WithSecure Oyj (WITH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Very good afternoon, and welcome to WithSecure. My name is Laura Viita. I'm the Investor Relations Director and would like to wish you all welcome to this quarter 3 '23 results release whether you're in the room or following us on the webcast. Today, as usual, we will have Juhani Hintikka, our President and CEO, talking about the company, the quarter in general; and Tom Jansson, CFO, talking about the numbers. We will have questions-and-answers session at the end. And if you are following us on the webcast, you can put in questions all the time. We will take them at the end. So warmly welcome, and I'm handing the floor to Juhani.

Good afternoon, and welcome. So another quarter is behind us, and the headline is progressing on profitability in a challenging market. And indeed, the market continues to be challenging as we have also remarked earlier. There is plenty of competition. And of course, some of the macroeconomic circumstances are impacting this market as well. Let me next walk you through some of the key takeaways from the third quarter. As you recall, we report our revenues in terms of different categories. First one here being the cloud portfolio, where we saw an ARR increase by 13% to the level of EUR 81.2 million compared to last year. And also another important metric is the cloud NRR, which was 102%. And of course, well, we see year-on-year growth being positive and even report double-digit numbers on that one, of course, it is fair to remark that on a shorter-term horizon during this year, of course, the revenue has been flattish. There are some bright spots in certain geographic areas. We here talk specifically about DACH, which is primarily Germany, but also Austria and Switzerland to a small degree. And then France, we continue to perform well in those markets. We've also seen growth again year-on-year basis in all main products. It was a disappointing quarter for cloud protection for Salesforce. The growth was below expectations. There were some specific reasons regarding to customers cost consciousness in terms of consuming the service that we saw primarily in Europe and at least temporarily made an impact on the ARR regarding 1 part of it. We continue to be transforming our on-premise products. And as expected, the revenue declined. It declined by 12% to the level of EUR 5.9 million in the quarter. And of course, an important target for us is to convert as many of these customers we can towards our detection and response product portfolio, which is our cloud-based offering. And consulting, we actually did see a revenue decline, but we also did see some promising progress in consulting. So the financial sector purchases are finally stabilizing and the order backlog is improving. And we also saw some very good customer progress in Singapore and U.S., which are helping us now as we continue to move towards a higher revenue and targeting profitability in this area as well. So continuing on the profitability. If there is a bright spot, it is just to report that we made progress in terms of the adjusted EBITDA. It was at the level of minus EUR 2.3 million. And Here, we see the impact from cost saving actions that we had restructuring, actions we took earlier in the year. So they are now becoming visible in our EBITDA. We have decreased our OpEx approximately EUR 4 million from previous quarter. And then just a note that when we make comparisons to last year, third quarter 2022, we need to take into account that there has been TSA work for F-Secure that makes it not fully comparable these 2 quarters on a year-on-year basis. We have also separately communicated a goodwill impairment regarding the consulting business that we took down EUR 6.2 million in terms of the goodwill value we have in the books concerning consulting. To further reinforce our financial position, we have signed a EUR 20 million revolving credit facility with the OP Corporate Bank in September. And then a few words about the promarket and products. As I said, the market continues to be tough in terms of competition. And of course, that puts also pressure on us to further develop our offering and to differentiate from other vendors in the market. This is a fairly contested space, and some of these examples are the new cloud security posture management product, which is an extension to our Elements platform and the co-monitoring service that -- both of these have reached general availability in early October, co-monitoring services, our services that complement our product offering and especially designed to support our partners as we are a very partner and channel-driven business. And then a bigger road map item or bigger development areas, the exposure management which is -- as you may recall, we primarily operate in the endpoint EPP/EDR market. And of course, we see now very attractive prospects also in developing offering in the exposure management space, which is a different part of the market, but quite a natural extension from what we have been doing. And we plan to launch new products there during sphere, which is during -- happening during the first half of 2024. And our outlook remains unchanged here. It was updated on the 11th of July. I will not go through all of these in detail. With that, I would actually like to ask our CFO, Tom, to join us here on stage. Over to you, Tom.

