TeamViewer AG

XETRA:TMV

Earnings Call Analysis

Strong Q3 Performance with Improved Guidance Amidst Challenging Market Conditions

In Q3 2024, the company achieved 8% revenue growth and 7% ARR growth, reaching EUR 169 million and EUR 669 million, respectively. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 15%, yielding a robust margin of 48%. The company narrowed its full-year revenue guidance to EUR 662-668 million, equating to 7-8% growth. Notably, the adjusted EBITDA margin guidance was raised to at least 44%. Despite expecting low single-digit growth in Q4 billings due to tougher comparisons, the firm remains confident in future growth, particularly in its expanding Enterprise segment, which showed 23% year-over-year revenue growth.

Strong Financial Performance Amidst Challenges

In the third quarter of 2024, the company reported solid financial performance with an 8% growth in revenue year-over-year in constant currency, reaching EUR 169 million. Successful implementation of the Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) metric has allowed for clearer assessment of predictable growth and better peer comparison. ARR saw a healthy growth of 7%, totaling EUR 669 million. This transformation appears to position the company favorably against peers, especially given the macroeconomic challenges.

Enterprise Growth Driving Profitability

The Enterprise segment demonstrated remarkable resilience with a 23% increase in revenue year-over-year. This sector contributed positively to the overall financial health, underlining a strategic pivot towards higher-value contracts. The adjusted EBITDA for the quarter improved by 15%, yielding an impressive margin of 48%, reflecting strong cost management and benefits from the altered Manchester United partnership. Net income surged by 49% to EUR 39.5 million, supported by lower share counts through the ongoing buyback program.

Navigating Expected Slowdown

Looking forward, management has narrowed the revenue guidance for the full year 2024 to between EUR 662 million and EUR 668 million, which corresponds to a growth rate between 7% and 8% year-over-year in constant currency. However, guidance for the fourth quarter indicates a softer performance with expectations for low single-digit growth in Billings, primarily due to challenging year-over-year comparisons from last year’s strong performance.

Strengthening Pipeline and Future Deals

Despite these potential headwinds, management expressed optimism about the pipeline for Enterprise deals, indicating a strong prospects for 2025. There are still ongoing discussions regarding potential slip deals into Q4, which may partly offset the anticipated slow growth. With Enterprise now constituting 22% of the revenue mix, up from 17% two years prior, the focus on strengthening the Enterprise pipeline appears to be paying off.

Cost Management and Shareholder Returns

Management's disciplined approach to controlling costs while continuing to invest in key areas such as R&D has yielded benefits. The adjusted EBITDA margin rose by 4 percentage points compared to previous quarters, while the cost base remains stable. Furthermore, the company has successfully completed 94% of its EUR 150 million share buyback program, signaling a commitment to returning value to shareholders while maintaining healthy cash flow. The company expects levered free cash flow to increase around 8% year-over-year.

Outlook on Pricing and Market Conditions

On the pricing front, new contracts are anticipated to reflect modest increases of about 3-4%, which is a significant drop from previous year's hikes of 10%. As the company continues to navigate a cautious macroeconomic landscape, management will maintain prudent pricing strategies moving forward. The Enterprise Net Retention Rate (NRR) stabilized at a solid 99%, highlighting the effectiveness in customer retention strategies despite external economic pressures.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while the company is poised to face challenging market dynamics in the immediate future, its strong financial metrics, strategic focus on Enterprise growth, and effective cost management stand as pillars for resilience. Investors should keep an eye on how the pipeline develops into the next year, particularly with the ambitious goals set against the backdrop of a cautious economic outlook.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the TeamViewer SE Q3 9 Months 2024 Conference -- Results Call and Webcast. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast.

At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Bisera Grubesic, Vice President, IR. Please go ahead.

[Bisera Grubesic, executive]

Thank you, operator, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to TeamViewer's Q3 2024 earnings call. I am Bisera Grubesic, Head of IR. And today, I am joined by our CEO, Oliver; and CFO, Michael, to present our results. As per usual, Oliver will run you through the quarterly business highlights. And in the second half, Michael will present the Q3 financials. The presentation will be concluded by a Q&A session. Please note that you can find the important notice and the APM disclosure on Slide 2 and 3 of the presentation.

I would now like to take a few minutes to explain the introduction of ARR, which we made this quarter. As a leading SaaS company, we today introduced annual recurring revenue at the group level and for our SMB and Enterprise business. This forward-looking KPI offers a clear view of annualized recurring revenue while eliminating multiyear deal noise from Billings. Aligning with SaaS peers, this market standard metric facilitates better growth assessment and peer comparison, and it provides a clear predictable view on our business. We calculate ARR as annualized recurring revenue for all active subscriptions at the last day of the reporting period. Specifically, we take the daily subscription revenue at the last calendar day, and we multiply this by 365 days.

