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 here as the Interim CEO of SmartCraft. I have been part of this journey for the past 7 years, starting as CEO of Bygglet and since 2022, responsible for the Swedish market. Presenting with me today is our CFO, Kjartan Bo, who many of you know well. So let's dive into our Q3 results, highlight key initiatives and share why we are confident about the road ahead. Here is what's on the menu today, Q3 overview, a deep dive into the numbers with Kjartan, a summary and your questions. We're putting the spotlight on growth, margins and the strategic moves that keep SmartCraft ahead of the curve. Before we get into the numbers, let's remind ourselves what makes SmartCraft tick? Who are we? And why do we do what we do? At SmartCraft, we're on a mission to digitize construction for the benefit of people, profit and the planet. This is our passion. We build software that empowers companies to work smarter, not harder. Our tools help them to boost profits, create better workplaces and deliver more sustainable results. We are focused on SME, giving them the digital edge to win in a tough market. And with our scalable recurring revenue model, we're growing. Let's talk scale. Today, SmartCraft serves over 14,100 customers and more than 185,000 users across Norway, Sweden, Finland and the U.K. Our 270 strong team is all in on customer success. This demonstrates that our solutions are aligned with customer needs and that our growth strategy is delivering as intended. Construction market is tough, tight margins, complex workflows, high risk, but that's where we shine. Our products give customers the insight of control they need to manage people, materials and documentation, smarter, faster and better. We cut admin, streamline scheduling and give teams one source of truth. The result, fewer disputes, safer projects and stronger profits. We're not just a software company, we're a growth partner. The opportunity is huge. Our total addressable market is NOK 50 billion across the Nordics and the U.K. And only 10% to 15% of companies have adopted mission-critical digital solutions. The U.K. alone is over 60% of our TAM. We're perfectly positioned to scale, deepen our market presence and lead the digital revolution in construction. And we're not waiting. We're accelerating product development and sales to seize the moment. Let's move into the highlights from the third quarter. Some of these figures were released already yesterday, but let's look at it now from Q3. Our annual recurring revenue held steady at NOK 505 million, reflecting a 6.4% year-over-year increase. We actually crossed the NOK 500 million milestone already in Q2, and I'm proud to say, we have maintained that level despite a challenging market. Remember also that Q3 is a very short quarter with regards to sales and marketing activities. So we always have a limited sequential growth from Q2 to Q3. Adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx margin climbed to 28.2%, up 2.9 percentage points year-on-year, showing our continued focus on profitability and operational efficiency. Operating cash flow was strong at NOK 36 million, up 4.8% from last year. And importantly, churn declined to 9.6%, a positive signal that our retention initiatives are working. Despite ongoing market headwinds and some elevated churn and downgrades, our SaaS model continues to deliver resilient growth and robust margins. We're seeing early signs of optimism in the construction industry, and our fundamentals remain strong as we prepare for the next phase of growth. So let's talk about our commercial momentum. In Q3, we saw a 16% increase in our new customer contract year-over-year. That's a strong signal of continued demand, even stronger than we saw in Q2, which was 8%. But what's even more encouraging is what's happening earlier in the funnel. Sales leads are up 37% (sic) [ 7% ] year-over-year, and the number of leads in our pipeline has grown by 15%. 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 activity gives us confidence. It suggests that our visibility in the market is strong and that we're 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 Q3 is a result of targeted campaigns, improved messaging and strong execution across the teams. So let's talk about one of the most exciting changes at SmartCraft, our shift from a country-based organization to a business area-driven structure. First, let's acknowledge what's brought us here. Our country-based model has been a fantastic engine for growth. It's allowed us to build strong local brands, stay close to our customers and adapt quickly to market needs in Norway, Sweden, Finland and the U.K. This local focus has been a real competitive advantage, helping us win trust and deliver solution that truly fits each market. But as SmartCraft has grown both in scale and ambition, the world around us has changed. Our customers are becoming more specialized and the needs are increasingly defined by their business area, not just their geography. We're seeing more cross-border opportunities and our product innovation is moving faster than ever. So why make this shift now? Because we want to build on our strength and take SmartCraft to the next level. And this is by organizing around business areas, Electro, HVAC and Plumbing, SME construction and Enterprise. We can go even deeper into each customer segment this way. This means more tailored solutions, faster innovation and greater expertise. Each business area now own its product go-to-market and profitability. That means quicker decisions, clearer priorities and stronger accountability. So we can move at the speed our customers expect us to. This structure lets us leverage our best practice across countries, scale successfully solutions faster and unlock new opportunities for international expansion. With shared playbooks and unified platforms, we can collaborate more effectively across borders while still nurturing our local brands and relationship. This isn't about fixing something that is broken. It's about evolving from a position of strength. We're keeping what's made us successful and adding a new layer of focus and agility to accelerate our growth journey. In short, we're setting SmartCraft up to deliver even more value to our customers, drive innovation and scale efficiently while staying true to the principles that have guided our success so far. From Q4, we're reporting on business areas and will provide historical figures. Let's take a moment to clarify how Enterprise business area stands apart from the other 3 and why that matters for our customers and for SmartCraft's strategy. The 3 synergy-driven business areas, Electro, HVAC and Plumbing and SME construction approach is focused on scale and synergy. We are building tailored ecosystems around our customers and users in each trade like SmartCraft Spark for electrician and SmartCraft Flow for HVAC and Plumbing. At the same time, we're aligning product road maps within each business area so that our engineering teams can deliver more impact with the same effort. Solutions like Bygglet, EL-VIS, Cordel, Kvalitetskontroll already have a strong local position and a large loyal customer base. Building on that foundation, our new solutions like SmartCraft Spark and SmartCraft Flow are built on the SmartCraft Core platform, which a global mindset from the start. This allows us to reuse more of our technology and roll out across different segments and markets with minor adjustments. Even with this global approach, we stay close to each local market to understand what tradesmen truly need, making sure every product is made for them. Across these 3 business areas, we emphasize collaboration and shared technology and repeatable processes. The result is faster innovation, more efficiency development and a consistent high-quality user experience for our customers, no matter which trade they are in. And Enterprise, a portfolio approach, Enterprise is intentionally different. Instead of focusing on one unified product ecosystem, we take a portfolio approach. Our enterprise customers are a large organization with complex operations that often span multiple regions or business lines. Instead of a single unified product, the enterprise area brings together a suite of specialized solutions, each designed to address specific requirements, integrations or workflows. The focus is on flexibility and breadth. We offer a portfolio of tools that combined, customized and integrated to fit the unique needs of each enterprise customer. This approach allows us to serve a wide variety of large clients from those needing advanced analytics and compliance modules to those requiring deep integrations with their existing systems. Why this structure then? For Electro, HVAC and Plumbing and SME Construction, the synergy model lets us move quickly, scale efficiently and deliver innovation that benefits a broad base of customer. For Enterprise, the portfolio model gives us the agility to meet highly specialized demands, offer tailored solution and build long-term partnerships with some of the industry's biggest players. In summary, while the three synergy-driven areas are all about building and scaling unified solutions, Enterprise is about offering a flexible, comprehensive toolbox, making sure we can support both the specialists and the giants of the construction world. This dual approach is a key part of what makes SmartCraft unique and position us for the growth across the entire market. As a part of our structural evolution, we're also advancing our brand architecture. We're moving towards a unified SmartCraft master brand, supported by strong sub-brands like SmartCraft Spark and Flow. This shift simplifies our story, strengthen recognition across markets and improve marketing efficiency. At the same time, we remain mindful of the value in our local brands and will preserve that equity where it supports customer trust and market position. This balanced approach ensures consistency while allowing flexibility where it matters the most. This slide visualizes our evolving brand architecture in practice. On the left, you see the SmartCraft master brand, our central platform and identity. In the middle, SmartCraft Spark tailored for electricians and on the right, SmartCraft Flow, our newest solution for HVAC and Plumbing professionals. Together, these sites reflect a unified brand experience with distinct value propositions, each designed with their own personality to meet the needs of our target groups while reinforcing trust, clarity and consistency across markets. Speaking a little bit about innovation. Q3 was a really exciting quarter for us. We soft launched SmartCraft Flow, our new solutions for HVAC and Plumbing professionals. Flow is built on our SmartCraft's core platform, which means it's fast, scalable and ready for AI. It's the second product on this platform after SmartCraft Spark, which we launched earlier this year for electricians. Spark is already off to a great start with more than 300 customers and really strong feedback. As a first trial, we show just a happy customers, which is super encouraging for us, of course. Together, Spark and Flow shows our focus on vertical innovation. We offer 2 modern AI-powered solutions built for different trades, but on the same strong platform. It really proves that we can move fast, scale across trades and build global from day 1. And now in Q4, our focus is simple. We will keep the momentum going and scale adoption in both products. And now I will let Kjartan in.