Thank you, and good afternoon from my part as well. As Juhani already mentioned, the quarter was slow for us. And as also mentioned, competition and other factors did impact us. But year-on-year growth was 13% and so on. We also maybe a few positive notes is that the MDR shift to the mid-market customers is progressing quite well in certain areas, and especially in Germany, where we see a good progress on that, and we are very happy about that. As said, the cloud protection for Salesforce ARR was disappointing, particularly in this quarter. But this is a good solution we see. And especially in the U.S., we see a great customer base, and we think there's significant upsell potential in that area. Revenue went up similarly to ARR, 14% year-on-year. The on-premise continues to decline, and we are targeting to transform our on-premise customers to cloud environments, and that is progressing as well at the same time. Cybersecurity consulting. I said, we have had a challenge in the beginning of the year. We have seen though, especially after the summer now and late in Q3, quite good recovery in some of our customers. And as a result of that, our order backlog going forward is improving. And that, of course, is positive news for us than going forward at this point of time. But this has been a bit of a challenge for us and also partly the reason then that we ended up booking an impairment in this quarter along with the fact that interest rates and so on have gone significantly up. Here's the deferred revenue. There's two -- of course, our business intake, as been said, was in Q3, not somewhat below our expectations. At the same time, in certain markets going into monthly subscription models is very much happening, also specifically in the Nordics and also in the -- some of the DACH area markets, and that, of course, have also some impact on how much our deferred revenue is going down along with the order intake. Then if we look at our Q3 profitability, so revenue was EUR 34.8 million for the quarter. Gross margin still continued on a healthy level. So we are close to 70% there. And as said there earlier, our operating expenses were EUR 26.6 million for the quarter. The comparable to last year is not great because we still last year then took out the TSA portion and the demerger work from our comparable. So that's why we guide more that the Q2, Q3 comparison is more relevant at this stage. And our adjusted EBITDA ended at minus 2.3% at this stage, and that is, of course, also a lot of work behind that to get our costs out and so on. And now we can also see some of the results of that. The medium-term financial targets were not updated. Those will be updated when we update our strategy and that is some work that is still something ongoing. And with that, I would ask Juhani back up and we can go to the Q&A part.

Thank you. We'll start with the questions in the room. Matti, please?

It's Matti Riikonen, Carnegie. A couple of questions. First, just to check that in your midterm guidance, you say that you would be landing your adjusted EBITDA at breakeven by the end of this year. I was just wondering how can you do that if you end up at the low end of your adjusted EBITDA guidance for Q4, which is EUR 4 million negative. So what needs to happen in the quarter cost base or something that you would actually make that midterm guidance promise?

So I think on that note, we haven't updated the medium target is the current year guidance is what is kind of the value ones. And in that case, the bracket that we said earlier, minus 4 to plus 1. So as said, the medium targets will be updated once we have completed our strategy process.

Right. But wouldn't it be better just to say that the midterm targets are no longer valid because now somebody might read that you actually, when you update or keep the midterm target unchanged and I mean many investors might think that, that is a valid target still? Although verbally here, you say that it's not valued [indiscernible].

In the same time, those will be updated. But -- that's a good point.

Okay. Did you face any particular disappointments in Q3 such that you would think that there will be an immediate cure going into Q4?

So in cloud protection for Salesforce, specifically in Europe, we had some customers who were very careful about their consumption of the service and that temporarily, we believe, will affect the level of invoicing we have with that particular area. But on 1 hand, we see that will bounce back. That customer hasn't gone away. And then on the other hand, I think it is a kind of a separate thing. It doesn't reflect the broader situation in any way. That was maybe the single one, I would pick from the quarter. Other than that, I think we'd be mostly kind of continuing to see tough competition as we have before, intense pressure on prices, those kind of things that everybody is experiencing in the marketplace.

All right. Because just by looking at the numbers, the growth trend has decreased quite substantially in basically every quarter of this year. So do you think it's possible that there would be a sudden change into positive or that you would stabilize the kind of growth decline at Q3 level in Q4?

