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Trifork Holding AG
CSE:TRIFOR

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Trifork Holding AG
CSE:TRIFOR
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Price: 117.4 DKK 1.91%
Updated: Jun 10, 2024

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2022-Q4

from 0
K
Kristian Dollerup
executive

Good morning to the audience. We would like to welcome you to the presentation of Trifork's fourth quarter and full year results. My name is Kristian Dollerup from Trifork Investor Relations, and I'm hosting this from Zurich, with my colleague, [ Felikand ] our CTO, [ Clayton ]. Today, our CEO, Jorn Larsen; and our CFO, Kristian Wulf-Andersen will start by providing a [ let's say ] a 20-minute presentation and thereafter offer you a Q&A session. Before we start, we have a few housekeeping points that we have to run through. And first and foremost, I would like to inform you that this presentation is recorded in its full length and it will be available on the investor web later today. Second, I would like to inform you that if you want to download the presentation, it has been released on our Investor web front page, and you'll later also find it under the tab Events. Third, we invite you to ask questions after the presentation and have the chance to engage with management. [Operator Instructions] Before we get started, we quickly have to show a disclaimer. That's this one. Please have a quick look. Yes, then I think we're set to go, and I hereby hand over to our CEO, Jorn Larsen.

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for showing up to this presentation of our '22 financial numbers. So in '22 -- was overall a good year for Trifork, it was not an easy year. It was full of -- yes, disturbances such as war, supply chain challenges, et cetera. But even though we managed to pull through and report it for us satisfying year. And here, as you -- as we will always show you, the revenue growth in a long perspective. Here, you see it since 2007, and we reported a revenue of EUR 185 million which was a growth of adjusted 20%. Let's move on to the EBITDA. So the Trifork segment adjusted EBITDA resulted in EUR 31.9 million, which was the total growth of 17.3%, and we can move into the next. And Kristian, could you take us through the guidance for '23?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Yes, we have collected all the guidance and actual results. So what you see here, first is to realize 2022 compared to our guidance. And you can see all over that we have been in our guidance and operating of guidance. If you look into revenue, also mid of guidance in relation to adjusted EBITDA and an upper level of guidance in relation to Trifork Group EBIT. Here, we have also added our guidance for '23. So what you see here is the EUR 205 million to EUR 215 million in revenue, and this corresponds to a growth between 10.9% to 16.3%. This including the acquisitional growth that we expect to have from the acquisition of IBE and this we expect to count in somewhat between 2% to 2.4%. This acquisition, to some extent, also have some deconsolidation, you could say, because we already had just about EUR 1 million in revenue to IBE as a customer in the past. Looking into Trifork segment adjusted EBITDA, we, for 2023, guide at EUR 34 million to EUR 37 million, equal to a margin between 15.8% to 18%. If you take the lower revenue and the top EBITDA or the higher EBITDA and the lower revenue. Then you see the traffic group EBIT, where we also expect an increase to EUR 20 million to EUR 23 million, equal to margins of 9.3% to 11.2%. Midterm, we will still keep our guidance in the same way as previously, meaning 15% to 25% growth. And then including in that a 10% to 15% organic growth. And improved margins, both in relation to adjusted EBITDA in the Trifork segment and EBIT on the Trifork group. Last but not least, we also still are guiding to be within a level of up to 1.5x in relation to leverage net debt to adjusted EBITDA.