The previous calculation method was based on last 12 months Billings. As a result of the new ARR calculation method, our net retention rate is now also calculated based on ARR. Additionally, we have decided to eliminate currency effects, and we will report NRR on ARR in constant currency. For more background and historical comparison information, please refer to the appendix of the earnings presentation, Slides 21, 22 and 23. And for transparency purposes, we will continue to disclose both ARR and NRR in all of our materials for one more quarter. Additionally, this information will be included in the comparable table on Slide 23 until Q4 '24.

And now I hand over to Oliver to kick off presentation.

[Oliver Steil, executive]

Thank you, Bisera. Good morning, everyone. Also a warm welcome from my side. Thank you for joining our Q3 2024 earnings call. Before we start with the content of this presentation, let me remind you that we are organizing an in-person field trip for investors and analysts in the U.K. on the 11th of December. The focus of this event is to experience our products through several demo stations firsthand and also to hear from our customers what benefits they generate with the help of our solutions. And we think this is an ideal opportunity to learn and understand more about our technology and solutions. If you're interested in coming and have not yet registered, please reach out to our IR team. I think it will be very beneficial to see you there in person.

Now let us look at the highlights of this quarter on Slide 5. So we've delivered another strong quarter from our perspective and are very satisfied that we've met our expectations for revenue growth and even exceeded our ambitions for profitability. And I'm also pleased with the continued strong momentum in our Enterprise business. In terms of revenue, we achieved a strong growth of 8% in constant currency year-over-year with continued positive contributions from all regions. Enterprise again showed strong revenue growth with 23% in constant currency year-over-year, which is a continuation of our already strong momentum that we saw this year.

Our ARR, important measure, as Bisera's note, was up 7% in constant currency year-over-year. And this shows that our underlying growth dynamics are healthy when we eliminate distortions and quarterly volatility that occur in Billings, especially from the multiyear deals with upfront payment. In addition to our revenue and ARR growth, we achieved an outstanding adjusted EBITDA margin of 48%, supported by the scale back of our Manchester United partnership, but also by our maintained strong cost discipline. Net income, therefore, increased significantly by 49% and adjusted earnings per share by 30% year-over-year. It is important to note that we continue to navigate in very challenging market conditions, particularly in this context, we have seen a good execution in the third quarter. We delivered on our growth ambitions with continued strong Enterprise momentum and achieved outstanding profitability.

Our strong healthy fundamentals are underscored by high single-digit ARR growth. With the first 9 months of the financial year behind us, we have narrowed our revenue guidance range for full year 2024 to between EUR 662 million and EUR 668 million, which is within our original revenue guidance range. And we have raised our adjusted EBITDA margin guidance by 1 percentage point to now at least 44%. Michael will elaborate on this in more detail later. I would also like to share our growth expectations for the fourth quarter. As a reminder, we will be facing more challenging comparison in Q4 due to last year's exceptionally strong Billings performance, especially within Enterprise.

We anticipate a similarly challenging trading environment to continue in Q4. And as such, we expect to see low single-digit growth in Billings for this period. This is also reflected in our updated revenue guidance range, which implies that we expect to see revenue growth in Q4, but at a lower level than what we've seen in Q3 and year-to-date. Michael will explain this in more detail later. However, I want to emphasize that we remain well positioned for significant growth once the macroeconomic conditions improve.

Let's now go back to Q3 and look at the regions and customer categories on Slide 6. All regions contributed to revenue growth in constant currency in the third quarter. We are satisfied with this development in light of a continued challenging macroeconomic environment as the global economic growth for 2024 is forecasted to be barely above 3% according to OECD. We see continued demand from customers and are building on our pipeline already for the year ahead. In constant currency, our growth trajectory was as follows: EMEA, our largest region, grew by a strong 9% year-over-year, Americas grew 7% and APAC grew 5% year-over-year. On the right side, you will notice that our Enterprise revenue has shown robust growth and increased by an impressive 23% year-over-year. Meanwhile, our SMB revenue achieved mid-single-digit growth and grew by 5% year-over-year in the third quarter. Enterprise ARR was up 20% and SMB ARR grew by 4%, both year-over-year and in constant currency. In the third quarter, Enterprise made up around 22% of our revenue mix, which is a significant increase from just 17% 2 years ago, and it reflects our efforts to successfully drive sustainable growth in Enterprise.

Let us move on to Slide 7 and look at the development of our different ARR value ranges in Enterprise and in SMB. Before we dive into this slide, I want to highlight that all numbers here are now based on ARR, which demonstrates sustained underlying growth in our business. Previously, we reported last 12-month Billings per ACV, annual contract value bucket. We will continue to disclose this information in the appendix of our earnings presentation for one more quarter, so you can still find it on Slide 26 in this deck.

