NFON AG (NFN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Starts Abruptly] Today's earnings call of the NFON AG, following the publication of the Q1 figures of 2024. The CEO and CFO, Patrik Heider; and Friederike Thyssen from Investor Relations, will give us a presentation in a moment and guide us through the results. The floor will be open for upcoming questions following the presentation. Having said that, I hand over the floor to you, Friederike.

Thank you, Alexandra. Good morning. Warm welcome to NFON AG's 3 Months 2024 Earnings Call. As Alexandra just mentioned, I'm Friederike Thyssen, VP of Investor Relations and Sustainability at NFON. Joining me today on this call to discuss our results is Patrik, our CEO and CFO of NFON. We hope you've had the opportunity to review our quarterly statement that we issued this morning on our website. The document and the following investor presentations are available on our website, too. Let me quickly outline the agenda for today's call. Firstly, Patrik will take you through a short business update, and then will give you an insight into our financial results before presenting our business outlook for the full-year 2024. This will take approximately 15 minutes, and we will then take your questions. And having said that, I'd like to hand over to Patrik.

Yes. Thank you very much, Friederike. A warm welcome from me as well to the earnings call of NFON AG. As already mentioned in our previous earnings call for full-year results 2023, we are continuing to work on our transformation journey in 2024 to lay the foundation for stronger revenue growth in 2024. Here is an overview of some milestones we achieved in the past weeks. All key positions in our management have been filled with highly experienced managers. We are continuing to work on merging DTS and NFON AG to fully leverage the synergies of the acquisition. We believe that the legal merger can be completed in the second half of 2024. The modernization of the technology basis of our product is well underway. We are confident that we will meet our customers' demand in the future by delivering new product capabilities and dedicating focus on leveraging AI to drive innovation. In addition, we have introduced a professional portfolio management tool to drive significantly improved collaboration with our customers and partners on our internal R&D planning. We are also making good progress in the transformation of our sales teams to better utilize the potential of a customer-centric and highly efficient sales organization. These transformations includes reorganization of the sales teams, introducing more efficient steering of our partner ecosystem and a new sales incentive system to focus on recurring revenue measurements. Sales is now well positioned with optimized KPI management, which will help us to focus better on churn and ARPU management, as well as winning new seats. Finally, we continue to optimize our ERP, Business Support System, BSS, which is an integrated and a key topic for us in 2024. Let's turn to the next page. The entire industry is currently undergoing a huge AI technology-driven transformation phase. Just look at all the new announcements like last week, like GPT-4o, the new AI model from OpenAI that works across audio, visual and text in real time. The fundamental relevance for this transformation will determine who will stay competitive in the future. Therefore, this topic is key and top of mind at NFON. Our approach is to leverage the technology to solve concrete business challenges and create tangible customer value. This will improve the customer experience and satisfaction. In addition, it will drive operational excellence for our customers and for us in [ total ]. Regarding our products, we are currently focusing on the use of AI as part of our Contact Center Hub, a variety of supporting bots and services like voice bots and transcription services are already available and you can expect more to come. We will make this more concrete and tangible at our Capital Markets Day in Q3. In parallel, we are building up broad internal AI competence across all functions, driven and coordinated by an internal AI competence center. This will guide us stepwise in leveraging and implementing internal AI use cases, supporting our operational excellence and innovation ambitions. The modernization of our technology basis and the ongoing standardization of our internal business processes are an important foundation of our AI activities. Ensuring data protection and data security is also particularly important for us in this context. Currently, we are evaluating how to further leverage and integrate AI capabilities with a clear focus on the business value for our customers and partners. Stay tuned for more updates to come. And this brings me to the results of Q1 2024. The current figures prove that our approach is effective. Our work in 2023 is already paying off, and we are seeing the first good successes. Overall, we are on plan. Here is an overview of the results for the first 3 months of 2024. Recurring revenue growth is 2.8% compared to 3 months 2023. We continue to have an increased high share of recurring revenues of 93.6%. Our adjusted EBITDA improved to EUR 2.8 million. On the next slide, you can see our continuously growing share of recurring revenue of 2.8%. This growth is driven by both the acquisition of new customers and upsell to existing customers including new enhanced products, our premium solutions. Total revenue growth of 2.2% compared to 3 months 2023 is lower due to decrease of non-recurring revenue, primarily less profitable hardware sales. Year-on-year growth between Q1 2023 