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Thank you, Kristian. So let's take you through some of the highlights of '22 and Q4. So in specifically, for the whole year, we saw that churn came down compared to the year before and also churn in Q4, in particular, is at a level where we are starting to accept it, but we still believe it's possible to have it lower. But here, we are more or less on market, but we'd like to improve from here. Inspire, the big highlight there was the acquisition of a conference series in Australia. And the reason why we did that was simply that it was a conference series that we actually cofounded in 2008 that was then taken over by a partner. But then last year, we got it back. And so it's an old friend of the group that is now consolidated in Build. We saw a 19.3% organic growth in the quarter in Q4, which is very satisfying and a run growth of 31.6% in organic revenue growth. So both Build and Run was strong in Q4. In Labs, we follow -- we did follow up investments in &Money, which is this joint venture between Trifork and 3 banks in Denmark and Kashet, which is a R&D fintech company that will provide new and innovation technologies to the market. And the events as of Q4 is now that we consolidate as Kristian mentioned, the IBE acquisition in Switzerland. Let's move on. So here, you can see the financial highlights of Q4 2022. And here you see that we have the organic adjusted revenue growth of 20.1% and -- which is a very good number for us and where we would like to be also in the future. But let's see if it's possible. We have a Trifork segment adjusted EBITDA margin of 19.5%, which is also a very good place for us to be. And so it's good to see that we ended the year '22 on a high. And what we can also see that now we are 66 business units at Trifork, we have 24 active Trifork Labs start-ups, and we have chosen to disclose more information about our Lab portfolio, and we will get back to that in a moment. We are more than 1,000 headcounts, almost 1,100. And also our digital channels on our Inspire continues to grow. And also, we have included other social media platforms such as Instagram that is picking up very nicely. And next quarter, we will also report on that. Let's move on to the next. So here, we can see another view that you are used to in regards to Trifork segment and Trifork Labs segment. But this view here, I like because it kind of also shows the size between the Labs and the segment. So here being the Trifork segment is the big and the Trifork Labs is a minor part, but a very important part of being an innovative next-gen company, and you can read about how we drive those 2 segments in the report. Let's move on. So here, you can see some of the work that has been documented in our financial report. So if you're really interested, you can see these case studies and coach from our customers. And I don't want to pick out one here, particularly, we have a case story coming in a moment. Our strategy house we have maintained and the strategic priorities in '22 are listed here to the right. I just want to highlight one that personally and the whole management team has been working quite hard on and that is how to make sure that we get a good evolution in our DNA throughout the whole company. So we have performed a number of leadership workshops where the business unit leaders from the different business units are meeting in groups. And today, we have 7 groups meeting 3 to 4 times a year where we plan strategic development. And also we train and we exchange good practices on how to grow a healthy business. Let's move on. And here, you see for the Trifork segment that we are now in 14 countries. We are 66 business units, as mentioned before and just short of 1,100 people. What we don't see here is that now we also have business in Australia and in the U.S., but we will keep you updated on that in the quarters to come. And here's the case story that we chose to feature in this presentation. So being in Switzerland, it's hard to avoid flying with Swiss. And actually, Swiss is one of my favorite airlines and as you can imagine, I travel quite a bit. And it's a pleasure the way that Swiss treats their passengers and also the way they are very responsible with minimizing food waste and optimizing customer experience. And this is done through software that we deliver through our group company, Vilea, and they have had this customer relationship for years and we are constantly updating this. And so basically, when the plane takes off, the crew of the plane has all the important information on the passengers that are needed to perform a good flight and a good experience, but also a safe journey for all the passengers. Let's move on. We maintain our engagement model through the market. We call it Inspire-Build-Run, as you know. And here you can see that Inspire is slowly picking up. It's now 3.1% of the EUR 185 million and we are getting close to all-time high. Before COVID, we had EUR 7 million, EUR 8 million. And now we are around EUR 5.5 million in Inspire. The relationship between Build and Run is more or less maintained, but we do see Run increase a little bit here, which is quite happy. And you see, as I mentioned, the Inspire Q4 revenue growing 136%. Actually, for a long time, now also a quarter with a positive EBITDA of [ 0.4 ]. So that's, of course, very promising to see that development. Let's move on. Here, you see an overview of our 6 business areas, and we will dive down into our verticals first. So our 3 verticals, FinTech, Digital Health and Smart Building, as you can see here. What I want to highlight here is the development in Digital Health for the year. And as you can see for Q4, there was a very high revenue growth in Digital Health and for the whole year as well, a 66% total revenue growth for Digital Health. And I hope to see that we can enter yet another market in '23. But in '22, we put Switzerland on the map of Digital Health. It is a big mission we have, and it's a very important mission, and we are working extremely hard for the success of the digital development in health care in Switzerland. Let's move on to the horizontals. So -- and here, as you can see, again, as you recall from previous presentations, Cyber Protection is now 8.4% of our total business and in Q4 had an increase in revenue compared to the year before of 27%. And for the full year, 45%. So a very nice development in Cyber Protection as well. And we also continued our investment into Cyber Protection and into operation, and we believe that, that will pay off in the future. Let's move on. First of all, here you can see a new overview. We will talk a little bit about our lab investments, so we can take some of the feedback we had that it's a little bit mysterious, what we do in Labs. We -- of course, we don't see it that way. But we like to be more transparent on what we do in Labs and why we do it. So you can see to the left what we're looking for. You can study this in our presentation and in our report later and also the outcome we are looking for. So the whole point is that our labs should really support the work we do in Trifork segment, as also indicated on the earlier slide. Let's move on. So here, is a quite new and very important view. So the way we track and the way we would like to have you to look at our portfolio is, okay, so let's see the top 5, how do they account for our book value. And you actually see that that's close to 70% of the total value in our book and the top 5 being AxonIQ, C4 Media, Dawn Health, Promon and XCI. And there, we have a combination of a large ownership share and also these 5 companies are in a very healthy situation despite even the world's economical climate at the moment. And Kristian, maybe you can just take us shortly through for these 5 the different ways we do -- yes, if we do discounted cash flow or we do the latest investment round.