Coming to ARR now. As you can see on the right side, Enterprise showed strong double-digit growth across all ARR buckets. We saw 16% growth in the lowest value range, a very strong growth of 23% and 26% in the middle range and an outstanding 30% year-over-year growth in the highest value range of over EUR 200,000 in ARR. For SMB, we saw 4% growth in the lowest value range and a good mid-single-digit growth of 8% in the highest value range of between EUR 1,500 and EUR 10,000. The decline of 1% in the middle SMB value range was mainly driven by upsell.

Now let's move to Slide 8 with an overview of new logo wins and interesting use cases. On this side -- slide, I would like to highlight 3 interesting customer stories to demonstrate the breadth of our solution portfolio and the value that our products bring to our customers. The first one is Coop. I'm sure you know a large retail wholesale company in Switzerland, one of the biggest Swiss companies overall. They are using Tensor for secure IT support of 22,000 devices. And they also decided for Frontline to improve their warehouse picking processes. I want to highlight this deal to underline our cross-sell potential. We offer a wide range of solutions for Enterprise customers, and we know these companies also like buying more than one product from the same trusted vendors.

The second example is CaetanoBus, a Portuguese OEM. You probably all have experienced their products multiple times already because they built airport shuttle buses that bring you from the terminal to the airplane. They also build and run other types of buses. For example, they provided the bus shuttles at the Olympic and Paralympic Games this year in Paris. CaetanoBus started to use our augmented reality solution for fleet management, so technicians can get remote expert help. If you know a bit about commercial vehicle business, you will know that they have strict SLAs in place. Every longer downtime of buses means penalties. So keeping maintenance as short as possible has a real financial impact for Caetano. The third one is YPF, one of the largest energy companies in South America, USD 20 billion in revenue. They are using TeamViewer Frontline for inspection and workflows in their refineries.

These need to be 100% correct. Otherwise, the operations of a whole plant can be compromised. That's why they decided to go digital with us and improve the entire workflow. Frontline now ensures that their operations are safer. Moreover, the documentation of the inspection is much easier now.

Before I hand over to Michael to run you through the financials, let me quickly talk about another business highlight that is worth mentioning here. At the end of October, we've launched Session Insights as a new AI-powered feature in our remote connectivity solutions. It will empower IT support teams to resolve issues faster and scale expertise even with limited staff. AI-generated session summaries serve as automated case documentation and relieve IT service desk of the critical yet time-consuming task of report writing. Moreover, it speeds up troubleshooting and handovers, reducing mean time to resolution and boosting customer satisfaction.

Additionally, powerful analytics dashboards allow businesses to track and meet service level agreements, identify recurring issues and trouble some applications to drive improvements and optimize resources. We got great feedback from our beta users and are looking forward to our customers experimenting with it and adopting it in the future. And of course, we are already working on additional features and integrate AI more broadly in our platform and solutions.

And with this, I hand it over to Michael for the financial overview. Thank you.

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Thank you, Oliver, and good morning to everyone in the call today. As Bisera mentioned, I'm very pleased that today, we introduced annual recurring revenue. This milestone is significant for our company. And let me also emphasize in this call that we have chosen for a textbook example of the ARR definition by annualizing the daily subscription revenue at the last day of the reporting period. This forward-looking KPI provides a clear predictable view of our annualized revenues. And more importantly, it eliminates lengthy discussions and distortion from multiyear deal noise in the Billings. Today, I'm pleased to also present our performance through this forward-looking KPI. ARR underscores our healthy growing business and facilitates better growth assessment and peer comparison.

Let us now start with a look at our financials for the third quarter and first 9 months of 2024. Next slide, please. We again delivered a good set of results. Our Q3 top line performance was solid with 8% revenue growth in constant currency and reached EUR 169 million. Our ARR showed a healthy 7% growth in constant currency and amounted to EUR 669 million. Enterprise NRR on ARR remained stable sequentially at a solid 99%. Billings execution was solid amidst a consistently challenging macro environment and delivered a 4% growth in constant currency for the quarter. We are, in particular, pleased with a 15% higher adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter and a very strong adjusted EBITDA margin of 48%. This further enhances our best-in-class margin profile.

Adjusted earnings per share strongly increased by 30% to EUR 0.29. This growth was primarily driven by the increase in EBITDA and by lower number of shares due to our ongoing share buyback program. Levered free cash flow was EUR 41 million and EUR 143 million year-to-date and developed as anticipated. As we saw the positive cash flow effect from the revised scope of the Manchester United partnership already in the second quarter, there was no cash effect in the third quarter.

Now let's dive into the details of our results. Next slide, please. We delivered on our growth ambitions with continued revenue and ARR growth, and we achieved outstanding profitability this quarter. Revenue developed in line with our expectations and increased by 8% year-over-year in constant currency. This percentage is corrected for FX headwinds of EUR 2.4 million from last year's Billings.

