Esker SA (ALESK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everyone, for this presentation of Esker's 2021 financial statements. My name is Emmanuel Olivier, and I will be walking you through our performance for 2021. So let's dive right in. 2021, in a nutshell, so let's see what are the most important things to remember about the 2021 performance at Esker. First of all, what we saw is an accelerated growth of our SaaS revenue. We grew that revenue 23% in constant currency and 22% in current rates. In 2021, the slight difference is mostly coming from the U.S. dollar. But in both cases, very good performance on the SaaS front. Of course, that is driving company revenue overall, 20% growth in constant currencies and 19% in current rates. We will be discussing that further in the next slide. In addition to revenue performance, we also had a very good year in terms of bookings. So those are the contracts -- the new contracts that have been signed in 2021, and that will essentially fuel company's growth in 2022 and the years after. So from that perspective, we saw a 25% increase in booking value compared to 2020, 34% growth over 2019. And comparing that performance with 2019 as well, because we know that 2020 was kind of a rather unusual year due to COVID, but very good dynamic in both cases. One thing to notice in our 2021 result is the excellent performance of Esker in the Americas, both in terms of revenue and in terms of bookings. From a revenue perspective, we had a 24% growth of revenue overall across all channels of revenue in the Americas and 45% increase in bookings value for the region. So very, very good performance indeed for the Americas. This is Esker's first and largest market. It accounts for about 40% of our revenue and is 1 of our fastest-growing markets. So that is 1 of the most important markets for Esker. So that performance that we saw in 2021 was very good news indeed. We continue to invest, as we always do. So we saw growth on the revenue side, and that allowed us to continue to invest, which in the case of Esker is, basically is of hiring people to prepare for future growth. In 2021, we added 86 people net, obviously, of people leaving as well. So 86 additional headcount were added to the business on average for the year, which is a 12% increase compared to what we had in 2020. So those people were mainly hired in sales, 14%, consulting 13%, customer experience 13%. Again, I'll be reviewing this in more detail during the presentation. Between the revenue increase and the additional investments made, overall, that meant that operating income is increasing as well as, it is actually increasing a little bit faster than revenues actually up 22% compared to what we've done in 2020. And this is essentially fueled by, one, the gross margin, which is up 21%. So again, slightly more than revenue, reaching 67%, essentially driven by more emphasis being put on the control of the platform, some more investment there as well as, of course, professional services, the cost of the consultants is up, because the business is growing. But the other production costs were very much under control. And so that meant that gross margin was actually up. Beyond gross margin, we saw as well an increase in sales cost and marketing costs of 30% and 23%, respectively. This is linked to, obviously, additional investments, I mentioned that earlier. There was more headcount. It's also linked to a bit of a price effect. There's a bit of inflation there, definitely, but there is also an increased level of, let's say, quality and price in the new people that we recruit, particularly on the sell side. As our solutions get more and more complex, we need to up our level a little bit in terms of the level of -- and the cost of the people that we recruit. And this is noticeable. Finally, another thing that actually contributed to the increase, particularly sales cost, is commissions. We had a very good end of year in terms of bookings and the commissions that we paid to the sales reps when they close a contract. Actually, we're a little bit higher than we thought, EUR 1.4 million more overall than we thought for the year, which actually is very good news. That means we signed very interesting contracts, and we also have this accounting policy at Esker, where we do not defer that cost. So the total cost of acquisition of a contract is charged through the year when the contract was signed, and not deferred. So the more we sign, which is good news, the more costs we have from that perspective. And this is what happened towards the end of the year and the impact is EUR 1.4 million. Other costs were increasing moderately overall and taking into account the translation effect, which was negative, mostly due to the U.S. dollar to the euro exchange rate. So translation effect of EUR 300,000, taking all of that into account means the operating income was up 22%. Below the line, so below current operating income, we have a slightly improved, let's call, financial income, which is essentially financial income and currency translation realized or unrealized translation income as well. So that was up as well. Income from associates was up EUR 0.5 million as well. So all of these things meant that net income is actually increasing 24% compared to 2020. Finally, we -- it's more of a 2022 event, but we announced the acquisition or rather the fact that we were entering into exclusive discussions with Market Dojo to acquire the company. This has been announced in January. Market Dojo is a software company based in the U.K. They specialize in e-sourcing in the cloud, and they will complement nicely our procure-pay solutions. We do expect to close this acquisition end of Q1, beginning of Q2 approximately. That's just the summary of the revenue performance for 2021, but I'll come back to that a little bit later, so I can pass on this slide fairly quickly. Just to remind you about Esker's business model, most of our revenue is basically SaaS revenue. So this is what our customers are paying us to use the platform that we have. That's 78%, 77% of our revenue depending on the exchange rate that we're using. 