net income amounts to EUR 15 million, that's up 112% year-over-year.

Now on the next chart, you can see profitability by business unit. These are reported figures. The B2B E-Recruiting segment contributed EUR 35 million to profitability. That's up year-over-year. Margin is on previous year's level despite our investments in future growth in this business. In Q3, the B2C segment contributed EUR 4.2 million in segment EBITDA. That is down year-over-year. The margin is down as well. This reflects lower direct B2C monetization on the one hand and our investments in building the talent side with our brands, XING and kununu, on the other hand. B2B Marketing Solutions segment, now without the Events business, contributed EUR 2.5 million to profitability. That is slightly up year-over-year.

Now if we look at the revenue development by segment. B2B E-Recruiting revenues came in at EUR 52.5 million. That's up 20% year-over-year. We're very happy with that development. Of course, our comps are getting more difficult but we continue to see strong demand for recruiting solution as shortage of labor continues to characterize the German labor market. B2C revenues amount to EUR 22.4 million. That's down 9% year-over-year.

This development comes as expected. Key driver behind this development is direct B2C monetization at XING. As you know, with our refocused strategy, we concentrate on building our access to talent through XING. Short term, direct B2C monetization is less of a focus because we monetize that talent access through E-Recruiting on the B side. Finally, let's look at the B2B Marketing Solutions segment. Revenues amounted to EUR 3.8 million, which is slightly up.

If we look at our cost structure, again these are reported figures. In Q3, personnel costs before capitalization amount to EUR 34.2 million. That's an equivalent of 44% of revenue. That is up year-over-year. And as you know, we continue to invest into growth, and we are hiring, in particular, on the go-to-market side and our growth capabilities in general.

We look at marketing in Q3, overall marketing costs amount EUR 10.7 million. That's 14% of revenues. That's up year-over-year. And our last cost line is other operating expenses, as you all know, excludes as usual external services, legal audit consulting, payment processing, server hosting and other costs. In Q3, other operating expenses before capitalization amounted to EUR 13.2 million or 17% of revenues, which is up year-to-year. The main driver behind this development is the return to normality after COVID. We have more travel and entertainment, and we also spent more on consultants and freelancers.

Let's look at cash flows. Operating cash flow amounts to EUR 16.6 million. That's up year-over-year, driven mainly by changes in net working capital and EBITDA. Cash outs for operating investments amount to minus EUR 6.8 million down year-over-year. Now you would remember that last year, we had extraordinarily high CapEx in connection with the move into our new headquarters here in Hamburg. Cash out for interest paid, foreign exchange and rents amount to minus EUR 2.1 million. This is mainly lease cash outs. And with that, free cash flow before dividends amounts to EUR 7.7 million.

So to sum it up, in Q3, we continued to grow our E-Recruiting business and our C-side talent access. Overall, we are well on track in executing on our strategy, and we confirm our pro forma EBITDA guidance.

That's it for the numbers, and we are now happy to take your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We will firstly take few questions from Marius Fuhrberg.

[Marius Fuhrberg, analyst]

So my questions circle around the new B2B subscriptions, which came in quite satisfactory, I would say. Could you elaborate a little bit on the size of the new subscriptions? So especially in terms of ARPU. Are those like average what we saw in the past or are those larger or smaller clients that are coming in?

And also in this context, what should we expect in terms of growth then going forward because [indiscernible] might come right then the B2B subscriptions growth on today is the revenue growth from tomorrow, to make it easy. And that's what my question is basically important.

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

Yes. I'm happy to take that question. Let me first of all ensure you that in Q4, we will obviously continue our growth track. We envisage further subscription growth within Q4 in line with our general growth strategy and also the revenue ambition that we have left for this year, which is still valid. And as far as ARPU is concerned, we are happy to tell you that ARPU is up, slightly up in comparison on those new contracts.

[Operator]

We will continue with the questions from [indiscernible].

