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Okay, great. So good day, everyone. Welcome. This is our usual call to comment on the latest release data, and as usual, we have Mr. Monfredini, our founder, chairman, and CEO and CFO with us, and Mr. Gorni, who's our founder and CEO. We'll start commenting the data and then leave room for questions. Please let me remind you that any questions should be addressed to our investor.relations@growens.io email address, so that we can review them and properly answer. I would leave it to Matteo to introduce the comment on the figures, and thank you very much for being here today.
Thank you, Micaela. Good afternoon to everyone, and thanks for being here. I'm going to introduce the first half twenty twenty-four results, starting from profit and loss. First of all, I would like to underline that the profit and loss data for the first half of twenty twenty-four and twenty twenty-three are not directly comparable as they refer to a different consolidation perimeter. Data for the first half of twenty twenty-three include the results of the Datatrics business unit, which was sold in October twenty twenty-three. At the same time, the balance sheet, the twenty twenty-three comparison column, does not include Datatrics because it is related to 31 December, 2023 .
In the first half of 2024, Growens' consolidated revenues amounted to EUR 36.9 million, showing increase of about EUR 1.27 million, or +3.6% versus the same period of 2023. If we do not consider revenues in 2023 economics of Datatrics, the increase would have been higher, of about EUR 1.1 million, showing an increase of 6.8% versus the same period of 2023. Foreign revenues amounted to EUR 29 million, representing 79% of total revenues, growing by +3.4%, or 6.9% without Datatrics versus the first half of 2023.
Recurring revenues amount to 5.7 million EUR, growing about 19% without considering Datatrics revenues. As usual, our revenues are divided into two business lines, SaaS and CPaaS. Without considering Datatrics, the first half of 2024 growth of the SaaS line exceed 19% for a 16% incidence on total revenues, whereas the CPaaS line grows 1.2% for an 81% incidence on total revenues. Other revenues grew by about 1.05 million EUR, compared with the same period of 2023, and this growth is mainly related to non-repayable grants and reallocation, as well as non-business revenues related to the disposal of the ESP and Datatrics businesses.
Going forward, we can see the cost of goods sold that shows an increase of EUR 424 thousand for the first six months of 2024, compared with the same period of 2023. The first margin or gross profit shows an increase of EUR 843 thousand, more or less, or plus 11.7%, with a revenue incident of about 22%, up 12% compared to 2023. The first half of 2024, total operating expenditure amounts to EUR 8.7 million, compared with the EUR 6.9 million in H1 2023.
This increase is mainly due to some una tantum and general admin costs deriving from the M&A activities and from service provided to former subsidiaries subjected to divestment, and then reinvoiced based on specific contractual agreements. There are also some other minor increases in business-related costs, like license, wage increases, or long-term incentive allocation. Other cost items negatively impacting total expenditure are related to the development of the Beefree business, especially in terms of sales and marketing, research and development. Research and marketing cost increased of about 18%, and research and development plus 27%.
Consolidated EBITDA is negative by approximately EUR 0.7 million in the first half of 2024, compared with the EUR 0.29 million in the first half of 2023. The main negative impact on these results is due to Beefree EBITDA that is negative for approximately EUR 1.7 million, and is in line with the investment we planned. Earnings before taxes is negative by EUR 2 million, after EUR 0.6 million of net financial income and EUR 1.9 million of depreciation. IFRS 16 related amortization amounted to EUR 0.3 million, growing by 9% year-on-year, while research and development amortization grew by 13% to EUR 1.5 million.
Net earnings or net profit in the first half of twenty twenty-four, after current and deferred taxation estimates amount to minus EUR 1.8 million. The allocated tax figures are, as usual, derived from the aggregate amounts of individual taxation applying on each legal entity. Okay, going to consolidated net financial position. As of thirty June 2024, the net financial position exceed three million euro cash, decreasing versus the previous recorded net cash amount of EUR 42.1 million as of thirty-first December 2023, with the variation largely influenced by different factors.
