Lime Technologies AB (publ)

STO:LIME

Earnings Call Transcript

[Nils Olsson, executive]

My name is Nils Olsson, been around at Lime since 2006 and took over as CEO in 2021. And today, I also have Anders with me.

[Anders Hofvander, executive]

Hello, everyone.

[Nils Olsson, executive]

And if you have any questions, feel free to write them in the chat, and we will answer them at the end of the session.

So let's start with giving you a little bit of overview before we run into the more details of Q4 and full year. So what you see in front of you is that we've always been running Lime with a very long-term perspective. And that has left us with a fantastic footprint, as you can see. In more than 20 years now, we've been growing and, in average, 19% per year, with an EBITA margin of 25% in average per year. And for me, that's something that I feel really, really proud about.

But no matter how we looked, how many customers we had, how many markets we entered, we more or less have had the same goal since the start. And that is to help customers to become really strong in sales and customer care so they can help their customers in a really good way. And I would say, when we do it as our best is when we combine our expertise and our software to solve mission-critical problems and become a natural part of the company's core processes.

Over the years, we've been scaling Lime, and now we've been scaling it into 7 markets. And since 2020, we entered Netherlands, Germany. And also in 2024, we added Sportadmin and Plan Plan at the -- to be a part of the Lime Group. So now we are present in 7 markets, 11 offices, and we have around 500 employees.

Looking at some of our key success factors, as I started with long-term profitable growth that has been in our DNA. We have a reliable business model. 65% of our revenue is recurring. We are not depending on 1 or 2 or 3 big customers. We have a sticky customer base with a low customer concentration, and something that is -- has really helped building Lime to what it is today is a strong corporate culture that we are running this company together.

So let's look into a little bit on Q4 and the full year. So starting at this, we continue to deliver a quarter with profitable growth and, I would say, in a still tough market. Revenue growth amounts 19%; EBITA margin, 26%; and an ARR growth of 30%. Growth during the quarter, mainly driven by the increased subscription revenues, which is exactly in line with our strategy. What I'm happy to see also in the quarter is that we are improving our organic growth in the quarter, an important measurement for us.

Last quarter, we also acquired the Dutch market leader in swimming schools, Plan Plan, and we added them at the end of Q4, and that's an add-on acquisition to Sportadmin. And then I would say, I'm really happy about this because that marks the beginning of Sportadmin's international journey.

Looking at the full year of 2024, our ARR growth, of course, 30%; profitability, 25%; and we have the revenue growth of 19%. And I would say that this shows the capacity to still generate customer value in a tougher business climate, which I would say '24 really was.

Our profitability for the full year remained really good, and the EBITA -- with an EBITA margin of 25%, and that's in line with our financial targets of at least 25% in the medium term.

So our improved cash flow from operating activities and our overall financial position allows us to increase dividend. And the Board of Directors, therefore, proposes a dividend of SEK 4 per share, which equals SEK 53.2 million and 60% of net profit.

As I always say, and I've stated that in many, many quarters, how important it is, and that's having the right mindset, and that's a key to perform well in a tough market. And I think that's something that I'm extra happy about in the quarter that our team has really showed this, and that's resulting in a better finish up of the year.

We can still do better when it comes to results, even though we have, as I said, delivered an improved organic growth in the quarter. The same goes for the market conditions. We saw a little bit shorter sales cycles in the last quarter. And I would say that the market, in general, feels a little bit more optimistic, even though it varies a bit between the different countries.

Looking into our different business units, and '24 has been a challenging year for more or less all our business units. At the same time, we are working really focused. And I would say in many areas, we are moving in the right direction.

Starting with Lime CRM. We finished the year strong and a little bit stronger actually than the previous quarters, with a good order intake, a higher ARR growth and a better result for our consultants business, the Expert Services that I've been talking about throughout 2024. At the same time, I still think that we have done investments in our products. We've worked a lot with a proactive culture. And I would say that we also have sharpened a bit more focus on our key verticals, especially on the international markets. And what I see is that, that should bring a good starting point of 2025.

Looking into Lime Go and Connect, a little bit slight tougher last quarter. But in Lime Go, we managed to attract more companies in the right target group, and that's something that we've seen throughout the whole 2024. And looking at Connect, something that I'm happy about. Looking more into Q4 perspective again, I think it's the increased activity in new sales and outbound.

Then of course, talking about Sportadmin. And as many of you know, in January, our business are, Sportadmin, which makes around 8% to 10% of our revenue, was attacked by external hackers. And of course, it's really unfortunate to see this kind of trend in the society where more and more companies are being attacked by these criminal networks. Since the attack, we've been working really hard to investigate what happened, get our software back on track and also, I would say, staying really close communication with our customers. And that was our top priority from the start: helping our customers and their members so they can keep running their important activities with the kids and the youngsters.

And I would say -- I would really like to say thanks because our customers have been very understanding, supportive, and that's, of course, something that we are very, very grateful for. And closing the chapter about like Sportadmin right now, as a software company, I would say that IT security has been and will be a high priority focus area for us. We always work both proactive and with standard processes to handle security incidents. So looking forward now from this kind of incident, it's mostly a police matter.

