Agillic A/S

CSE:AGILC

Earnings Call Transcript

[Michael Friis, analyst]

Welcome to today's presentation where we have the pleasure to present Agillic. To help us through today's presentation, we are joined by CEO, Emre Gursoy; and CFO, Claus Boysen. Today's topic: the Q1 results just released this morning, so for fresh out from the press and of course, also the expectation for the rest of '24. As always, you're very welcome to ask questions in the box down below. We have had some questions already coming in. You can see them there. But do not hesitate to ask questions. I'm sure you are willing -- more than willing to have the discussion and the conversation afterwards. So let's see more questions.

But for now, I think I will hand the call over to Emre.

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

Thank you very much, Michael. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking your time to join us today. I'm here together with Claus and we will spend the next 20, 30 minutes together with you to take you through the preliminary results that we have put together for Q1 as well as the detailed Q&A that we would like to share with you as we go through.

So for those who are new to Agillic, I just want to spend a few minutes about what we actually do. We are a technology company and Agillic's customer experience platform, our technology, is based on empowering brands to work with data and content and automating them to deliver personalized communications, which we call it to millions because this is the personalization at scale. That's exactly what we do with our platform.

The reason that it is quite important, it's because this gives brands, companies with heavy first-party data, the ability to create impactful and meaningful and profitable customer experiences, which then comes back to them in return with higher conversion, improved and enhanced customer satisfaction and thereby retention and increase customer lifetime value. All this is the part of our technology and what we deliver to our clients.

If you look a quick overview of our company's presence, we are currently servicing 116 clients in 10 different markets in Europe. These companies, they are using our platform actively, over 100 countries where they are actively engaging with their customers. We're a 100% SaaS company with 41 employees from different -- 8 different nationalities. Our main office is based in Copenhagen. And then we had [ to open ] centers in Europe. And then we have been listed in exactly, actually, it was 6 years ago in 2018 spring. And since then, we have been part of the First North NASDAQ growth market.

It is maybe -- it's also important to mention that, as I said, the first point of data companies and these companies, what kind of companies are these are those that what we call industry specifically retail, finance, travel and leisure. These are specific areas where the companies, our clients are coming from as well as all kind of companies working with subscription business model, and this could be from energy companies to charities to media and publishing. So it's a very wide spectrum of ability that we can actually address solutions. It's because these are all first party data companies, and they are all looking for how to get most out of their data.

If -- let's look at the top highlights of the Q1. If this is what we always talk about revenue, EBITDA and ARR. On the revenue side, we are DKK 14.8 million for the first quarter with a positive EBITDA of DKK 0.6 million. And the subscription ARR of our business stands for DKK 52.2 million, where in total ARR 61.1 million, the difference is the transaction ARR that comes to it.

When we look at our results for Q1, on subscription revenue and subscription ARR, we have a 4% decline year-over-year. This is mainly driven by certain reasons that I will speak in a minute. And then we also have had a decline on our transactionals part of the ARR, and that is mainly driven by the market conditions altogether. On one side, I'm quite pleased that we have been able to adjust our cost base and pricing what might be coming towards us and adjust our cost structure to be able to keep our EBITDA on the process side. On the other side, it is also very important to mention that we are constantly looking for growth opportunities as we are hitting the market.

Now let's talk about what are the challenges that we have been facing in Q4, Q1, this period of time that we're going. Top line to ARR and revenue decline. There are 2 reasons, main reasons for the decline that we have seen. Number one, our client structural changes. What we mean by that is that a couple of our clients have been purchased, acquired by global companies, and they have been asked to continue with holding company structures, deals and thereby, they had to leave our engagement even though they were quite very happy with working with us. This is as a holding company decision.

The second, it's -- we are also seeing some clients, 2 reasons driven by cost reduction or efficiencies. They're looking for interdepartmental technology consolidations. So what then happens is a company like us, best-of-breed is losing against the solutions that the companies are choosing to bring everything under one umbrella, mainly driven by IT departments. And that necessarily is then a good solution. But under a declining market environment, this is a solution that companies choose to do so to reduce their cost base.

Now if you look at the negative impact also coming from the market conditions, that is also driven from the geopolitical and the macroeconomic situation. Now what that means is we are a BTBTC company, meaning we sell BTB, business to business, but the companies that we sell to are mostly working direct to consumer, which means they're highly sensitive to the market changes and conditions that are actually happening in the market. So when the consumer is impacted by higher inflation and higher interest rates, they're saving their money, less spend and certain industries that we're highly engaged with, such as retail, are getting major impact, and that impact is being reflected on us.