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. My first question would be on the pricing model. I think you have done some price increases, also changed your model for this. So do we see in the Q3 numbers already any price increase effect on the revenue side?

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

The price, yes, we are about to do a price increase. Actually, as we have subscription contracts that run for a year, the price increase actually takes about a year to go through the whole customer base. So there is no effect visible really in Q3 as we only started that price increase after the Zukunft Personal, which is mid-September. So there is nothing to be assumed in Q3. But going forward, the price increase will materialize in figures.

[Unknown Analyst]

And when you mentioned the BA-X. So you showed that the high level came a little bit down. So what would be in your opinion a critical level if it's going down further when you say, okay, that could be business critical?

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

Actually, that's really difficult to answer as you know. When we look at the last years, we obviously saw in Corona times that the index completely plummeted to a level that we've never seen before, and that then obviously also had an effect on our business. Looking at the years before, our B2B business was always continuously strongly growing, and the BA-X never had an index as high as it is like now. So it's -- I mean it's really difficult to define a concrete level that we would judge critical. I mean we do not expect the BA-X, as I said, coming down like in Corona times, even if there was a recession effect that might now influence it. So sorry to not be able to give a very clear answer on that level.

[Ingo Chu, executive]

Let me add to that. I mean, it also depends on what you mean by business critical. I mean, if you need by business critical that suddenly, the company is starting to do losses, we don't expect to do that.

[Unknown Analyst]

No, no, no.

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

We didn't do that in Corona times either.

[Ingo Chu, executive]

If you mean, for example, E-Recruiting revenues, that to be to shrink, we don't expect that. I mean, overall, what we do see and [indiscernible] it's very difficult to say, what does it mean in terms of BA-X index. But what Petra has told you already about is something which we see is holding true is that the macroeconomic situation is decoupling from the labor market. As long as the labor market remains strong, then we will grow. The level of strength probably will determine the level of our growth, okay? But we don't see it to become business critical in the sense of really...

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

That's true, like even in the worst Corona times, we were growing single digit. So no business critical level to be expected.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. And lastly, [indiscernible] do you see any changes in customer behavior right now? Or is it more or less everything running like in the past quarters?

[Ingo Chu, executive]

I would say it's like in the past quarters.

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

As expected.

[Operator]

We also received some questions over the chat. One question is regarding onlyfy. Is there an integration of other career networks also planned and other job portals?

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

Yes, definitely. When we said that onlyfy one, the product integrates the opportunity to actually publish those job ads and publish those open positions, this also includes job boards and social media portals, yes.

[Operator]

[indiscernible] do you sense an increased momentum in the fourth quarter?

[Ingo Chu, executive]

Well, basically in our guidance, full year guidance, which we've confirmed. So we plan to have EUR 104 million EBITDA on a full year basis. And last year, we had EUR 97 million. So that's about a 7% growth. So it's accelerating in Q4, yes.

[Operator]

Jumping back to onlyfy, we received another question. If you could give an indication as to how many customers you have won for onlyfy already?

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

We only launched the product mid-September, and we are referring to end of September figures here. So sorry if I can't give any figures. This is why actually I gave you the feedback and the fact that we won an award already with this brand-new product should tell that we are on a good track, but I won't give out any detailed figures for 1 week of sales in September. That does not make sense.

[Operator]

Was worth a shot, and we remain patient on that and look forward to receive some more details in future calls, of course. [Operator Instructions] Could you give us some indications on how revenue did from job ads develop how -- let me start again, how did revenues from job ads developed in the third quarter?

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

Actually, all our B2C -- all our B2B segments grew nicely in the third quarter. I mean, you know that the overall revenue growth of our B2B segment was 20%. And all of our segments contributed to that, including job postings.

[Ingo Chu, executive]

We would say we can add that job postings were particularly strong in Q3.

[Operator]

And what is the order of magnitude of the price increases that you have made?

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

Double digit.

[Ingo Chu, executive]

So it depends, it depends on the product, it depends within the product and which package give, it's between 10% and 20%.

