Huddlestock Fintech AS (HUDL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay, and welcome, everyone, for this Q3 presentation for Huddlestock 2024. I plan to spend not more than 30 minutes on this presentation. We have done a Norwegian version earlier on today, and both the Norwegian and English version will be recorded and will be available on the website during the day at Huddlestock Investor Relations section and I will try to save 5 minutes at least at the end of this 30 minutes so that if anyone has questions, it's possible to raise them for me. So then let's just start the whole show. Let me see, yes, here we are. Okay. Let's jump right into the Q3 quarter that we are reporting today. Revenues of this quarter ended up with NOK 16 million compared to NOK 17 million in Q2. It is important for me to point out that we have done a small correction on the Q2 figures. It was some internal payment between 2 companies that ended up with giving NOK 1 million more than it was correct in Q2 on the revenue side and also NOK 1 million more on the cost side in Q2. So in this reporting, when we refer to Q2, that is corrected. The correction has no effect on the EBITDA that we reported, neither it has any effect on the cash flow and balance sheet. So anyway, revenues from Q2 to Q3 in total, the Investment as a Service part of it increased with 1%, following also an increase in the assets under administration that is a KPI we are following and that increased quite well actually with 5% from Q2 to Q3. What is always happening in Q3 is that the consulting business and the consulting revenues are slightly down. And the reason for that is vacation period. So in July, in Scandinavia, most customers are taking their vacations and projects are on hold and the same to our own employees. So we have a small underlying growth in the Investment as a Service area. But when you also include the consulting business, the total ended up with a reduction on top line with NOK 1 million. Then going from the revenue side to the cost side, I'm happy to see that both personnel costs and operational costs have been stable from Q2 to Q3. But with a decline in the revenues on NOK 1 million, that means an EBITDA going from minus NOK 6 million to minus NOK 7 million Q2 to Q3. Just before the summer, it was in April or in May, we did some changes also on the commercial side, and Daniel Risberg was appointed as the Chief Commercial Officer in the Nordic region. So he has been doing a great job together with his colleagues, working on to intensivate the sales processes. Sales processes is, yes, it's an art, but it is both about to start the long sales processes with new clients, and that normally takes -- if you're lucky, 3 months, normally 6 to 12 months before you start the process until you get the signature and you are live. What is easier is to increase sales on existing customers, and that is exactly what we have seen also during this quarter. We have published 3 new contract expansions during Q3, one with Sirius Asset Management, a Swedish company, one with Kraft Finans, a Norwegian company and also with East Capital that is a well-known Swedish player. We actually also last -- yesterday published another up sales on Garantum Wealth Asset Management here in Norway. So what we see on the effects from the sales effort is that we have been able to increase and grow revenues from existing clients. And of course, that is important because we need increasing revenues, but also it's a signal, at least as I see it, a signal from our existing clients that they are confident with Huddlestock and our services and that's confident and happy that they even would like to buy more. So that is why I think it is a highlight that we have been able to sign up these expansion contracts during the quarter. Germany is, as it has been for a long time, been an important part of our strategy. We have been working and I will come back to that a little bit more later on in the presentation. But as part of that road map, we were very happy to see that we could sign up an agreement with a technology provider called Tradevest in Germany in September. We also have a consulting business with main focus in Sweden and Denmark. And in August, we published an agreement with a new customer on the consulting business area. That is also very good. And also as part of our road map to growth and profitability, we have been having some cash proceeds, and we had a private placement in September, which resulted in a little bit more than NOK 14 million in new cash. So thank you, everybody, for contributing on that round as well. After the quarter is finished, it was finished, we received a resignation from the CFO, Morten Bernhardsen. He will work full time and together with us during the rest of this year, and we are already in a good process of trying his successor. All in all, on all important areas for the Investment as a Service segment, assets under administration, end clients, accounts and so on, they are -- the arrows are going in the positive direction. The revenues from that part could be even more positive in my opinion, anyway. But the quarter as a whole, when you put all these revenues together is very much reflected by the decrease in consulting revenues from Q2 to Q3 due to this seasonality in the consulting business that is happening every year. Just a repetition from those of you that has not been introduced to Huddlestock before, a very short intro. Huddlestock has 2 business legs. We have the tech-led leg that we call Investment as a Service. That is the business area where we use our own scalable technology, our infrastructure, our regulatory permissions and our own knowledge to provide players out there that would like to offer investment solutions to their clients. It's a scalable business area. It's -- the revenues are very much based on recurring monthly revenues and licenses. And part of the revenue model is also connected to the assets that are under their management or under our administration and also transaction fees. So that part of the business is very much about volume, and that is what we are working for every day. The other business leg is the consulting area, where we have a profitable, stable consulting business, most customers in Sweden and Denmark. The relationship and the contracts are long and for many years and very well-known brand names as Swedbank and Nordea and so on. Our customers, we can find in -- yes, in all areas. We have the traditional players that has been in the market for many years. They are very often could provide us with access to many new clients. They are very often very profitable and very good -- many good things to say about them. What we see is that the time for us also to attract them and get in position and sign contracts takes time, also very normal, but that's what we call with the higher customer acquisition costs. In the other part of the scale, we have the start-ups, typical small businesses, good ideas. They are understanding the market development very good, and they have a value proposition that they will go out