Looking into the recruitment. And we've had a high recruitment pace full year 2024, and that's something that we also started with in the beginning of '25. In total, we hired around 95 new employees, and we also had a new record, with 12,000 applicants applying for job at Lime. In the beginning now of the year, we just welcomed 30 new colleagues with a nice onboarding weeks in Lund. And for me, personally, and for the whole company, that's always a great way to start the year. It really gives you a lot of energy.

So we are ending 2024, I would say, in a little bit more positive way. And for us, the focus going forward for '25 is very clear. We will continue to build on the world-class international company, where we combine growth and profitability. And looking into our foundation, I think we have a very strong foundation. We have 6 markets. We have 4 different product lines, 2 different revenue streams, 7,500 customers and around 500 dedicated employees that really wants to help making life easier for our customers.

So let's jump into a little bit more details now. And we will look into order intake, revenue. Anders will talk about the profit. We have a summary, and then, of course, we go into Q&A.

And starting with the order intake. And as I've communicated before, our customer concentration remains very low. Top 10 customers stands for 7% of our revenue, and the biggest customer stands for 1% of our revenue. And I continue with this message. I think that's really, really good in these kind of market conditions that we're not depending on a few big customers. Instead, we are making deals with many customers every month, every quarter and so on in different geographies and in different verticals.

As I said about the market, it looks a little bit better, a little bit shorter sales cycles now in Q4 and a little bit more optimistic feeling. And looking at Q4, we continue to do many nice deals, starting with Lime CRM within our industry verticals, both in our home market but also on the international -- in our international markets. And I'm really glad to welcome new customers, such as the Norwegian utility company, Yve; the Danish football club, FC Copenhagen; and also a big German membership organization. So a nice amount of deals, and it's especially focused within our verticals.

Looking into some more deals on more Swedish perspective, we see that we welcome SJ; the real estate company, Mölndalsbostäder, and also those are in the industries where we more or less know that we can help them to really solve mission-critical problems and build on with our industry knowledge.

Looking into Lime Go, we welcome new customers, such as Kopernicus, a Swedish company specializing in solar energy solutions. And for Connect, we have several customers, of course, among one, which, I think, is really interesting, is Intersport, and this one is Intersport in Austria, which is the leading sports retail in Austria with over 280 stores. And from a Sportadmin perspective, welcomed 2 really classic football clubs, Västerås SK, Enköpings SK. And those are quite big clubs with over around 1,200 members.

Looking into the revenue and as a product company, of course, it's really important to look into our ARR growth. And our subscription is growing fast, growing 34% quarter-to-quarter. I would say, a strong result. And looking at the service agreements, as you can see, it's a decrease of 24%, and I've communicated this before, in line with our strategy when we are converting the customers from old upfront agreements into new subscription agreements. And in total, this builds up to the strong ARR growth of 30%.

So looking at the -- our different revenue streams, and we reached, as you can see, the last 12 months, a strong growth in the subscription of 33%. We still see that -- we don't close any upfront deals anymore. Looking into the service agreements on a quite stable level. And if we sum up those subscription revenues, we see that we have 65% now recurring revenue of the total revenue, which is a strong -- which a good improvement, I would say, from the start of '24 to the end. And looking into our Expert Services part, we see a little bit better growth at the end of -- in Q4. And it will, of course, continue to grow but decrease as a total going forward.

Looking into the revenue here. We have, as you can see, the net sales is up in the quarter, 19%. And the last 12 months, it's also up 19%. If we look at the split between the segments, Sweden grows 22% and the Rest of Europe, 13%. Looking at the last 12 months, we grew 21% in Sweden and 13% in Rest of Europe. And I'm not happy, and I'm not satisfied with the growth in the Rest of Europe. Both subscriptions and Expert Services are low, even if we see an improvement from last quarter. And as I said, we want to build a more international company. That's our focus. So to strengthen our market outside now for '25 is a big focus going forward.

So Anders, a little bit about the profit side.

[Anders Hofvander, executive]

Yes. Adjusted EBITA in the fourth quarter increased by SEK 7.4 million to SEK 47.5 million, corresponding to an EBITA margin of 25.8%, compared to 25.9% for the same quarter of the year before. Looking at the last 12 months figures, we delivered an EBITA margin aligning with our financial targets. Adjusted EBITA for the -- for 2024 amounted to 25.1% compared to 25.7% previous year.

In 2024, we have continued to invest in sales, marketing and employees to strengthen our market presence and our product offerings. We have an underlying pressure in our software revenue, so despite a tougher business climate, we still managed to deliver a solid profitability of 25%.

Going over to our OpEx development. On the left-hand side, we have our personnel expenses. Personnel expenses in the quarter increased by 19% and by 21% for the full year. Looking at the personnel expenses in relation to net sales, year 2024 amounted to 58% compared to 57% in year 2023. The increase in our personnel expenses for the year is partly explained by the acquisitions of Sportadmin in January and as well as our acquisition of Plan Plan in December and also due to our continuous investment in staffing and employee activities.

