SmartCraft ASA (SMCRT.OL) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Hanna Konyi, and I'm proud to be here as Interim CEO of SmartCraft. Even though I'm newly appointed to this role, I've been a part of this journey and the executive leadership team for the past 7 years, starting as CEO of Bygglet, 1 of our core brands. Since 2022, I also been responsible for the Swedish market, which has grown to be the largest in SmartCraft. Presenting together with me, we have Kjartan Bo, our CFO. For those who have followed SmartCraft, you know Kjartan from before. It's been a dynamic quarter, full of momentum, strategic execution and a strong financial performance. Today, we will walk you through our Q2 result, highlight key initiatives and share why we are confident about the road ahead. So let's dive in. I will start with Q2 in brief, and then Kjartan will deep dive a bit further into our financials, and we will finish off with a summary and open the floor for questions. The focus is on growth, margins and how our strategy continues to deliver. SmartCraft is a leading sales provider for the construction industry in the Nordics and the U.K. We serve over 13,800 customers, and I'm happy to see that we have already currently gained approximately 400 additional customers in the first 6 months of 2025 despite an elevated churn level. Our solutions are built for SME, helping them to digitize operations, improve margins and stay competitive. We're growing and our scalable model with strong recurring revenue puts us in a great position to keep us doing so. We're here to serve the construction industry so they can be more profitable, create better working conditions and deliver a more sustainable product. And how do we help our customer to do great business? Construction companies face real challenges they have tight margins, complex workflows and high risk. Our products give them insights and visibility into their business so that they can better manage their people, materials and documentation. That means fewer disputes, safer projects and better profitability. Our tools streamline scheduling, reduce admin and give teams 1 source of truth. It's also about clarity control and confidence so our customers can focus on their daily work. The opportunity ahead of us is massive, we see a total addressable market of NOK 50 billion across the Nordics and the U.K. with only 10% to 15% penetration of mission-critical solution, leaving huge room for growth. The U.K. alone now represents more than 60% of our TAM. This makes the U.K. our greatest and single greatest largest growth opportunity, and we are well positioned to scale geographically, deepen market penetration and lead the digital transformation of construction. One area that I am focused on and will continue to do as interim CEO, is to increase the speed of both product development and sales effort in order to capture this opportunity. Let's look into the highlights from Q2. First of all, this is a huge milestone for us and makes me really proud that we passed the NOK 500 million in ARR. Organic ARR growth increased by 1 percentage point. The first time we've seen that since Q4 2022. This has been achieved by stronger sales efforts, and we're also now starting to sense more optimism in the construction industry. Our adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx margin rose to 29.4%, up 2.1 percentage points quarter-on-quarter. Even if the margin was affected by the recent acquisition on Locka, which a much lower margin than the group average. Operating cash flow came in strong at NOK 30 million despite elevated churn and downgrade, which affected our growth. Our SaaS model continues to deliver resilient growth and profitability. This is the beauty of a scalable recurring revenue business. Going forward, as the construction market is expected to improve, we expect to see reduced churn and gradual improvements in both growth and margins. So let's talk about our commercial momentum. In Q2, we saw an 8% increase in new customer contracts year-over-year. There's a strong single and continued demand. But was even more encouraging is what's happening earlier in the funnel. Sales leads are up 22% year-on-year, and the number of leads in our pipeline has grown by 45%. That's a record high. We also saw an increase in web traffic which tells us that interest in SmartCraft solution is rising. It's fair to say that this level of pipeline activity gives us confidence. It suggests that our visibility in the market is strong and therefore well positioned to convert interest into growth going forward. We've built a scalable marketing and sales engine and it's working. The lead generation we saw in Q2 is a result of targeted campaigns, improved messaging and strong execution across the teams. We are investing in innovation to fuel future growth. SmartCraft Spark has launched in Norway and Sweden and we already have nearly 200 paying customers, of which approximately 100 added in Q2. More features are coming later this year to boost average revenue per customer and strengthen product value. We also launched BIM capabilities in May. And within weeks, we have 60 users and 20 customers on board. These initiatives are expanding our product offering and opening new revenue streams. In addition, we are also working on new product suits that could potentially be launched next year. We are building for the future. Now let's look at some insights from our Digimeter survey. This is our annual deep dive into digitalization trends in construction. We surveyed over 840 professionals across Norway, Sweden and Finland. And the results are clear, 87% says digital tools are essential to their business, 6 out of 10 have already seen improvement, thanks to digitalization and 30% plan to increase their investments in digital tools. This confirms strong underlying demand and a clear willingness to invest. Worth noting is the large figure, 40% to 55% of all office and field workers are still using pen and paper or Excel to solve their business needs. This really shows us the huge possibility to make a true impact within the industry. You will find a full report at smartcraft.com/digimeter. And over to you, Kjartan, to dive into financials.