to their market with as well. The challenge very often with the start-ups is they are lacking technology, they could lack regulatory permissions, they could lack software and so on. And that is a typical reason for them for coming to Huddlestock. At Huddlestock, they can get what they need to realize their business and they can focus on customers, they can focus on marketing, they can focus on sales and everything else they can let Huddlestock take care of. Huddlestock is in a market that is -- has been growing actually for quite a long time, and we actually see that it is perhaps growing even more going forward. And it is a market where for investments. The investment market is not longer and just for professionals. It's about individuals that would like to save long term for their pensions. It could be some long-term savings for some goal they must have or some objectives they would like to reach if it's buying a boat or whatever. Anyway, with more investors in the market and especially also with more end investors in this market, that opens the space for new players to come in to offer their platform with their specialities that is attractive for their segment. And instead of how it was done 10 years ago, where we needed hundreds of millions in investments and very much time. Today, with new technology and players like Huddlestock, it is possible to realize and transform your idea to a business much faster. And that is also on the right side, we see -- if we go into our world, we see that the assets under administration it on our accounts is growing steadily, and that's a part of our revenues. So that is important for us. But we can also see that there are coming more and more investors also through our customers. And the development from Q2 to Q3 has been very, very positive. So the growing assets under administration and activities and number of clients is very positive for the tech part of Huddlestock's business. Going forward, as we have done so far, it is important for us to grow organically the Investment as a Service area. And as I've said, assets under administration is an important part of that growth. And what we see from quarter-to-quarter, it is following that revenues directly coming from the assets under administration is growing. In Q1 this year and the Q1 every year is a quarter we have some extra revenues due to the tax reporting season. But if you take that away, we have a steadily growing business on the Investment as a Service area. I would definitely like to have more than 1% growth as we see now from Q2 to Q3. And that is what we are working very hard on every day to increase that revenues. As I said, attracting new customers takes time, but that is definitely something we are working on, and that will come. But in the meantime, to make sure that existing clients are happy and that the existing clients are buying more from us is important with the example of 3 new such contracts in Q3 and one more yesterday, which will start to give effect in Q4 and going forward. So going forward, it is important to focus on take care of the clients, upsells and of course, new sales. In addition to sell, it is important to have a good support, support on the technology side on the products and services we have. If you are a provider of technology, you always need to spend some energy and some resources on make sure that the existing technology is working. Things are changing every day, and it is important to make sure that also the technology we provide is working well for our clients. But also, it's not enough only to have that, we need to develop. So during this third quarter, we have delivered, yes, new functionality for financial advisers. It's about new user interface, we have working with payment integration with the banks and also on the API side, which is very important for us since we see ourselves as part of an ecosystem, either with partners we have where we need to connect through APIs or where our clients would like to connect to us through our APIs. As the investors that have followed Huddlestock for some time, we had some capital increases over the years. And to save money and be cost efficient, we have not used brokerage houses for that. We have done it ourselves successfully. But behind the scenes, I can assure you that there's a lot of work, a lot of evenings and nights to come through it. This time, we started to use actually our own system to automate the whole process. And it went very well. And my own personal experience is that this time, I have had no nights or no late evenings that I needed to work manually because it was done automatically. So that was a very good experience, and it was good to see to yourself what we are offering our market. Also, since we are now during this year, introducing the brick load system from Sweden into the Norwegian market, tax season is coming very soon and a lot of work has been done and is being done with preparing for the tax -- the yearly tax season for Norwegian clients. Germany is an important part of the Huddlestock strategy. We have been -- we are present there. We have been there for some years present. We have a license based in Germany. We have 2 employees in Germany, and we have an LOI with AVL in Germany, an LOI that was signed in January this year, I think, it's some time from now on, at least. And during the spring this year, we worked more detail in how to deliver. And what we saw was that to deliver to AVL what they want, would take more time and needed more investments that was wanted if we would like to have some results faster. So with that as a background, we evaluated alternatives for the way to the German and European market and identified Tradevest as one partner that we really would like to work together with. Of course, with the LOI with AVL in the bottom, it was important for us to also have an acceptance from AVL for Tradevest as part of the delivery model, which they did accept. So discussions are still going with AVL and both parts would really like to see a solution on that. But it is, of course, important that it's a good agreement for both parties going forward. So it can be a partnership that both parts are happy with. I mentioned that we had 2 business legs. One of them is the tech-led leg, the investment as a Service part of it. The other one is the consultancy business or professional services business. It is based out of the company called Visigon. Visigon is a company with customers in Sweden and Denmark. The clients are normally typically big banks with long contracts. And we see that revenues from that part of the Huddlestock business is very stable. It's -- and it's profitable. We did sign up a new Visigon client in August, which is very well. And we have also been working with strategy and activities to see and decide how we can grow the very good Visigon business from the where we are today because we have a good reputation. We have very skilled employees. Everything works very smoothly. We are actually in a very good position for growing that business. So we have done some initiatives to see how we can