Thank you, Hanna, and good morning. So let's jump straight to our recurring revenue. So ARR grew 6.4 percentage points year-over-year, and this is in a continued challenging market and a seasonally slower quarter. So the markets in general are improving in both Sweden, U.K. and Finland, although Finland recurring revenue growth is hampered by the large customer downgrade that we have mentioned before. Our recurring revenue share is now 97%. We are increasing our profitability. Adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx is now almost 3 percentage points higher quarter-over-quarter. Our EBITDA margin is slightly down, but this is relating to a lower level of CapEx in the quarter. So CapEx declined due to project life cycle. But all in all, development spending is the same. Looking at the current segments we have. Sweden is -- has a high level of activity. So we see a good sales pipeline. We see declining level of churn and downgrades, and we see an increase in both growth and profitability. Norway is a bit lower than before, the most challenging market for us currently. And we see also a negative short-term effect by the relocation of a sales office. The sales office is now up and running in full at the end of Q3. So this should be improving going forward. Profitability in Norway is good. We increased EBITDA margin quarter-on-quarter by 4 percentage points. In the Finnish market, there are several positive signals. We have more contract starts in the new build sector, and we have higher user activity. But the downgrade from the customer flows through both in organic revenue growth and in profitability. In U.K., we see a resilient performance. We have improved market in general, but it's still quite challenging. There's a high churn, although the churn is expected to go out of the comps in Q4 2025. We see several good and positive signals, including interest rate reductions. And let's see how the timing is of these effects. Our financial position is still strong, and we have a strong cash flow as we have always had, now growing at roughly 5%. As we have focused on distributing invoicing throughout the year, we see a more similar picture across the past 5 quarters, and we expect so going forward as well. All in all, we are in a good position to go forward, and we expect good results in both cash flow and in the P&L. So Hanna.

