SNP Schneider-Neureither & Partner SE (SHF) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and a warm welcome, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Judith, and I will be your host for today's earnings call of the SNP Schneider-Neureither & Partner SE. The Executive Board of SNP, CEO Dr. Jens Amail and CFO Andreas Röderer, will speak in a moment and guide us through the presentation of the financial year 2024. After the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session in which you will be allowed to place your questions directly via audio line to the management. We are looking forward to the results. And having said this, I hand over to SNP's Director of Investor Relations, Marcel Wiskow. Please, the stage is yours.

Thank you, Judith. Good afternoon. A warm welcome to our conference call. Today, we published our full results for the year of 2024. All the relating documents and also the presentation you can find on our website in the section, Investor Relations. And as Judith mentioned, we are facing with the same lineup as in the previous calls. With me, our CEO, Jens Amail, will give you a short summary of the reported numbers and give an outlook. And a more detailed explanation will be given by our CFO, Andreas Röderer. And yes, with this short introduction, I will hand over to Jens. The floor is yours, Jens.

Thank you very much, Marcel. Hello, everybody, from my side. Thank you for joining the call. And as always, thank you for your continued interest in SNP. 2024 was a good year for our customers, for our partners. It was a good year for our shareholders and for all of us at SNP. And here in this call, we absolutely talk almost exclusively about our financial performance, but I still want to spend 1 or 2 minutes on a couple of product comments because 2024 was also a good year because we could settle quite a few issues out of the past. And here, I would like to specifically mention that we were able to bring a long-standing legal dispute to a close with the family of our founder and with a satisfying result for both sides. Here, I'm particularly grateful to Tatiana Schneider-Neureither for her willingness to build bridges and to find a real fair compromise for all parties involved. So we could fix issues from our past, but 2024 was also a good year because we feel very well prepared for the future. With the launch of Kyano and the evolution of our strategy, we will be able to significantly extend the market category we have created and shaped over so many years. So we continue to be thankful for the trust of our customers and partners. We are pleased with what we have achieved financially, and we remain optimistic about our future. So looking at the financial results. In this 5-year overview, you first see that all numbers are consistent with our pre-release on January 22; all of them just a little bit higher, but overall very consistent. And you also see that we had, in every respect, the best year of our history, with a very strong top line, but also massive sustainable improvements in the area of profitability and cash flow. Looking at the headlines of 2024. So there's no need to read out everything. This is just a summary of everything we go through. At this point here, I just want to point you to the EUR 73 million cash and cash equivalents we had in the bank at the end of the year. This is a significant improvement, and we are very happy with what we have achieved here. And I also want to highlight more strategically that all key levers we have defined are kicking in: the partner business, the push through S/4 and to RISE and our efforts to expand our company internationally. Here, you see an overview of the 2024 key figures. Again, no need to read out everything here on a more detailed level. No surprises compared to what we have released on January 22. I want to highlight the positive book-to-bill ratio. And when you look at the details, we have an overproportional growth in software, and we also have an overproportional growth with our partners, which is again supporting that we are focusing on the right strategic levers. Here, we have the details on our partner business. I already mentioned the overproportional growth in the full year. You see 27% order entry growth in Q4, which is also much bigger than the total growth on the order entry side we have seen in Q4, which was 5%. In the meantime, we have almost half of our order entry coming through partners. We are here at 46%. In 2023, we've been at 37%. And the last bullet here on the right side, I want to mention is that our new strategy with Kyano also further fuels the opportunity to co-innovate with our partners, and there are many, many examples both with system integration partners and with technology partners. Before