Hi, and welcome to today's event where we have the pleasure to present Agillic. To help us through the presentation, we are joined by the company, by both Emre Gürsoy, CEO, and for the first time, Claus Boysen, CFO. Welcome. I guess, Emre, you will do the introduction.
Yes. Thank you.
The reason for this event, fresh off the press, your half-year result. Already Tuesday, you upgraded your guidance, so that seems strong. Also accelerating growth is the first that catch my eyes. With a lot of discussion of economic uncertainty, maybe we could try and bridge this development in the future in this event. I think that will interest a lot. As always, ask questions down in the box down below. Do it in Danish, do it in English. I will try and translate the Danish question to the best of my ability. For now, Emre, I think I will hand the call over to you.
Thank you very much, Michael, and thank you very much for everyone who had the time to join us today. We are here to present our Q2 and half-year results. My name is Emre Gürsoy. I'm the CEO. I'm together with Claus. This is the first time he's joining me. He started with us in the March 1st, and I'm very happy that now we are both of us attending these sessions, giving a greater perspective to all of you. I just wanna start with a very short introduction to our company for those who are new to Agillic. We are a SaaS company, software as a service. We operate within the omnichannel marketing platform. We are an omnichannel marketing platform operating in the Omnichannel Marketing Automation.
As we call it's the MarTech, marketing technology space that we operate. What we do is we empower brands by bringing content and data together to activate it within the relevant channels. These kind of activities naturally has a tremendous impact for businesses who are customer-centric because these deliveries of timely and relevant messages through the right channels brings higher conversion on businesses. It has a major impact on extended satisfaction, on the customer satisfaction. It's a higher retention for a greater engagement, and it's a longer customer lifetime value, which ends up naturally with a greater revenue. A snapshot of our facts. DKK 64.2 million is the latest ARR number that we have reported end of half year.
We are 100% SaaS business, which means that we do not deliver any professional services. This is done by our partners. That's why we have a tremendously tight relationship with our partners. Since 2018, we have been listed on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market. If you look at our customer portfolio, we have 108 clients at the end of half year. Of that, we operate with them in 11 different markets where they use our platform over 100 markets across the globe. We are achieving all this through a headquarters office in Copenhagen, and then we have our sales units in Sweden, Norway, Germany, as well as partner sales, indirect partner sales, partner sales activities in different markets. We have two development markets.
We have in Romania and in Ukraine two development teams that are supporting our team here in Copenhagen. Altogether, we are 51 people. We operate in a very large and a fast-growing market. It's the total addressable market. It's growing very fast because it is driven by data growth, which is a fact that we all agree on that is growing every year, every day. The second one is the relevance that is required by the customers, requiring from the brands they're engaging with. The relevance is a great need for the communications, which brings the need for the engagements. Now, these engagements are across multiple industries, from retail, finance, travel, hospitality, energy, utility. These are all the kind of clients that we bring in from different new industries.
What is the common denominator across all this is that they're all first-party rich companies. They're all in a great interest for customer experience growth, and their customer centricity brings their business development further. In the bottom, we have mentioned that the subscription businesses, so it's not an industry, but it is a way of working. It's a business model across all kind of industries, what we see on the screen and many other beyond, who are looking into opportunities to grow their businesses through subscription model. That's where we are tremendously impactful because at the end of the day, we activate the subscription businesses for greater relevance and a growth.
Now, what I will do is that I will just jump into some of the highlights of our half-year results, and then we'll go into the details with Claus's detailed presentation. Now, if you look at, I'm very pleased to see that we are ending the half year with a very strong performance on our ARR growth. That's a 34% growth. Now, this is the DKK 64.2 million that I've mentioned. What we see here is that, mainly it is driven by our transaction ARR growth over 160%. But in the meantime, we shouldn't forget that it's also driven by 15% growth on our subscription ARR year-over-year, which is a very strong number together delivering this 34%. On the revenue side, we have a + 14% growth year-over-year.
Again, this is a very promising result because it is with this and together with the operational optimization activities that we have been conducting throughout the first half of the year, we have actually improved our Q2 EBITDA result to a break-even of DKK 0 million. If you remember, if those of you, if you look at it in Q1, end of Q1, we have reported an EBITDA for DKK -1.7 million, and in Q2 we have achieved DKK 0 million, basically meaning that we are ending the half year with DKK -1.7 million. Now, all that is the whole idea behind our focus and how we are conducting our business and improving the operational efficiencies, is also reflected on our. Two days ago, we have given a new guidance on the August 23rd.