Going over on the right-hand side, we have our operating expenses. As you can see, our operating expenses increased by 24% in the quarter and by 20% for the full year. The increase is mainly due to the acquisitions of Sportadmin and Plan Plan and also that we are investing more in future growth by marketing, physical sales events and product offerings.

[Nils Olsson, executive]

Thanks for that, Anders. Do a little bit summary and looking into then the financial targets. And as you can see, we reached a growth of 19% in the last 12 months compared to the target of 18%, an EBITA margin of 25% over the last 12 months, in line with our target. We have a goal of net debt in relation to EBITDA should be less than 2.5, and we ended up at 0.9. And in 2024, the Board has proposed an increased dividend amounting SEK 53.2 million, corresponding to 60% of net profit.

So let's see if we have any questions in the chat.

[Anders Hofvander, executive]

Yes. So the first question is, can you give us some more information about the different markets?

[Nils Olsson, executive]

Yes. I think if we start with the market that is maybe a little bit -- are still in the same condition as previously, I would say that if we look from a Lime Connect perspective, we see that the German market is a little bit tougher. We have the automotive industry and so on. And we don't really see a positive sign there from a Line Connect perspective. And also, if we look at another market, which is more on the Finnish side, we also see that, that is more on the -- yes, from our data points, at least then the same conditions as previous.

If we look from the positive angle, I would say that we saw a little bit shorter sales cycles in Sweden, also saw some positive notes in Norway. And looking into Germany, but from a Lime CRM perspective, I see that we -- even if maybe the market in general is a little bit tougher, but I think that definitely, we have good vibes on -- in our pipeline on the German market going into 2025.

[Anders Hofvander, executive]

Okay. Next, we have a few questions regarding the incident in Sportadmin. First one is, how will this attack impact the result going forward?

[Nils Olsson, executive]

Okay. So starting with that, again, Sportadmin stands for around 8% to 10% of our revenue. And to clarify, this cyberattack was only isolated to the Sportadmin platform. We have yearly contracts with our customers. And in general, what I can see now, I don't think that it will have a big impact on the revenue going forward or on the cost side.

And yes, we see that we have another related one to this, which is a question about how have our customers reacted and do we see a big risk of churn.

So looking into this, I would say, overall, our customers have been very understanding, very supportive, which we are, of course, very thankful for. They have particularly appreciated that we have continuously communicated, we have supported them with both practical matters and, of course, having a very transparent communication.

[Anders Hofvander, executive]

Okay. We have another follow-up question in regards to the incident. Can you explain a little bit more how you work with security?

[Nils Olsson, executive]

Yes. And unfortunately, I need to start with that. I just -- and -- of course, we are living with this kind of like constant threat of cyberattack with tough criminal networks trying to attack and destroy for us. And as a software company, I would say that IT security has been and always be -- will be a very high-priority focus area. And we are and we need to work more or less with both to be more proactive all the time but also that we have good processes to handle. It could be cyberattacks, of course, but it could also be other types of security incidents.

[Anders Hofvander, executive]

Okay. And last question in regards to Sportadmin. Will this impact your strategy with Sportadmin going forward?

[Nils Olsson, executive]

No, it will not impact our strategy going forward. We just started the internationalization with Sportadmin, adding Plan Plan in the north part of Netherlands in Assen. And we will continue to focus on that international journey and, of course, to build us even stronger on the Swedish market.

[Anders Hofvander, executive]

Okay. We have another question. What does your M&A agenda look like for 2025?

[Nils Olsson, executive]

We did 2 acquisitions now in '24. We started the year very early with Sportadmin and then ended the year with Plan Plan. And we will continue to do active prospecting, and we are -- at the moment, we are building the pipeline. And I see that we will continue the internationalization of Sportadmin. So that's on track. And we are looking into different opportunities. It could be both greenfield, and that's how we expanded into new markets with -- as we've done with Lime historically, but also it could be an opportunity to enter through M&A. We also see different tech acquisitions that can be relevant to the market for us to fill up gaps in our different product portfolio.

[Anders Hofvander, executive]

Okay. And -- thank you. We have another question. How does the candidate market look like? And how do you see your need for 2025?

[Nils Olsson, executive]

I still see that there is a quite good candidate market out there. As I said in the call, we had around like 12,000 applicants. And I think still, it will be a good candidate market next year as well. We've started the year more or less with -- like started to recruit in the same pace as we did in 2024. I still believe when the market is opening up a bit, that we will see a higher employee churn. So I think it's important to always try to be a little bit ahead of that. And then, of course, we need to balance our new recruits with the employee churn, but that's something that we -- I would say that we have a good control over.

Perfect. So that was the last question. And of course, if you want to discuss more, don't -- never hesitate. Just reach out to me or Anders. Send us a mail, give us a call. But otherwise, we thanks a lot for you listening into this call and have a really nice day. Thank you.

[Anders Hofvander, executive]

Thank you.