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Yes. So actually, we also provided this table. You see here in the annual report where you can see the rationale for our investments. You can see the ownership we have, you can see the stage of the company, and you can see the evaluation method as you see here. So as you see, we have four companies evaluated through DCF models and the remaining companies in relation to financing rounds. So here you see 2 of the top 5 is based on DCF models. And the reason for that is that the companies are mature that don't need any additional funding. They are earning money and then paying out dividend to Trifork.

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Thank you, Kristian. Let's move on. So here, you see where we inject that money into the Labs, it was Kashet and &Money. Let's move on to the next. And also here is an important overview of you can say the maturity level of the companies and then the year they were founded. So this gives you an indication of are they growing on the healthy curve. And you can see, for instance, AxonIQ, founded in 2017. And now 5 years later, already at a bridge to B-round and very loyal and solid investor base. And so that's a, you can say, an example of a nice development in startup that started really very, very small. Let's move on. So Kristian, maybe you can take us through some of the ESG update. There's a lot of new stuff there to tell about.

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Yes. So actually here, the most important thing is that there's a link to the new and updated ESG report that we also published today. This report is very comprehensive compared to previous reports and covers all the requirements from -- based on the EU taxonomy and relation to all emissions, et cetera, and also the governance topics from the Danish authorities. So in here in that report, you can find all the targets and all the emission numbers from Trifork in Scope 1, 2 and 3. So it's really a lot of information you can find there. One thing maybe to point out here is that our use in all our offices went up to 87.6% of green energy, which is definitely in the right direction. We are all not there yet, but still struggling with a couple of the landlords to actually get green energy in. But we had it on [ our mission ]. So if they won't supply it, then we have to move somewhere else. Then also, you can see in the picture to the right here, that's the rendering of the Trifork Smart Building one. And now finally, after having some issues with the deliveries of components to the building, we expect this to be finished in Q2 and taking it into operation. So we look very much forward to do that.

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Yes. So I just want to add a few things here maybe. Yes. So the example of our self-engineered and architected building, Trifork Smart Building one that you see on the picture, as Kristian mentioned, that we are close to moving in. But it actually represents a lot of new innovations. And one of them actually links right into Scope 2, namely the energy and the CO2 emitted from heating the building. So when we have a very windy day on a winter there is a heat loss of 100-kilowatt in this building. And the way we actually insisted on doing this heat add to the building was using solar panels and then drive a heat pump that when the sun is actually there, we accumulate that energy in a hot water reservoir. And actually, if we compare that to a normal central heating system in an office building, we actually have a CO2 optimization of 24x. And so actually, the taxonomy actually links quite well into how we like to see the world develop. There are not many buildings that are this efficient in generating energy and heat from nature.