Good morning. So our ARR has passed the NOK 500 million milestone. The ARR is ending at NOK 504.8 million in Q2 and is growing by 9%. Organically, we grow now by 7%, which is an increase from last quarter, and Sweden is the primary driver of this growth. The growth is paired with a decline in downgrades. Downgrade go -- slightly down from last quarter, although churn has an increase in the same period. The overall picture is the same, churn -- a high level of churn due to the bankruptcies and the elevated downgrade level does affect our organic growth heavily. Our revenue ended at NOK 140.6 million, of which now more than 95% is recurring. We continue to transition nonrecurring revenue, especially in the latest acquisitions, and this puts a damper on growth in the short term, but will be very positive in the longer term. We do also increase the profitability both the EBITDA and the EBITDA minus CapEx margin is increasing. The EBITDA margin is increasing by 3.5 percentage points quarter-over-quarter and it includes a 0.4 percentage point dilution compared to Q2 last year. The latest acquisitions do have a lower margin than the rest of the group. So the effect from the acquisitions is higher than the 0.4 percentage points and it keeps a pressure on margin for the group. But we are good at increasing the margin over time, and we do think that we will be able to increase in both these solutions, and it will be an increase going forward. We do capitalize roughly the same amount this time around compared to last year. But in terms of -- in share of revenue, it's a decline to 8.8 percentage points. We do continue to invest in strategic development projects. And we expect roughly 9% overall for the full year. Sweden continued to perform well. We have a good activity among sales activity and customers and recurring revenue is growing by 10%. Sweden do have an elevated churn and downgrade level compared to the normal market, but we do have a focus on that and continue to focus and trying to decrease everywhere we can. Sweden has a decline in total revenue growth, but this is not a dramatic thing. Locka, when we acquired them last year, had a very large nonrecurring revenue in Q2 which normalized in Q3. So this is just this quarter and this quarter effect. Sweden also increased the profitability by 3.5 percentage points year-over-year. The Norwegian market continues to be challenging, and we see lower growth in revenue in Norway. The macro picture is, of course, highly affecting the growth. But also in Q2, we have a negative short-term effect as we relocated 1 of the sales offices. This will be back on track in second half of 2025. So this is regarded as a temporary effect. The revenue performance in Norway is trickling down to the margin, and we see also a decline in margin in Norway which also is due to lower capitalizations. However, in Norway, we have a very good traction among customers when it comes to SmartCraft Spark, and this will be a very future -- a very potential growth opportunity in the future. We have positive signals in the Finnish market. We have more contract starts when it comes to the build sector. So the general market in Finland looks better than before. This being said, we see a decline in revenue growth in Q2, which is related to the downgrade from a large customer. Unfortunately, we do know that the downgrade will continue, so we expect Finland to take a larger downgrade in Q3. This will also be not temporary, but a short-term effect. So we do see Finland probably be a bit lower in the short term, but the overall market is more positive than before. When it comes to cash flow, we are still very good position on the cash flow. We increased cash flow in Q2 by 20%, we have a positive cash inflow all quarter still. The balance sheet is solid. We are still net cash positive, and we now hold roughly 3.4% treasury shares. So Hanna, with that, I give the herd back to you.