Now how it's being reflected is on 2 different levels, and the transaction reduction, for example, is one of the main ones that we are having this reduction hasn't having an impact on us. On the other side, the subscription side of these market conditions is that the sales cycle is getting longer. I mean this is not any secret that technology companies in the last 2 quarters, 3 quarters have been talking a lot about the longer sales cycles, slow decision-making. And this is mainly because of the changing leadership on the client side, prospect side and a new buying behavior is being the main driver. This is the new norm. We need to work with this, but these are the conditions that we are working towards.

The last part that I would like to talk about, the challenges is that this is also an ecosystem challenge that we are working because we are not the only one working under these conditions. So our partners are both solution partners, our technology partners, they're also going through this together with companies like us, technology companies. So what that means is that this change is quite common across the board. But in the meantime, what is also happening is, as we're all working with these challenges, we're also getting better and better and sharper and sharper as we are running our companies. So as we are stepping out of this, I would like to see this as an opportunity, too, because this will give us a real acceleration as we're stepping out of this.

So while we're waiting to that opportunity to come in, we also keep our resilience. So on the balanced side that what we are seeing is a good performance from our side is that we have been very fast on looking into the solutions that we should come up with for what might be coming in the quarter 1 and '24 back in our annual report presentation, we're talking a lot about the way that we have built our guidance, the way that we are looking into the new year, it was very much around how we're going to adapt to the changes, how can we be ready for the market conditions and create a financial resilience. And I think we are -- with our Q1 results that we can actually say that we have done quite a strong performance on that side.

While we are doing this, we have also -- we talked about this, our product platform upgrade, one of the largest ones over the last couple of years, we have completed in Q1. And in Q2, we are about to finish the rest couple of last items, we're up to 95% of our clients are on the new platform right now. So while everything else we're running, we've also been very much focusing on a major upgrade on our platform side. And then we also -- the resilience is also moving into the results on the both side on the cash adjusted EBITDA and the tax credit, which I'd like to have Claus to give a bit more detailed update on that.

[Claus Boysen, executive]

Thank you. So cash adjusted EBITDA, we started saying that our strategic goal towards 2025 is to be cash adjusted EBITDA positive. And what that means is that we constantly look towards an improved year-on-year EBITDA with a steady R&D capitalization investment in our platform, mainly and then an increased committed future revenue and an increased committed future revenue, I'll come back to that on the next slide, but it actually means that we have customers, clients that are committed and prepaid for a license period of 1 or 2 or 3 years ahead, which secures our client and our working capital.

On the tax credit side, we announced previously that we have been -- had a decision from the Danish tax authorities that in 2019, we were rejected to have our tax credit paid out. We have appealed that, we also have talked about in the annual report that when you file an appeal for that decision, it can take up to 4 years. So there's a long time before we necessarily know the outcome of 2019. Right now, we are working with 2020 and 2021 together with the Danish tax authorities, and we have reserved everything that we have received partly in our annual report 2023 and are now working towards getting a final decision on all the years that we have applied for.

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

So altogether, what we wanted to give a bit of a big picture on this one, we see a kind of a perfect storm that we are going through. But we would like to see this one as we're coming out of it as resilient as possible. and moving into the growth opportunities.

Let's just talk more about the numbers behind the report.

[Claus Boysen, executive]

So if we go more into the details of the total revenue in Q1, which landed on DKK 14.8 million total. The subscription revenue was DKK 12.6 million slightly decreased compared to Q1 2023, while an increase compared to Q1 2022. So the main impact from our decline in total revenue quarter-on-quarter was related to our ARR on the transactions. We spent quite some time on explaining the ARR transactions in our annual report presentation that we were hit by market conditions, and that was mainly from countries like Ukraine, Russia, Israel that were definitely hit where we had volumes previously that suddenly disappear due to embarkments or the circumstances in those countries.

The committed future revenue, this is the commitment that our clients have done for future license payments. So this is license that has been agreed, completed, invoiced and paid to us. So we should hopefully always see an improvement in committed future revenue quarter-on-quarter. As ARR has declined, it would have been normal to see a steady amount of committed future revenue. The reason why it has increased from DKK 26.3 million to DKK 30.1 million is also because we constantly look at our commercial contracts and improve the conditions so we can improve our commitment from our existing clients and our future clients.