we go to the next slide, I forgot to mention the third bullet here that we also see a significant improvement of enabled partner consultants. That's, of course, a big lever to scale internationally and to scale our software business. Here, we improved the number of trained and enabled and ready to deliver consultants by 75%, which is quite significant. When we look at the order entry by deal bands, I think we can be rather quick on this slide, nothing unexpected here. We have more sizable strategic deals in all regions, but also a better run rate. And the better run rate, if you look at the 2 bottom boxes here, the better run rate also supports the evolution of our strategy, not only to enable singular one-off transformations, but also to enable and to drive ongoing business agility for our installed base. When we look at the regional distribution of order entry, the good news here is that we see growth in all parts of the world. We see very strong growth. So the 2 biggest contributors in terms of growth have been again NEMEA, which is U.K., the Middle East, the Nordics and Africa and North America. And the good thing here is these are the biggest IT markets in the world, and we have in both regions also a very strong 2023. So we basically had the same message already last year in this call, and we were able to build on that. So I'm very pleased with the performance we have here, and this points really to a very sustainable business development. Now the last thing I want to highlight here on this slide is the growth in our strategic markets. We have defined 5 strategic markets: in Mexico, in Brazil, the Nordics, the France and the Middle East. We have more than doubled our business with a partially early market entry last year in Brazil. In some countries, we've been very late like in France. So we have our office opening here next month, and we were only doing opportunistically business there. But still in the 5 strategic markets we have defined, we more than doubled our business, and you see here a total growth of 130%. The full year EBIT, if we want to decompose the bridge here, we start with the revenue, which is, of course, a big EBIT driver for us. We have EUR 51.4 million more revenue with a split in software and services: as you see it here, EUR 20.2 million software, EUR 31.2 million in services. We had in 2023, a lot of headwind on the currency side, more than EUR 4 million, and basically no currency impact this year, just some tailwind, some positive impact of around EUR 1 million, but this totals up to EUR 5.2 million. But again, this is a bridge against 2023. So we need to take into account the negative effects we saw here in 2023. Then the one-offs are minus EUR 3.4 million. We had a positive one-off with a net impact of EUR 3.6 million plus out of the settlement with the community affairs. And what you see here is the total number. So we have overall EUR 7 million negative one-offs. We can go through the details, if you like, later in the discussion, but the total negative impact is here EUR 3.4 million. No surprises. So I'm happy with the development of the COGS. When we look at the revenue growth we have seen last year. Personnel expenses, we've been growing the business. We had compensation increases well deserved for our team. So this is all very much in line with our expectations. Also the OpEx, the OpEx have been increasing around 13%, 1-3, which is significantly less than the revenue increase. So also from a cost perspective, we are happy with how we could manage this. And this leads, at the end of the day, to an EBIT in 2024 of EUR 28.6 million, which is 157% year-over-year growth. Last, but not least, the outlook. We are pleased that we are a predictable partner for our investors and for the analysts and for all stakeholders. We were able, thanks to the trust of our customers and partners, to raise the outlook twice last year, and we still could exceed in every pillar. When we look at the outlook for 2025, we keep the mechanics of our midterm guidance from 2 years ago. So we said we want to have a positive book-to-bill ratio. We maintain that. We want to -- we said we want to see a revenue growth of around up to 10%. Here, after a very strong year 2024, we have a midpoint increase of 8% and 10% at the upper end. So if it would be EUR 280 million, it would be 10%. And we also said that the EBIT margin will improve by 1 percentage point every year. The guidance -- that was the guidance we gave 2 years ago, and we want to honor that. So we had around 11% in 2024. And if we take here also the midpoint, we are at 12%. So that's it in a quick overview from my side. Thanks again for everyone for joining the call. Looking forward to the discussion later. And with that, I hand it over to our CFO, Andreas.

