Columbus A/S

CSE:COLUM

Earnings Call Transcript

[Operator]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Columbus Financial Report Third Quarter 2021 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, Soren. Please go ahead.

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everybody. My name is Soren Krogh Knudsen, and I am the CEO and President of Columbus. I'm accompanied by Hans Henrik, our CFO. And we are pleased to take you through our results for Q3 and the first 9 months of 2021.So at today's call, we will start by looking at the operational and financial highlights of Q3. I will then share a short update on our strategic priorities. Hans Henrik will continue and will share the financial review of Q3 in a bit more detail. And we will end the presentation with an outlook for 2021 and long-term guidance, followed by a Q&A session.So let's go to Slide 5 to begin the presentation. And I would like to start with the most recent event that some of you might have seen, which is the divestment of our U.S. SMB business unit. Well, actually, I should say, U.S. SMB business. Because on Monday this week, we signed an agreement with the U.S.-based SMB company Enavate for them to take over the SMB business unit of Columbus U.S. The divestment comprises 55 employees and up to 1,400 customers in the SMB customer segment.This divestment is an important milestone in our strategic direction to simplify the business and focus on digital advisory to larger companies. So -- hence why we are selling off the SMB part of it. The divestment impacts full year revenue with approximately DKK 150 million and EBITDA with approximately DKK 25 million.On a global level, Q3 continued to be a busy quarter with high demand across our markets. During the spring and summer period, we have worked hard on hiring new people to the organization to keep up with demand but also to fuel for further growth. In Q3, we onboarded 171 new people, resulting in a net increase of 122 FTEs compared to the end of Q2 of 2021, so last quarter. So quite a significant growth that we have achieved.During October, we also announced 2 major leadership changes. In Sweden, Lena Ridström will take over from Markus Jakobsson as the market unit executive, that is Columbus term for what you could call the General Manager or the Managing Director of a Columbus geographical entity. Mattias Goldkuhl will take over leadership of our Global Care M3 business unit. And both leadership changes were expected and are result of quite well-planned succession plans to ensure that we have a continued strong leadership in Columbus.The execution of the Focus23 strategy is proceeding, as you can see from both the hiring and the SMB divestment. And we have defined 17 strategic key acceleration tracks which I will cover in some detail on the next slide.Looking into the Q3 financial highlights, which Hans Henrik will cover briefly. I would just like to highlight that we realized a revenue of DKK 323 million, which corresponds to an increase of 11% year-over-year. We saw significant growth in our Norwegian business, growing by 42%, and we also saw strong growth in Columbus Sweden and Columbus U.K. They grew by 22% and 15%, respectively. Columbus Denmark and Columbus U.S. delivered below our expectations, declining by 5% and 24%. On a global level, the service revenue on an aggregate level increased by 12%, and the increase is mainly driven by, well, there was increase in most business lines, but we're especially driven by Columbus Care, our Digital Commerce unit and the Data & Analytics units. They all grew with the double-digit numbers. The recurring revenue part of the total revenue increased by 6% and now constitutes about 23% of our total revenue.In terms of the efficiency of the organization, the year-to-date customer work increased by 4 percentage points from 53% to 57%. Our normalized EBITDA declined in the quarter by 83% from DKK 22 million to DKK 4 million, and this decline is mainly related to the hiring cost for all the new people that have joined us, the onboarding costs, but also to our efforts related to our new ERP platform which we have gone live with and some extraordinary external costs, both for the ERP implementation but also some other matters. So year-to-date, the normalized EBITDA decreased by 6% to DKK 78 million. All in all, the management considers this consolidated results for Q3, in line with our expectations.And then I'll go to the next slide. So in terms of update on the strategy implementation, we have already mentioned the U.S. SMB divestment, the leadership changes and the hiring of new employees, which are important components. I'm just going to share a little bit about the 17 tracks, as I said before. So as the Focus23 strategy is being executed, we have focused on expanding our current strengths, addressing operational challenges and adding some of these new digital advisory capabilities to the organization that we need to fulfill the strategy.In order to deliver progress quickly or swiftly, we have defined 17 acceleration tracks, which are meant to help us in the short and midterm. Each of these tracks is already mobilized as a clear scope has clearly defined leadership, a delivery time frame and a time line for them to deliver. The tracks are meant, as I said, to accelerate our strategy in the short term, and they will also be augmented by some longer-term investments in -- particularly in the digital advisory capabilities but also building up of the industry expertise that we need for our chosen sector verticals. And that is again manufacturing, retail and food.The 17 tracks include initiatives such as talent and leadership development, commercial optimization. We have some market unit and business line expansion and also a track dedicated to improving our strategic alliances.In addition to this, I would just like to say a few more words again about this implementation of a new common ERP platform across Columbus. So we have directed a lot of energy and attention to this in Q3 and have gone live with the platform. We will begin to reap the benefits of this in the coming quarters. And the main benefits in the business context is to have less friction as we do business between countries and business units. So it's much easier for us to conduct business and getting the right experts from anywhere in Columbus in front of any clients. But also in terms of financial management, it gives us a much simplified operating model, so much better transparency and visibility of performance. So a lot of work has gone into this, and I'm sure we will be very pleased with the result as we stabilize this platform.I'll now hand over the presentation to Hans Henrik, who will take us through the financial review.