On the EBITDA side, we have a positive EBITDA of DKK 0.6 million in Q1, an improvement of DKK 0.6 million since Q1 2023 and of DKK 2.3 million since Q1 2022. This is a planned balance of how to adapt our cost structure to our current conditions, our current challenges and being able to look into how do we want to invest in the future of 2024 and forward going with high impact on -- sorry, on investments in mainly the sales organization part, but we'll come back to that a little bit later.

If we look into our ARR data. As Emre said, our total ARR decreased to DKK 61.1 million in Q1 in 2024. This is mainly driven by the decline in ARR from transactions, which comes from a very strong quarter in Q1 2023 of DKK 17.3 million. and declined by 49% to Q1 2024. This is, as mentioned, primarily driven by market conditions, not the way that our clients necessarily are engaging with our platform, but also because of the price increases around the world on SMS transactions. That means our clients are more focused on how much, how many SMS they are communicating, maybe choosing an alternative communication channel like e-mails that are way cheaper. If we look at the total ARR -- sorry, ARR from subscription, it declined 4% quarter-on-quarter from DKK 52.2 million to DKK 52.2 million, while we had a decrease since Q4 2023 from DKK 57.8 million. That leads us to the next slide.

So by the end of Q1 2024, we ended with 116 clients where we had 118 clients at the end of Q1 2023 and 122 clients by the end of 2023. So we have lost some clients during Q1 here, some that we were in risk of, as we mentioned in the annual report, due to the fact of business and technology consolidation, as Emre mentioned in the beginning of the presentation.

Our average ARR per client is still strong at DKK 0.5 million per client. And when it comes to the amount of client wins internationally, Q1 is historically always a very, very slow quarter in this type of business. And we have in Q1 2024, not won any international clients. This is both seen as because it has been a slow quarter, but also because we have upgraded and spent some time on upgrading our international sales organization which we are moving towards an increasing during the rest of 2024. If we look at the net revenue retention, by Q1 2024, it's DKK 88 million, it's not a satisfying number, but it's a consequence of our lost clients that we ended by Q1. We expect that this number shall increase towards the end of 2024.

Our customer acquisition cost for Q1 was DKK 200,000, and this is a fairly low amount in general. It has been for quite a while if we compare to the last couple of years. What we do expect is that the amount will periodically increase during 2024 as we will focus on investments in the sales-related expenses like people and events. So the business is driven on a strong operational excellence. So we constantly adapt to the situation we are facing and we 100% focus on sustainable and capital-efficient growth based on organic growth. So if we look at our revenue per employee since Q1 2021, we have increased our revenue per employee by 44% over 4 years. This leads to an organization that is constantly ready also to improve the bottom line, the EBITDA or our EBITDA once we see the growth that we are driving for.

On the liquidity side, we have now included a slide here about cash adjusted EBITDA, which is a part of our strategy for 2020 -- towards 2025. The element in the positive cash adjusted EBITDA is that we need to improve our EBITDA year-on-year. That's a positive factor for cash adjusted EBITDA. We have a planned strategy that we will have a steady capitalization of R&D investments. So we constantly improve our platform. And then the amount of increase in committed revenue either coming from growth of clients and ARR or improved contracts.

The cash flow from Q1, we started the year with DKK 9.8 million, and our cash flow from operations was 0 while we invested DKK 3 million in our investments in our R&D platform. DKK 3 million is very steady quarter by quarter. And we do expect for the rest of the year that we will see a positive trend on our cash flow from operation, supporting that we both have sufficient and correct capital preparation for the year and our investments.

Going into the guidance. These are the guidance that we also published on the 22nd of February where we have guided DKK 62 million to DKK 66 million in revenue and EBITDA of DKK 0 to DKK 2 million and then ARR -- total ARR of DKK 66 million to DKK 74 million.

We are delivering Q1 according to our plan. So we still expect that these are the guidance that we maintain. If you look at our EBITDA performance, where we already have DKK 0.6 million in EBITDA towards our guidance of DKK 0 to DKK 2 million is because we have plans of making sure that we invest in our sales organization to support our international growth towards the end of 2024.