So thank you very much, Jens. I'll try to keep it short because you already elaborated on a lot of topics. So let's have a look at the personnel expenses. As Jens has already indicated, they increased by approximately 23%. So this is to fuel our future growth as well. We will see later the primary additions have been done in the sales and in the services areas. On the OpEx side, I think we also see an increase, but this increase is, I think, something we have expected because the business is growing as well. Jens has already touched on those offsetting effects. We had some positive effects from the settlement from the community of heirs, but we also had some negative effects. We did some impairments from some old receivables where collection seems to be Russia-improbable. But this is something, I think, we now have a very good and solid starting position for the year 2025. Overall, I'm really happy with the margin development. Jens has already elaborated on that. I think the EBIT margin developed from 5.5% in the last year to 11.2%. And I think we are really happy with this increase. If we go to the next slide and have a look at the segments, there is not that much more to add besides that all segments are growing. We also had a very good development with our EXA segment. I think in the past, we have already outlined to you that EXA has long-lasting sales cycles. And I think a lot of them came to a very successful end with very, very big and very well-known customers. Also, the book-to-bill ratio is a very healthy one with 1.22. We will see that later when we have a look at the backlog bridge as well. Now let us have a look at the segment margins. Also here, we see an increase in all segment margins. Maybe let's touch a bit the Services because it is a rather smaller increase. On an operational side, on the Services side, we are fully on track, but we also need to acknowledge that the Services segment needs to absorb some of the allocated costs coming from marketing expenses and also from sales. But on an operational side, we are well on track. If you go to the next page, I just want to reiterate, I think we have passed the EUR 300 million in order entry, and we are really happy about that. And again, the key message is our backlog is rock-solid as it has been indicated over the last 1.5 years. This is also what we see when we look at the backlog bridge. So what we do, we add OE and then we bring it into revenue, and we are not losing any reasonable amounts of backlog. We are very happy with that. There are just some minor project remeasurements, but this is the size of the business. I think this is absolutely normal. So this gives us a very good starting base for the current year. If we go to the next page on the balance sheet structure, I just want to highlight also, as Jens did, the cash situation. I think we did very good progress, increasing the cash balance to EUR 72.5 million. It is a huge increase, and the company is now very well financed. The receivables and contract assets did increase, but they increased as the business did go up. And then finally, this does, of course, also lead to an improved equity ratio, which is now by 44.1%. Now let us come to my main highlight of this presentation. So this is actually our cash flow statement. Let us just remind ourselves where the company is coming from. I think Jens has already elaborated on that. In 2022, we had an operating cash flow of minus EUR 0.5 million. So we were actually not making any money from our day-to-day business operations. So last year, we had been able to increase that to EUR 12.5 million to end up this year with EUR 40.8 million. So this is a huge and great result for us as a company and as a team. We also need to be aware here, we had some great collection efforts from some long-lasting historic receivables of approximately EUR 10 million included in this number. So just keep that in mind. But now as we have seen those offsetting effects, there are no further risks in our balance sheet anymore. So we really can now look ahead. Jens has already elaborated on that. A lot of things from the past have been cleaned up in the last year, and this gives us a very good starting base for the current year. Now let us have a look at the head count. I think what we can say here, SNP is getting more and more attractive as a brand. I think we have done some great hirings, for example, in [ UMD ] in our strategic market in France. We did some great additions in North America to our sales teams there as well. But also on the finance side, we have been able to hire a very experienced controlling head who has experience in cloud business. We have put in good and very experienced people on the process and project side. So we are really making progress here also as a brand. So overall, we are in line with our hiring plans, and there is nothing to add. And with that, I would like to hand over to our Investor Relations Head, Marcel Wiskow.

Thank you, Andreas. Thanks for explanation. Judith, I guess, we can open the Q&A line.

[Operator Instructions] We already received some hands up. Mr. Lukas Spang, you should be able to speak now.

Yes. I would do my questions one by one. Let's start with the revenue guidance. And I think we had the same discussion 1 year ago when we discussed, let's say, the conversion from order entry into revenue for the next year. If we take the EUR 310 million in order entry and compare it to your guidance of EUR 270 million to EUR 280 million for 2025, there seems to be some room. So is it like in the last year that you maybe start a little bit cautious concerning your revenue guidance and see how the year will develop? Or is there, let's say, a bigger portion in your order entry and order book compared to last year for the years after 2025?

