Good morning, everyone, and welcome. I'm Etienne Jacquet, Vice President of Corporate Development and Investor Relations at MotorK. I'm delighted to have you all here today for the presentation of our H1 2023 financial results. Joining me today are our Executive Chairman, Amir Rosentuler, our CEO, Marco Marlia, and our CFO, Andrea Servo. Together, Amir and Marco will take you through the key highlights of the year, focusing on our main achievements. Andrea will delve into our operational and financial performance over the period. Lastly, Marco will offer an update on our guidance for FY 2023 and elaborate on the various initiatives we implemented in H1, and explaining how they will shape the upcoming quarters. Following the presentation, and as usual, we'll open the floor to a Q&A session, and we'll be happy to answer any question you may have.
Without further ado, I now hand the floor to Amir to kick off the presentation.
Thank you, Etienne. I would like to start the presentation by presenting the key strategic highlights. As a first point, I'd like to mention that we continue the growth at scale, growth in annual recurring revenue, and you will see that when we present Q2 results, the ARR was EUR 30.1 million, but the Committed ARR was much higher at EUR 34.8 million. To remind you, these are deals that signed and not delivered yet. Another point is that we have a large and healthy pipeline of opportunities, both retail and enterprise. We feel that there's a lot of room to grow also within the existing customer base. By now, we have more than 5,000 customers across Europe.
Part of them are customers that we gained through acquisitions, that enable us to continue these customers into our platform. Both the strong pipeline and Committed ARR that we discuss provide very good visibility for the H2. Another point I'll mention is the M&A strategy. We feel that it starting to yield significant results. The business that comes from migrating customers from M&A becoming really evident, and we can see that in the June results, which was a record month for us in retail booking, we see a huge gain in Spain, the ongoing migration of Dapda, which was a company we acquired in Spain. Migrating of Dapda customers, you know, help us to generate a massive uplift in ACV.
We feel that we're gonna replicate this strategy that was very successful. We replicate that in Germany. Again, in Germany, we, we, we acquired a company to help us to migrate its customer base, and we feel that the next quarter, we will see a big change in Germany. There is a major focus and effort around profitability and operating leverage. I would also add that we focus on leveraging the M&A synergies as mentioned. We focus on post-merger integration and generally streamlining the operation. With all these efforts, there is a short-term impact on profitability, but we are still committed on Cash EBITDA positive for next year, fiscal year 2024.
Lastly, I would like to mention that we launched the Tech LABS, which is designed to become, you know, our cutting-edge technology and R&D hub. We want to foster innovation and especially embracing and incorporating AI into our solutions. To recap, in terms of highlight, 50% growth in annual recurring revenue, strategic focus on profitability and optimizing business, and M&A integration starting to yield significant results. Now I would like to invite Marco Marlia, the CEO of MotorK.
Thanks, Amir. Welcome everyone. Let me go through some key figures for the H1 results. With the acquisition of GestionaleAuto.com, we now serve over 5,000 customers across Europe. This is a significant number. Please do remember that these are dealer groups and not just rooftops. Actual rooftop number is higher. The operational KPIs like retention and retail ACV are stable, a slight increase on the ACV due to our continuous effort to expand our product footprint, and the platform approach, which is continuing to have success in our customer base. As Amir mentioned, the growth of the ARR in H1 was over 50% year-over-year. Also, we achieved a recurring mix of 80% of our revenues.
This is a big achievement that has been that we got to in the last quarter by focusing only on the recurring component of our revenues, and progressively, as we know, outsourcing the low-quality revenues like media or professional services. We do a Cash EBITDA burn of EUR 9.3 million, by year-end, we see an ARR rate of saving to support our stability of over EUR 2.7 million, thanks to also mostly synergies with the M&A companies that we acquired. We remain confident of our booking trajectories, we confirm the EUR 39 million-EUR 43 million ARR, possibly could include up to EUR 2 million of Committed ARR due to the shift of enterprise revenues that take to go live and bill.
You will see in the next few quarter, significant operating leverage as we will be stable mostly on the cost perimeter, and our revenues will continue to grow at this pace. We will, we are adjusting the cash EBITDA outlook factor in the reorg cost, but we confirm that we are going to be next year. Given these highlights, let me pass the word to Andrea, that will deep dive on some metric.