[Operator]

Marius Fuhrberg has a follow-up question.

[Marius Fuhrberg, analyst]

I've developed some more questions. Firstly, in Q2 call, we mentioned or you mentioned that the number of positions open came up from 1.7 million to 1.9 million. How did this figure develop? Secondly, on the B2C side, I mean, we've discussed that from time to time, I guess, but we still see a declining trend in revenues, and I assume that we will continue to see so. Where would you expect a solid basis where revenues should not decline further? And the third one, also on onlyfy. Should we expect onlyfy to become your best B2B E-Recruiting brand and that basically all of your B2B customers will be also converted to onlyfy in order to standardize the product?

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

I'll start with the last question on onlyfy. So onlyfy is definitely the new brand for all our HR offerings, and we actually changed the name of all our products. For example, it's the onlyfy TalentManager now, not the XING TalentManager anymore, and our kununu offering is also the onlyfy Employer Branding offering now. So onlyfy is the brand for our HR customers.

Now as a matter of fact, so far, all products stay independent, and we have launched this new suite that has the idea to answer the needs of the small and medium-sized customers and offers a real -- a version of product that makes recruiting especially easy for them and incorporates all kind of features and [indiscernible] that they can use for their recruiting channel.

So over time, we will add other products like, for example, Employer Branding product within that recruiting suite. So over time, the scope will evolve and get even bigger. But for the time being, all existing products stay independent, and this is the new product we launched, and we will -- where we will grow the scope. The idea is obviously to generate more lock-in effect in that new product and create a suite where all recruiting needs are definitely served in one product. I hope that answers the onlyfy part.

And the second, do you want to answer the revenue question?

[Ingo Chu, executive]

Yes. Well, for us -- and it is a trade of direct B2C monetization versus maximizing our access to talent is a tradeoff that we have to balance within the context of our group strategy. Our group strategy is we want to become the #1 recruiting partner by winning talents. And so by winning talents, we have to maximize the talent access. And that is why, currently, we deliberately do not push direct B2C monetization on the contrary.

And so every product innovation that we do on the B2C side in XING, we give to everybody and not just to the paying members. We even take some premium features and we give them, not all of them, of course, but some, and give them to the basic members to maximize the talent access because we do see the major monetization potential in the future on the new recruiting site. And our right to play there is maximum tenant access.

And so for the time being, although financially, let me tell you, of course, it's painful. We accept the situation as it is, and in short term, we expect -- we continue to expect direct [indiscernible] planning, direct B2C monetization. I mean the way you can look at it is it's an investment into maximizing talent and therefore, investment into our group's winning aspiration. It's painful, but it's the right thing to do.

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

And I think the last question was the 1.9 million. To my knowledge, that's still the late stage but...

[Ingo Chu, executive]

It's 1.8 million.

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

1.8 million? Thank you. So this comes up in a monthly evidence, so still on a very high level.

[Marius Fuhrberg, analyst]

One follow-up, if I may, on the selling revenue that you received. It's very clear that it's a trade-off, but I was just wondering on what base scenario should be on the speed of or level of trading revenues. So what we saw of the current year now, is this something you would say would encourage you for the next couple of years as well?

[Ingo Chu, executive]

Well, it's a little bit early because we're currently in our budget planning and the right call in which we talk about this would be our February call. But let me press it differently. I would not assume a decrease and decline at this point in time for the next [indiscernible].

[Operator]

As we do not -- have received further questions also not in chat box, it appears that everything is answered for the moment, at least, and we are rounding up this earnings call. Thank you to all the participants for your interest and taking the time. And of course, I would like to take the chance to thank New Work for presenting and answering the questions. I hand over to you for final remarks.

[Petra Von Strombeck, executive]

Well, thank you very much for participating, and thank you for the questions and your interest in New Work. We will finalize the year as planned and look forward to the next call.

[Ingo Chu, executive]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you and have a great afternoon.