Yes. I think, Lukas, Jens speaking here, it's a little bit the same situation as in the last couple of years that we want to be conservative but on the other side, also looking at the macroeconomics. Right now, I believe there may be more reasons to be conservative this year versus last year. So there are no red flags in terms of the backlog structure. But I believe, first, it's always prudent to be a little bit more conservative. And second, when you look around the world, I believe there are quite a few reasons why it makes even more sense this year to be conservative.

Okay. But is there a, let's say, meaningful portion in the order book, which is not relevant for 2025?

I did not break it down by year. We have a few long-term contracts, of course, which go beyond 2025, but there is nothing structurally different than in the last couple of years.

Okay. Then coming from top line to bottom line, if we take your bridge and put the EUR 3.4 million of negative effect on the EBIT, we already result in EUR 32 million of EBIT adjusted for these one-offs in 2024. So it's already the midpoint of the new guidance. And now you can say, okay, you made a big jump in 2024 on the margin side. But I think on the other hand, your ambition is not to make a decline in margin because, if we take the adjusted EBIT of EUR 32 million, we would result in 12.6% EBIT margin and now the new midpoint is 11.6%, so 100 basis points lower. So why should we assume a margin decline in 2025 based on your EBIT guidance?

This is Andreas speaking, Lukas. I think your calculation is, from a theoretical point of view, fully correct. But you need to keep in mind that we are a growing company, and we also need to do certain investments.

Especially in personnel or other topics as well?

We are promoting our new Kyano strategy, marketing effort, but also in people to grow our business, also to other countries where we are not there, and also build up the business in the countries where we are.

Okay. And then lastly, on the pipeline, on the current pipeline, can you share a little bit how is it developing? How is the customer behavior maybe also a little bit different concerning the countries and regions?

So also here, no structural or systemic changes compared to the last 2 years. We are happy with the pipeline. We see the multiples developing as they did in the last 2 years. What we do like, what you see also, when you think back to the slides with the deal bands, that we see more run rate business from existing customers. What we do like and what is encouraging that once a customer has bought from us, I don't want to say have a customer for life, that's, of course, the ambition, but the likelihood that they buy again from us is very high. So this is a very healthy base from my perspective on which we can build.

But you mentioned the economic environment. So is there may be some hesitation in the U.S. regarding the new government or maybe also in Europe and Germany, anything?

No. You were asking about the pipeline mechanics and the pipeline dynamics. So here, again, nothing systemic compared to the last 2 years, neither in terms of deal volume, software services ratio, deal sizes, regional things which jump out. So nothing structurally and mechanically, right? We want to be, with regard to the overall guidance, as conservative as in the last few years. We believe this year, it's even more the right thing to do to be conservative, looking at the macroeconomic trends. But we don't see any impact, Lukas, in the U.S., in other markets, which concern us at the moment.

And last, maybe a quick follow-up on that. Regarding the seasonality, do you expect any seasonality for the order entry or rather similar than in the past?

As in the past, everything as in the past. And Lukas, sorry for the boring answers, but that's what we are aiming for, and we're working so hard that we are predictable, a balanced business throughout the years. But again, we expect that the linearity and the seasonality quarter by quarter develops as in the past couple of years.

And we go on with one more hand up, Mr. Wolfgang. The stage is yours.

Some follow-ups on the ones from Lukas. Probably first on the one-offs, the delta between the payment received from the widow of Mr. Schneider-Neureither, and the total of minus EUR 3.4 million is around EUR 7 million gap. Is this purely impairment on receivables? Or are there any other larger amounts that are worth to mention? That would be the first one.

So we have -- we still had to deal with general staffing issues out of the past where we had partner deals with no end customer, and we now fixed all of them. We were hoping to be able to resolve a few of them, but it was not possible. So here, we have around EUR 3.8 million. And then we have another portion where we basically needed to do an adjustment for the purchase price obligation to EXA. And then we have EUR 500,000 other.

Okay. Then a second one on your partner business, which is strong for the order intake, but also in execution. Is there any risk that partners are demanding more, higher share or higher commission rate?

