Lime Technologies AB (publ) (LIME) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Perfect. So if you have also -- okay, we're -- I saw that we were muted there a bit. So welcome again to our Q3 update. My name is Nils Olsson. I've been at the Lime since 2006 and run as the CEO.

My name is Magnus Hansson. I'm the CFO with Lime. I've been with Lime since 2015. This will also be my last quarterly report with Lime. And it has been a great pleasure to working with Lime and with all of you.

Yes. Thanks for that, Magnus. And if you have any questions, please place them in the chat. So before we dig into the numbers here, let's start here with a bit of an overview of Lime's history. And I will say that we've always been running Lime with a very long-term perspective and that has left us with a great footprint, as you can see below here. In more than 20 years, we've been growing and in average 19% per year with an EBITA margin of 25%. And of course, that's something that we are really, really proud about. Looking into what we actually do -- and I would say that no matter how big we've been or how many customers we have, we have all -- more or less, have the same goal and that is to really help our customers to become really, really strong in sales and customer care so they can help their customers in a good way. And we do that by delivering spot-on software and on-point expertise. So we've been doing this for many years now and we've been scaling our business into 6 markets. And if we look in the past 2 years, we've been opening up Netherlands in 2020. We've been opening up Germany and welcomed Userlike in 2021. And we also now established an office and engineering hub in Krakow in 2022. So in total, we have 10 offices now and around 400 employees. If we look at the customer base, we help many customers on a daily basis. So in total, over 6,500 customers and with over 80,000 users. So we have a really big impact on the day-to-day business society. And I would say what we deliver with helping customers to become strong in sales and customer care and that has always been an important topic. But as we can see, in a world where services and products are becoming more and more alike and also where we have price pressure, great customer service is really one way to stand out. So let's dig into the overview of Q3 and also put some flavor on the quarter. And first of all, I'm very, very glad to see how we present and close the third quarter. In total, we delivered a growth of 21%, we have an EBITA margin of 26% and an ARR growth of 17%. One part that I'm very happy about is our development in our organic growth. In Q3 last year, we performed an organic growth of 8% and, of course, a level that we are not satisfied with. We had a plan and we communicated that everyone should expect a gradual increase and it feels really, really good to actually deliver on that. We moved from the third quarter in 2021 from 8% to 11%, 13.5%, 17% in the last quarter and now 21% organic growth, really, really strong numbers in challenging markets. As we mentioned before as well, there is a little bit tougher business climate up there and it primarily reflects in quite -- in a bit longer stage processes for us. The order intake during the quarter has been okay and it's been growing. And in the present situation like this, where there are more tougher market conditions, we're not only competing with other CRM suppliers but we're also, more or less, competing with the company's general feeling and willingness to invest. So from a sales perspective, this means that we really need to be on our toes. We need to do all parts of the sales process better than we've done before. So it's a lot about mindset in the organization here. If we look on an overview, we could see that the change has mainly -- has affected our German market, where we can see that it still has a bigger effect compared to other markets so far. During the quarter, I think I'm really, really happy to say that it feels that we can deliver a strong solution that really, really helps our customers. And it's both through revenue-driving changes and/or efficiency boosting digitalization. And a good example of that is the energy segment, where we make it possible for companies to provide really fast services to their customers in an environment where we can see the number of support cases is rising. So in this way, we're not only making our customers more successful, we're also simplifying the life for the end customer and that is exactly in line with our ambition. A big focus now, going forward, is to scale our existing markets. We have done 60 recruits so far and it's, more or less, divided in all markets. And we will continue to recruit, and we'll continue to recruit on all markets. And we will continue to focus on scaling up our verticals and invest in both sales and marketing driving activities. From an acquisition perspective, we have acquisitions in our growth strategy and we are continuing to evaluate potential acquisitions. And as the market situation is currently unfolding, we believe that the acquisition market will become even more favorable going forward. We have a really strong position today as a company, good profitability, strong cash flows and low leverage. And this leaves us with good opportunities ahead. At the same time, and this is important for us, we will not compromise with the evaluation of future acquisition candidates. We have had a number of conversations and candidates in the pipeline during the quarter but it hasn't resulted in any closer collaboration so far. So what about the future? I would say that as an organization, we are well prepared. We have, more or less, our house in order. We have a very dedicated team, highly engaged employees in place. We have good cost control and a higher proportion of recurring revenue. We have low customer concentration and it's going down. And we are operating in many different verticals. So I would say we have a great position today. And we also have great opportunities to continue to increase our sales through upselling. So our mindset going forward is to continue to focus on long-term profitable growth and deliver in the same, more or less, what we have done in the past 20 years. So jump into the agenda here and we will continue this call with order intake, looking to the revenue. Magnus will talk about the profit. And then we do a sum up with our financial targets. So let's start here with the order intake. And as we had communicated before and as I mentioned earlier, our customer concentration is low and it continues to decrease. Today, our top 10 customers stands for 5.9% and our biggest customer stands for 0.8% of the revenue. And going into tougher market conditions, I think this is a very strong position to have. We are not depending on 1 customer. We are continuing doing deals with many customers in this quarter, more or less, the same pattern as previous quarters, both closing many new deals with new customers but also doing upsell on existing customer base. As I said, we can see a little bit longer sales processes in Q3, which I would say is a direct effect on the turbulence in the market. Still, the order intake is growing and we close many deals in our focus segments, which I'm happy about to see that the verticalization is going in the right direction with [indiscernible] in the utility segment. We also see that we can extend our relationships with the real estate company, Entra Eiedom, which has been a customer for many, many years already since 2012. So moving into the revenue side and we can see the ARR development. And of course, for us as a software company, ARR is an important KPI. We deliver an ARR growth of 17% in the quarter. We can see a little bit decline there in the subscription revenue. And as I said, we have a focus on transforming and moving customers from all service agreements into subscription revenues. And we have a strong subscription role in Q3 with 22%. Looking at our different revenue suites. We have had a nice development since 2015, where we started to transform the price model from upfront to subscription. And you can see that subscription is growing really fast there, 34% in the last 12 months. And today, it stands for 54% of the revenue. Service agreements on a quite flat level, which stands for 8%. And we, more or less, don't sell any upfront license anymore. You can also see that we have a good pace in our expert services. But the expectation going forward is that it will decrease as a part of the total sales going forward. Looking into the revenue side. We reached 21%, as I said, in Q3. In the last 12 months, we have a growth of 22%. If we look at the split between the segments, Sweden grew by 16%, so a big improvement compared to last quarter. And the rest of Europe is still growing fast with 31% in Q3. I touched upon that in the start here, which I said that we are gradually improving our organic growth. And we delivered 21% share in Q3 compared to 8% last Q3 in 2021, which is a strong number. Looking on the right-hand side. We have last 12 months, Sweden, 11%; and the rest of Europe, 58%. And that is exactly, more or less, in line with our ambition here to build an even stronger and more international company going forward. So Magnus, let's look into the profit side.