A little bit more insight to why the financial guidance was set as they were, both the geopolitical impacts that Emre mentioned earlier on, but we have also made the guidance reservation or the guidance included reservations for these potential reductions in ARR that on business and technology consolidation that we have seen most of in Q1. We are remaining our focus on sustainable organic growth and drive towards positive and increasing EBITDA in 2024. On top of that, we also in our guidance take into account that we have this tax credit case. And we make sure that we have the sufficient capital needs for being prepared for any outcome of that case.

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

Now as part of the last portion of our presentation, we wanted to talk more about our commercial growth strategy. So it's obvious that we are running a very tight ship. But in the meantime, we are investing a lot on our ability to improve our commercial structure, the team, the way that we go to the market, the way that we invest into the go-to-market strategy together with our partners in the local markets where we are defining as key markets.

So let me just take you through very quickly on a couple of the highlights. So we have defined our commercial growth strategy with these 4 areas previously shared with our overall strategy for 2024. The number one is expanding market presence in prior to markets, which is basically out of Denmark and Norway and Germany. And then second is partner activation because our go-to-market strategy is highly driven by solution partners, technology partners and how do we grow together with them. The third is how do we accelerate our growth through pricing strategies? What can we do in that kind of perspective because pricing for us is never a project. It's something that we live with. And then the last one is how do we increase our NRR, net revenue retention and improve our existing client base ARR growth.

So if you take a couple of highlights on these 4 areas. Number one. So how do we -- what do we do on the expanding market presence in the specific markets that we have been talking about. Number one, I mentioned, Claus mentioned we are investing a lot on the number of sales team members that we are adding to our portfolio of team, but also we're also increasing the seniority of these team members. Now why are we doing something different here? It's also reflecting the market changes. As I mentioned earlier, the slow decision taking the higher level of decision-making in the organizations that we are talking to. It requires different kind of person gallery, a different type of experience, different type of approach to the sales process. And that's one of the reasons that we are investing in such team members.

Another area that we have defined for our management team across the board in the company is called high-impact opportunities. There are certain new clients, all existing client opportunities that we have in hand that we call them as high-impact opportunities that will make a difference in our talks with our ARR growth. These are all-hands approach focus areas. In addition to that, beyond our daily task than what we otherwise do, both Claus and I, we are now highly engaged to both commercial activities in -- within the market, within the prospects or within the existing client portfolio, it became a part of our daily tasks as we speak.

When we look at the partners and how do we engage and activate the market together with them is that we have been running lots of events. This is one of the #1 lead generation and quality lead-generation activities that we do. Now we have activated actually a series of events, for example, with Merkel in -- we have a partnership in the Northern Europe. The team has been running, both Merkel team and our team, a road show in multiple markets going through multiple events to connect with all their existing and prospect clients.

I spend quite a lot of time in Germany these days, as much as possible because there's nothing more important than spending time with our partners and the prospect conversations to support the team. In addition, we are doing a lot of circular [ wins ] that we call, which is basically bringing the core leads in specific markets together with our sales team and thought leadership team to speak about problem-solving pain-identifying activities. The last bit, which we are doing over here is kind of something I personally have a great interest on is building joint product solutions, integration-driven technology partnerships where we can actually create true value to the clients that we're speaking to with integrated technology solutions. We're also looking into this one with our international tech partners.

On the pricing side, as I mentioned, it's not something you do it once. It's something we always look at it as a continuous activity. So what we have been doing and Claus main driver behind this one is price adjustments, both for subscription side, also transaction side to improve our gross profit and the license fees. On top of it, we have been working on a pricing activity, specifically designing for market-based pricing. So not one-size-fits-all, but more in a different market, different pricing levels. And on top of that, we are also looking into different models, knowing that there might be a better solution that we are -- where we might be able to apply, and we have a couple of them in hand that we are working as we speak, piloting them in different areas.

The last bit, I'm sure you will remember, those who have seen our previous presentations, is something we call value assessment. It's something we offer to our clients is how to get the most out of our platform. Are they using it in the right way? Are there areas of improvement, which they can create more results and return investment into the business? This is now something that we are really penetrating into from our organization to the clients' organization to different levels, together with our partners to improve retention and increase the uplift opportunities. And lastly is that we are working really hard on how to bring best cases from one client in one industry to another market to another industry partner to see what is it that we can achieve that they can achieve with our platform and become the catalyst for their success. This is another very important area of how we can add value to our clients' business as quickly as possible.