Yes. I think we work to achieve that. So when we do our -- we're sitting together on a midterm really concrete business plan. And what we want to take into account, and we see this happening, is that partners can take more and more business from our services organization, which is a good thing. This will not happen overnight. Our Services business will continue to grow. But the ratio between software and services, we want to improve that. So we want to have more software business coming through partners, and it's part of our strategy that the partners deliver the services. As I said, we have now 75% more partners enabled. But this is not a liability. This is a big opportunity for us that they do services. We improve the stickiness in our partner relationship, and we can scale our software business through partners.

Okay. But you see no risk for devaluation of the margins you're making with the partners?

No, no. The opportunity is on the software side. So the relative margin will improve. So if we can scale our software through partners, the relative profitability will go up. The software ratio go up. Still, I want to -- we also have a very clear plan to increase the head count on the services side. We will grow our Services business. We will make it more profitable. But it's part of our strategy, Mr. Specht, that the partners take on more and more service delivery work for our joint customers.

Okay. Understood. Last one from my end is the process with Carlyle. Do you have any update for us what is going on there? Is it still the closing expected for next quarter, so in the first half of the year?

Yes, that's expected, Mr. Specht, as planned, and nothing has changed from what has been published. I think at this point in time, Carlyle has 78% of the shares from SNP. And I think everything is valid what we have published.

And [ Thomas Kaiser ], the room for your questions.

So a warm welcome to all of you from me. As always, great numbers in nearly all areas. First, in my view, the extraordinary strong cash flow and development of EXA should have had a place in the preliminary figures for 2024, but there's no need, right? And except for the Carlyle bit, can you tell us about the biggest progress you made in 3 areas in 2024? And where do you expect the biggest developments for 2025 and beyond?

I'm not sure I understand the question. Are you asking for the 3 areas where we made the biggest step forward in 2024?

Yes.

Yes. I think I want to be consistent here, right? And I want to see the improvement in the areas where we can move the needle. And that's our partner business. That's our international growth. And that's overall the focus on -- or I would say, I would go a little bit broader that we now have a super clear vision and strategy, which was a little bit vague in the past. So continued improvements on the partner side, strong progress in international markets, as you have seen. And as a third improvement area, I would highlight that we have now a much better clarity and a much stronger, very concrete strategy with concrete proof points than we had maybe a year ago.

Do you see 2 or 3 partners that will make the biggest progress in 2024? Do you expect the biggest developments here in 2025?

So as we highlighted also in our annual report, we have a very strong ecosystem overall with 17 out of the top 20 SAP system integration partners working with us. We expanded our portfolio on the technology partner side with CPQ, with smartShift, with Tricentis. We developed joint solutions together with them. And the usual suspects, which you also hear from SAP, have also been highlighted in the annual report. So we continue to feel very humbled by the trust IBM, Accenture, Deloitte and PwC and many others are putting in us.

JAPAC is looking still weak. Could you give some color of this region and what developments you made in France and what progress we can expect there in 2025?

So we are growing the business in JAPAC. 2024 was maybe a consolidation year with the new regional President who is doing a fantastic job in JAPAC. So I agree there's upside potential, but it's also a market which always excites you about opportunity and disappoints you about timing. So I've been living and working in Asia for 3 years. So I know this firsthand. So maybe you see things I don't, [ Thomas, ] but I'm happy with the progress we've made in all regions, including JAPAC.

Maybe you see it already in the pipeline.

We are not disclosing pipeline numbers here, but you can expect growth in JAPAC as we expect growth in all the other regions. You also mentioned France. The big progress, as Andreas said, we made is that we, at the end of 2024, found the perfect Managing Director, a female leader coming directly from SAP, Sandrine Pons, who is making a difference already in Q1. And we established now a legal entity very recently, and I'm very much looking forward to the office opening next week in Paris.

Okay. Fine. My personal highlight was in 2024, also EXA, exceptional development with an environment that should be well supported in actual worldwide dynamics markets, especially in tech and other areas. What is the potential in the future? And what impact do you expect from Carlyle to contribute here in this network, into this area?

