Austriacard Holdings AG (ACQ0.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Constantinos, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Austriacard Holdings conference call and live webcast to present and discuss the 9 months 2025 financial results. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. We're joined today by Mr. Manolis Kontos, Group CEO; Mr. Markus Kirchmayr, Group CFO; and Mr. Dimitris Haralabopoulos, Group Investor Relations Director. They will take you through the presentation and discuss the 9 months 2025 results. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Dimitris Haralabopoulos, Group Investor Relations Director.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Austriacard Holdings 9 Months 2025 Financial Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I'm joined today by Manolis Kontos, our Group CEO; and Markus Kirchmayr, Group CFO. Before we start, I'd like to remind everyone attending today's event that during the course of the call, we may refer to forward-looking statements and certain non-IFRS financial measures. The relevant definitions, reconciliations and disclaimers can be found in the results press release and the results presentation, which have been posted on our corporate website. With that, I'll now hand over to Manolis Kontos, Group CEO, who will take you through the highlights of the group's financial results. Manolis, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Dimitris, and welcome from my side, and thank you for having -- giving us the opportunity to share with you an update on the performance of the group as we have published it earlier today. We have put together a deck, which will help us to guide us through the financials. And we are more than happy at the end of this presentation to answer any questions. The aim of this meeting today is for you to have a better understanding of where do we stand up to now and what are the potential that we have in front of us. So with that, I will go directly in the results highlights. And I want to say -- I want to start by saying that -- we -- Q3 marked a return to the growth momentum of Austriacard. We have a very strong performance, as you can see in the financials from our 2 main categories, the Document Lifecycle and Digital Technologies, which have managed to alleviate revenue headwinds that we have faced from cyclical and macroeconomical factors, which burdened the Payment Solutions segment in H1. But I would say on that, this is, I would say, behind us. And that shows also from the Q3 performance that we are returning back to the growth trajectory that we have recorded over the course of the past few years. So getting now in the details of the numbers, we see that as far as Q3 gross profit performance, it was one of the strongest performance we have shown compared to the relevant quarter of 2024, we see also from an EBITDA point of view, a 16% growth. So this is all driven from the gross profit margin improvement. As I said, the 2 categories, the Document Lifecycle Management and the Digital Technologies are the one that are supporting this growth. But if we just also -- move from the P&L and look also at the balance sheet, main financials, you will see that we had a very strong operating cash flow, getting at EUR 23 million, growing 23% versus the same comparable period of 2024. And this is in the back of what we have said, working on improving our inventory management and cash collections and also normalizing our working capital buildup. This is something that we have communicated from the beginning of the year that this is one of our priorities. And I'm happy to say that this is now being reflected in our results. This shows also the free cash flow where we reached EUR 11.7 million versus EUR 2.7 million, which was at the same period of last year. And the leverage of the group is still at a very healthy level at 1.9x and the group's debt is below EUR 100 million at EUR 91 million and even improved versus the year-end position that we had in 2024. So we believe that the strategy that we have set is paying off. We see that also the focus that we have in the digital identity and payment solutions and the digital transformation solution is the right one. And that's why you see that this is already being, let's say, recorded in the Q3 and will also help fuel the growth in the coming quarters in the coming year. So if we now look at the main financials of the P&L, starting from the revenue line. So both Document Lifecycle Management and Digital Technologies recorded a 10% growth on a comparable basis versus the same 9 months of last year. The challenge that we have faced, which is something we have communicated earlier in the year, has to do with the Turkish market, the normalization of the Turkish market payment cards, which already has impacted us EUR 25 million. I would like to point out here that this also is behind us. So we don't have any more any impact -- negative impact expected from the Turkish market. So already in this quarter, we show a good performance compared to the same quarter of last year. And the second item, which we have again communicated had to do with a large-scale launch of metal card promotion that one of the fintech clients that we had done last year. Obviously, when you have a launch of a large project, there is a big order that is placed. And then when you compare to the previous year, you cannot compare on a like-to-like basis on a launch order when you then have