Now, this guidance is also the highlight is of course the growth on our revenue, but also driving the EBITDA from DKK -3 million-DKK +3 million previous guidance to DKK 0 million-DKK 3 million guidance. Now, that also means that for third year in a row we will be delivering positive EBITDA, and this is something that we are really focusing on because it is one of our strategic financial objectives to achieve that, as well as delivering a positive cash flow from operations and a growth on our ARR. Now, if you look at our guidance itself, the numbers have increased, but if you just make a little comparison of what does that mean actually versus FY 2021 to the new guidance. Now these are the numbers that are actually quite positive that we are very happy to see.
The total revenue, if you compare 2021 full-year result with the new guidance that we are going out with, we are aiming for 13%-21% increase. EBITDA, I've just mentioned, positive EBITDA, and the total ARR, it's 18%-33%. Now, these are very positive developments, and we are very happy with the performance that we have delivered so far, and I'm looking forward to stepping into H2 with even a stronger base. Now, let's look into the numbers with a closer eye.
Thank you for the introduction, Emre. I'm pleased to stand here next to you and present the numbers for our half year report. If we go a little bit deeper into our numbers, the revenue of the first half year was DKK 29.6 million, an increase from Q1 of DKK 1.6 million. If we look into the future and the financial guidance that Emre just mentioned, we have looked at our deferred revenue, which is the committed future revenue that has increased by DKK 6.4 million since half year 2021, signaling that we will increase our revenue for the second half of 2022.
If we go further into the EBITDA level, we have two things that will affect our second half year of 2022, both the operational efficiencies that we have implemented during Q1 and Q2, as well as the increase we see on the revenue side, making us confident that we will expect a positive EBITDA by year-end. If we look at the numbers for the total of revenue, first of all, it's an increase to DKK 29.6 million from DKK 25.9 million last year. We already see a slight increase in quarter two from DKK 11.9 million to DKK 12.2 million, compared to last year quarter two, where we now see the impact of our increased ARR on subscription.
Of course, the main driver here is the revenue from transactions, that is driving the increase in our total revenue. If we go further down, we have at the end of Q2, a cash balance of DKK 12.6 million, and that takes me into the next slide, where we in Q2 2022 have a net cash flow positive of DKK 5 million. If we look at the total half year, we started out with DKK 20.6 million at bank, and the cash flow from operation has increased our balance by DKK 500,000 . Then we have invested, primarily in our software platform, DKK 6.9 million, and then spent DKK 1.6 million for our finances, leaving us with DKK 12.6 million.
If we look a bit ahead of half year, we will continue to invest in our software platform in 2022. We have optimized our financial situation by making a down payment of two loans, in total DKK 2.5 million, which happened in July after this half year report. In order to down pay two loans that has the highest interest rates that we have and was most expensive, and then combined with reducing the cash requirement for other borrowings in the total of DKK 4.5 million. Providing a net less requirement of DKK 2 million over a period of 15 months. Furthermore, we continue to aim for a positive cash flow from operations for 2022.
Of course, we have seasonality fluctuations, and if we look at the past two years, the most positive impact is in Q4, where Q3 is less positive for cash flow from operations. This is a highlight of the quarterly development of our total ARR, leaving us with DKK 64.2 million, which combined is DKK 49.6 million from subscriptions and DKK 14.6 million from ARR from transactions. An increase on both ARR from subscription as well as transactions is what we have done and completed both, compared to last year and the last quarter. If we go and look at further SaaS highlights, we have increased the number of clients to now 108 and maintain our strong average ARR per customer at a level of DKK 600,000.
If we look at the first half year, 2022, where did our customers come from, the wins that we had? We have focused in the past on increasing our internationalization. If we look at the first half year of 2022, 38% of our wins were coming from international markets, while we in first half year 2021 had an 80% win of our new clients. Those two brings us into what they are providing us in ARR. If we look at the internationalization for half year one, 32% of our increase in ARR value from subscription is coming from international markets. Our net retention rate is remaining at above 100, which is very positive.
We have now a customer acquisition cost for the first half year of only DKK 150,000, so continuing our lower cost on acquiring a new customer. That leads us to a month to recover at four months for the first half year, 2022, which is a very, very strong number. At this slide, the main focus is our change in ARR for the first half of 2022, an increase of DKK 16.2 million compared to the increase we saw first half 2021 of only DKK 1.1 million.
Mm-hmm.