Thank you, Kjartan. Let's summarize this. Strong recurring revenue and margin SmartCraft continues to demonstrate the power of its SaaS model with recurring revenue reaching 97% of total revenue in Q3. Annual recurring revenue grew to NOK 505 million with 6% organic growth year-over-year, even in a seasonal weak quarter. The company adjusted EBITDA minus CapEx margins increased to 28%, up 3 percentage points from last year, and operational cash flow was robust at NOK 36 million. This highlights SmartCraft's ability to deliver profitable growth and strong cash generation regardless of market condition. Proven scalability and operational resiliency. The company's scalable platform strategy is delivering tangible results. SmartCraft successfully launched new solutions such as SmartCraft Flow, and continue to build momentum with SmartCraft Spark. Despite mixed macroeconomic condition, SmartCraft achieved growth in Sweden and the U.K., saw improving figures in Finland and maintain resilience in Norway through high cost discipline. The recent shift to a business area-based structure enables faster scaling, sharper customer focus and more efficient decision-making across geographies. Well positioned for future growth through innovation and market opportunity. SmartCraft is investing in product innovation, including AI-enabled modules to drive future growth and customer value. The addressable market remains massive and unpenetrated, especially among SME, providing significant runway for continued expansion. SmartCraft's clear strategy is combined organic growth, upsell, cross-selling and new customers while selective acquisitions to strengthen its market leadership. Our financial foundation is strong. We're cash positive, well capitalized and ready to invest. That means we can keep building great products, improve efficiency and be fully prepared when the market turns. And we also continue to build our M&A pipeline. With a strong balance sheet and a proven integration model, we're ready to act when the right opportunities arise. Going forward, we remain confident in our strategic and medium target of 15% to 20% organic revenue growth and margin expansion. This is based on the large unpenetrated market, SmartCraft's proven ability to deliver strong growth in normalized conditions and our scalable SaaS platform. While current growth is affected by challenging market conditions, we see signs of improvement and have continued to invest in innovation and sales. As the market recovers, we are well positioned to quickly return to our medium-term targets. And other information, we are very much looking forward to welcoming our new CEO, Jeremias Jansson, who will arrive on 5th of January. I'm excited and really looking forward to working with him in their role as Deputy CEO from the same day. Kjartan will be stepping down as CFO in the end of January after 7 years, and we're grateful for his long-time contribution to success of SmartCraft. Kine Kragholm Olsen, our Group Chief Accountant, will serve as Interim CFO. She has a strong financial background and worked for many years alongside with Kjartan. The evolution of change in listing venue is in the latter stage in the evaluation process, and we will provide information due time. So let's open up for Q&A and questions.