replenishment orders, which are much less in volume. So if we take out this effect of the Turkish market and the metal cards, the group would have been showing a 3% growth even on the 9-month basis. If we look at the EBITDA margin, we also see that we reached 13.7% and the absolute number is 36.1%. This is coming again from a very strong performance of Q3. So the Q3 performance on an EBITDA margin level was one of the highest EBITDA margin we have achieved around 17% and this is in the back of having a quite favorable revenue mix coming from services and solutions. And that's why this has been our strategy, how we can increase the contribution of revenues coming from services and solutions and keeping, of course, the product sales, which continue to be a big part of our business, but complementing it with services and solutions. When we look at net profit, we moved from a very low level of EUR 2.5 million, which was the first half of the year to EUR 10 million already. And this is because of the fact that from the EBITDA -- from the EBITDA improvement. This is the reason that you see the improvement in the net profit. And also, we have managed to have lower financial expenses. which helped, let's say, the EBITDA difference to be flowing mostly on the net profit level. Operating cash flow, as I said, on the working capital improvement and also a very disciplined focus in improving the inventory management and the cash collections. Looking at the leverage, we see that I have a chart here that shows how this has been progressing over the course of the 9 months of 2024 and the full year of 2024. So we see that we -- our debt has been reduced from EUR 104 million at the same period of last year to EUR 91 million, and the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio closed at 1.9. On the working capital level, we see that we are at a similar level like last year. As we have mentioned, we expect this year is to be the last year that we'll be talking about working capital, let's say, because we have managed to now rationalize our inventory intake, especially from the semiconductors, which is the main component of our inventory value, which is used in the payment and identity cards that we produce. So we have now -- we are in the pleasant position to say that this, let's say, contracts that we had in place, we have managed to get out of commitments that we have. So that's why we are confident that as we enter in next year, the topic of the increased inventory levels will be behind us. Also on the free cash flow level, we see that we have reached EUR 11.7 million, which is coming from the improved practically operating cash flow generation. And our CapEx level is within the target range that we have communicated on the low end of it also between 4% and 5% of revenue. This is what we have given. The absolute amount that we have is 11.4%. All this CapEx that we are doing is mainly, I would say, going forward in capabilities that we want to add in development that we want to do because as far as our main capacity concerning the production of the payment cards and the identity cards, we are more than okay. So we don't need to do any large-scale investments to be able to accommodate the demand that we have -- we are anticipating. Now we will go to look at the situation from a geographical point of view. We will start with the biggest cluster, which is the Central and Eastern Europe cluster. The reason that we have this decline of 14% is because of the fact that the Central Europe cluster is the one that has the largest manufacturing site of the group, which is supplying most of the markets. So the fact that the Turkish market had seen that adjustment is impacting the intrasegment sales. So if we take -- this is around EUR 21 million. So this EUR 21 million is recorded here in the Central Eastern Europe cluster and is also recorded in the Turkish Middle East in-market sales cluster, which is the far right. So this is the main reason that we have this decline versus last year. In the middle part, which is Western Europe and U.S., there is a decline because of the metal cards related to this fintech launch that we had in 2024. If we take out this impact, I would say that both, and you will see it later on, the Western Europe and the Middle East and Africa clusters are showing a growth. And this is verifying our strategy, why we are focusing on these 2 clusters because these are the ones that have potential for us to grow because especially for the Middle East and Africa, we are under-indexed, underrepresented, and it poses a lot of opportunities for us to grow our footprint and also provide our services. So you will hear more and more us talking about this part of the world, and we will be investing in this part of the world in order to be able to get much more meaningful contribution from this cluster. As far as the Western Europe and U.S. cluster, again, we have very good news from the U.S. market. The U.S. market is an entry that we have done in the recent years. So this is the year that we are able to see a double-digit growth and the U.S. market is starting to contribute nicely in the portfolio of this cluster, but also in the portfolio of the group. And also, this is a cluster that has all the fintech clients. Most of the fintech clients are especially in the U.K. market, the ones that we are serving, where, as you might recall, we have quite a large market share in the fintech space. And the fintech and based on the research also