So -- of course, first of all, Q4 is typically high in our industry. The customers tend to kind of spend their budget towards the end of the year, and that tends to be visible. So there is the famous Q4 effect from that perspective. But in terms of the rest, our churn remains fairly moderate. So I think it's mostly been a question of customer spending, they have been regulating their spending on cybersecurity and our win rates continue to be at a very high level.

All right. But the seasonality happens every year. So there was also a Q4 last year. So what would make this Q4 so particularly good that it would kind of break the seasonality trend, which is that Q4 is strong?

Yes. So we have a good pipeline for Q4. And of course, that is the basis for doing any analysis on the numbers.

Okay. Then a couple of technical questions. Did your MDR business grow in Q3?

We don't report that separately from the cloud solutions, but I can say that it developed positively. And we have especially now seen that it's working. We've been earlier discussing here that we want to orient our MDR growth more towards the mid-market, and this is working now, especially in Germany, for example.

Okay. And then what's your consulting business loss-making in Q3?

We haven't given out the profitability of different product lines. So.

Okay. And then what explains the revenue decline in rest of the world if we talk about geographic split?

How do you mean? Can you clarify that?

Well, when you report geographically, the rest of the world was negative 2%, if I read it right?

Yes, we have had some churn in the rest of the world and so on. So this is also some effect of the fact that our customers are closely looking at the spend and in certain cases, they also look at spending a little bit less even though they're not leaving us.

Thanks, Matti. I think maybe Felix was a nanosecond before. So I'll hand over to you.

Felix Henriksson, Nordea. A few questions from me as well. Firstly, on the cost base, do you expect that there will be further incremental OpEx savings for Q4 on top of the sort of EUR 4 million that you did in Q3? I guess what I'm trying to ask is should we sort of expect narrowing down EBITDA losses from the OpEx side of the equation?

We are continuously working on this topic, and this is a high priority for us. So we are expecting to go further down what we'll see where -- also it's, of course, depending on our top line development.

Okay. So basically, like all the benefits from the restructuring measures that you did earlier this year are not yet in the numbers?

Partially yes, but there might be some effects still coming.

Maybe I can just complement that we also do have a certain amount of discretionary spending in the company. So we have been quite careful with that regarding Q4 and taking some action proactively. So we will see the impact in Q4.

Thanks. Then on consulting, you stated that there was an improvement in the backlog. To what extent will this support the Q4 development?

As we said that we have a pretty good backlog going into the Q4. So we expect that to improve the situation.

Does that mean that the sort of negative growth trend organically that we've seen 3 quarters in a row in consulting should perhaps break in the fourth quarter?

So we have -- we are seeing -- has put it classify -- qualify it like this. We are seeing positive progress with consulting.

Then on the new elements, products, the cloud security posture management that you mentioned, should we expect this to be a revenue contributor in the fourth quarter already now that it's sort of live with the customers?

Not in a major way. So that will mostly have the impact in 2024. I hasten to add, though, that customer reception has been really positive, and we are, of course, actively ramping this up as well as the co-security services.

Great. And then on the cloud ARR guidance that you have, your ARR development has been more or less sort of flattish sequentially throughout the year. And it sort of sounds like that it's kind of a big ask sequentially to end up in your sort of cloud ARR growth guidance. So what sort of needs to happen for you to get there? Because you mentioned that Q4 is always seasonally big, but is there some other factors that I'm sort of missing when I'm looking at that sort of side?

So 1 of the factors is that we have actually -- and this is specific maybe to cloud protection for Salesforce, but we have been building up quite a nice list of Fortune 500 companies, especially in the U.S. So there's a big base of customers where we have entered initially with the low entry value and many of these represent actually quite a good opportunity for expansion. So it typically takes a little bit of time for a large customer to test out the solution. But then when they decide to expand and go for it, you typically also have the opportunity of immediately then selling thousands of seats our licenses.

And this is something that you see already taking place in the fourth quarter?

We're targeting that.

Thank you. And then over to Atte.