[Hans Henrik Thrane, Corporate CFO & Member of the Executive Board]

Thank you, Soren. And we're now on Slide 7, which is sort of an overview. And here, you again see the 11% revenue growth. And then we have a DKK 6 million currency impact if we had sort of like-for-like currencies. So we have a DKK 6 million tailwind on currency, primarily deriving from a Swedish krone, Norwegian krone and British pounds. So had it been like-for-like currency, our growth in stable currency, our growth would have been 9%. And then when you look at down on the EBITDA, you see we do have what we call normalized EBITDA of DKK 4 million compared to DKK 22 million last year. And the EBITDA we do report is the DKK 37 million, and it is because we want to show what is the real development in the business because we had 2 major extraordinary elements last year, and there was a DKK 13 million provision on the Norwegian loss-making projects, but we also had a reversal of earn-outs with regards to the iStone acquisition. So like-for-like, the EBITDA is for the quarter dropping from DKK 22 million to DKK 4 million and year-to-date from DKK 83 million to DKK 78 million.So then let's move to the next slide and our income statement. And here, again, you see the total revenue of 11%, but we -- in the quarter, we actually have a growth in products -- or service revenue of 12%, leaving us to, if you look at further to the right, a 4% year-over-year or year-to-date growth in total.And then going down to staff costs. We do see a growth of 11%, which is sort of being underline of all the new recruitments we're doing, but also supporting the growth we have in our services business. And when we look at the year-to-date growth in staff cost, we now have a 6% growth in staff cost here.And then looking at other external costs there for the quarter growing with about DKK 10 million, primarily from some additional consultancy fees as we are spending some money in the transformation process with our new ERP platform to create that transparency as Soren mentioned just earlier. But also if you look at the year-to-date numbers, this account is growing by only 9%. So there's also an element if that, that we have saved some spending in kickoffs and get-together as we normally have earlier in the year.So that leaves us then down with the Q3 2020 column, there's a DKK 28 million last year in the other operating income, and that was the one I mentioned on the previous slide that was an extraordinary element in last year. Good. So let's move down to depreciations. They are at the same level as last year and also both in the quarter and last year, and that is primarily related to depreciation of all our office resources but also all our other equipment.And then down to financial expenses. We do have a slight increase in the quarter of DKK 7 million. This is normally related to currency adjustment on monetary items in our balance items and normally on intercompany payables and receivables. And again, if you look at it year-to-date, it's being reduced from 16 to 9. So that's fluctuating a bit. So that's sort of the normal part of it.And then finally, if you look at down in the year-to-date number, we have a huge element of DKK 736 million in profits from discontinued operations, which is related to the divestments we have done. It's both the sale of our software company and our Baltic companies we had in the first -- we still have with us in January and then finally here, our U.S. SMB business. So that's sort of the capital gain we had on those items you see accumulated in the DKK 736 million.Next slide to Slide 9, now sort of a breakdown of our service business. And here you see that we now have growth on cloud ERP in Q3. However, still accumulated on year-to-date, we have a decline of 3%. And that is still because we had a big reduction in people last year. So the pickup even though we have hired a lot of people is still not kicking full in the year, but we also have a slower sales execution in the Danish market unit that is also causing a -- that we are not fully on par with our cloud ERP yet. However, a really, really strong growth on Columbus Care in the quarter of 18%, bringing us to accumulated growth of 12%, Digital Commerce growing 32%, bringing us to accumulated growth of 15% and then Digital -- Data & Analytics growing 25%, taking us up to 15% cumulative growth. And then we unfortunately have a small decrease on customer experience and engagement, but we still have year-to-date growth here. It has more to do with some phasing on customer products that we have the small decline here. So it's still small numbers. But all in all, very nice with strong service growth here.So let's move on to the next slide where you have a graph of our development in recurring revenue. Recurring revenue increased by 6% to DKK 73 million, and the recurring revenue now constitutes 23% of total revenue for the third quarter. It's a small decline of 1 percentage point compared to third quarter last year. Year-to-date, this development in the recurring revenue shows a great progress in Columbus Care contracts, increasing by 20% but also cloud products that increased by 43%. However, the subscription, which is related to sort of old perpetual or owner licenses, declined as expected 20% due to the continued cloud conversion.Next slide. So now here's an overview of our customer work. So in Q3 this year, which is normally a big vacation quarter, and therefore, normally the least productive quarter of the year, we had 50% in customer work for the third quarter compared to 48% last year. So even though it's a slow quarter, it is still a slight increase with -- again, with all the new hires we had on board. That's a very good development. And then that brings us to accumulated year-to-date chargeability of 57% versus 53% last year. So again, despite the large number of new employees, customer work remained pretty high, and we experienced sort of a steep learning curve, ensuring how many new consultants they are quickly to deliver on project customers -- on customer projects. So all in all, we consider this development satisfactory.So next slide. And I'll now take you through our sort of the other way we look at our business, that is our market units in the geographies where we do our performance. And what you see is that Sweden, Norway and U.K., we had very strong 2-digit growth. And in Denmark, we had investment in sales capacity and other key hirings to address sort of the lack of performance in the Danish market. And again, due to sort of a very high demand in Norway and Sweden, the people in the Danish unit have also been focusing on supporting the growth delivered both -- or primarily in Norway but also in Sweden. So that's also an element in the strong growth in both Sweden and Norway and the lack of growth in Denmark.So that was the overview of the geographies, and I will now hand back the conference to Soren.