and Q1 2024 is comparatively low due to the previously communicated churn in Q2 2023 about 9,500 seats. This one-time and significant churn lowered the opening seat and recurring revenue base. Excluding the 9,500 lost seats from the quarterly comparison, the underlying seat growth improves from 2% to 3.5%. Seat growth is steady and in line with budget for all quarters in 2024, with price indexation adding additional revenue from April 2024. Of course, we have taken the expected churn rate into account in our budgeting process and are therefore, confident that we will achieve our guidance. On the next slide, you can see our improved gross margin of 84.1% due to the successfully growing share of high-margin sales. In the reporting period, the cost of materials was the same level in the same -- compared to the same period of the previous year, about EUR 3.4 million. As a result of the increase in revenue in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period of the previous year, the cost of materials ratio is slightly lower at 15.9%. Same period of previous year, it was at 16.2%. The positive development is the result of realized economies of scales, and the increased share of recurring sales, which have a significantly higher margin compared to non-recurring sales. On Slide 11you can see the impact of reduced personnel expenses in line with our strategic focus to grow the business more efficiently and profitable. Compared to the previous year, the average number of employees fell by 13% to 419 in the reporting year to previous year of 482. Adjusted for the one-off effects, special effects, personnel expenses fell year-on-year to EUR 8.6 million. This corresponds to an adjusted personnel expense ratio of 40.1%. On the next slide, you can see our significantly improved profitability development. An increase in sales, higher gross profit and reduction in personnel and other operating expenses resulted in adjusted EBITDA of EUR 2.8 million for 3 months 2024. This is clearly positive and an improvement compared to the previous year. EBIT also improved to EUR 0.7 million. In 2024, we plan to spend EUR 1.5 million in integration costs for the merger of DTS and NFON AG. These integration costs will be adjusted as planned. We will see potential here in terms of profitability and expect further positive developments. Coming to our next slide. We are happy to say that the free cash flow remains positive. In the first quarter of 2024, our operating cash flow declined compared to the same period last year, moving from EUR 1.5 million to EUR 0.9 million. This decline was primarily due to following factors. Firstly, there was an increase in net profit by EUR 0.5 million. Additionally, changes of trade payables and other short-term payables decreased by EUR 0.8 million. This was mainly because the timing of our payment and runs in Q1 2023 were shifted from March into April 2023. In Q1 2024, trade payables decreased slightly. We also used EUR 0.4 million from our provisions for the reorganization of our top management. Lastly, tax payment of EUR 0.4 million, mainly to the termination of the profit and loss share agreement with DTS and the paid taxes in Q1 2024, therefore. On a positive note, our investing cash flow improved by EUR 1.1 million. This improvement came from lower capitalization of internally generated intangible assets and reduced investments. Furthermore, our financing cash flow decreased by EUR 0.1 million. This increase was due to a lower cash outflow in connection with our relocation of the Munich headquarters. Let's turn now to the outlook for this year and beyond. For the current financial year, we are happy to confirm the outlook already issued in April 2024. We, therefore, expect growth in 2024 in recurring sales in the mid- to upper single-digit percentage range, which with recurring sales accounting for over 90% of total sales. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between EUR 10 million and EUR 12 million. We will continue to drive forward the changes we have initiated with the aim of operational excellence in the current year, enabling us to strengthen growth, in particular, profitability. We are on the right track to continuously developing NFON AG to a profitable growth path. Our journey through 2024 to 2025 has been set, and all the defined initiatives will lead to stronger growth from 2025. I'm now happy to move to your questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much, first of all to you Patrik, for the presentation and the update. Coming to the Q&A session, you can submit your questions by audio line by pressing the raise your hand button on the lower part of your screen. [Operator Instructions] We will start with the questions from Knut Woller.

Yes. A couple of questions. First, on the ARPU movement, Patrik. Can you give us some ideas and split the ARPU momentum by how voice-centric developed and how premium solutions contributed to the slight ARPU increase? Then secondly, on DTS. Looking at the adjustments made in Q1, it was just EUR 0.1 million, and this was related to stock based. When should we expect the bulk of the cost to be booked for the DTS integration? Then thirdly, on the recurring revenue growth, you highlighted the loss of a customer in the second quarter. Is it fair to assume, given that the comps in Q2 are quite easy that we should already see the mid-single-digit recurring revenue growth in the second quarter? And lastly, on adjusted EBITDA, is it fair to assume that the EUR 2.8 million is a run rate with further slight improvement for the adjusted EBITDA? Or will there be any kind of accelerated invest in the remainder of the year.