I think you are right. EXA is bringing its potential to the surface. I think we made some very good progress, having also big customer names and the word-of-mouth is spreading around. It's, at this point in time, still a bit difficult to really now make a concrete long-term plan because I think we have just started. I think the potential is there. The mechanics work. If they make a deal, it's pure profit. And the more customers we get on, the more profit that will be there. What's the potential? Of course, there might be, but this is something we are then checking in the near future together with Carlyle as well to also have that in the Carlyle portfolio sold. But those are things we did not start yet to dig into details. All that will come while all the legal topics from the acquisition are legally done, and then we will start that.

Okay. So you target the whole market? Or is there a special in the chemical and bio sector?

In the first step, that's the plan. Chemical, pharmaceutical. And this is just also the sales cycles take time, and we cannot just attack each and every industry. So those are the target industries.

Yes, super. What impact do you see in the big developments in the chip area like NVIDIA or Quantum chips machines? How do you see that on your business going forward? Is there any impact?

No, no. We are absolutely industry agnostic in terms of our go-to-market in our core business. Andreas explained, EXA is an application layer business, right? So the industry is relevant. Andreas explained the focus industries here for EXA, and we don't see any relevant impact on our business from the developments in the chip industries.

Right. Can you give us an update on the old partner agreements and the old contracts on big customers like Siemens and Bosch?

I don't understand the question.

Old partner agreements, are they all done? Or are there some still open?

Yes. So you mentioned 2 customers, right? Siemens and Bosch are valued customers. But as I mentioned, we still had to deal with some things of the past in terms of partner deals with our end customers. And now here, we fixed everything. We don't have any liabilities anymore, which was painful, 2.5 years of hard work. But with the impairments you have seen in the P&L in 2024, we can finally leave this behind us.

Congratulations to that. One question, general, to communications with shareholders. What can we expect in the future? Will we see Q1 numbers in the conference call again and quarterly results in the future?

At this point in time, we are listed. And as long as we are listed, we will fulfill, of course, all our publicity requirements. I think we will see -- we have a timetable attached and then we will go on and publish our numbers.

Last question. SNP has introduced a new connector that simplifies the process by enabling a direct connection between SAP systems and Microsoft Fabric using SNP Glue. In general, I mean, this is a big trend to connect the brownfield area of the machine data with the ERP data of the company. What impact do you see in this area and potential in favor of SNP?

So also we see quite a few positive market trends, which impacts our business on the application side, the trends towards a composable enterprise; the trends towards, of course, AI, IoT. So this will all drive complexity. This will drive additional values for our joint end customers and data become more and more relevant. So the one example you mentioned is for me not a standout, it's not on my top 10 priorities to watch. But overall, apologies, [ Thomas, ] that my question is a little bit more -- my answer is a little bit more generic. All the trends we see in the market, which we then also have reflected in the recalibration of our strategy, will expand what we're doing, which expands the relevance in the market category we are currently addressing. That's one of the reasons why we're so cautiously optimistic about the future.

Okay. And finally, all the best for the future. And stay in contact on your trusted shareholders.

No matter what, [ Thomas, ] count on us.

In the meantime, we have received no further hands up. I will hold the room for a few more seconds if there are any questions left. And it doesn't seem like that. We, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you, everyone, for joining and showing interest in SNP Schneider-Neureither & Partner SE in this lively conversation. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Mr. Wiskow from Investor Relations. And you can also find the presentation and the recording of this call afterwards on Airtime. A big thank you also to you, Dr. Amail and Mr. Röderer, for the dive into the numbers and the time you took to answer the questions. I wish you all a lovely remaining day and all the best. And with this, I hand over to you, Mr. Wiskow, for some final remarks.

Thank you, Judith. Thank you for your emphatic moderation. I guess there's nothing to add on. And with these closing words, we will terminate this call. Next release day, Q1, 8th of May. And yes, goodbye. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye-bye.