17% is implementation services. These are consultants that we send to our customers to implement the solutions that we sold to them. And of course, we're getting paid for doing that. And then 5% is really all the rest -- all the legacy products or the on-premise solutions that we still have, but that really becomes immaterial at this point. We can see historically what's moving up. The legacy business is going down. The SaaS business is growing nicely. And professional services is helping as well at a moderate rate, but it's still contributing to Esker's growth. Speaking of that, in 2021, so SaaS was growing 22% overall, 18% was the growth for implementation services and legacy products were down, but that's basically the usual trend that we have with those products. What's driving the growth on the SaaS side is really 2 things. One is the new customers that we put in production and start using the platform and therefore, contributing to Esker's revenue. But that's also -- and that's important. The level of activity that our existing customers are having on the platform. Of course, and we saw that during COVID, when there was a sudden drop in the volume of documents of transactions being done on the platform, this is really affecting our revenue negatively, because a large amount of our revenue, which comes from -- through document fee, which is directly linked to the volume. In the case of 2021, we had both an increase in new customers going live and a very good level of activity. So that drove the performance of 22% growth for the SaaS business. For implementation services, it's growing as well. It is really linked to the booking levels. Of course, we're implementing the deals that were just sold. We've been hiring reps in implementation services as we'll see a little bit later. It's grown a little bit less than the bookings, because it takes a bit of time for those reps to ramp up. But we nonetheless have been able to put a lot of those customers live during 2021. From a geographical standpoint, Europe accounts for more than half of the revenue, 55% of the revenue; the Americas is at 39%; and Asia Pacific at 6%. And from a growth perspective, as you can see, the most dynamic region in terms of revenue growth has been the Americas, 24% growth year-over-year. This is really coming from a very solid and consistent performance of the Americas, both on the revenue front and the bookings front. And you can see that in the revenue performance. In Europe, the growth is significant as well, but I would say that there's more fluctuation, particularly with regards to COVID. And as I just explained, when the economy somewhat slows down due to COVID, it's really affecting our revenue a little bit. And it's been the case more in Europe than in the U.S. historically. Asia Pacific also posting nice growth despite the fact that we definitely saw more strict sanitary measures being taken in the region, in some countries, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, the zero-COVID policy has slowed down business definitely. In our case, it's not been slowing down revenue too much, but it really has affected us on the bookings front as I am able -- about to discuss. From a booking perspective, so worldwide, 25% growth bookings value for 2021, that's compared to 16% that we had in 2020. But again, 2020 is a very unusual year. As a reminder, we count as bookings essentially the guaranteed revenue to Esker. We sign 3- to 5-year contracts and the annual recurring revenue that we use for assessing bookings is basically the average guaranteed revenue to Esker over the course of the contract, and that's what we use to determine those numbers. So you can see the annual performance on the 1 side and down below, you can see the same thing essentially broken down by quarter, which basically allows you to see the impact of COVID in Q2 2020. The sudden drop of bookings as customers essentially were not able, at that point, to commit to anything or sign any significant contracts. So that meant a significant drop in bookings for us in Q2 of 2020. But then you can also see the very sharp recovery in Q3 of 2020 and even more in Q4 of 2020, which was an unusual quarter from that perspective. 2021 has been more regular, more consistent quarter after quarter, and Q4 which always is the strongest quarter in the year, was almost at the level that we had in Q4 of 2020, which is excellent considering the unusual situation that we had in Q4 of 2020. So quite a good performance, quite a good, solid, consistent performance for bookings throughout the year. If we look at it geographically, so 25% is the performance for Esker globally. The fastest growing area, in terms of booking performance, was actually Europe in 2021. But when we look at the situation over 3 years, '19, '20 and '21, we understand why. As I said, Europe was significantly more affected by COVID than the U.S. in 2020. We actually saw a slight decrease in bookings in Europe in 2020, but the recovery was sharper. So we had that very nice increase in bookings in Europe for -- at 53% growth compared to what we have in 2020. Part of it is just getting back to the trend, but some of it is also catching up from, let's say, lower 2020. In the U.S. much more regular, consistent performance, very nice growth over 3 years. The U.S. was affected by COVID even for bookings. That's why you see that the growth is definitely accelerating between '21 and '20. But we actually had significant growth in the U.S. as well in 2020. So the performance is more regular, I would say. Asia Pacific, like