Absolutely. We have lots of questions coming in from the webcast, and please keep them coming through the webcast player. First question, what is the effect of downgrades on organic ARR growth?

The downgrades have actually decreased a bit in the quarter, so we're now at roughly 12% of downgrades.

And adjusted for the large downgrade in Finland, with the organic growth in Finland be in line with the other geographies, i.e., mid-single digits?

Yes. All in all, if we adjust for the large customer downgrades, Finland would be increasing from Q2 and now be mid-single, yes.

And I think you touched upon on in chat, but in which quarter will the large Finland downgrade be out of the comps?

The downgrade started early in 2025, but the major part of the downgrade came now in Q3. So Q3 '26, we are out of the comps.

Sales lead generation seems to have slowed down in Q3 and might be negative in September compared to last year. Can you comment on this? And what is the reason for that as churn in your sales team increased following the recent CEO departure?

We will always have seasonal changes in the leads generation. And Q3, we had the summer month in there. So I would say no, it's not dependent on the CEO change.

And also, there's a question on the customer growth, has seems to accelerated from 8% in Q2 to 16% in Q3. What regions or segments are the drivers behind this?

I would say that we have a really effective sales process and all the marketing and sales process is really effective, so this can also change. But we definitely always make improvements when it comes to marketing efforts, campaigns and so on, always try to keep up the flow.

And then there are a few questions on AI. Are you working on any AI features in your products? And what is the time line of these projects, if so?

Yes, we are, and we are actually releasing at least one of them in Q4.

Then there's a couple of questions on the new business structure or the group structure. How will this affect cross-selling opportunities between products?

We will always look at the possibility to cross-sell. That hasn't changed that much, but of course, much more focus now. That's why we're doing this business area organization because the country organization was not bad at all, but we are growing. And this is the next step for us to keep much more focus on that.

There's a few other questions here. When was this organizational structure planned? The timing may seem a bit odd since we are now waiting for the new CEO? Or does it reflect the renewed product portfolio, basically?

I would say both ways, but we are always moving forward, always being more -- try to sharpen the organization, and that will keep on going, even if we change in management, I would say.