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Okay. And then moving over to the performance, the financials. Jorn already elaborated over some of the numbers. I will go a little more into details and explain a little more. And otherwise, you are welcome to ask questions after the presentation. So what you see here overall in Q4 is the 20.1% organic growth when taking deconsolidation of Dawn Health into account, that accounted in '21 for EUR 900,000. And you see also that the part from acquisitions, inorganic growth was only EUR 100,000 in Q4, meaning that the majority of growth here was organic. In relation to the Trifork segment performance, what you then see here is a growth or an increase in margin from 17.5% to 19.5% in Q4 and overall accounting to the 17.3% margin that was reported by Jorn to EUR 31.9 million for the year. The Trifork Group performance where we guide on EBIT, the new focus here and reason for having also adjusted EBIT here was because of the [ iProcedures ] in 2021 and all the costs allocated there being adjusted and also adjustment of the profits from Dawn Health last year, but we did not have any special items in 2022. So looking into this, you see the Q4 adjusted EBIT going up from 9.3% to 12.3% in Q4 2022, which is a satisfying development from our point of view. Looking a little more into the Trifork segment performance and the subsegments, then here, you have the actual numbers and not only the percentages in relation to how the different subsegments developed. And you see here the development in the Inspire and below in the first graph to the left, from EUR 2.4 billion to EUR 5.7 million. And you see how the increase also in -- went up in Trifork in the Run-based subsegment. I'll come back to that a little later. Here on the right-hand side, you see the margins. So you see that Inspire now has a breakeven more or less, a very small minus. And we do expect for next year that to be a breakeven or maybe even a profitable business as it was in the past. Looking into the Build-based subsegment, we totaled a 20.9% margin which is a satisfying level, close to what it was in '21. Even with the, you could say, the abnormalities we had in Q3, Q2, with 1 debt-to-loss and some delays in engagement, et cetera, which we reported in Q2. Then in the run base, you still see a margin below what used to be average. This, of course, is impacted by the investments that we have accounted for the noncapitalized investments, which totaled EUR 1.6 million for all of 2022. But we'll dive a little more into that afterwards. Inspire subsegment performance, here you see the actual numbers. And in total, this was 136% growth in the quarter and 140% growth for the year. The Build-based -- Build sub-segment performance here, you see revenue here. So the increase in revenue overall was the 16.5%, but the 19.3% in Q4, which was very satisfying. In relation to the margins, more or less what I just told you that we had a higher margin also for the year or at the year equal to what it was in 2021. The Run subsegment performance here for the quarter and then you also see for the full year. So the quarter was at this 10.2% increase. When comparing, we also need to compare to what was hardware sales. I will come back to that on the next slide. But we did see a lower hardware sales in Q4. So looking in the overall increase, it was only 10.2%, but I'll come back to that. Overall for the year was a satisfying increase with 19% in revenue. And what you see here is also the margins from the annual margins of 16.7%. Actually, it already in Q4 improved to 20.1%. Also, the investments we had in Q4 was less than it was in the previous quarters. And to some extent, that was part of that increase in margins. This we also expect to move forward that we can increase margins and run more based on now not having the same investments into the operation centers, but also that services and the products are more ready to increase sales in the Cyber Protection area. Here is a more detailed view, which you can also find in the notes in the annual report in relation to how especially hosting security and license support, which is the most recurring revenue we have in the group and in the Run-based segment, how that develops. And you see here from Q4 '21 to Q4 '22, there was a big difference in the hardware-based revenue and this is why I'm talking about these different numbers. If we're only looking into hosting security license support, then we saw a growth of 30-plus percent in 2022. Then looking into Labs segment performance here. On the left-hand side, you see the EBT. This EBT was combined by a negative EBITDA of EUR 1.5 million, which is expected, which is the cost of running the Labs organization. And then increase in valuations of the lab companies. So in total, this combined to EUR 4.4 million. Looking at the right-hand side, you see the orange and dark blue bars. That's the book value we have in the Trifork Group, meaning EUR 40.2 million as investments or cost of active investments. That said, you need to look into that, saying only half of this is actually cash investments and the second half is coming from the deconsolidation that we talked about earlier on Dawn, which accounts for EUR 20.3 million of the EUR 40.2 million. The EUR 20.1 million is then unrealized gains in total and Trifork Labs, accounting we have right now on the books. And the EUR 73 million is the accumulated realized gains, meaning the cash that we got out from all the exits from investments after deducting the initial cash investments. Overall, in relation to cash flow and financial position, then we had a solid cash flow coming in 2022. And net end of the year, we had a net cash position of EUR 3.7 million, equal to a leverage of minus 0.1 to adjusted EBITDA.