that we are tracking is expected to continue to grow double digit. The fact that we have a big market share in this segment is also going to be supporting the growth that we expect in this cluster. Central Eastern Europe on the other side, it might not be showing significant growth because of the fact that we are quite a strong -- we have quite a strong market share in this cluster in most of the markets that we operate. But on the other side is the cluster that we are developing and launching a lot of digital services and solutions. That's why you will see that although we have this decline in the top line on the EBITDA level, it doesn't show to have such a big impact. And this is because of the fact that we have quite a good margin improvement from the contribution of digital solutions and services there. If we now look exactly to this point on the contribution of each of the 3 main categories that we report, the identity and payment continues to be the biggest let's say, solution cluster that we have at 51%. And then total life cycle and digital technologies is now increasing -- digital technologies are increasing, let's say, their contribution. So they have reached 9%. This is the one that has quite a strong potential to grow, and this is the one that we continue investing. And you will see more and more the contribution of the digital solutions in the total mix of the group. And as far as the geographical segments, Central Eastern Europe, as I mentioned, is the biggest cluster of the group. It's 53%. But all of the clusters have shown a growth in the last, let's say, in the 9 months. So if you look at the quarter-by-quarter comparison, we will see that we have added value in all the clusters. So all the clusters in Q3 have shown a positive growth. So H1 was the worst, let's say, performance that we have seen in this year. And going forward, Q3 onwards, we will be seeing a positive growth in all clusters and across all solutions, which leads us exactly to this point. So on the 9-month level, on the left side, you see EUR 303 million being the turnover that we recorded in last year 2024 in the same period. We are now at EUR 262 million. We are coming at 14% decline. I would like to remind that during the first half of the year, this percentage was closer to 17%. So we are now correcting this gap, let's say, that we have, and we are working in the direction to reduce further this decline on a full year basis. And this is in the back of initiatives starting from Central Europe on the digital technologies, where we already see an 8% growth versus the 9 months of last year. And this is coming also as a strong contributor is the projects that we have secured in Greece, which have shown a performance of 16% versus the same period of last year. In Western Europe and U.S., the fact that we see good performance in the fintech is recognized in the delivery also service. So the cards that we personalize, we also do the last mile of delivering these cards. So the fact that you see an increase here means that there is more volume of cards that's being personalized and distributed. And the point on U.S. that I made, we see 17% growth in the U.S. market versus the same period of last year, which is a combination of business that has to do with the segment of metal cards and the regular PVC cards. And the fact that we are now able to claim that in U.S., we also recently secured quite a significant contract, which will start contributing from next year, which has to do with enabling us to increase significantly the West Coast of U.S. because now we have one in the East Coast. So with this contract that we have secured, we will be able to finance the investment in a second [indiscernible] because this will be an enabler for us to be qualified for even more customers to be served because of the size of the U.S. market in order to be able to meet the service levels that are expected. You need to be able to serve both the West and East Coast at a certain time frame. So by saying that, we expect that U.S. will continue to be a good contributor in the growth in the coming year. Last but not least, on the Middle East and Africa and Turkish market, we are now able to say that on the Document Lifecycle Management, we are able to get recurring revenues. So this means that in the past, you might recall, we were mostly into election projects. Now we have expanded our portfolio and offering. We have made a very good, let's say, reference and reputation in the market. Now we are one of the players that are in position to qualify for holistic security documents projects that has to do with both managing information and data in a secure environment, printing on security documents level like this examination papers and dealing with of the results of the examination papers. So we are focusing on doing more projects in this space, continuing having election projects that we serve. So even now in the last quarter of this year, we will be having part of an election project that has to do with one of the African markets. So the Middle East and Africa region will be a combination of identity holistic solutions. This is what we will be focusing on and security -- holistic security projects. So this is the focus as far as that part of the world is concerned. And the good sign is that on the Turkish market, which is the one that has impacted us the most during the course of this year, there is early signs of stabilization. We are comparing quarter-on-quarter what