Our ARR increased by 7% year-over-year in constant currency, whilst our Billings grew by 4% in the same period. Regarding Billings, we saw an increase in multiyear deals with upfront payment to [ EUR 17 million ], up 10% year-over-year. As previously stated, our first customers with multiyear deals with upfront payment became eligible for renewal in the third quarter. We are pleased to report that renewals slightly exceeded our expectations. We now expect multiyear deals with upfront payments to range between EUR 60 million to EUR 66 million for the full year 2024. Billings from new subscribers were again notably above EUR 10 million in the third quarter. In fact, we consider the actual inflow of EUR 40 million from new subscribers, another strong result.

Our adjusted EBITDA was EUR 81 million in the third quarter, significantly up with 15%, as we maintained our cost discipline whilst we continue to invest in innovation and Enterprise growth. As previously announced, the scale back of our partnership with Manchester United also had a very positive effect on our cost base. With this, we have realized a significant uptick in adjusted EBITDA margin of 4 percentage points compared to Q3 last year.

Let us continue with our Enterprise business on Slide 13. All Enterprise KPIs in the third quarter demonstrate our strong momentum in this part of our business. The growth in Enterprise ARR and NRR on ARR confirms the health of our business and reassures us of our steady progress towards becoming a more Enterprise-focused company. Enterprise revenue increased by 23% year-over-year in constant currency and reached EUR 37 million in Q3. Enterprise ARR increased by 20% year-over-year in constant currency and amounted to EUR 139 million. The bottom left chart illustrates a consistent growth in Enterprise ARR above 20% in 2024 thus far. This confirms the robust fundamentals of our strong Enterprise business when removing distortions from multiyear deals in Billings. You can clearly see their large effect on the quarterly Billings in the second line of this graph.

As the bottom right chart shows, the Enterprise NRR and ARR has been trending upwards since the end of last year and remained stable sequentially from the second quarter, now at 99%. Enterprise ASP was up to EUR 35,000 and shows both year-over-year and sequential improvement. Our customer base expanded by more than 11% compared to 12 months ago, now totaling almost 4,500 enterprise customers.

Let me now come to our SMB business on Slide 14. SMB revenue increased by 5% in constant currency year-over-year to EUR 132 million. ARR grew by 4% year-over-year in constant currency, whereas Billings slightly declined by 2% in the same period. Also here, as illustrated in the bottom left chart, multiyear deals have caused negative distortions in the quarterly SMB Billings trend. The SMB ARR, however, reflects the true underlying fundamentals of a growing SMB business at a mid-single-digit growth rate. And at the end of the third quarter, the SMB subscriber base was around 639,000 customers, which again -- which is again a slight increase both sequentially and year-over-year. Also, the subscriber churn improved sequentially to 15.4% in Q3. As mentioned during our previous earnings call, the uptick in churn in the first half of this year was mainly the result of increased free-to-paid activities in the comparable prior year period. Since we typically reduce free-to-paid activities in the second half of the year, this effect was now less pronounced in Q3 as we had anticipated.

Let us take a look at our cost base on Slide 15. Our adjusted EBITDA increased by 15% year-over-year in Q3 and surpassed the 7% reported growth in revenue. Our total cost base in the third quarter remained stable year-over-year. Consequently, adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 4 percentage points to 48%, which is an outstanding achievement. Adjusted for FX headwinds in revenue from prior year Billings, adjusted EBITDA margin would have been even higher at 49%. Cost of goods sold increased by 12% year-over-year, which was mainly driven by higher deployment costs of Frontline projects. Marketing decreased by 33% year-over-year and now reflects the reduced scope of our partnership with Manchester United, which took effect for the first time in Q3.

We continue to invest into our future growth over the last 12 months. Sales costs increased by 18% year-over-year, driven by the FTE buildup throughout the last quarters. Costs allocated into R&D were up 13% year-over-year as we have increased investments into our product and build up FTEs, which was partially offset by a reduction in external R&D contractors. In addition, some of our investments in our product platform are allocated into COGS rather than R&D. The increase of 16% in G&A cost is the result of phasing effects. Far more important is the year-to-date G&A was only up 5% year-over-year and remained stable as a percentage of revenue. Other costs increased from a very low base due to slightly higher bad debt expenses.

Let us move on to net income and EPS development on Slide 16. Our nonrecurring costs in Q3 decreased by 37% year-over-year, primarily due to positive valuation effects related to our FX hedging. This contributed to the increase in reported EBITDA. D&A decreased by 36% year-over-year as the PPA related to the acquisition of TeamViewer by Permira in 2014 was fully amortized in July this year. This resulted in a positive pretax over-year effect of EUR 5.3 million. Post-tax, this positively affected the reported net income by EUR 3.8 million in the third quarter. This PPA effect will continue to have a similar positive effect over the next 3 quarters.