Thank you, Marco. Good morning, everyone. Let me walk you through the details of our H1 2023 financial results. As said, during the first semester, 2023, our revenue grew by an excellent 30% year-over-year to EUR 21.9 million. Billings were also growing at the same pace, but in reality, there has been an acceleration of the recurring billings, which grew 69% to EUR 14.3 million, and now represent 76% of the total billings, up from 58% in the same period of last year. This is the result of our strategy to focus on SaaS recurring revenues, which is leading higher quality business and is a foundation for our future growth at scale and for the profitability going forward.
ARR reached, as said, EUR 34.8 million at the end of last June, including EUR 4.7 million of committed ARR, arising from signed contracts to be delivered and billed in the future. ARR grew therefore, by 50% year-over-year, of which 34% organically, including in this definition, the companies acquired before Q2 of last year. As these companies, in particular, are still in the first years of integration, they keep representing a significant growth reservoir, thanks to the ARR uplift that we are able to achieve when migrating acquired customers onto our SparK platform. On top of it, as always, organic growth will count on the expansion potential with the existing customer base. As we look at M&A, it generated EUR 3.1 million of additional ARR, thanks to the acquisitions executed from Q3 2022, driving and enhancing our growth potential.
In terms of ARR definition and calculations, we have now fully aligned the acquired company's reporting, extending to them the more conservative and strict standard of MotorK. At the same time, we are porting all the contracts to our standard, ensuring the quality of the information. As a result, we have reviewed the full year 2022 and Q1 2023 ARR to EUR 24.6 million and EUR 27.3 million, respectively, to better compare with the EUR 30.1 million we are reporting for H1 2023. Such review does not impact in any way our reported revenues, both historically and going forward.
The 34% overall expansion of organic ARR benefited from the acceleration of the enterprise segment, which doubled compared to the last year, reaching almost EUR 6 million and representing now 21% of the total organic ARR versus 14% in year ago. As you remember, enterprise is one of our strategic pillars for growth and was specifically a focus from the back end of 2022. We are just now starting to see then the impact on our numbers of this focus. Alongside enterprise, the retail business is consistently delivering on its growth, with a 23% increase year-over-year. In fact, in retail, all of our operational KPIs are in a healthy shape, confirming our solid business model and strategy.
More in detail, retail customers count reached 852 in last June, including for the acquired companies, only the clients that have been migrated onto the SparK platform. This means an increase by more than 100 customers in the H1 of this year alone. ARR churn keeps reducing and is now at 5.6%, while the net revenue retention is stable at a solid 114%, confirming our ability to continuously expand the value generated with our existing customer base. As a result, the annual average content value in the retail perimeter kept growing and has now passed the EUR 18,000 mark, up 9% against the EUR 16.6 thousand in the same period last year.
The trend was supported by growth in multi-product adoption by our customers, fueled by the continuous launch of new products and by the launch of our SparK platform offering in the H2 of 2022, which is a higher average ACV of EUR 30,000. I leave now to Marco to zoom in on our achievements in Spain and potential for expansion.
Yes, we had a very successful record quarter and record month in June in Spain. This achieved also thanks to the migration of customers from the Dapda platform, the Dapda technologies. Which is the average of all the customers that during the Q2 migrated from Dapda to MotorK. As you can, it is huge. These customers, on average, they were EUR 6,100 in ACV. They almost doubled at the first migration, usually a like-for-like product migration to the MotorK product. They went close to EUR 29,000 ACV. Again, on average, this is the full class that has been migrated during the last quarter for the customers that embraced the MotorK platform.
We think this is a great sign of the opportunity that is still, you know, mostly there in our customer base, that we will tackle in the next few quarters to migrate the customers that we have acquired to our superior product and value proposition. If you consider that thanks to the acquisitions that we have executed between IPO and now, we do have 4,000 customers that can be migrated. As Andrea mentioned, this is a great reservoir of growth for us in the first. Andrea?
Okay. Yeah, thank you. As we focus on the cost side, we report a total OpEx of EUR 23.3 million in H1, up 21% versus H1 2022. In fact, during the last year, we have been investing to build the infrastructure to grow at scale, namely in the R&D and sales team. H1 2022 didn't reflect that investment yet, while on the other hand, we have incurred in H1 2023, additional costs aimed at streamlining our operations going forward, and this has an impact on the profitability in the short term. Also, we have added some costs inherited from the acquired companies.