I said earlier, a different situation. It was a very difficult year for businesses in the region and especially in terms of committing to any kind of project. And we actually saw bookings decrease in the region in 2021, getting back to the level that we had in 2019 after, let's say, a very decent 2020. So we do expect this to improve in 2022. Of course, it's going to depend on: one, the pandemic; and two, the reaction of governments in the region. Some countries are definitely reopening like Australia, where we have a strong presence. Some others, a little bit less, like New Zealand or Singapore or Malaysia. So we'll see how that goes. Just a quick reminder about Esker's business model. We do combine profitability and growth, and investments for the future and it's been the case for many years. This is really working for us. We want to maximize growth short-term and midterm, but we want to do this profitably. We don't want to be crazy profitable. We don't think it makes sense, because we're still very much focused on growth. But we do want to stay in this range, this gray area on the screen between 12% and 15%, and we have stayed in that range for some time, as you can see on the chart. Despite the level of growth changing a little bit, as you can see, 2020, obviously, the growth was definitely less than it was before, you can see it went from 20% in 2019, down to 8%, roughly growth, and now we're back to 19%. But the profitability is very consistent over the years. And that's very much how we run the business at Esker. Speaking of investment, you have on the left-hand side, the headcount broken down by department, consulting and R&D being the 2 largest departments at 25% and 20% of the headcount, then sales and then all the other departments. In terms of headcount increase for the investment, not too surprisingly, consulting is the largest investment that we made in 2021, but that's only a 12% increase compared to the year before. And then we had sales, because we're optimistic about the future. We did invest this year more than the year before in sales and marketing, both in headcounts and operations cost, and it shows on the chart. So that was basically the business review very quickly done. I'm going to move to the financial statements, just quickly discussing first, the currency effects. This is the impact of the U.S. dollar. Obviously, this is the currency that is affecting us the most. This is essentially saying that this is the [ rate 1.18 ] that we had, the conversion rate that we had between the U.S. dollar and the euro between 2021. Had it been what we had in 2020, we would have had EUR 1.5 million more sales and EUR 0.5 million more operating income. So that was the translation impact that I was discussing earlier. So that's just the U.S. dollar. If we consider all currencies, then we compare to 2020, sales should have been EUR 1.1 million higher, if we were using constant currencies or if currencies had not moved in value between each other and operating income should have been EUR 300,000 higher. Having said that, I'm going to talk about the income statement. So we have 2 ways of presenting the income statement, 1 on the left-hand side is more the international way, where costs are presented by department. So you have R&D, selling expense, et cetera. The other way on the right-hand side is the traditional French way of presenting an income statement. I'm going to discuss both, because what you can see in both presentations is not necessarily the same things. I'm going to take you from 1 to the other, as I'm discussing the results. So let's take a look at the international version first. And here, you can see, of course, sales going up 19%, income from operations increasing 22%. So that means that expenses obviously are increasing less than the revenue. And it starts by cost of goods sold, which is only growing by 14%. I gave you the breakdown of that number on the right-hand side. And you can see that production costs were essentially flat, platform costs increased significantly due to the increased level of attention that we put on security and performance of the platform and professional services cost, which is the majority of the cost, as you can see, increased 15%. So slightly less than the revenue, both for professional services and the overall revenue. So it was sadly controlled in terms of its evolution, and that means that the gross margin rate was slightly up during the year. If you look at other expenses, something that stands out is the increase in selling expense, which are up 30%, compared to 2020. And there, again, I'm giving you a breakdown of that line on the right-hand side. Two reasons -- a couple of reasons. One, fixed cost being essentially the fixed packages that we pay to our salespeople. That's up 24%, because the headcount is up for 1 thing. The level of quality, of sophistication of the salespeople that we hire now is up significantly as well. So essentially, we're paying more our salespeople as our solutions get more complex, our deals get more complex and bigger. We need more experienced salespeople. So the salespeople that we bring in tend to be more expensive than the salespeople that we had before. So that's driving that number up. And there is a little bit of inflation we must admit on hiring salespeople in particular in the world. So that's the reason for that increase. The variable cost is also increasing, and that's linked to the question of commissions that I was discussing earlier. A lot of those reps had a very good year. Signed very interesting deals, and we don't defer that cost. So that means that this line is impacted by the fact that we sold a lot of contracts. Essentially, the more we sell, the more costs we have that we pay to salespeople. So that gives you an idea of what that cost is. Other than that, all the other costs are pretty