And as a result, our net income in Q3 increased significantly by 49% year-over-year to EUR 39.5 million, and our basic earnings per share increased significantly by 60% to EUR 0.25. Our adjusted earnings per share were up 30% year-over-year to EUR 0.29, supported by a higher EBITDA and the reduced number of shares outstanding due to our continued share buyback program. In August, we canceled 4 million ordinary shares that had been repurchased through our share buyback program and were held in treasury. As a result, the share capital has been reduced from 174 million to 170 million ordinary shares outstanding.

With this, let's move on to cash flows on Slide 17. Our levered free cash flow year-to-date is EUR 143 million, broadly flat year-over-year and fully in line with our expectations. Let me address the main developments in Q3. The year-over-year decrease in levered free cash flow was mostly the result of a 43% higher income -- higher in income tax paid. This is because of a 49% higher EBT in the quarter, which benefited from the reduced Manchester United partnership. Let me give some more color on some year-to-date cash flow components presented on this slide. Pretax unlevered free cash flow was up 7% year-over-year to EUR 200 million with a corresponding pretax levered cash conversion at a stable 88%.

On the other hand, our income tax paid year-to-date increased by 46% to EUR 45 million, which is the result of 2 things. First, our profit before tax in the first 9 months was up 20%. And second, our levered free cash flow in the first 9 months of 2023 was supported by a EUR 6 million one-off tax effect. So for the full year 2024, we remain confident that our levered free cash flow will increase by around 8% year-over-year and primarily driven by positive working capital contribution, including positive effects from the sponsorship adjustments in Q4.

I will now give you a short update on our financing on Slide 18. We have again improved our leverage during the quarter. At the end of Q3, cash and cash equivalents were EUR 24 million. We generated a robust operating cash flow of EUR 167 million year-to-date, offset by cash outflows of EUR 120 million related to our share buyback program and net debt repayment of EUR 65 million. Consequently, our financial liabilities improved to EUR 468 million compared to the end of 2023. Net financial liabilities were slightly higher at EUR 444 million compared to year-end 2023 as a result of reduced cash and cash equivalents of around EUR 24 million at the end of Q3.

Our financial leverage ratio also improved to 1.6x per end of the third quarter. We continue to aim for a target ratio of around 1.3x per end of the year on the back of a further improving adjusted EBITDA in the remaining months of the year. To give you an update to our ongoing share buyback program, we returned EUR 26 million to our shareholders in the third quarter. And as of Monday, the 4th of November, so including shares bought back after the end of Q3, we have now bought back shares with a combined value of almost EUR 141 million and thus completed around 94% of our ongoing EUR 150 million share buyback program, which we started in December 2023. Our debt maturity profile remains unchanged from our latest earnings call.

Our existing syndicated RCF facilities, '22 and '24 are fully committed until the end of 2027 and '29, respectively. We paid back EUR 35 million of utilized credit from the 2022 RCF in the third quarter and reduced the current utilization to EUR 20 million per quarter end.

Let us continue with our financial guidance on Slide 19. To sum up, we continue to navigate in challenging market conditions. Particularly in this context, we have seen a good execution in the third quarter. We delivered on our growth ambitions with continued strong Enterprise momentum and achieved outstanding profitability. Our strong and healthy fundamentals are underscored by a high single-digit ARR growth. Year-to-date, revenue was EUR 494 million, which corresponds to 9% growth in constant currency year-over-year.

We have narrowed our revenue guidance range for full year 2024 to between EUR 662 million to EUR 668 million, which is well within our original revenue guidance range. Guided revenue range corresponds, therefore, to 7% to 8% growth on a constant currency basis. As you know, we continuously build on our pipeline. But let me repeat again, current macro environment is unchanged and still very challenging. We continue to see a delay in customer decision-making, and we also hear this more broadly in the industry and across all our regions.

So we anticipate a similarly challenging trading environment to continue in Q4. As such, we expect to see low single-digit growth in Billings for this period. This also reflected in our updated revenue guidance range, which implies that we expect to see revenue growth in Q4, but at a lower level than what we have seen in Q3 and year-to-date. Our revenue trajectory is fueled by Billings from last 12 months. In this context, please be aware that we have seen a meaningful contribution in total Billings from -- mix from multiyear deals of EUR 44 million and higher than we had originally anticipated. And multiyear deals translate into revenue over more than 1 year, on average over 3 years. Please take this into account when you also do the modeling revenue for Q4 as well as for the financial year 2025 and onwards.

In addition, our adjusted EBITDA margin is strong at 43% year-to-date. After an outstanding margin of 48% in Q3, we again expect to see high profitability in Q4 as well, maybe 1% lower than in Q3. Therefore, we have raised our adjusted EBITDA margin guidance by 1 percentage point to now at least 44%. We continue to invest in important areas as R&D, but we will also see benefits from cost efficiency from early investments such as automation.

With that, I would like to hand it back to the operator and open for the Q&A session.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from Alice Jennings with Barclays.