We believe that now we have reached a great level of structure to sustain our growth going forward, and therefore expect that our operating leverage to start growing significantly and to benefit the Adjusted EBITDA going forward. Cash EBITDA close to EUR -9.3 million versus EUR -7.3 million in the year ago. This reflects increased investments in R&D that were at EUR 4.7 million in H1 2023 versus EUR 2.7 million in the same period of 2022, and the change in the contract asset, which, as you know, corresponds to additional future billings and increases in line with our SaaS business. Cash EBITDA overall, in its evolution compared to 2022, reflects on one side, the increase in billings, not yet fully absorbing, on the other side, the new cost structure.
More in detail, compared to the H1 2022, cost increased to reflect the, upsized structure and some reorganization expenses among the acquired companies, with increased recurring billings absorbing the perimeter incremental cost. Factoring the decrease of the non-recurring business, which is consistent with the strategy, but yet is impacting on the short-term profitability. Going forward, as said, no new major investments are required to support our growth at scale, while on the other hand, we identified cost optimizations to improve, profitability. In this respect, alongside the increase of our cost base to sustain our ambitious, growth plans, we have undergone an optimization review to streamline our operation and leverage synergies from the acquisitions.
These optimizations relate to the reduction of the R&D needs for the legacy products of the acquired companies that are no more developed and will phase out as the migration progresses. Relate also to FTE optimizations, both organic and M&A, to the elimination of retention costs in M&A, posting out periods, and to the consolidation of vendors between the group companies. To materialize the savings, we will incur EUR 2 million of reorganization costs, including the EUR 1.6 million already incurred in the H1 of 2023. In total, this will lead to EUR 2.7 million in annual cost savings, with full impact in full year 2024, but materializing already in the H2 of 2023. This concludes the commentary on our financial achievements, and I will now hand over again to Marco.
Thanks, Andrea. As we said, we have both in retail and enterprise that will support the visibility to the EUR 39 million-EUR 43 million ARR. We are very confident of booking results. We may include possibly up to EUR 2 million in Committed ARR, as some of these contracts in enterprise but not maybe billed by the end of the year and could into the first few months of next year. That said, the EUR 13 million of combined pipeline is strong, and we remain confident about our booking capabilities. This growth in revenues will support to profitability.
We are adjusting, as Andrea mentioned, in the short term, for the year 2023, our Cash EBITDA guidance, more conservative, EUR -13 to EUR -10, as we take the cost to improve the path to profitability. Now, you can expect a significant leverage toward profitability in the next few quarters as we will continue to grow with a stable cost structure. As you see here, we confirmed the Cash EBITDA positive result for the year 2024, and we think that you are going to receive a quarterly update which is going to support this data. Etienne, maybe as we conclude the presentation, we are going to open for Q&A?
Absolutely. Any question in the panel? I don't see any question from the audience. Let's maybe give two or three minutes. Okay, we receive it. First question from Max at Edison. Can you discuss what has driven AR growth from Q1, looking at the balance between realized contract backlog and new wins? What are the strategic priority for cash deployment, especially given that you are now in advanced stages to secure additional debt financing? Could you give some more detail on your expectation for the integration of Gestionale Auto? Do you think it will be similar to Dapda WebMobil24? Quite a lot of, question in this, in this thread.
First, maybe if Marco or Andrea, you could, you know, give maybe a bit of color of, you know, what has driven the, the growth in Q1, and how it has, you know, impacted Q2 as well. Then maybe you can discuss on, you know, our focus on profitability.
Yeah, maybe I'll take the first part, and then I'll leave to Marco. AR growth from Q1 actually relates mostly on new bookings, both in terms of increasing the value with existing customers, e-essentially upon renewal, and new customers, including the start, the kicking in of a significant impact also from the migrations, especially in Spain, as said. We are still working to absorb the backlog, and as we mentioned for the guidance, we expect to be absorbing it going forward before the end of the year, a significant part, but for Q2, we experienced that this is mostly due to new wins. In respect of cash deployment, we think that we are now focusing on our operations.
We are streamlining somehow our cost base. We have a great expectation, and we have great focus on the migrations, on the M&A. This is where we will deploy mostly our cash in our, in our, in our general corporate activities, business activities, and we do not expect for the moment to use it for other reasons.
Okay.
I, I will take the one about... This acquisition will lead to a probably slightly quicker in the process, as the main product of Gestionale Auto was somehow already integrated platform. As we had, you know, in Italy, already customers that were using part of their solution and part of our solution. There is an opportunity in the country, where also our sales team is the larger, to have a quick of cross-selling this customer base, differently from maybe the Dapda acquisition, a longer path, you know, able the migration, like for like of the different Dapda products into our platform. We think that, in this case, we are going to see results much quicker than, than in other deals.
