Welcome to our Q1 2024 earnings call. As usual, we are in the company of our chairman, Mr. Monfredini, and our CEO, Mr. Gorni. And as usual, we'll proceed to briefly comment the latest financial results, released earlier this week, and then with a brief overview with the strategy. You are all very welcome to type your questions in the chat here below, or at the email address investor.relations@growens.it. Thank you very much again, and I will leave it to Matteo to present the latest results. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Micaela. Good afternoon to everyone, and thanks for being here. Today we are going to comment the 2024 first quarter results, that represent the two remaining business unit in the group, BE and Agile Telecom. In the profit and loss report, the 2023 comparing column represents the same perimeter of the first quarter 2024, excluding the email service provider and customer data platform activities as a consequence of the sale of MailUp, Acumbamail, the Contactlab, and Datatrics companies. For the consolidated and financial position in the period ended at the 31st of March, 2024, as usual, is compared with the period ended at 31st December, 2023. So let's start with the profit and loss.
In the first quarter of 2024 quarter, total revenues reached around EUR 16.9 million, showing a 2% decrease versus the EUR 17.3 million in the same period of 2023. Such results are mainly driven by 17% growth of the SaaS component, for a 16% incidence on total revenues, and the 7% decrease of CPaaS component for 82% incidence on total revenues. The same values are shown in the business unit summary, where you can see that the Agile Telecom business unit posted the biggest revenues of EUR 13.9 million, decreasing 6.7% over the same period of the previous year.
While the fastest business unit was Beefree with a 17% increase, or 19% at constant USD exchange, with the EUR 2.8 million in revenues. So on one end, we have Agile Telecom that had a decrease in revenues, while on the other hand, we have Beefree that has a growth in percentage, more or less in line with the previous year results. In terms of absolute value, the Beefree growth didn't support the revenue decrease of Agile Telecom, and so the total consolidated revenues decreased by EUR 420,687. It's a result in line with our expectation because of SMS traffic lowering for Agile Telecom, and seasonal lower growth for Beefree.
We expect for sure a higher growth rate for BE in the next part of the year, thanks to the repricing strategy and the contribution of RGE acquisition. Annual recurring revenue for BE equals $13 million as of March 2024, growing by $0.4 million compared to the value at 31 December 2023. Foreign revenues amount to EUR 13.5 million, representing 81% of total revenues, substantially in line with the previous period. Consolidated EBITDA in Q1 2024 amounts to -EUR 0.7 million, decreasing versus Q1 2023. The decrease of this figure is due to the accelerated investment in sales and marketing, increased by 49% versus the previous...
The first quarter of 2023, and our research and development, +24% versus the previous quarter in view of the Beefree development. Also, general and admin costs increased by 15.6% versus the first quarter of 2023. In this case, the increase is due to lower optimization of costs on fewer business units. In Q1, 2023, we had 5 business units, while in Q1, 2024, we had only 2. The overall operating cost in Q1, 2024, amounted to EUR 3.9 million, compared to EUR 3.1 million in Q1, 2023, with an increase of EUR 0.8 million, of which EUR 0.4 million in sales and marketing, EUR 0.1 million in research and development operating cost, and EUR 0.3 million in general and admin cost.
Looking at the business unit summary in terms of EBITDA, we can see that Agile Telecom's margin decreased due to increased intercompany costs and slowed down activity of our relevant customer, Beefree that decreased due to the increased investment in social marketing and research and development costs, as said before. Gross profit instead grew by 9% to EUR 3.2 million, with a margin on revenues of 19%, while earnings before taxes was negative by EUR 1.1 million due to increased amortization cost, mainly impacted by research and development investments. The consolidated financial position, net financial position as of thirty-first March 2024, amounts to EUR 36.3 million cash, decreasing versus the previously recorded net cash amount of EUR 42 million as of thirty-first December 2023.
This is mainly due to cash out for certain Agile Telecom net working capital items, the increase of the Beefree investment, and certain payments made by Growens at the beginning of 2024, but inherent to 2023 fiscal year. Financial debt from IFRS 16 adoption amounts to EUR 1.2 million. Short-term available cash amount to 39.5 million EUR, 4 million EUR, sorry. And finally, the adjusted net financial position also shows excluded amount as a guarantee of certain obligations related to the sale of ESP to TeamSystem. And that's all from my side.