Atte Riikola from Inderes. Still a couple of questions left. Maybe first about the cloud protection for Salesforce. I think you have been talking previously or earlier about that you're also trying to expand into the product to other platform. So how is that going on?

So we haven't taken any -- announced any steps towards that direction. I think it has been partly related to kind of needing to show that we can actually be truly successful in the Salesforce ecosystem, and there's quite a lot of opportunity, as I mentioned. Now we are in the situation where we have a very nice list of logos there. And I think the order of things is to first show that we can grow there and then release additional funding for new products and new areas.

And now it seems that the short-term growth rate is slowing down for you. So if you think about your profitability turnaround, are you prepared to cost heavily more cost if it seems like that the growth is slowing -- slowed down more than you expect?

Well, being profitable in Q4 remains a high priority for us. And we are, of course, continuously assessing all options that will help us there.

And about competition, can you name any of your worst competitors that are giving headaches for you?

Well, it depends a little bit on the market space. Maybe I won't name any of those, but I will just say that, in general, in our business, most of the competition is from the U.S.

Thank you. And then I'm handing over to Waltteri.

Waltteri Rossi from Danske Bank. Still a few questions. About the OpEx and sales and marketing and R&D costs, they were clearly lower now compared to history. So would you say that this is a sustainable level right now? And does it kind of affect your growth ambitions going forward?

We believe that we have quite good capacity in terms of sales and marketing. So yes, the answer is that we believe that, that will support also our growth ambitions.

All right. Then about the 2 -- sorry, EUR 6 million right now down on consulting goodwill. Any particular reason why this was done now in advance? Are you maybe putting the consulting business into selling shape or any...

Well, we need to look at our impairments every quarter. And of course, with the new guide -- revenue outlook for consulting. And then of course, a big portion is also the interest levels that have increased significantly. So that combination then -- and led to this impairment.

It's Matti Riikonen. A couple of more questions. When you made the personnel cuts in your cost saving plan, where did they take place in which operations, R&D, sales?

They took across all of the functions and with different impacts, of course, but they were across all functions.

Right. Could you quantify the impact of kind of further cost savings when we compare Q4 cost base and Q3 cost base that you now achieved. So any kind of quantification of that?

I think, as Juhani earlier mentioned that we are mainly working with discretionary spending now. So that is, of course, something that we diligently look at what opportunities we have at that point -- this point.

All right. Then regarding the goodwill write-down, could you explain that when you do the impairment testing, what is the long-term growth rate of the business that you use in the testing process?

We have plans 5 years out. And based on that, we make the assessment of those.

Yes. But can you kind of open up what kind of growth levels are you estimating there?

That is probably not something we can disclose.

Okay. Because some companies do give out those parameters. And particularly in this case, it would be helpful to understand what kind of expectations you place still on the business because you still have roughly EUR 50 million left of the goodwill. So this was just a small part of it.

Yes, understood.

Thank you.

Felix Henriksson, Nordea. One more from me. Regarding cash flow, in your report, you mentioned that there was some unusually high payments to some of your key vendors. Can you sort of clarify this a little bit?

That was more maybe timing than anything. So they landed in Q3. So I don't think anything more unusual than that was that the timing between the quarters were a bit negative for Q3.

And that was regarding your sort of cloud vendors or?

Yes, that was a lot of the cloud vendors, which is, of course, our biggest [indiscernible].

I think we don't have questions from the room. So I'm moving on to the chat. And we have Jaakko Tyrvainen, our analyst, asking a few questions. Cloud ARR negative development in Q3, which products had the most negative impact quarter-on-quarter and also which products saw a quarter-on-quarter growth?

So I can start maybe. We don't break it down to product groups. But of course, as I said earlier on, we had maybe the biggest disappointment in cloud protection for Salesforce area. Anything you want to add?

No, I think the growth, of course, also in the other areas were lower than what we expected, but that was the -- 1 of the key items.

Okay. And then this again, the question about what gives you the confidence to the guidance for Q4, but I hope we have already answered that. Are you seeing more aggressive pricing from the large rivals? And do you need more scale in order to be competitive in your sweet spot market?