Last, looking a little bit into the financial guidance that we lifted here Tuesday this week to the new range. We now have a guidance on revenue of DKK 60 million-DKK 64 million. The main thing that I want to bring forward here at this presentation is that we have a ARR from transaction at half year at DKK 14.6 million, and we are aiming at a level of DKK 10 million-DKK 14 million. We are increasing the spread on ARR from transactions and do expect that we will have some leverage back towards the first quarter of 2022, and thereby giving us a spread from DKK 10 million-DKK 14 million on that, giving us a total ARR level of DKK 66 million-DKK 74 million.
Now, before I take the word, I just wanna say, a quick update on what is very important for us is not just the financial guidance, but the last three years that I keep talking about the Reboot 2.1 strategy that we have been working on. It had some strategic financial goals, and the ones that are on the bottom left corner, and these were the double-digit percentage growth on ARR subscriptions, which we're achieving. Positive EBITDA for the year, that's what we are aiming for now, third consecutive year, and the positive cash flow from operations, as we just mentioned that we've also achieved that one, and we are aiming to achieve that one again this year.
Now, these are the elements of our Reboot 2.1 strategy that is taking us from the financial perspective and fueling us for future readiness. Now, when I'm talking about the future readiness, I also wanna make sure that, you know, that we give the greater picture on what we are working on for those investing in our business. Now, there are three main areas. Business model and financial performance is an extremely important part, as well as the go-to-market strategy, having cracked the code on how do we actually do that, and then the future readiness, because at no point we can stop developing our platform or our business growth achievements.
If you take a look at the business model and financial performance, our Reboot 1 strategy was based on this fueling of our financial performance as giving us the wind that we need to grow our business. Again, it is very important that not just we deliver a positive EBITDA, but we fuel this for further growth, both for international growth as well as the partner-driven growth that we have been established together with the Reboot 2.1.
On the go-to-market strategy, it is very important to mention that our way of expanding our business from the strategy that we have put in place was based on how do we create a scalable and an international go-to-market model where we do not need to invest on boots on the ground every market we step in, because we do not have that agility and the financial power to come from a small market and expanding into the large one. This is what we have achieved so far with our partner strategy and the 38% growth that we are talking about in the first half year, the new clients that are coming, 38% of them are coming from international markets, meaning that we have this connected strategy working, showing us the impact.
Now we just have to do more of it. That's why one of the reasons that I wanna mention this very specific part of the conversation is. It is very important for us to see that our strategy is delivering the results that we have aimed for. Now, we adjust it continuously, as we have been doing throughout the year.
How can we get more out of our strategy by the adjustments moving forward? If you look at the future readiness, what is extremely important for us is that not only that we're competing on an international level with other international MarTech companies, we have to be best of breed as the promise that we have made to our existing clients as well as our prospects in the future so that we can actually compete on the ground with a unique proposition that we are coming out with. I think it is all together we have talked about it made in Europe. We are one of the very, very few who can actually claim that they're coming from Europe, living up to the compliance regulatory requirements in the European markets, which we are pushing really hard.
The last thing that I just wanna mention, on the September 14th, we are coming out to the market. For quite a long time, we have been working together with Forrester. We have completed a European study on personalized Omnichannel Marketing Automation. The study has not been done as far as we can see in that spectrum of the detail that we went into. We will be presenting it on the September 14th. Now, why is this important? Because this is also putting us on the map as a thought leader in the European markets with a statistical and a consultancy company perspective of know-how that is defining the future of. I'm not gonna give some of the results that we have seen so far. It's very promising. We like that.
It is actually driven within our strategy to activate this as we move forward. This is what we have for today. We would love to have the time, the rest of the time for the conversations and the questions that you might have, which we have.
Perfect. We both have some questions here, and I also get something on email. I think I would like to start on you just adjusted your guidance. If you take the mid-range of that guidance, that kind of indicates around 60%, 26% growth in the ARR. Someone here is asking, "What should we expect going forward? We are seeing some acceleration, 20% last year, 26% this year. You know, I know you cannot be specific or guide already on 2023 and 2024, but your feelings around those growth levels and the acceleration, is that also something you hope to deliver into 2023, 2024?
I think that two main focuses that we also have presented here is we have had a strategy since for the past two years where we focus on double-digit percentage ARR subscription growth. We focus on positive EBITDA and cash flow from operations. That alongside with the information that we now have provided in this presentation on our internationalization and how that works is a part of how we also see the future and invest in continuing a growth rate.