Thank you very much, Matteo, and I will leave it now to Nazzareno to comment on how the business is going and the strategy for from now on. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Micaela. Hello to everyone. Starting from Beefree, as you have seen, the Really Good Emails acquisition is a game changer for us, because most of our growth is expected to grow due to those synergies with this new player that we acquired. Two of the founders of Really Good Emails are joining the Beefree organization this month, in a few days. In particular, Mike Nelson will become Head of Growth Marketing, so we expect him to fill the gap, because today I believe we have a gap in terms of growth marketing. And so we expect that Mike Nelson, who has a quite good experience in that area, to provide valuable improvements in that area.
Together with the changes that we are going to apply to Really Good Emails to start driving traffic and possibly clients to Beefree directly. So those are activities that are started, but we cannot yet appreciate the results because we are just at the beginning of this integration. In terms of Agile Telecom, the margin in this first quarter is not very brilliant. It's decreased compared to the last year. This is due to intercompany costs, but also, as Matteo shared, also for due to market conditions, because we have one of the largest clients that decreased the traffic, and this is reflected directly on our revenues and our gross margin. This is something that is out of our control.
We all know that Agile Telecom business is quite volatile, so we are expecting this kind of volatility. We can have good periods and bad periods. This period is not very in line with a possible divestment because as you can imagine, we need to have good numbers in order to have a good evaluation of the business. So in regards to M&A, we still keep an opportunistic approach, and so we will consider any transaction based on the valuation that we can have. Any question, Micaela?
Yes, Nazareno, thank you very much. So following the last part of your discussion, we have a few questions concerning the M&A strategy, and so can you update on the M&A landscape in Beefree regards, and how are you seeing multiples moving in that area?
Okay. Yeah. In terms of, acquisition strategy for, Beefree, is still opportunistic. So we have a scouting activity ongoing, and we are looking to acquire companies that can be very synergic with Beefree. In terms of multiples, I can tell about, the research. The latest one that I read is about... from, SaaS Capital-... and, for private companies, SaaS companies, the multiples are around, 4.4x ARR, up to 5x or down to 3.7x. And, those are the multiples, it's an average, in the U.S. In Europe, we expect, a bit lower multiple. So for us, it's still quite expensive, but, if we see value, we have, we can consider also deals at those evaluations.
Thank you very much. With this respect, a question also came up about comparable transactions, and specifically a transaction concerning Affinity. Can you please give us your quick overview of this acquisition of Affinity from Canva, please?
Yes, it's in the same space, but I would not say that it's comparable, because Affinity, first of all, they sell a software with a one-time fee, not recurring, and, so a different business model. Then Affinity was, much larger, I think, above $60 million in revenues, growing more than 30%, and also with a very good profitability, around 20%, if I remember correctly. So it's a completely different business, both in terms of business model and in terms of financials. So it's, it's not really comparable in my view, still, but still in the same space, of course.
Thank you very much. Well, we can take it as a confirmation that the overall market still looks very interesting and active in terms of consolidation opportunities, growth, and M&A, so we'll be active and on the look of the right opportunity from, from this moment on. I would have a question for Matteo now, which regards Agile Telecom outlook and net working capital. Can you please provide more color on those issues, please, Matteo?
Yes, thank you. We advanced some payments to suppliers for approximately EUR 1.6 million. This is usual for Agile Telecom in order to have some more lower price on traffic. We usually do this prepaid sometimes when we have the possibility to have a lower price of a large amount of traffic. And this is why we have a negative net working capital.
In terms of outlook, I can say that it's very difficult to predict because many variables are out of our control, including one of the largest Italian carriers, TIM, that already announced a increase of the SMS price, and this will be reflected, of course, to all the players in this industry. And this, we expect, that will lower the market demand for SMS services, given the higher price.
Thank you very much. And, is there any other seasonality items that affect Agile Telecom's net working capital?
Not in the... Not at the moment.
Great. So I would say, that for now, looks pretty much it for the questions. If anybody has further questions, now is the time. Well, please let me remind you anyways, that we're always available, and we respond at the email address investor.relations@growens.io. If there's no further questions, I would say we might confirm the outlooks for the current year. And in lacking other questions, I would thank you very much for your participation. I would thank Nazzareno and Matteo very much for their availability today, and, well, let's keep in touch.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you very much. Thank you.