These are the top line commercial growth strategy activities that we have been putting a lot pressure on in Q1 as we go into the Q2. And this is the reason also why we believe in what we do is the right strategy and to be able to do it within our performance for the upcoming quarters.

So this is from us, Michael.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

Yes. Let's jump to the questions. Let's start by the first one. It's not about your results, maybe more regarding to the marketplace, you're on and your share price. Have you thought about -- what are your thoughts about being listed? The private marketplace, higher multiples in some cases, and a lot of other listed companies have started a strategic process to explore their opportunities. So I know, of course, you can't go into deep into anything, but is there -- have you done any thoughts to that development we have actually seen on both in your sector and also on the First North that some are thinking, is it the best to be a public company? Or is it better to be a private company? So any thoughts about that.

[Claus Boysen, executive]

So first of all, it is clearly a strategic and a Board decision where to be located. And we were listed in 2018 on First North growth market. It gives abilities, but of course, First North has been challenged, both in the media about the delisting of certain companies. We are at First North, presenting it, and that's our current strategy.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

Yes. You have had a stagnant, declining development in ARR. Which initiatives are you taking to grow this? And I think you're kind of spent a lot of time on that. But if you should censor one, the initiatives on the sales side is -- and I think that's a different question. Maybe we could also start on that. You have laid off some people or balanced the organization, but the revenue hasn't fallen that much. So we could also turn it around. You are now talking about accelerating your investment in sales force. So why should we now expect that to increase the revenue when the reduction has not given you that? So any thinking about that? Is that different...

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

I can talk about that. I think -- let's start with the question from the beginning. I mean, it is extremely important for us to improve our commercial success because we are a growth company, and we need to put a lot of pressure on that one. The initiatives that I mentioned, both from the partner side from our direct sales, our partner engagements, both technology and solution partners and product development. So all this all together is our major focus on how do we increase our commercial success.

Now the second part of your question that you were referring to, I think it is very important to mention that there is nothing happened from one month to month in our business. I mean what we do right now has an effect in the coming months. I mean our sales cycles are running 6 to 8 months on average. And we didn't lay off, I would say, so many people as we have done in -- I mean we have seen on the numbers. It is a combination of both changes on our current structure because we wanted to -- as we are completing certain tasks in the house, there was a different personnel needed. And the second is there's always a certain level of turnaround on the personnel because they would like to move into something else in their lives. And when that happens, we sometimes delay the decisions for waiting for the right opportunity to position this opening to a new role and a new responsibility. This is what we have been doing for the last 6 months.

Now it is -- when you look at, as I mentioned, we have completed a very, very important product platform activity engagement. So what's happening is if we didn't own our R&D department, there's also a transition happening because we have completed certain things. Now we are looking into future for a different type of task that we will be addressing within R&D and then how we are going to address them with a different type of skill set. So there are 2 areas that we will never stop investing, technology development and commercial. But in the meantime, the roles are shifting and time is changing. So it is a constant balance game that we play to make sure to get the most out of the impact of our investments.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

So to put it bluntly, you expect -- if you put more effort in it, if you have more events, if you talk more to partners, that the probability-weighted will -- is saying that, that will increase the success rate...

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

This is what we believe, yes. See, this is what we see. This is what we believe. And in the meantime, it's also important to mention that, as I mentioned, we are running a tight ship, and we are growing organically. So you're absolutely right. So as much as we can save here and there and put it in the right boxes, that's all about improving the business.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

Then there's a question there. When do we expect to be breakeven on free cash flow in addition to be breakeven? And you talked about it this cash adjusted EBITDA is giving us some indication on when it is, but if I should understand you correct, is -- are you guiding in '25 for actually being also free cash flow positive? Or is it in '24 with those? So if you can talk a little bit about that, Claus.

[Claus Boysen, executive]

So we have -- our strategy is that we will be cash adjusted positive by 2025. And the reason is that 2024 still have a number of uncertainties like the tax credit topic and so forth. But the main driver is that we want to drive an EBITDA that can cover our investments and by securing growth, we can be, you can say, self-sufficient or cash-free positive. But there are uncertainties that we have to sort of be realistic about here in 2024.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

Then you talked about this -- the clarification. I think you mentioned they can run for 4 years. So do we have any new insight on to any time line or was that your best ability? And have any indication of potential outcome of those cases? I guess you can see cases being -- there's a lot of those cases in your sector. Are some being won, some being lost? You probably also talk to your advisers. So the feeling about whether -- where it's pointing to, whether you can win or not. And then thirdly, on the tax case here, do we have capital enough in case you will lose this case?