Firstly, the cash payment of fees and commission pertaining to the 2023 fiscal year, but made in the first half of 2024, related to the execution of extraordinary transaction for the sale of the businesses, ESP businesses, and the partial voluntary takeover bid for approximately EUR 1.4 million. Secondly, the payment of the first tranche of the extraordinary dividend for approximately EUR 10 million. Third, the capitalization of research and development expenses, mainly related to Beefree, for approximately EUR 2.5 million. Four, the increase in receivables from customers from approximately EUR 2.1 million. And lastly, the investment of excess liquidity in low-risk financial asset for approximately EUR 4 million.
Financial debt from the IFRS 16 adoption amounts to EUR 1.6 million, if you consider the short term and the long term. Cash and equivalents exceed EUR 27.6 million. The adjusted net financial position also shows, as we showed at the thirty-first December 2023, escrowed amount as a guarantee of certain obligation related to the sale of the ESP business to TeamSystem. The amount, this amount is six point four EUR 7 million.
Going deeper in the business units figures, you can see that Agile Telecom business unit posted the biggest revenues of circa EUR 30 million, increasing by 1.3% over the same period of the previous year. The profitability of the Q1 2024 was affected by some negative market dynamics, resulting in performance below expectation and below the previous year. However, it benefit from the corrective action taken in the Q2 to return to the excellent levels of previous fiscal year. And this will allow us to for a gradual recovery of overall margin, which is still ongoing.
The fastest business unit is Bee, with a 20% increase in revenues at the EUR 5.8 million, or $6.2 million revenues, driven by increasing volumes. The annual recurring revenue amounts to EUR 13.6 million, sorry, $13.6 million USD, as of June 2024. And as I said before, the Bee EBITDA margin is negative for, say, EUR 1.7 million, and this generates a significant impact on group marginality, making it negative. These numbers are in line with the, for the moment, with the guidance we have published in April 2024, so we are confident to stay inside the numbers we confirmed previously. That's all from my side.
Thank you very much, Matteo. I would now leave it to Nazzareno to comment on how the business is going and where we're going from now. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Micaela. Good evening to everyone. A few updates from our two business units, starting from Beefree. The Beefree activity is concentrated on the execution of the plan that we announced. In particular, in this last quarter, in the following quarter, we will focus our attention on the HubSpot user base. As you know, Beefree app has a connector with HubSpot, which is a quite famous CRM and marketing automation system, and many clients of HubSpot are using already Beefree app, and we want to expand this client base by improving the connector and by implementing marketing initiatives that will attract more and more HubSpot clients, also attending a HubSpot Inbound conference in Boston. The second initiative in this quarter is related to RGE.
As you know, the Really Good Emails company website has been acquired a few months ago, and now we want to exploit this huge user base. We already organized a few events, both online and offline, and so it's promising, but still we are at the beginning. As you know, the sales cycle is not so fast, especially for larger companies, so it's too early to draw a line and understand the real impact in terms of numbers. And finally, we also have the SDK product. On that regard, the focus now is to increase the API usage.
As you know, the SDK has a pricing model related to the number of seats, plus the number of features, but we also have a usage related to the CDN traffic, so the amount of traffic that our clients generate, but also related to the number of API uses used by our clients. So the, let's say, is something that allows the developers to interact with the application through APIs, or application program interface. Those APIs have a specific price, and we charge for those. And we introduced a few new APIs, and now we are developing some also marketing initiatives in order to increase this usage from our customer base. Then we have Agile Telecom, as you know, operates in a market that is not very flourishing.
The SMS market is globally, but also in Italy, is decreasing, so this makes this market a bit challenging for us. We are working in the direction we already announced, so we want to improve margins, and most of our efforts are related now to keep at least the margin we had the previous year. The Q1 was not good, as Matteo shared, but the Q2 was better, so we are confident that we can keep this margin level also in Q3 and Q4. On top of that, Agile is evaluating possible investments in order to increase the number of direct clients through other solutions.
And this will allow Agile to, let's say, have more recurring revenues like Beefree, and that's at least the goal of these initiatives that we are evaluating. So it's very early stage, but this is an investment that we could plan for the future. And then we have the M&A activity. On that regard, the strategy is not changed. We are still opportunistic in both the sell side and the buy side for both business units. We don't have active discussion at the moment, so the scouting activity is an ongoing activity, but we have no news on that side. That's all.