Thank you very much, Knut, for the questions. For the ARPU development, we saw a similar -- we are seeing a similar development like last year that voice from the corona peaks is going a bit down, and this is also part into the ARPU. But also, we are seeing, obviously, the counter-impact and that's the price indexation. So for Q1, we can announce that the ARPU remained stable, but we already see a good improvement for Q2. So, that means also the additional professional services like we have, they don't -- they are not on the scale on the bigger size, so they don't influence too much the ARPU, but they will because, obviously, the premium services are stronger growing like, for example, our contact center solution. But we definitely go now clearly into the direction of double-digit and already [indiscernible] in Q2. DTS adjustment, you are right, we don't have booked any adjustments yet. That means that from Q2, Q3 and Q4, there will be investments in. We announced also that we have in budget EUR1.5 million. We are obviously taking care about not spending that whole budget, so that might be a small, let's say, also opportunity to have an impact on the EBITDA base, but you will see the adjustments in the upcoming quarters, starting from Q2. The recurring revenue growth, you are right. And as already announced, we compare to a really stronger Q1 last year, including the churn. Obviously, we budgeted this. This is why we are confident with our guidance. And this is why we definitely already seen Q2 an impact on that. Yes. And the EUR 2.8 million, as I always announced, that we have several still leverages and, let's say, operational excellence projects in our P&L. Those are all potential for the upcoming years. But the phasing will be quite stable for the moment, as I already said, for the DTS integration, obviously, we're taking care that we are not spending more than budgeted, of course, not. But you can keep the, let's say, a stable phasing of this EBITDA margin development. But obviously, we're working also on options. But there is nothing really special from the phasing perspective. Hopefully, that answers all your questions. And if not, you will re-ask.

Yes. Just then a quick follow-up, Patrik. Do I interpret your comments correctly that based on Q1, it's more likely to achieve the upper end then of the adjusted EBITDA guidance in 2024?

Yes.

Thank you, Mr. Woller. We will now continue with the questions from Maurice Patrick.

Guys. Can you hear me okay?

A little bit.

A little bit silent, but we can hear you clearly.

Okay. Is that better?

Better.

Great. Perfect. Can I just ask a few small questions? Maybe the first one. Could you just expand a little bit in terms of the trends across your various markets? I saw you say in Slide 9 about how you did see the base in Germany and Austria increase. But just if you could give us some more color on the sort of market-by-market trends, that would be very helpful.

Yes, of course. So in general, we do see that still Germany -- and 80% of our revenues is in Germany, 10% in the U.K., 10% in Austria and slightly a smaller one in Italy. Still Germany is the highest potential market when it comes to digitalization, also in the voice-centric part. So, we do see a lot of potential. There are more than 4.5 million seats to be distributed in the next 4 years. This is why we have a very good position in Germany, and we still continue to see good growth rates in the high single-digit, and so that means 8% to 10% in the traditional UCaaS market. We are not happy with the revenue development, as we indicated. We know on what we need to work in order to come stronger back. This is why I said all the initiatives this year in the transformation year will lead to stronger revenue growth next year. We also do see a good growth momentum in the U.K. We are really happy to see the U.K. market going back to growth mode, which is interesting because the U.K. market is a highly competitive market, where also American players like RingCentral are meeting and much stronger than we do see them in Germany. And also Austria is well on track. Italy, we do consider we still need to consider about internationalization in general. So, this is also on my agenda to become more effective, more profitable and faster in terms of contribution of all internationalization aspects. This is what I have on the transformation, here on the agenda as well. To the markets, we do see UCaaS still growing. UCaaS, I divide into 2 different sections. First, the voice-centric part where we are pioneer and very strong in. And that's the video collaboration part where MS Teams and Zoom, for example, is very strong in. We just announced that we stopped any investment into new collaborations, but we do want to partner with MS Teams, for example, and also Zoom. But Teams is strong because we have this year shouted out an API-first strategy. That means we are embedding our voice-centric solution into the best video-centric solutions. And this is why we see good traction here. So, we have already about 50,000 seats already sold via MS Teams, and there is a good momentum to do more. And then obviously, there are stronger parts in the whole business integration system growth, and this is the so-called CCaaS part that's Contact Center as a Service, and we see good growth momentum with our solution, which is a tech partnership with Daktela, and that's our CC Hub product. Obviously, what we also see and that will be announced in Q3 in our Capital Markets Day, we see good growth momentum also in all. And this is why I had a slide in today's presentation in the AI momentum. So, this is something I call it always internally. This train is still in the Munich train station. We don't want to miss this train. This is a highly interesting, everybody is working on. And together with Andreas, my colleague in the Executive Board, we are building up an AI competence center. And we do this with own people, own capacity, not new investments, and we do already see good ideas for getting traction into the first quarter for next year. Hopefully, all those ideas and thoughts makes sense for you and answers your questions.