[Claus Boysen, executive]

Will you start? I mean I can take tax credit.

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

I think it was all on the tax credit altogether. But I think I can mention one very important thing. What I really like is by the time we have been involved into the tax credit conversations altogether, whether it's because we -- our name starts with A and we have been selected as the first -- one of the first ones to be part of this or whatever the reason might be, there was not much of talk going on in the market around the tax credit conversation. And now, what I really like seeing is that it's a media topic. It's a topic that has been openly discussed. Multiple companies are going through this, learnings are being shared. So it is becoming a important topic.

So when we start talking about this, people who were usually not aware of what is the tax credit issue that you're talking about, today, many people are aware of what that means, what kind of pressure it puts on to the company, both financially and from the time perspective. So I think what we have been going through has been quite a steep learning curve behind what these kind of decisions might have an impact on the company. So the decision timing, yes.

[Claus Boysen, executive]

Yes. So as I mentioned, when you appeal, it can take up to 4 years. Of course, they are ongoing with 2020 and 2021 talks with DTA. Again, we reserved to be on the worst-case scenario by the end of 202 because there are so many uncertainties and so many unknown factors. Also, if you ask top advisers across the board, what is the outcome? What is the history, what is the expectations for how it's going to be treated in the future? So we're just precautious to make sure that -- but we try to stand for our right. We did what we should do at the time when we applied for it that everybody else also did. So we have followed the rules and guidance that were present in the market at the current time and feel that we should stand for our right, at least to maintain that.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

And lastly, it's about the capital side. You made reservations for it. You are -- you are running your business, either want to invest more or less. So you're balancing your business also to this situation. Those 2 means the reservation and your balancing of the business actually to this case. Does that mean that you are -- you feel you have sufficient capital to cover not any scenarios, but most scenarios.

[Claus Boysen, executive]

Yes, that it is. That's true.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

Then I think I will turn it over to you again, Emre. How will AI affect the marketing automation segment? And how are you positioned here? Do you expect this to increase the growth in the coming years, in the marketing optimization, please? But maybe most importantly, I think a lot of people are looking into this space, AI, what are meaningful business model, our internal business model, the external business model and so on. So any thoughts on how you're positioned to this future?

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

Yes, that's a very good question. Naturally, I mean it is impossible to run a business today without taking the AI into consideration in multiple different levels. So the way that we look at it, number one, how do we activate AI within our own internal processes, improving our ability to do things faster and more efficiently, in a better penetration into the greater sense and then also maybe use it for our support services for the clients. Now that's one area.

Second area. How can we create -- because the way that we work, I mean, within our space, you called it marketing, but for me, it's like the space that we're operating, it's we have content in one side, it's called generative AI that has been fueling this crazy push behind it. And then you have data, which is data analytics and predictive analytics, it's all about that. So when you bring these 2 into Agillic, then you get a superpower. So this is exactly what we have been putting a lot of pressure on our clients' conversations and everything because Agillic is ready. Agillic is working on it today with these platforms and algorithms that are creating either generative AI or data analytics and running through Agillic. So we have clients that have already been activating in their industry, best-in-class algorithms that they can work with those 2 and using Agillic to actually get the most out of it.

Now why is this important? And why I like this conversation is because we are a best-of-breed product, and we are talking only but only personalization at scale. So what that means is we can personalize messages, communication and the whole experience in a personal level to quite a big millions of people at the same time. Now why is this relevant for a brand is can you imagine, yesterday, you could get 100 videos or images or messages that you could get, tomorrow, you can get 1 million with AI. So where will this stop? I mean, basically, you will be the victim of a lot of messages hitting irrelevant messages. Where we come into the picture is being relevant message at the relevant time through the relevant channel, maybe 1, not 1,000, but just 1 relevant that will be enough to do what is expected from that consumer brand engagement. So I'm very, very happy with this whole AI structure that is actually giving us a new -- even more power to improve our results with our clients.