is the volume of cards that we personalize and distribute. And we see an increase of 70% versus the second quarter of 2025, which gives us confidence that the issue that we faced in the first half is behind us since we are seeing that there is a volume uplift in the number of cards that are being, let's say, which means that there is more customers that our clients are, let's say, onboarding and are issuing cards. So the point I want to make also on the Turkish market is that although we have faced the situation that I mentioned in the first half and we don't have to anymore come back to it. It is to do with the fact that we have lost no customer. We continue being one of the biggest player in that market. We serve the majority of the major banks in Turkey. So all we have faced in the first half was a normalization of the inventory levels on that the customers have. With that being said, we move to the EBITDA performance on a group level. So the group recorded 36.1 million as actual in the 9 months compared to EUR 43.5. As I said, we are narrowing the gap that we have in the first half in Q3, having a strong Q3. This is in the back of cost-saving initiatives that we have done and also managing our selling and administrative costs. That's why you see a reduction in CEE. So the fact that we had this decline because of the intersegment sales to Turkey, we have managed on a gross profit level to improve our gross profit level. And that's why we reduced the impact of the top line when it comes to the EBITDA line. In Western Europe, it is purely because of this metal cards business that we had last year because if you look at the rest of the business, as I said earlier, there is a growth, and there will continue to be a growth in this part of the world that we are serving. And for MEA, it's purely because of the Turkish market. If you exclude the Turkish market, in MEA, we have a very strong pipeline of initiatives that we are implementing. We are starting to get traction on holistic citizen identity solutions, which is the strategy that we have communicated that we want to be focusing on. Already, we have a few projects that we are implementing and will be delivered by the end of this year, and there is a strong pipeline of initiatives that we are qualifying in order to be able to continue having a good progress on the citizen identity solutions in the Africa region. Going now on the solutions contribution, we see that it's crystal clear here that all the issue that we have faced in this year is coming from the 2 -- the metal cards from the Western Europe and the Turkish market. That's why you see this EUR 53 million. It's all related to this. The other 2, let's say, segments that we have, the Digital Technology and the Document Life cycle are both showing an increase of 10% and 11%, respectively. On a quarter-by-quarter level, it is worth now seeing exactly what I was saying in the beginning of our call that if we compare the quarters of this year, we see that Q1 was EUR 82.6 million, Q2 was EUR 81.1 million. This was the lowest quarter that we have seen. And Q3, we moved significantly at EUR 99 million turnover, having a growth of 22% versus the previous quarter. And that's why we are able to see on a 9-month level, a good improvement and closing, let's say, the gap that we had shown in the first half of the year. The same goes on the EBITDA level. We see that Q2 was the lowest quarter that we had in this year. Q3 is coming back strongly at EUR 17 million. And it's worth mentioning here that Q4 of last year on EBITDA level was one of the lowest of 2024, which means that our expectation and we are working in this direction in order to be able to overcome the value that we had of last year in Q4. And already it's shown from Q3 of this year, and we are confident that Q4 of this year will be stronger than the Q4 that we had last year. Net working capital, EUR 77.7 million is the 9 months position that we have. It's exactly the same position that we had in the 9 months of 2024. As I said, this situation will be completely normalized as we enter in 2026. So we are now still at this 22% of working capital on sales, but our projections and based on the orders we have in place for the replenishment of -- especially on the chips of the semiconductors, we are confident that we will be able to have a reduction of this percentage on sales as we enter in the next year. Debt kept at a very healthy level. So we see that the debt in '23 was EUR 95 million. In '24, it was EUR 95 million. And in the 9 months of '25, we are at EUR 91 million. So very good management of our balance sheet and our cash, which converts to a lower debt position, which also converts to lower financial cost that we have for the group. I would like to reiterate here what are the key drivers for Q4 2025 and beyond. So our focus in building and implementing our strategy is the right one. It's worth mentioning that besides the challenges that we have faced in 2025 in the first half of the year, we continued investing behind implementing our strategy because we are a long-term player. We are not a company that is looking on a quarter-to-quarter basis, but we look into investing behind solutions and people in order -- in R&D in order to be able to fuel the growth in the coming periods in the coming years. We are a long-term player. And as such, we continue implementing the strategy that we have despite the headwinds that we faced. And this is paying off. That's why we have a