much in line with revenue with the exception of marketing expenses, which we decided to boost towards the end of the year in H2 in preparation for 2022. Essentially, as we were getting more and more comfortable with the state of our markets and the prospects of our business for 2022, we increased marketing spend to prepare for 2022 and the years after. And also some shows actually reopened, and we were able to do some events again. So that shows on the marketing line. Below -- sorry, I'm switching side to the other format, the French format, to talk a little bit about capitalization of R&D costs. We do capitalize R&D costs, and we have been forever essentially. This year, it virtually has no impact on our P&L. We did capitalize more cost as you can see, about EUR 800,000, but we also had an increased amortization of those costs and the net effect of that essentially has no impact on the P&L. The line that you can see below the development cost, which is called other income is really recording the R&D tax credit that we get in France, and that's fairly -- that's been fairly stable, as you can see as well on this chart. Really what stands out when you look at the French version of the P&L is the increase of personnel and related taxes, basically personnel costs, which is up 22%. And this is going to the increasing headcount, which we discussed earlier. The increased commissions, which also we discussed earlier. And also linked to a tax that we had to accrue for share-based compensation that we give to some people. There's a tax that we need to reserve for on the financial statements for that. And this is very linked to the share price. And as the share price at December 31 was essentially at the highest, it's been, that made this tax increase drastically. Now the good or not so good news is that the share price has decreased a bit since then. So that means when we actually pay the tax, which is going to be in 2 years, it's going to be a lot less. So we can expect this reserve to go down in even the first half of 2022. So that's basically a few comments I wanted to make on -- at that level. If we go down the lines below the operating income, financial income is slightly positive as it was -- it was slightly negative the year before, that's linked to the fact that Esker paid back all of the financial loans that we had. So the net interest income is higher. But also exchange rates were actually favorable to us. That's not the translation effect. This is the result, the income or the loss that we make every time that we have to convert 1 currency into another. So that was positive for us that to EUR 148,000 compared to negative last year for EUR 100,000 as well. So that's driving the, what we call the, financial income up slightly. Beyond that, the exceptional income is mostly linked to transactions that we make on our own shares to essentially provide liquidity to the market. We're not doing that. We're not in control of that. We have [ BNP ] doing that for us. But using our shares and our money to do that. And as the share price has increased during the year, we actually made a little bit of money on that as well, and we classify that outside of the operation. Obviously, tax rate is stable. And so in the end, the net income is actually growing by 24% for the year. On the balance sheet, just a few comments, not many things to discuss. The intangible assets increases Q2 capitalized R&D costs, as we discussed earlier. Financial assets are up as well. In there, you really have 2 things. You have 1 line for EUR 4.8 million, which is essentially cash, which we intended to invest for the long term. So from an accounting perspective, we're forced to put this as a fixed asset -- as a financial fixed asset, if you will. The reality is that if we need this money, we can actually get it in a matter day. So it's almost cash like, in my opinion, so it should be noted. And we also have investments in associates on that line. The other categories are basically moving in line with the business. On the liability side, like I said, we paid back all the debts that we took in 2020 due to COVID. Those were essentially government guaranteed loan that we took as a precaution at the beginning of the crisis when we didn't know how things would turn out from a business perspective. They turned out pretty well, so we didn't need the money. So we basically paid back all of those loans, and this is where you can see that financial liabilities are going down from $15 million down to $1.2 million roughly. We're going to see that obviously on the cash flow statement as well. The other lines are really moving in accordance with the business. Lastly, cash flow statement, the net cash position decreases by EUR 5 million, but that's really linked to the fact that we paid back EUR 14 million of loans globally. The business operating activities actually generated more than EUR 25 million of cash, which is more than EUR 2 million more than what we had the year before, and that really helped us finance all of our investments. Of course, capitalized development costs are the main ones, but we also had additions in tangible assets and also financial assets. We contributed to a business that we are partnering with in the U.S., a company called LSQ to develop supply chain finance solutions, reverse factoring solutions, in particular, and that would -- that is classified on that line. We pay dividend as we usually do, EUR 2.9 million, slight positive currency fluctuation impact. And like I said, EUR 4.8 million should be added to the net cash position that we're showing there at EUR 35 million to really assess how much Esker has on hand to mobilize if need be.

Thank you very much for your attention and talk to you soon. The next announcement will be on April 19 for the revenue for Q1. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.