The last bit, the third part or portion of our AI conversation, it's related to what elements that goes through horizontally through different industries where we can pull a couple of these use cases and include into our own platform. This way, our platform also enriches the experience as well as making sure that all kind of industries are getting the same use case benefits. So there are 3 different levels that we're working on AI altogether. In short, yes, AI should actually give us an acceleration. But that requires AI to be clearly understood, put in place in engagement on the clients or the prospects, companies decide to be able to do this. Everybody can do a film today. but that's not necessarily the film that the brands would like to do one and just work with it. It requires a maturity. And it is also happening very rapidly. And I'm very, very happy about to see that.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

Perfect. And just to understand it, your third part was that if someone actually does something in a different segment, like in the retail and create something AI and they might be creating it. You actually be able to take that use case and share the other factors that if you use large language models like this, you can create content like this. And with those data and algorithms, if you twitch them a little bit, you maybe will be able to get better products. So you are able to take that learning from some of your clients and moving them around. Is that understood on the third part?

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

That is -- actually, you mentioned something that we are already doing without the product development. This is exactly what we are trying to create as a kind of information sharing this. But in the meantime, what we are trying to do on the product development part of it is selecting AI use cases that will be coming for everyone, all industries at the same time. The reason I'm saying it this way, if you look at the AI algorithms, they are usually driven for specific industries. So a finance industry, working with a certain predictive analytics, it is not suitable for the retail business because it's a whole different structure, a whole different [indiscernible]. So what we are looking for, what will be the coming use cases and how can we apply these into our platform so that everybody gets the benefit out of it for this experience.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

Is your Q -- now we jump to you, Claus. Is your Q1 cost levels also what we should expect for the upcoming quarters? I guess there could be some phasing on -- during the quarter, some onetime cost if you have done some reduction, but you also mentioned that you might invest a little bit more in sales. So can you give us a feel on if we look at the cost structure here in Q1, could that be what we should be looking out for in the coming quarter? Or do you expect a decline or a little bit increase?

[Claus Boysen, executive]

So what we also show by Q1 and what we discussed about the CAC and so forth is that we are preparing ourselves to have enough liquidity to be able to show a positive EBITDA as we have guided. So we measure where we are, what the market is and what we are going towards while we are investing in sales in the right time. So the cost level, yes, depending a little bit on how fast sales is going and so forth. But we want to invest in sales. But we also, at the same time, need to secure our capital needs as well as live up to our guidance.

So it's -- yes, it's a relevant balance that we have in our cost structure. It's a good balance that we have. It is very good if we grow a lot and where we want to invest is in our sales organization to improve the growth. So in months, there will be more costs related to that. but hopefully we'll benefit on the EBITDA margin soon after.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

And the last question, then I'll let you off the hook, a little bit -- you had, unfortunately, a good visibility that Q1 might be hit by some consolidations and the technology consolidation. But how is the general pipeline to develop the possibilities also, is that what is supporting your '24 guidance that you actually are seeing some development in your pipeline also?

[Claus Boysen, executive]

Yes, we see a pipeline that is supporting where we have guided, wherefore we maintain our guidance, of course. We see that we -- that those business and technology consolidation that we were speaking of in the annual report and based on our guidance, the main part has been here in Q1, we expect that. And then Emre also talked about these high-impact opportunities that we work on, on the top to see if they can escalate within our current existing clients -- sorry, our existing clients to actually grow our ARR also in '24, but also in the future to support the pipeline.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

And how much of that is price? You talked about this pricing model, i.e., I guess you're going more to a value-based pricing model, trying to -- and are you going a little bit more from a model where there is a high subscription and more maybe being how you use the system? Or can you talk a little bit about how prices is expected to deliver some of the growth?

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

I mean I think we can mention that -- so pricing in general, the current guidance that we have put together, it is based on our pricing changes for the existing client base that Claus is managing this as we go through for the quarters. The second portion that I'll also mention is seeking other models and testing, piloting, learning and at one point that we will be moving into is not part of the current guidance. It will be something that we need to make sure that it is actually something applicable and then we will be speaking about that.

I think it will be unfair to get into the details because we are looking into different models at the same time, and they're kind of different. But the aim is to look for models where we can pilot, learn from this and then reapply across different markets as we learn through it. So we are working on different scenarios, all tailored towards how to improve our AI.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

Perfect. That was the last question. Thank you to Emre and Claus will for taking us through your [ guidance and presentation ], for talking about your business.

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

Thank you.

[Michael Friis, analyst]

So may everybody have a nice day.

[Emre Gürsoy, executive]

Thank you very much. Bye for now.