solid backlog of customer onboardings both in U.S. and in the Western region in Q4, which will start showing results also as we enter in the first half of next year. Our focus on building new technologies like our GaiaB Generative AI appliance with this partnership with a player like Dell, where Dell, it's a very strong vote of confidence in our ability and our know-how for a partner like Dell to be comfortable to pre-install on Dell servers our Generative AI software and be able to launch together such a solution shows that we really have something good here, and that's why partners like Dell are willing to work with us on having Generative AI on a control environment. This is the other thing I want to point out. We are not -- we are an organization that is very strong in data management. And this is another example of how we are able to provide to our customers Generative AI on control environment and not in the open cloud. So that way, they can have the confidence that their information is kept at their level. And that way, they can have the ability to get the benefits of Generative AI without having to be having the data there in the open. So our focus in holistic, let's say, identity solutions and document life cycle, combined with our enabling technologies is making us confident that we can continue on the growth trajectory that this group has shown in the recent years. So the progress that we have shown in Q3 reinforces exactly this confidence. And more importantly, all the investments that we are doing in the course of '25. So we didn't stop the investments. As I said, we continue doing the investments in people and R&D. And if you look at the financials, you will see that the R&D line is a line that has shown a growth even in the 9 months of this year despite the challenge that we faced because we strongly believe that you, as the organization have to continue investing in order to be able to have a long-term journey and progress as we have shown over the course of 130 years that this organization has been around. So all this noise, I'm sorry to say that we have heard during the course of this year and all this communication that has been out there about what is going on with Austriacard, what I want to say on this is that we have to be assessed on a more broader range and not on a short-term view. And this is why we keep alterating this that this is not a company that is being assessed on a quarter-by-quarter basis. this company that has to be assessed over time. So this is what I have from my side. And as I said in the beginning, happy to answer any questions or provide any clarifications that you would like.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from the line of Vrekos Georgios, Piraeus Securities.

I got 2 questions from my side. The first question is regarding guidance. At the Investor Day, the 6% to 7% CAGR was communicated based on the full year revenue full year '24, which were available at that time, which gets you to roughly EUR 470 million to EUR 480 million of revenues by 2027. But if we compare to the current run rate, which is around EUR 360 million estimate for full year 2025. It implies something closer to a 15% CAGR for 2026 and 2027. Could you please confirm if this interpretation is correct and whether these targets should still be viewed on the base or adjusted for the new reality?

So thank you for your question, very valid question to raise. Yes, we have given a 3-year CAGR, as you said, 6% to 7%. The fact is that during the course of 2025, we faced the 2 challenges that I have mentioned. So this reduces the base on which if we apply this percentage, you're right, we have to increase the guidance. I would say that at this stage, we are not finalized yet with our calculation for our revised midterm plan, which will include '26 onwards. I would say that we are working in this direction, but I cannot confirm at this stage that it will be exactly in line. I can tell you that we will be working in the direction of a strong growth being at double digit. But this is something that we have to provide as guidance once we have finalized our exercise internally. So the guidance on a trajectory is the same, but I will be able to confirm on the level of double digit after the completion of our workings.

And the second question is regarding the East Africa Examinations project. Since these projects -- these exams are not like elections, which only happens occasionally. Should we think of it as a one-off item or there is a potential for multiyear monetization given the recurring nature that the national exams have?

So sorry, I thought you said about the exams or the elections. I missed. Can you please repeat?

My question was regarding exams. Should we think of them as a one-off or something recurring given their nature?

Yes, the exams are recurring because they are happening every year. Elections are the ones that have this that are periodic. And that's why you see us focusing -- we started being present and visible in that part of the world starting from election projects so that way we can start building references and being visible on our capabilities. But now we have moved in the direction of pursuing more recurring revenue projects like the exams that happen every year. And we are also looking to expand further our portfolio beyond just the elections and exams to look at other type of security documents that combine technology with security, which are more on a recurring revenue basis.