Thank you very much, Nazzareno, and I would leave some room for a few questions that have arrived through our email address, and I would start from Beefree. You mentioned several details already, and thank you for that. But you... Can you give some more color on how the integration with Really Good Emails is going, please?
Yes. As I shared, we are just at the beginning. We made some, let's say, edits to the Really Good Emails website in order to start collecting traffic and move that traffic towards Beefree.eu website, so in order to increase the number of leads. Those activities have not ended, so it's an ongoing activity that is not ended, so we want to improve that, and on top of that, we already organized a few events that not only enable Beefree to expose the Beefree activities and tools and products to the RG user base, but also it's important. Those events are important because this community, the email community around Really Good Emails, is also providing good insights and feedback that can be for sure used in defining our future strategy.
So as said, it's too early to draw a line and to understand the real conversion rate of this user base.
Thank you very much. And, as per, Beefree, also, can you give us more color about what to expect for the second semester, second half of the year? I think we can be qualitative here in terms of financial expectations, and I can give this indication also that we are going to release Q3 preview data on October the 10th. So there will be an interim check in there as per where Beefree's ARR is going. But if you can give us some more color with respect to the end of the year, I think that would be great for analysts. Thank you very much.
Yes. We can say that the guidance, the outlook that we provide in terms of ARR growth, which was the target was 15 the range was from 15 to 18 million dollars at the end of the year in terms of ARR. We confirm this target, and so while in terms of initiatives, I think I already shared the main initiative that will help us to get to this target.
Perfect. Thank you very much. And, also there was a question about the repricing of the Beefree SDK, which happened, of course, after the closing of the first half of the year. Would you give us some qualitative views on how it's going?
Yes. It's just started because it was planned for July 1st, but actually it was really started in August, and so it's just the beginning. As usual, the price increase was quite substantial, and we had some churn already, but it was expected. It's normal in this case, and the churn is not that high for the moment, so we can say that the price increase at this time is a successful change.
Thank you very much. Now we switch to Agile Telecom. Which trend are you expecting for the second half of the year in terms of turnover and margins, please?
Well, the focus for us is to at least keep the marginality we had in the previous year, and so we are working in that direction, and the Q2 is quite promising in that regard. In terms of revenue growth, it's not a focus for us. As you know, in that market, revenues is doesn't matter too much. So we believe that well, I don't know if I can tell, but I can say that revenue is not probably going to grow. But it's not a problem for us. We are focusing on margins.
I think it's really thorough, and thank you for the explanation. Now we have a few details concerning an information that was released in the financial reports, and it is about a change in the stake in Beefree, which was raised by like 0.4%. Let me just take this question. The question was why was it not separately communicated in a press release? The reason why is that because the amount is irrelevant with respect to regulatory standards, and of course, the change was released, was communicated in the financial reports. You did not see it in a specific press release because it was considered an irrelevant information by financial threshold standards.
A further question, which I would address to Nazzareno, is about the frequency and strategy of future meetings with the financial community, and well, let me take this part. Why are we not participating to the Next Gems? We do not participate to Next Gems usually, but to other conferences dedicated to bigger companies, so in any case, this year you would not have seen us at the Next Gems, but at different conferences, but I would leave it to Nazzareno also to comment on the adjustment in strategy in Investor Relations, please.
Yes, I believe that our focus now, at least my focus now, should be more related to the business. So that's where I think it's better to spend most of my energy and my time. So that's the reason why, during this phase, this period, the IR activity is not as maybe last year, for example.
Thank you very much. I think there are no further questions. And I think we answered all the questions. If there's any more, well, at least we're not as active as in the past in this transitional period, but of course, you can reach out to us. In any case, we've got this investor.relations@growens.io email address, and we'll try and be as responsive as always, and address all your questions and concerns. And you'll find the recording for this call soon on the website for your check. And I would thank everyone who have participated in this meeting for being here with us today. Thank you, Nazzareno. Thank you, Matteo. And we'll speak soon, and the next appointment is, of course, October the 10th for the release of the quarterly preview for the Q3. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Micaela. Hello to everyone.
Have a great continuation of the day. Thank you.
Thank you.