This was the financial walk through, and now we're ready to take questions.

K
Kristian Dollerup
executive

Let's start with the Poul.

P
Poul Jessen
analyst

Okay. Okay. Congratulations were a very strong end of the year. So that had looked very, very strong. So I was just thinking about the Run segment where you look at -- reiterate the recurring revenue in the business. Can you say something about what drives then the volatility from quarter-to-quarter to better understand what's driving it when it's recurring?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Yes. I mean some of the revenue is based on consumption. And some of the revenue is also based -- so that is a little volatile, you could say, throughout the year, not that there's any special seasonality in it. And some is also when we are implementing new services or new functionality on existing platforms, et cetera, then there could be some higher add-ons to the recurring revenue.

P
Poul Jessen
analyst

Okay. And this is the part where you -- when you guide the highest growth for next year coming from Run? That's then the hosting and the security that should continue growing?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Yes. And also because we started last year to move from, you could say, from one-off sales also from licenses, et cetera, more to be kind of SaaS models on the Cyber Protection solution, but also in some of the hosting environments. We developed a new Trifork cloud stack solution, which we then sell in the same way. So that is really something that we expect to drive the growth in the next year.

P
Poul Jessen
analyst

Then on the investments you did in '22, the EUR 1.6 million. Just to have a clear understanding, that was investments into the platform and costs that are recurring going forward? Or was it one-off costs?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

That's investments -- yes, you can say that's investments into the operation centers and in relation to automate the operation centers and to say, to get them into operation. So actually, this cost is also something that had an impact on revenue. Because we use these -- the same resources that we would have used to do external jobs, to actually do it internally in order to make room for future growth.

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Kristian, can I just add here? Because I think the question was a little bit different. Poul said, is it a recurring cost? Do you expect -- do we expect the same level of cost this year, next year and the next year? [indiscernible]

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Sorry, no, we don't expect that. This is a onetime cost, you could say, and it was lower in the beginning of the year and the end of the year and we only expect a maximum 40% in the next year of what it was in 2022, but potentially lower.

P
Poul Jessen
analyst

Okay. Then just to get some insight, you won 2 larger Danish contracts in the fourth quarter [ in Akina ] and [ Sunnhaus Duerson ]. Can you put a little on to these? Is this new business? Is it expanded business? Or is it just an extension of the existing contracts?

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

I mean the [ in Akina ] in particular, is a very large framework agreement, and that's new business. So it's an expanded relationship with that customer. And in the area of Digital Health, I mean, to continue the work and expand the work in an organic way that we have done for many years in Danish Digital Health, in particular, that is more or less a continuation but with some add-ons.

P
Poul Jessen
analyst

Extension plus extra business?

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Yes, yes.

P
Poul Jessen
analyst

I have 2 final ones, the current market conditions. How do you look at that? You mentioned higher risk in your guidance, but is this something you've seen materialize into new business?