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Thank you. And I will now cover the outlook for the remaining part of 2021, which we have on Slide 15. So Columbus' ambition during the current strategy period is to gradually increase our profitable growth to a minimum of 10% annually by 2023. Due to the divestment of the SMB business in the U.S., our guidance is adjusted accordingly. And as the SMB business will be reported as discontinued business, revenue guidance will be reduced by DKK 150 million, and EBITDA will be reduced by DKK 25 million. So the revenue guidance hereafter is the range from DKK 1.5 billion to DKK 1.65 billion, and the EBITDA guidance is now in the range of DKK 100 million to DKK 125 million.And I think that concludes what we had planned for you, and we will now hand over for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] We are going to take our first phone question from the line of [indiscernible]

[Unknown Analyst]

I have a question about the net staff increase of 122 people. Is that because of a normal organic growth or is it like new hires for expecting this new digital advisory strategy is like people for that strategy?

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Okay. Thank you, Dennis. So the net increase of 122, which is actually -- represents actually 171 people that have joined during Q3. Let me just try to break that down a little bit. So out of the 171 that have joined us, 84% are what we call PFTs, which is Columbus' peak for productive resources. So those that conduct consultancy work for our clients. So that's a pretty big increase over the average that we come from. So it improves our ratio, if you will. And the ratio we come from is about 66% to 68%. In addition to that, 4 of them are dedicated to sales, which is also fairly directly linked. So -- and then your more specific question, is it capacity increase? Or does it move us towards the desired market position for the future? And it definitely moves us toward the desired position. But also, I would say that some of it is just capacity to keep up with market demand in our existing business model. So it's a mix of both -- a mix of both but with more PFTs than we have before. And it is our ambition to improve that ratio gradually over time.That was different parts. Does it answer your question?

[Unknown Analyst]

Yes. But is it like a one big hire you did? Or do you expect like something similar in the upcoming quarters?

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Good. Yes. So it's not one big hire. It's really hard work in every country we are in and in every business unit we're in, except, as you might imagine, not so many new joiners in the U.S. right now. And we do expect to continue hiring but only to the extent that we can see our efficiency keeping up with it. And at the moment, we are now well into Q4. We have pretty good visibility of how quickly we can get our new resources onto paid work, which is kind of the limitation on how quickly we can onboard them as well as finding them, of course. But those are the 2 ones. So assuming we can keep our efficiency ratio at a decent level, we will continue.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. My second question is, do you see any risk in the general market perception of Columbus regarding this digital advisory strategy? Like, as Columbus is most -- has always been seen like an implementing consultancy and suddenly, we'll do more advisory? Is it -- do you think it will be difficult to change that label? Or is it, like, will it need some kind of longer-term rebranding strategy of people's perception?