[Alice Jennings, analyst]

So if I could just ask a couple of questions. The first one on pricing. So in the past, I believe that you've done price increases often in the fourth quarter for the coming year. Can you comment at all on what price increases we should expect? Will this be within the normalized range of 3% to 4% that you've mentioned previously? And then my second question is just on Enterprise. So Enterprise was again up very strongly in the quarter, but it is facing much tougher comps going into Q4. How does the pipeline look for the fourth quarter? What kind of level of conversion are you assuming? And have you seen any change in the pipeline conversion recently like already in the first month of the quarter?

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

I can start with the price. Actually, you're spot on. So 3%, this is what we had throughout this year. We also expect that for the fourth quarter. And this is exactly also from the comp comparison last year, it was in the vicinity of 10%. But this is exactly what we also mentioned at the beginning of the year.

[Oliver Steil, executive]

And I think you had a reference to, especially in Q4, that's not -- we roll the price increases through the base. So there's no specific seasonality on the price increases. So it's upon renewal, we inform customers that there is an increase in price, and that's rolling through the base. And so there's no specifics on the seasonality there, if that was the question. Yes.

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

And on pipe, I can continue. So we see a good pipe. And actually, you saw the 32% Billings growth in Enterprise in Q3 or [ 23% ] on ARR. Actually, in this growth of Q3, there were also some deals which slipped into Q4. So too early to say whether we will be able to close them in Q4 or whether it will move into H1 of 2025, but we see a good pipe, and this is why we are also confident. What is important to note is that Q4 comp last year was very strong, and this is why we also ease it a little bit with regard to the second half of the Billings growth.

[Oliver Steil, executive]

And you asked for conversion rates, I would say, largely unchanged in terms of how we see the business developing. As Michael said, good pipeline for Q4. We also had a good pipeline for Q3. This is not an easy market, as we've said. I think, repeatedly, customers take time, a lot of uncertainty in the system, and not the least with like elections in the U.S. and so forth. So conversion could have been better at the end of Q3, but not materially different than what we've seen in the last quarters. And that's also what we're assuming into the fourth quarter. Now fourth quarter is a bigger Enterprise quarter. So there's many more deals in flow, obviously, than in other quarters.

[Operator]

The next question is from Gustav Froberg with Berenberg.

[Gustav Froberg, analyst]

I just have one actually. You said we're 94% through the share buyback program. You're still generating a lot of cash. You're expecting free cash flow to be up 8% year-on-year once we get through Q4 as well. What are the thoughts around capital allocation and the continuation of a buyback program? Is that something you would like to do or would you like to put money to work elsewhere?

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Yes. A quick correction on the cash flow, around 8%, not at 8%, but this is a minor one. But with regard to the share buyback, first of all, we intend to completely finalize it, as mentioned. And with regard to '25, share buybacks is for us always a part of the full equation, the capital allocation strategy, but we obviously also do that in the absence of M&A. So let's stay a little bit tuned, Gustav with us until we have the full set of numbers for the full year, and we will give an update then with the guidance next year.

[Operator]

The next question is from Agarwal Deepshikha with Goldman Sachs.

[Deepshikha Agarwal, analyst]

Just I think [ 2 ] on misunderstanding like on the Enterprise dynamics, definitely like it was better than what was expected in this quarter. So how should we think about like [Technical Difficulty] quarters given how [Technical Difficulty].

[Oliver Steil, executive]

No chance to -- no chance to understand you. Sorry. It's -- your line is noisy and very low volume. Can you repeat, please?

[Deepshikha Agarwal, analyst]

Sure. Can you hear me now?

[Oliver Steil, executive]

Yes.

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Yes.

[Deepshikha Agarwal, analyst]

Yes. So first one is basically on the Enterprise in terms of -- there is obviously macro, which is like sort of weighing on it, but how do you see the pipeline for Enterprise going forward over the next few quarters in that context? That's my first question. Second one is on the SMB front. The SMB saw like a decline on a constant -- the Billings basically on a constant currency basis for the first time, like I think when we look at it. So is there anything to be mindful of that we should keep in mind going forward in terms of what drove that? And third one is basically a follow-up to the question on capital allocation. You mentioned like buybacks will definitely be there in the absence of M&A. So how -- like when it comes to the pipeline that you have in terms of M&A, what are the things that you're currently focusing on when it comes to M&A pipeline?

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Let me start with the SMB question. First of all, SMB, as you know and heard, was driven in the positive upswing by the price increases of 10% last year. So this year, 3%, one driving factor. And the second main driving factor is, of course, the lower multiyear deals in the SMB structure. These are the 2 driving factors. But this is why we, on purpose, introduced now ARR, so to show and demonstrate that this is a healthy mid-single business. And you saw now the first 4 quarters back [ 6%, 5%, 4%, 4% ], which is the growth on SMB, and this is what you also should anticipate going forward.

[Oliver Steil, executive]

I think it's important to note it's not a decline, it's an ARR growth.

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Yes.