Thank you, Marco. Next question from Antoine, at Kepler. Would like to, you know, get a bit of perspective on the M&A strategy in light of the cash burn in H1, although I don't think that, you know, they are totally correlated to some extent. Also, can you elaborate on the commercial momentum in Germany and what we want to do next? And more precisely also, if we can give a bit more detail as to the new cost, let's say, incurred in H1 to activate the synergy.
Okay, maybe I will start with strategic component, if you, Andrea, want to take the rest of the costs. We, we do have, as you know by now, acquired at least one company in every major market where we are present. Our view is that in the short term, we'll focus mostly integration of these companies. As we said in the past, after the initial moment where we are going to often, you know, say, adjust the products to connect to each other, so we can onboard clients, then mostly the bottleneck is migrating the customer base. That has to be done one by one. In terms of commercial contracts, I would say with very good by the fantastic achievement of Spain in Q2.
For the foreseeable future, the next, you know, 4 quarters, most of the focus is going to be in completing past acquisitions integration, rather than adding more of them within the territories. That said, in our, let's say, midterm growth trajectory, we do stay acquisitive. We think that now we have, you know, even more proof of that. We think this is a great strategy to grow our business in terms of CAC and payback at the end, once the clients are migrated. It stays as a mid-term strategy, but complete the six migrations of the companies acquired in the last 18 months. As far Germany is concerned, the acquisition there will start to initiate the cross-selling migration very soon.
The pipeline in Germany has been growing steadily in the last quarter. As you know, Germany, quick sometimes to migrate to new technologies, find the sales cycle there is slightly longer. It's also pretty normal in a country where you are not yet, let's say, a consolidated number one, clients need to progressively take confidence. We absolutely see a healthy pipeline. We do see momentum. I am myself involved on the field regularly with probably 12 top German dealers in the last few months, we are very confident, as Amir said, that Germany is going to achieve results in H2 2023.
Yes. In respect of the costs, in H1 2023, you see the materialization of the impact of what we have done, so to grow somehow our organization, our infrastructure, in order to support the growth, the integration of the M&A companies. Actually, we were hiring towards the end of the last year and the beginning of this year, and you see the materialization of this cost, and we are also incurring some additional cost there.
We addressed our optimization plan because we know and we realize that we need to grow, we need to invest in certain areas, but there are other areas of the company where we can streamline somehow the operations, especially if we look at synergies that we can extract from the M&A, the R&D expenses. When you do such kind of optimization, you always have some periods where you have overlaps of vendors, where you have some penalties maybe to incur to stop some services, or costs like this. This is what we mean by incremental cost to streamline operations. Maybe I also answer Catherine Thompson question about if we can give some guidance on personnel cost for H2 2023 and full year 2024.
Well, as, as we said, we think that we have now built an organization which is sufficient to support our, our growth for sure this year and also for, for the next year. Obviously, we will always need to do some additions, especially in the teams that are mostly connected with our growth in the revenue. The, the sales and marketing team, the support teams. We think that for sure for this year, we see in H1 2023 already the full impact of our upscaling the organization, so we don't expect to have any more additional uplift in this cost during the rest of the year. More or less, we expect to be stable in this respect.
Thank you, Andrea. Next question from Martin, discussing M&A. Are there any more acquisition in the pipeline? What is the company's take so far on expanding into more markets? Maybe, Marco, you want to take this one?
Yes. As I said, we are focusing significantly in completing the integration, but immediately after, we plan, you know, assume our acquisitive approach. In terms of expanding into new markets, given the boost in the enterprise results that we are achieving, we don't necessarily will need to open physical location offices and presence to be able to deliver into secondary market, let me say. We continue at the moment with our hub strategy based major offices that we have now, but we are already deploying technology in countries where we do not have, let me say, a local field footprint, thanks to umbrella deals that are maybe multinational and allow us to deploy our technology. We think that this, in the short term, will continue to support.
Of course, in the midterm, we could possibly once, you know, critical mass is achieved, select the other, other hubs into our strategy. We mentioned the Nordics, we mentioned Central Eastern Europe as the three main areas that we would like to expand into.
Thank you, Marco. Any other question from the audience? Okay. I think we don't see any more question in the panel. Thank you very much, everyone, for attending our H1 2023 presentation. And we'll see you next time for our Q3 update sometime in October. Thank you very much for attending, and see you soon.