Yes. Thank you, Kjartan. Let's wrap up with key takeaways from Q2. Let's talk about each point and explain why it's matter. Passing the NOK 500 million ARR milestone. We crossed a major milestone, ARR now stands at over NOK 500 million. This is a strong signal of scale and stability. We built a recurring revenue engine that keeps growing even in a tough market. And we're proud to say this is the result of consistent execution, a great team at SmartCraft and customer value. Increased organic ARR growth. For the first time since Q4 2022, we've seen an increased organic growth in ARR. That's a turning point and shows that our efforts to drive new sales and improve onboarding are starting to pay off. We're building a momentum and we're doing it the right way. Strong sales and marketing. Our funnel is buzzing. We increased web traffic, leads and new customer contracts. That's not just activity, it's conversion. It proves that our message resonates and our solutions solve real problems. We are visible, we are relevant and we are winning trust in the market. New initiatives. We launched SmartCraft spark and BIM features, and the early traction is great. These aren't just product updates. They're strategic growth drivers. Spark is already attracting nearly 200 paying customers, and BIM is expanding our footprint in quality and safety. In addition, the management team is focusing to increase speed of product development and sales effort. We are working on new product suites using the core platform. We are investing in innovation to fuel future ARR. Growth. Yes, we see headwinds. Churn is elevated mainly due to bankruptcies, downgrades are still high, and we kept the price increase moderate to stay competitive. But we are addressing these challenges head-on with early risk detection, effective onboarding stronger customer care and a clear upsell strategy. As the construction market improves, we expect to see reduced churn and downgrades and might eventually also see net upgrades. solid financial position. Our financial foundation is strong, with cash positive, well capitalized and ready to invest. That means that we can keep building great products improve efficiency and be fully prepared when the market turns. And we also continue to build our merchant acquisition pipeline. With a strong balance sheet and a proven integration model, we're ready to act when the right opportunities arise. We're not just surviving, we are positioning to accelerate. And finally, we have informed earlier that we are evaluating a potential change in listing from Oslo to Stockholm. So to sum this up, we're growing, we're innovating and we're ready. Q2 shows that our strategy is working, and we're excited about what's next. So let's open up for Q&A.

Very good. And just to remind everyone on the webcast, please submit your questions on the -- through the webcast player. There's a button there that you can use. We have several questions already, but please keep them coming. So first one, reading your opening remarks in the press release, it sounds like you're taking a more proactive approach to driving growth in this tough market. For example, through earlier risk detection, stronger onboarding and targeted retention actions. Is this a correct read an interpretation? And could you give us a bit more flavor on the actions you are putting in place?

Yes. As we talked about in the presentation, we are doing several things in the CS teams across all teams. We are trying to always see where do we have risk with our customers when -- because we know if there are low use CS teams in our products, they probably will leave us. So this is really important for us to have an early risk detection and we work really close to our customers to find out that. But we're also working on all our sales processes. In Norway, for example, we have reorganized, we have centralized, and we have also brought in a new sales manager. So yes, we are definitely putting a lot of effort into growth.

Should we be concerned about the growth in new customers on a year-on-year basis goes down from 16% in Q1 to 8% in the second quarter?

Yes, it is a tough market, but we have a really efficient new sales process, I would say. So we're working on that. And I don't think that worry is the word, but the market is tough, and we need to have the market with us on terms, but we are prepared. We're doing a lot of things during this period. We're not only surviving. We are working on processes. We are bringing more data we always try to align our processes and make them better. So I would say that's what we are doing during this period.

You are reporting, obviously, still a high level of churn and downgrades, although it's positive to see the latter coming down. Would you be able to give an indication on how churn and downgrades look like in the different geographies. Is it around the group level in all geographies? Or are some standing out either positively or negatively?

Yes. We've commented on this before as well. In general, we can say that the churn is higher in markets where we have smaller customers. It tends to be the smallest customer that churn, while the higher -- the larger customer is higher on downgrades. So with that in mind, Finland is higher on downgrades, as is Norway, although Norway has both small and large customers, while Sweden is higher on churn and lower on downgrades. But in all markets right now, both levels are higher than what we used to seeing. So yes, that's the short one.

Just to remind everyone, please submit more questions. One more from the webcast. Have you seen any additional competition from new competitors as AI makes it easier to build competing solutions?

I would say we haven't seen that, but we really can't tell that in detail, but we haven't had more competitive than usual, I would say.

And could you talk a little bit on how you apply and leverage AI in your business?

We are applying that in every process that we have, I would say, and definitely mostly, we be using in R&D for a long time. So yes, we are using AI, but we also use it for customer success that will make it easier for our employees to have a quick answer and -- so we are being more efficient in CES processes, but we also use it in sales actually to train our sales employees and sales persons to be better sales -- in sales. So yes, we use it in different places, I would say, and also built in, in our R&D process, of course.

Final question for now from the webcast. Although we see a few more coming in now, so please continue to send in questions. How has the initial response to SmartCraft Spark in Sweden then? Can you provide an approximate split between existing and new customers for the 100 customers that you added during Q2?