[Oliver Steil, executive]

Enterprise pipeline, I think first question, as we discussed already previous question, good pipeline, good pipeline coverage for the year, which we had seen, also good pipeline conversion. Yes, tough comps because last year was a very, very nice rally on the Billings side. I think it's important to look at ARR, again, that's why we introduced it, strong double-digit growth on Enterprise consistently over the last quarters, and that's also what we're seeing. And into next year, basically unchanged. And many of the initiatives we've put in place, also the changes is helping to build pipeline also for 2025. So in this sense, we feel very good about the Enterprise development. As I think we've seen even in quarters where the market around us is weak and other companies also report on challenges in the Enterprise space. We are able to bring these deals in, sometimes bigger multiyear deals, sometimes more focused on 1 year, hence, the focus on ARR, and you see that underlying health of the business.

Capital allocation, I think M&A, there is no, say, M&A pipeline that we would discuss here. As you know us, we have always been looking at tuck-in M&A. We like to bring on teams with solutions and add them to the platform to make our overall proposition better, especially towards Enterprise customers, but also partly towards SMB. We work in partnership. We work in smaller acquisitions. Clearly, over the last years, valuations, we found valuations weren't very attractive. And there's more happening in this tech space now. We continue to look, but there's nothing which we would want to report on in this call. So stay tuned on this one. But I think in general, tuck-in M&A, smaller, medium-sized type business.

[Operator]

The next question is from Ben Castillo-Bernaus, BNP Exane.

[Ben Castillo-Bernaus, analyst]

So just on the ARR metric, so plus 7% this quarter. I guess Q4, the guidance there implies revenue slow as you've indicated. I guess to what extent is that just kind of caution or prudence given the macro versus anything specific to call out on the implied revenue slowdown? I know the comps were tougher on Billings, but if I recall, nothing specific to call out on revenue or ARR. So maybe some color there. And then I just have one follow-up on the NRR metric, please.

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Yes, exactly, as you assume, it's rather overall caution is, which we intend to be in a better place and safer place, given also what happens around us. And we saw that now multiple times. This is why we also put out some caution already with Q2. What was the second one? NRR?

[Ben Castillo-Bernaus, analyst]

Yes. So Enterprise NRR, so that's running below 100% NRR on ARR.

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Yes. Yes.

[Ben Castillo-Bernaus, analyst]

I guess in your Enterprise business, should that not be -- is the ambition to see that NRR metric be sustainably running above 100%, given you should be able to kind of cross-sell and upsell...

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Clearly. Clearly. This is what -- absolutely, Ben. This is what we are striving for. So the NRR, and you see the growth from 94% now up to 99%, and that should be in the vicinity of 100% or also a notch up above 100%, yes.

[Oliver Steil, executive]

Yes. And ARR is -- I mean NRR based on ARR is the right metric to look at. It's obviously a tougher metric than any NRR that is based on Billings, including potentially multiyear effects or other effects. So the ARR logic is the right logic, which is strictest definition for what we need to do. And on that one, we are close to 100% now. But yes, absolutely, this should continue to develop upwards.

[Operator]

The next question is from Toby Ogg with JPMorgan.

[Toby Ogg, analyst]

Yes. A couple of questions from me. Maybe just firstly, just on the Billings growth of low single-digit for Q4. You mentioned a more difficult comp base as a headwind, but then you've also got the potential to close out some of these slip deals. So just wondering if you included the slip deals in that sort of low single-digit assumption, and then what gives you the confidence in that low single-digit indication for Q4? And then just on '25, any sort of early indications around kind of how we should be thinking about 2025? Any headwinds, any tailwinds that we should be thinking about across the top line metrics and on the margins?

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Yes. So as Oliver mentioned, the pipe is good. And you have obviously, in every quarter moving factors. Some deals slip, then they close, then sometimes you get a positive surprise like we got in Q2. So in the overall mix, we anticipated that some of the deals might also close in this lower-digit growth of the Billings. And this is why we also give this level of transparency and stability in the mix of Billings and ARR and revenue. This is why we obviously ask you to take also the multiyear deals into account when you model the Q4 and '25 outlook on revenue.

[Oliver Steil, executive]

And I think specifically to the slip deals, just be cautious. I mean, yes, they slipped and they should convert, but you never know. And therefore, we've taken the view that we looked at the pipeline for Q4, and that educates our -- the direction that we're giving you. And then if we have slip deals coming in and also the year-end development might be an upside, but it's too early to tell. There's too much uncertainty in the market, and therefore, we have been cautious on this one.

And then same logic applies to 2025. From a current perspective, we wouldn't model or expect any specific additional headwind, but need a tailwind. Obviously, now we're just coming out of the U.S. election, and that might have all kinds of impact in certain markets. You could easily argue that there's uncertainty out of the system, and that will be positive in the U.S., but then maybe you have the opposite effect in the -- in EMEA and APAC. And I think from today's perspective, please assume a continuation of the trends for 2025 as we speak today and more concrete will then be in February when we come with the full year numbers.