We believe that we are competitive, but yes, we do see also a price pressure, which is quite natural in the circumstances when there is less purchasing by the customers. Of course, there's bigger competition for the remaining part and then tends to translate into price pressure as well. We're -- of course, the fact that we are launching this cloud security services, we're also trying to, in a way, handle that partly with our portfolio and differentiate from the pure-play software vendors where we can actually help our customers get more out of the products themselves, and that's the role. And that will hopefully also help us in terms of the price pressure when we are not comparing apples to apples anymore.

Good. Then a couple of questions from Erik Carlson. How would you characterize the pipeline for cloud wins?

Of course, this is something that we monitor all the time. And at the moment, we see a healthy pipeline on our cloud business.

All right. And the second part was again about the ARR growth in Q4. So I hope, Erik, we have answered that. And as growth has slowed in the industry, competition is intensifying. It is also a very fragmented industry. After growth slowing and competition intensifying in a fragmented industry, we quite often see M&A or consolidation. With that in mind, and given you're a fairly small player, do you see any possibility to be part of possible industry consolidation?

Well, of course, I can talk on a general level. So it is true that, that tends to be the trend in the industry. It leads into consolidation. And of course, in our case, M&A as such, has always been in our tool kit. But at the moment, of course, we are very focused on our operational priorities here in the company. We continue to work towards profitability. We have launched new products. We are ramping up our capabilities in those areas, and that is our primary focus.

All right. Then a couple of questions from David Vignon, our analyst. First, could you delve deeper into the details about why the ARR dropped quarter-on-quarter? How has EDR performed in the quarter on an ARR basis?

So I think we answered a lot of those questions already. But specifically, EDR continues to also grow even though probably in Q3, we would have hoped for more, but as said, most of the other products is growing as well.

All right. Second question. Earlier this year, you decided to merge the sales and marketing teams. The main goal at that time seemed to be creating revenue synergies between MDR and consulting. With MDR moving to the mid-market, just a new organization still makes sense?

Yes, it's a good observation. I think our experience so far has been that there have been some synergies, but they clearly are on the bigger customer side. And even though we have said that the MDR is moving to the mid-market. Of course, we continue to do business also with the existing larger customers, and there are still opportunities in that they're in the pipeline. So it's not kind of black and white.

All right. Could you talk about headcount attrition? What's the current level and what areas are impacted?

I don't think we give -- disclosed the exact attrition numbers, but this is something that we have discussed here over the past 2 years. Attrition has been an issue for several reasons. But currently, I would say that as a combination of several factors, I think we are further in terms of our company, our culture in the way we present ourselves to our employees, that is helping us. But also, I think there's the sheer fact that the economic circumstances outside the company have also changed, and that is impacting it. So we don't currently see that being a major worry for us.

A question from [ Juha Morris ]. Well, maybe once more cloud ARR guidance, could you go through how you plan to reach this and with which products it could mean a huge jump for Q4 from the current EUR 81 million to EUR 95 million?

One of the biggest drivers, of course, this when we specifically talk about cloud ARR is to jump from on-premise ARR to cloud ARR, and that means going from business with -- to our EDR customer base, and there's a major push ongoing currently for incentivizing our customers to make that change, and that is 1 of the key priorities for Q4, and that will most likely have the biggest impact.

All right. Thanks. So another question from the room?

Matti Riikonen, Carnegie. 1 more question related to pricing and gross margin. If we compare Q2 and Q3, the gross margin was pretty much the same. My question is that was the sales mix also comparable? And have you given any additional price discounts in the competitive environment? Or have you kept your pricing steady?

I think first part of the question, yes, it should be pretty comparable. I don't think we had a big shift anywhere. I think it's also good to remember that we continuously work on our costs and have also received some progress in that, that offsets any price pressures that we have. We have not particularly see in a lot of price reductions in Q3.

Thanks for the questions. Our webcast does not have other questions, unless you send them in really, really fast. Are there any more questions in the room? If not, we're ready to finish. So thank you, everybody, for joining today.

Thank you.

Thank you.