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Very good question. So in terms of risk, I don't really see any risk of going backwards. I mean we have a pretty strong foundation platform on the business we do today. So the -- I guess, when we talk risk, it's more in terms of how far can we advance on that desired market position which we have stated, which both includes the implementation part we have today as well as an advisory part on top.I think your question is really precise. I mean we need to rebrand and the progress -- the speed of progress is different for every market. So in a market like Sweden where we're seeing a lot of progress right now, we have moved the brand a lot towards the desired position already. Norway is moving fast, and the U.K. has partly moved in some. And I think it's actually down to -- another way of explaining it is going back to our service offerings, the 9 Doors. The more revenue we have from some of the newer doors, you will see then the brand changes immediately. So I don't think it's something we do with the marketing campaign. It's something we do with the composition of business we have. And I think we're progressing, but it's not something you do overnight. That's the -- I think that's what I can say, Dennis, about it. Okay. So should I read the question? And we will take the first one. I'll read it, Hans Henrik, then you can explain it. So it's from [indiscernible]. EBITDA is down by over DKK 30 million year-on-year. Can you please quantify the various investments and extraordinary costs. How much investment and extraordinary costs should we expect in Q4?

[Hans Henrik Thrane, Corporate CFO & Member of the Executive Board]

Okay. So first, when -- as we talked about during the call, there are a couple of extraordinary items and then normalize there. We are not down with DKK 30 million in EBITDA year-over-year. We have dropped from DKK 83 million to DKK 78 million, sort of cleaned up for those extraordinary items, and that's a drop of 5% year-over-year. And it is a -- we are in a big strategic change journey with running our business in business lines. So we have been through a big organizational change. We have -- we are currently implementing new business systems for the whole business and how should I say, completing integrations of earlier acquisitions. So that's the reason why we do spend extraordinary on the consultants and also on some [indiscernible] to provide the services for [indiscernible] . So that's the reason for the drop in EBITDA. That is primarily related to the big earn-out we took as income last year. So that was hopefully reply to [indiscernible]

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Yes. And then I think the next one is from [indiscernible] and it says there is a decline in number of employees in the Nordics and a big increase in the rest of the world.

[Hans Henrik Thrane, Corporate CFO & Member of the Executive Board]

Yes.

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

What is the underlying development in number of employees this quarter in Denmark, Sweden and Norway compared to Q2?

[Hans Henrik Thrane, Corporate CFO & Member of the Executive Board]

Yes. And I think the reason why -- when you look back at the quarter report for second half or Q2 is that when -- again, we are changing our operating model. And in the old sort of model, we ran our business very much country by country. And in that model, we did report number of people from India that were working only for Denmark as part of Denmark and those who are working only for Norway, they were reported as Norwegians. And now we take all these people and put them in other or sort of offshore, nearshore centers.So now when we report a number of employees in Norway, that's actually those who are in Norway because now they are working seamless across markets and then it sort of loses its relevance to tie these people closely to Norway. So that's the reason for that change.

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Yes. And I think I can add to [indiscernible] also. I'm just going to break down, I think that might create some clarity. The 171, you wanted to know -- maybe your question was probably answered by saying where -- how many were hired into these geographies. And out of the 171, 23 people were hired into Denmark, 14 were hired into Norway and 43 were hired into Sweden. Good. And then I think we proceed to the next one. I'm going to read it, and I think it may be for you, Hans Henrik, to answer it. So just a request, all comparison numbers have been changed since last reporting, making it difficult to monitor and understand the underlying development in the Columbus business, both on an overall but also divisional level. Obviously, the divestment of the U.S. SMB had an impact on the numbers, but other changes have also been made. Going forward, could you please provide comparison numbers for the last 8 quarters when changes are made to the numbers. Thanks. Can we do that?

[Hans Henrik Thrane, Corporate CFO & Member of the Executive Board]

We will not make a reporting on 8 quarters. We -- and when we clean the numbers for the divestment, it is according to how we, of course, should report. And therefore, the development, we look at quarter-over-quarter, is comparable and shows the best comparison to how the remaining business is performing compared to last year. So I'm not sure I can promise to give 2 years back on that note. It will be -- I don't know if it makes sense, but the last year's numbers are correct. So once we get to the year-end, it will be -- you will see an 8-quarter comparison that is like-for-like for what we call the continued business, if that makes sense. I hope that gives reply to you, Michael.