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

I mean, Poul, as you can see, the Q4 went quite well. And we would be very happy if we can have more of those quarters over the next years. But it does show the potential we have. And when the -- you can see when the market situation is more challenging as it is now, you can say, we just have to look harder to find the business, but the potential is huge. We have a survey from the U.S. saying that the mobile first strategy, which is a lot to do with what we do in Smart Enterprise that only 15% of the largest 500,000 enterprises worldwide are actually using smart devices as a part of optimizing their business. And from those 15%, only -- they only use 5% of the features. So you can say it's not difficult to find these logos because they are everywhere, as you know, but it can be difficult to land the business in [ our ] Trifork. But -- so it's more demanding to do business development but there is still a very high potential. The same you can say about Cyber Protection because Cyber Protection has kind of the same. It's a lot of potential. But you need to work quite hard to actually get this level of, you can say, trust between us and the customer when we start a new relationship.

P
Poul Jessen
analyst

Okay. Makes sense. The final one on Nine, the put options that they had under 30%, they expired, as you write, early '23. Are there any news if they have been exercised or if they have just expired?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

No. I mean, you see in our financial report that the obligations to the put options are now as current, meaning that it's within 1 year, so this is the status we have right now. But as we also have explained earlier is that we are looking into acquiring additional NCIs. So we already communicated that the NCIs in Airline Solutions, we're looking into acquiring. And we will also be discussing now when the market is open for this, discuss with Nine if we're also are going to take over the NCIs this year. But currently, no new status.

P
Poul Jessen
analyst

But if you exercise a call or they exercise a put, will it require an announcement?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

I would expect that [ to happen ].

K
Kristian Dollerup
executive

Okay. Then I think it's Serge from Crédit Suisse.

S
Serge Rotzer
analyst

Well, I have several questions. Probably, I'll start with the first one about acquisition or inorganic growth. You say that you want to grow up to 2.4% or this is equal to EUR 5 million incremental sales [ SKU ] or [ since ] acquisition. Why such a low number? Is it due to missing opportunity? Or is it due to the restriction of the balance sheet? So I'm wondering, you mentioned ones that would go for a leverage of 1.5x. Is this still valid? Or did this change because of rising interest rates?

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Thank you. It's a very good question. Kristian, I can take it because it's, of course, an overall you can say balance between risk appetite and opportunities. So we are, at the moment, walking through a lot of potential M&As. There are none whatsoever imminent or even close to complete. And that should be seen from different angles. One is that -- of course when the economy is worsening, there are also a lot of not good acquisition targets that might try to sell to you. So we have to filter all that. And then we proactively have to look for the ones who are not yet for sale because that's probably the ones you want to buy. And so that's a lot of work. And also, when you can see that we can do a quarter as we did Q4, that is actually within the middle of the range of our total midterm expected growth. I mean, there is not a -- we'd rather save our dry powder until we really see something that we are very excited to bring into the group. And also another thing is that we just talked about the NCIs. And so in a year where we could potentially bring down the NCIs, that also requires a lot of cash. So no, the 1.5x is still what we are comfortable with. And we are not so worried about the interest rate. And of course, not now where we don't have any net debt, but still the 1.5x is something we can manage. But this I would say is the comments to your question there.

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Yes. But maybe just to clarify that the 2% to 2.4% inorganic growth, that's the growth by acquisitions that we already have performed. So if we would do any additional acquisitions, then we would update that number accordingly.

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Yes. [indiscernible]

S
Serge Rotzer
analyst

So this was my mistake, obviously, EUR 5 million is consolidation impact right? Would you pay then, if you could wish, with debt or with cross shareholdings?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Sorry, I didn't get the question.

S
Serge Rotzer
analyst

If you could buy now, make an acquisition, let's say, a larger one, would you make -- would you offer this guys shareholdings in your companies or one of the lab companies? Or would you raise debt? Or -- what is your favorite strategy here? Or even equity?

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

I think if you look back at what we have done in the past, such as in the Nine case, you would see a combination of cash earnout and then also buying less than 100%. And also, we'd pay partly with equity. So probably a combination of all the things you mentioned.