[Operator]

The next question is from George Webb with Morgan Stanley.

[George Webb, analyst]

Just one for me. I guess with Peter Turner leaving the business, it doesn't seem like there's been a decision to replace a replacement Chief Commercial Officer instead to kind of distribute the responsibilities amongst the management team. Can you just talk a little bit about why you thought that was the better approach than hiring a direct replacement? And if there's anything that's going to be changing going forward on the commercial strategy?

[Oliver Steil, executive]

Sorry, can you repeat the exact question? I mean I get the topic, but I wasn't -- what's the exact question? Sorry.

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

[ Why don't you repeat? ]

[George Webb, analyst]

Yes. Sure. Yes. Sure. I mean just the thought process of the Management Board to not replace the direct replacement for a CCO role, but rather to distribute responsibilities, why was that kind of the preferred choice? And then if anything is going to be changing around the commercial strategy as you look forward as a result of that?

[Oliver Steil, executive]

No. So no changes around the commercial strategy. That's unchanged. The thinking there is clearly we have the right strategy, as you can see with the Enterprise growth and the success in the different parts of the business. So that's not changing. We wanted to have the flexibility, quite honestly, to put extra emphasis on certain functional roles around marketing, around customer management into the base and also customer base marketing, campaigning. And we were -- our thinking process is that given that this -- that Pete will only roll out towards mid of next year, we want to have a good look of which functions and skills we want to add to the team and how we do this in the best possible way.

We work as a senior leadership team very consistently and coherently, so it might make sense to put these functionalities and capabilities into the senior leadership team, will also give us freedom to see how we evolve the Management Board structure over time. And that flexibility was the guiding principle, so to say. And we have time. I mean, it's the whole point. There's nothing we need to rush at the moment.

[Operator]

The next question is from Victor Cheng with Bank of America.

[Hin Fung Cheng, analyst]

A couple, if I may. I guess, first of all, going back to kind of the ACV versus ARR in the SMB segment. I noticed, I think for Q3 this year, the last 12 months, it's quite comparable at EUR 530 million. But if we look at last year, there's a difference of EUR 20 million. I think you alluded earlier that's a bit to do with multiyear deals. But even then, I think the multiyear difference at least isn't that big of a difference. Is there some other nonrecurring components in the SMB that you have taken off in the ARR? And then secondly, on margins, congrats on the margin improvement this quarter. But if I look at sales, cost of sales or other line items in aggregate ex marketing, I think the costs actually have gone up mid-teens. So I guess it goes back to the long recurring question of how the margins fare in Enterprise versus SMB. Can you give us some color on that?

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

Yes. Let me start with the later one. This margin question, SMB versus Enterprise, we don't do that. We don't have it. We don't disclose it. But look at us from a complete company perspective, Enterprise share overall is growing, and we are able to improve the margin step by step, which should be a good indicator of the overall decomposition. I would leave it there for now.

On the question with regard to ACV and ARR, whether there are other components, of course, hardware and professional services. But I think you related the question to SMB. And there, there's obviously almost nothing on professional services. It's rather the Enterprise space.

[Oliver Steil, executive]

Yes. So the effect -- in SMB, the conversion from ACV to ARR is effectively from Billings to ARR, if you want, is effectively a multiyear deal effect. There is no [Technical Difficulty] in SMB.

[Hin Fung Cheng, analyst]

So it looks like you don't have any multiyear deals in SMB then in the last 12 months versus maybe quite a bit more in the prior -- in 2022 to '23.

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

We have multiyear deals this year, but at a lower level.

[Oliver Steil, executive]

Yes, less of them, but not no. Yes. And I think on the margin, just to add to this, I think we're now having this discussion for quite some quarters. I mean, as a matter of fact, we have done 3 investments into Enterprise by investing into the brand and investing into the sales force. And now the Enterprise portion of the business is increasing, as Michael say, yet the margins are expanding because we are reaping the scale benefits of better productivity of the salespeople, a reduction in brand spend and an overall economies of scale in the business. So I think it will be hard to make the case that the Enterprise -- increase in Enterprise share puts pressure on our margins. We just don't see it, Victor. And I think it's just a fact, sorry to say.

[Hin Fung Cheng, analyst]

Okay. And actually, if I can squeeze one in on pricing. I think you did 10% last year, it's closer to 3% this year. Is there any kind of look into that whether that can be a bit higher going into next year, maybe especially on the Enterprise higher-end side?

[Michael Wilkens, executive]

No. Actually, we don't do price ups in the Enterprise segment, very rarely bespoke. But in general, the 10% and the 3% are referred to the SMB, and we feel today -- as of today, comfortable to think also going forward in the vicinity of 3%.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. This concludes our Q&A session, and the conference is now over. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.