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Thank you. And then I'm sorry, I skipped the question from Jonas. If we look at Columbus margin in 2021, it's quite a lot lower than IT services peers. What is the main driver behind the margin gap versus peers? And what margin level do you expect Columbus to be able to deliver over time? What concrete actions are needed to reach such targeted margin levels. All right. I'll give that one a go. So I'm not quite sure what the peer comparison you're referring to -- saying, Jonas. But what I'm going to do is to say, are we happy about the margin level we are at? Or do we expect it to increase over time? So -- and I do agree with you. And Henrik and I are currently discussing on how to include some target EBITDA measures going forward. But just to try to sort of preempt that a little bit, I think our #1 priority at the moment and it should be very clear, is to create 10% of profitable organic growth, which is doable, and we are sort of -- as you can see on the quarterly results, we are approaching that. We cannot at all say we're going to do it on an annual basis for 2021, but you can see some of the quarterly results starting to look the way they need to.And in terms of the EBITDA, I would also expect to see improvements. I'm tempted to say something, but I'd probably...

[Hans Henrik Thrane, Corporate CFO & Member of the Executive Board]

I can...

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Hang on a second. And then I will just -- so you can see what the margin level is in our current guidance. I think that ranges from about 6.3% to 7.5% in this -- each end of the spectrum. And yes, that is going to increase over time. The main components, there's still efficiency which we can take out of just running a better operation. So there's definitely something we're going to do about that. I do think also our hourly rates will be increasing, both as a result of commercial discipline but more so as a result of the value we can take out of our industry knowledge and our sort of more total portfolio approach to digital advisory over time. The latter one is the one that requires some buildup. Yes. And then I would say the rest to be honest is just clean up and removing some redundancy in terms of processes. And yes, mainly just process, just a tighter operation. I think that's what I can say about it.Did you want to add something, Hans Henrik?

[Hans Henrik Thrane, Corporate CFO & Member of the Executive Board]

No, it's just that during the development of the strategy, it was with the new way we are organized and having a bigger span of planning with the services, we would be able to drive up efficiency. It would also higher prices with the segment we're targeting. And last but also we talked about the span of control. So we need less leaders for the same amount of people, we're sort of the drivers in gradually bringing up the margin. And then sort of meanwhile, in -- we also -- there were an intermediate or temporary investment in getting us from A to B that sort of temporary take our margin down. So that was just to supplement what -- and add to what you said, Soren.

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Yes. And then the next one from Doug. Sorry, I think Steven is asking about the remaining U.S. business, and I think also that is Doug's question as well. So I think I'm going to answer both of them with one. Yes. So we just concluded the SMB divestment on Monday. And obviously, it's quite right of you to point out that we have a job to do with the enterprise business in the U.S. We have about 50 people left in the U.S., and we have about [indiscernible] [ USD 30 ] million left of revenue. And actually, in terms of the client portfolio and the services, there's nothing wrong with that. However, as we have divested just the 55 employees and the revenue associated with and the clients, the SMB clients, we have an overhead, which is too high, which sits now and is only carried by our enterprise business. So it's going to be a combination of fine-tuning that and then obviously growing the business. So the current size of the business is not going to be a really viable business. And in terms of the time line, it's not a complicated business for us to have a look at. So I think -- I don't want to promise anything in terms of flat figures, but it's more like a quarterly effort for us to go through. By that, I mean I'd like a fourth quarter effort, but that's sort of how that is. Okay. So how much time do we have left? Can we take some more? Yes, we can? Okay. So Dennis has one. What is the primary reason that Danish revenue is down compared to Sweden and Norway? What measures are you planning to increase it? Okay. So I think I'm going to divide this one in 2. And the first one is related to our big business unit, which is the cloud ERP business unit, where we're just not seeing the growth we want to. And what we're doing there is we are investing in a lot more business development capacity to be much more -- basically much more present in the market. We're trying to strengthen our partnerships with our -- with the technology vendors to just increase the performance of that big unit.And the second component is that some of the strong global growth that Hans Henrik mentioned from the commerce unit and for instance, also the CXC business unit are not really present yet in Denmark. So those are white spots in terms of the sort of the Columbus matrix that we really need to fuel to have some new business units that carry the future growth as well. So those, I would say, are some of the reasons behind it. So we need more legs to stand on, and our main leg currently has had its business development capacity increased. Yes.And then one more from Doug is the sold SMB unit in the U.S. was sold and what from the outside looks as a very low multiple. Could you please give us some more color on why you were satisfied with the price achieved? Well. Okay. So again, the first thing I would say is sort of we needed to address our performance issues and simplify our presence in the U.S. And the SMB client segment is not part of our core strategy. So it was that kind of divestment for us. It's not something, which was sold for other reasons than that. I think we ran a really structured process in the market to make sure we had the correct valuation of the assets.In terms of some of our more internal considerations, I'm not sure how much I can disclose because we have an agreement also with the -- I think that's what I can say about it. I realize if you look at the EBITDA, you can -- and you do a multiple on that, I know where the question is coming from. But I go back to what I said before is we have the full remaining infrastructure of the U.S. entity now sitting in enterprise and therein lies part of the answer. Okay. I think that concludes the questions. Do we have any more on the phone?