Yes. So EBITA in the third quarter reached 26% compared to 27% last year. As we've mentioned many times before, we are once again able to carry out physical sales activities, travel to new and existing customers, invest in employee activities and so on. So that's quite pleasing to us. It is also notable that in August this year, more than 60 new employees started in the line. And on the right-hand side, you can see the last 12-month EBITDA development. As you can see, we reached an EBITDA margin of around 29% during the pandemic. And in the last 12 months, in Q3 2022, we reached 26% as we are now able to invest more in future growth again. Since we have good growth in the underlying subscription revenues, we have a positive pressure on the EBITA margin. And as we've also said many times before, we will continue to prioritize growth before profit. And then on the left-hand side, we have our personnel expenses. This is, of course, the largest expense item in our P&L. And as I just mentioned, we had the largest onboarding program ever in August with more than 60 new employees starting. And our personnel expenses grew by 28% in the quarter compared to last year. Over the last 12 months, our personnel expenses is quite stable in relation to net sales of around 55% of net sales. And on the right-hand side, you have other operating expenses. And as you can see, the other operating expenses grew by 23% in the quarter and by 44% in the last 12 months. The last 12 months' increase is due -- quite large explained by the acquisition of Userlike but it is also explained by more investments in marketing, in product development and, as I mentioned before, in travel to new and existing customers in sales activities and so on.

Yes. Thanks for that, Magnus. So let's look into our financial targets. And as you can see, we reached a growth of 22% over the last 12 months and compared to the growth target of 18%. And if we look into the EBITA margin, we have 26% over the last 12 months with the goal of being above 25%. The net debt in relation to EBITDA is at 1.3 today. And I would say that, that really shows that we have strong cash flows, which reduces the net debt in a quite rapid pace. And we have also paid a dividend corresponding to 59% of the net profit in 2021. So let's jump over and see if there are any questions for today.

Yes, we have a few questions. So in the CEO letter, you said you wanted to reach 100 new recruits for 2022. Is it fair to assume you will have a similar ambition for the next year? What would you make -- what would make you more restricted in terms of growth investments?

Yes, I think that we will continue to recruit going forward as well. As long as we can see that we have strong pace in the order intake, which I think that we have had, we will continue to recruit and, more or less, have the same ambitions as before. We also are in a position today where we can use this kind of market situation and build an even stronger company going forward. So it's important for us to continue to invest both in sales and marketing and on the employee side to be able to build the company that we want to have going forward as well.

Will you be able to maintain your margin target next year if you keep a high recruitment phase, assuming longer sales processes remain?

Yes, that's -- we have been through a couple of crises before. And what we've seen is that we can handle both delivering long-term profitable growth, which means that we can continue to deliver on the growth side and, of course, then on the margin side. And we have a 25% EBITA goal and that's something that we want to reach, more or less.

What's the progress on the new pricing strategy, KPI-based adjustments? Any impact on Q3 numbers?