S
Serge Rotzer
analyst

Okay. Got it. Very helpful. Okay. I switch quickly to revenue, if I may. You want to increase top line by EUR 20 million to EUR 35 million. How much of this amount you already have in your books and for how much you still have to strive for new clients or projects or [indiscernible]?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Well, this, we have not published anything about. So of course, we have our internal numbers, but this is not something that we have selected to publish.

S
Serge Rotzer
analyst

Okay. But still, you have been growing quite well in the Build business, plus 20% as well plus 10%. Is this more or less a handover then from Run to Build? Or where do you see the growth is coming from in regard to the markets or countries?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

No, we don't see a handover from Run to Build, but more the other way around from Build to Run when we develop a partnership with a [ city ] customer. But -- so you could say we also have published that in the Build-based revenue, then 77% of that in 2022 was actually from repeat revenue, what we classify as repeat revenue, meaning this is revenue within existing customers. So in 2022, we really grew the most revenue within existing strategic customers.

S
Serge Rotzer
analyst

Okay. Helpful. Yes, obviously, I was wrong from the Build to Run, and it's the opposite. Then probably the last one, do you already have enough people to cover this incremental [ sets ]?

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Well, one thing that is interesting to -- if you analyze our numbers from '22, you would see that we have grown revenue quite more than we have added people. And this is, of course, good for risk, but it's also good for when you are going out and have to be in the market of talent. And so for sure, during '22, where you could say, Q1 '22 was probably the worst time in history to get talent and to get the people we really need to execute, whereas in Q4, it already shifted a lot. You all saw the announcement from big tech with Facebook and Google and everyone laying off thousands of people. And when the big ones are doing that, a lot of others are doing the same. I cannot tell you why, but they just do. And as you know, we didn't. So we added people. So of course, when everyone are shaking the trees, there is an increased appetite to go to Trifork. And although we are still small, our brand is still increasing in force. And so it is also getting easier to onboard, but also because I believe we have the best workplace in the world. In tech, we can really provide an excellent working environment where we can offer that you become partly owner of the company, you work with interesting stuff because we are in the forefront of technology. We have labs, we have conferences and if you have a really good IP idea, we can -- as we did in AxonIQ, we can turn it into a successful lab company. So I think we are a very attractive company to work with, but also we need to tell that story way more. But it's way easy to acquire new talent than it was a year ago.

S
Serge Rotzer
analyst

Okay, probably last one and then I will stop for my other colleagues. So when you have -- we will see then a hike in personal expense, do we have to expect this in the first 6 months or more in the second 6 months? Also in regard to margin volatility.

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Kristian, do you want to answer that?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Yes. Sorry, I didn't hear a question.

S
Serge Rotzer
analyst

I understood from that you will increase personal expense for hiring new people. So should we expect the hike in personnel expense in the first 6 months or the second 6 months, also in regard to margin volatility?

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

I would say, hiring would be distributed over the year in all our different business units. If you're thinking about inflation, then I think we have done the regulations needed, et cetera, but that is also offset to new engagement agreement with our customers. But I would expect, as Jorn talked about before, that we will see a high increase in revenue as well in 2023 than the increase in salary costs and the number of employees to employ.

K
Kristian Dollerup
executive

Okay. Any other questions from anyone in the audience? Yes, you think you should be able to talk now.

U
Unknown Analyst

Perfect. So one question on the guidance. Currently you are guiding for 8% to 14% organic growth. So maybe you could talk a bit about what will get you to the low end of current guidance and the high end of the guidance. That will be my first question.

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Do you want to pitch on this, Jorn, or should I?

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

I think you can do that. It's numbers.

K
Kristian Wulf-Andersen
executive

Okay. No. I mean, of course, this is a -- we have a rumor of uncertainty. We have a fourth quarter which came out quite positive. And if we can continue that journey, you could say, for the rest of the year, then we would definitely be in the higher guidance. But of course, we also see that things can disrupt as we saw in 2022. So I would say the lower guidance would be if we see kind of the same disturbances again, existing customers delaying engagements, et cetera, then that would also could cause us to be at the lower end of the guidance.