[Operator]

There are currently no further questions on the phone lines.

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Okay. Thank you. I have one more on the web interface. Which players do you see as your biggest competitors going forward with the new Focus23 strategy? How will Columbus differentiate itself from competition? All right. Okay. So I think actually, the first thing I'm going to say is that we should probably have a longer one on this at our next call. So we can do a little bit more of a deep dive into the -- like a proper strategy run-through. So this is going to be a very short and then thereby also insufficient answer to it.So the first thing I can say just to make some things clear is I don't see any major global competitor, which is sort of the one we need to. So we are competing very much against local and regional competitors. Hence, the list becomes pretty long because I would need to give you one for each market more or less. So I'm going to refrain from doing that.In terms of the differentiation, we can have the starting point today, but -- so the main point of differentiation, number one, is that we are focusing on 3 sector verticals. This really works and already works for us today. We have actually been pursuing this strategy for a while, a little bit more implicit before; now it's very explicit. But we know much more about manufacturing in food and retail than we know about banking, for instance, or something else. So our employees really know the taxonomy of the customers in these sector verticals. That is a great value because you can save time. You can do a better setup. You can suggest more things. So you can advise when you know the possibilities of, for instance, let's say, the Solomon -- what is that even called in English? I don't know what that's called. I'm going to say something else, dairy products, for instance. If you really know how those -- the taxonomy of those companies, you can do much more for them. This is becoming increasingly important. And if you want to be a real digital adviser, you absolutely have to know the regulation, how their supply chains work, upstream, downstream and the taxonomy. Basically, how are these companies built, how are the financial models, how are the production models built. That's a very big part of it. The second part of it is more like the total portfolio of digital advisory that we don't just go out and say, "Hey, we can help you with ERP." But that we can change to a position where we can basically say, "okay, so you have a commerce platform, you have an ERP platform, you have some data and analytics needs and other things, and we can tie it together." And we can start by having the discussion, is like what problem are we trying to solve and not what do we have to sell. That's a highly simplified way. We can come back to it in more detail. And then I would say that the third one is that we are zooming in on a client segment which we know very, very well. So it's not a blue chip, it's not the S&P 500, but they are quite sizable companies that typically are represented in more countries. So often, we find where we are also matching to some degree, the geographical spread. And we are used to setting this up in like a multi-market, multi-geography environment. Okay. So now we -- okay. I think that was it, Dennis for that one now. And I think we could go into more depth at a later stage. So Michael is asking again, would you consider hosting a Columbus Mini Capital Markets Day at some point in the near-term future? Hans Henrik?

[Hans Henrik Thrane, Corporate CFO & Member of the Executive Board]

I think we will get the -- we'll consider it and get back with that directly, Michael.

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

Great. Yes. I would certainly love to share more about the strategy, whether that's also called The Capital Markets Day, I have to learn about that.

[Hans Henrik Thrane, Corporate CFO & Member of the Executive Board]

Yes.

[Soren Krogh Knudsen, President & CEO]

So all right. I think that concludes it for today. I thank you for attending and for all the great questions, which proves that you have -- you know your details. So thank you very much for both attending and taking the time to look through the Q3 report. Yes, I wish everybody a great day. And I think the next date is already disclosed -- not yet disclosed, will be disclosed on the -- will be disclosed in December on the Q4 and full year. Thank you. Bye.

[Operator]

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.