make more out of that business than we have today. As part of that work, we launched a new website also in the third quarter for Visigon. Then let's move on to the figures. I have commented most of it, I guess, at least in the first slide. But for the repetition side, the revenue performance is not going in the right direction from Q2 to Q3. What is important for me is the Investment as a Service part of it, which is growing. I'm happy for that. I would really like to see more than 1% growth. That's for sure. But anyway, as an important part of the revenues, it goes the right way. And then we have this -- the revenues from the consulting business that is hitting us even harder, making the combination of the 2, a reduction in revenues from Q2 to Q3. Other important costs is the personnel cost and operating expenses. And both of these 2 are quite stable or slightly down. So at least we have a good cost control here. Cost is always a challenge, and I would always like to see them going down, and that is something that we are constantly working on, meaning that the change from Q2 to Q3 is activities done in Q2 before the summer, giving results in Q3. That again says that means that what we are doing and are deciding in Q3 is visible in Q4. So it's a lag on that side. But at least we have a good cost control. That means that EBITDA ended up negatively with NOK 7 million and net result with negative NOK 20 million. Cash flow start of the quarter, approximately NOK 10 million on our accounts and at the end, approximately the same just for this quarter. During this quarter, we have, of course, done -- we have had operations with positive cash flow from the consultancy business and negative cash flow from the Investment as a Service business. We have done some of the development the -- investments in our systems, and we have had what we call financing. And financing is a combination, of course, of the cash and the private placement came that we successfully did in September and also some from bank loans and repayments and loans and so on. The private placement ended up with NOK 14.2 million since the private placement was ended in end of September, $4.3 million of the proceeds we received in October. So that is not part of this picture. That is part of Q4. As always, being a company with high growth ambitions, but at the same time, with a need to be realistic on how to finance that growth, we try to balance growth and profitability in the best way. And that is what we have done so far, and that is what we still do. And that means that we always constantly have a discussion in the Board and in the administration on how best to do that balance because normally, the more you are searching for growth, the more capital you need to support that growth. And the more you are focusing on black figures, the more future opportunities you are bringing our way. So it's about the balance and how to finance that balance is a topic that is always important for the Board and administration. So as a summary, our opinion is that we have built up a unique market position as we are with presence mainly in the Scandinavian countries and in Germany. We continue to see how we can just -- how we can take care of and grow the profitable consultancy business, but also see how we can increase sales and increase revenues on top of the technology that we already have on the Investment as a Service side. The German market is still very interesting for us and the deal with -- the agreement with Tradevest has been an important step of that process. And we are still working on, of course, AVL, but other interesting prospects as well. So going to the balance to get EBITDA positive as fast as possible. We are focusing on sales, sales, sales. We are focusing on selling the products and services we already have. We will push forward to grow the professional services even more and faster. Efficiency is always important, and we always see how we can do things, if possible, in other ways with less resources needed, for example. I mean that the cost control we have, we will just continue with that and see where that could be reduced. And as I mentioned on the last slide, it's an ongoing work to identify potential financial partners and how to finance the growth strategy we have in Huddlestock. So that was that. Let me go back here. Are there any questions? Or comments? No Then everything must be crystal clear, and I'm so happy about that. And if not, if it is not clear now or if you have any questions, yes, during every time, every day, let me see, I've some questions here perhaps. Yes. Two question is, when do you expect revenues from East Capital? And can you say something about the level? East Capital is an existing client of ours, has been there for many years actually. So what we have agreed with East Capital is to increase that part of the delivery with more deliveries from us. Revenues will come in -- start to come in Q4 and going forward. And I am not sure if I can say something about the level, but East Capital is one of the larger customers we have in Sweden. And it is a growth in that revenues. Okay. Can you disclose who the new Danish client is on the consultant side? Unfortunately not. We have tried to ask very nice if it is possible for us to disclose them. But it is a wealth manager that are taking care of money for some of the more rich families in Denmark, and they would like to be very anonymous. So unfortunately not. Next question. What is the biggest challenge in onboarding more customers? Yes, Marcus, you're welcome. The biggest challenge in onboarding more customers. Well, it's -- what is it? It can be different from time to time. Normally, it is -- even though we have what we say is some sort of plug-and-play solution, it's normally some adjustments that need to be done from every one of them. It could be connections with APIs. It could be adjustments with the front-end solution. It could be their specific setup with their custody bank and so on. So it's not an easy answer to say on that. In an ideal world, we have a product that is what the customers can get. And if they're not interested, they can just walk away. But we are not in that luxury situation. We can just let them walk away. So what we try to do is to increase and get as many prospects and leads as possible at all times so that we can choose the customers that are easiest for us to onboard so that we can increase the number of new clients on our platform with the least cost. [ Henrik ], you're welcome. Okay. Then I say thank you very much for your participation. And I try as good as I can to answer questions when I get them. Some of them get on my e-mail, my job e-mail. We have this e-mail address called [email protected] that could be used. And yes, LinkedIn and yes, please reach out. If I'm not able to answer right away, it might be because I have too much to do, but I try as good as I can to respond on a request that I get in. So please contact us if you have questions between the quarterly presentations. Thank you very much, everybody, and have a great day until next time. Bye.