U
Unknown Analyst

Okay. Very clear. Then maybe 1 question on and cross-border opportunities and maybe this is within the Digital Health business. But I'm just trying to understand, are you close to sort of get a breakthrough into a new country? And also, it seems like the U.S. is a more important country for Trifork today. Would this be a key strategic market going forward?

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Yes, it's a very good question. Thank you. So the U.S. today represents EUR 7 million to EUR 8 million, part of the EUR 185 million. So -- and our experience with developing business in the U.S. is that actually that it's easier than it is in Europe. And also with -- yes, in general, better market situation. And so we do intend to increase our effort into accelerating our growth in the U.S. when you are -- and in particular, in regards to Digital Health, we are very happy also with our lab company, Dawn Health, that has a head start bringing their services into the U.S. And there was actually a big part of their strategy move when we deconsolidated Dawn Health. It was mostly about attracting working capital to the company and not as much as we sold anything. It was the dilution of our owner share based on a reasonable valuation, but that capital is being now put to work in expanding in particular in the U.S. market. And of course, we monitor that very closely. So you should also see our lab companies sometimes being icebreakers for Trifork because a lab company is always more risk -- has more risk appetite than at Trifork. We are more cautious about what we do, and we want to feel safe when we expand. So Labs is also about that. And so I don't think we will probably see a lot of revenue in '23 from Digital Health in the U.S., but I would more expect it to come from Smart Enterprise, where it's -- it would be probably way easier to acquire a business than if you compare to Digital Health because Digital Health in the U.S. is a risky thing. You probably all know the lawyers, the ambulance chasers and all that, that it's -- you have to be sure you're doing in the U.S. It's a high-risk market when it comes to liability, et cetera.

U
Unknown Analyst

Very clear answer. Then my final question here. So I know the European Union is currently looking at AI and we have this AI Information Act coming up with an outcome in -- I think it was in March or in the summer or something. Could this have any potential negative or positive impact on the Trifork?

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Yes, it can certainly have an impact. And if you look at the GDPR and the cookie loss implemented by EU or led by EU and what actually we ended up with. So I mean, the -- I think the intention was good and healthy. But if you look at some of the websites today where you enter, you can see sometimes 5,000 cookies in operation. And it doesn't really help if you just make people used to accept cookies. And then they don't really know what's going on because it's so -- if you really need the service of the website, you more or less have to accept. And so it doesn't maybe really change a lot with the -- but it just becomes something in the way and it doesn't have the intended effect that you actually see less, you can say, will monitor of data from people. So with the AI, I hope it will have a positive effect on what you'll use AI for. But I don't hope that it will have a negative effect that in more, you can say, innocent cases. So let me take an example where we use AI. So for instance, we have worked with the Danish rails and DSP to prototype systems in trains where we are looking at the signals. So there is the driver in the train. And this person is, of course, responsible for the safety of the driving. But sometimes you have really bad weather, and you need to look -- stare into this rain and fog or whatever it is. And of course, the electronic system says, well [ it plays ] but sometimes they fail. And so we have, together with them, developed camera systems that are looking out in the front, and they look for -- they don't look for people or they don't do facial recognition or anything, but they do signal detection. So it would be sad to see that the law would prevent systems like that, that increased safety just because EU wants to limit AI. So I hope it's not going in that direction.

U
Unknown Analyst

Okay. But there is an underlying risk that you will have to sort of change a lot of your systems in order to comply with the new regulation.

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Yes, there are underlying risks, but there are also underlying opportunities. And since we don't really know where it will end up, we cannot really know.

K
Kristian Dollerup
executive

Are there any other questions from the audience? It looks quiet. Then I think we will conclude this session. Just before letting you go, I have a couple of practical information. We hope to see you again soon, of course, in one of our investor road shows or other meetings. As mentioned, you'll find this presentation and the video recording on our Investor site. Next time, we have a publication for our Q1 results, will be on May 3. We will provide more practical information about that on -- either by mail to you or on Trifork -- investor.trifork.com. I wish you all a nice day.

J
Jorn Larsen
executive

Thank you.