I mean, I would just say absolutely true, and here's a bit of a perspective on that. One is we are a growth company. Naturally, it is our greatest aim to grow faster in a greater penetration to the new markets that we are stepping into. As I said before, when you come from a smaller market like Denmark, trying to penetrate into the larger markets, such as Germany, such as England, such as the other larger markets, it always takes time. What we are seeing is now we have a formula that works, and now we are pushing beyond that one together with our partners. Yes. The answer is yes, we would like to grow, and yes, we will be. Once the guidance is completed for the next couple of years, we'll naturally share with all of you.
It is the aim is to grow.
Actually, there's a good question also. Can you tell more about your EBITDA guidance over the coming years? Probably not. The second part of this question: Do you expect to focus most on growth or profitability? You know, looking through your numbers, you are now down to a CAC of around four months, a very, very low CAC. That tells me your model is working. Why not? You're very focused on growth or profitability, but why are you not giving more, investing more to growth if you can have those numbers? Maybe explain a little bit about your thinking about profitability versus growth, especially with a model showing that numbers.
Is it some, you might say, you are maybe not able to scale enough, up fast enough, or the market out there is not ready. If you can give some comments about that, Emre and Claus.
Sure. Let me just give you a bit of a from the historic perspective. The last couple of years, we have not been operating within normal market conditions. The macroeconomic changes, the market conditions have been extremely different from what we previously known. Thereby, it is very hard to make projections about how things will be going forward because we are in a new era. Now, when we defined our strategy of the strategic financial goals, it was a balanced growth. You know, we will have the growth, but we will have a solid positive EBITDA on the side to create a kind of a healthy business. That's what we have been doing for the three years in a row again this year.
We invest every amount of EBITDA, which is thanks to the board of directors. They have accepted this strategy that we don't work for making a lot of EBITDA numbers, but we work for running a positive EBITDA and reinvest it back to technology, reinvest it back to growth sales team members. This has been our aim for the last couple of years, and this is what we are working on right now. Naturally, at the end of the day, we would very much like to have an EBITDA that is also higher than just a breakeven.
You are saying, if I should listen to you, and I know you're not guiding forward, that you are really aiming for this profitability, but the rest will be invested into the growth. That is also your thinking about the coming years, without making any specific guidance?
Correct.
Then there's, I have a question also coming in from email, but also here, you are really growing on the transactions side. There is some question: how will transaction ARR be hit if you go into a recession? That's one part of the question. The second part, transactions also show that your customer are using your system more and more. Could you actually upsell on that or will that also drive some subscription higher revenues that your engagement with your platform is this high? First part, transactions and the fear of the world going into a recession and whether it could also drive some upselling or subscription growth.
Yeah. If we look at the market conditions and Europe's potential recession, yes, it will probably impact our ARR on transactions. While we have also increased the spread on ARR on transactions. Will it be significantly? It's difficult to predict, but we don't think so because there will still be trading happening and online trading will happen, and there needs to be communication among our customers and their customer. We will see that the ARR on transaction has a certain level, but it's difficult to say what exactly it is. Even though with the very high uncertainties we have currently on the second half of 2022 in the market, we still expect to have a level of DKK 10 million-DKK 14 million in ARR on transactions.
I think I just want to mention just one other thing that, yes, the transactions are increasing, but we also have to remember that, you know, last year's same time in the first half, it was a different market condition. Our clients were still struggling in a different world of COVID-driven businesses. Let's say the increases are maybe actually neutralizing, normalizing more towards that, and I'm hoping that as we move into the second half of the year, not only the recession, but I'm actually seeing something, maybe the businesses are picking up even further into the engagement with their customers because transaction's not in our power. That's our clients' engagement with their customers, how much, where, and how do they want to activate that. I'm just glad that we are the catalyst on making sure that they're using it through our platform.
Just to answer your question, whether it's an uplift opportunity, sure it is, and we are absolutely using that too.
Actually we have a question regarding it. It is a little bit of a housekeeping here. How much of the ARR growth is coming from existing customers concerning the upselling and churn? You have given us the net retention rates of 102%. Are you willing to split it out in churn and how much you're upselling to existing customers?
If I may just answer the churn part, then we can talk more on the retention side. We have spoken this in the past too. We do not submit the churn numbers because we have seen in multiple situations that the churn is not defined in the same way from one company, one size company to another size company. If we will be giving churn rates, it might be understood differently. Therefore we wanted to keep it out. We want to talk about the net retention rate, because actually that is the part that is the way that we can say that we are sticking to our clients, they're staying with us, and they're growing with us.
Correct. I don't think we can elaborate further on the exact numbers, but actually say that the net retention rate is an expression of growth among our customers, existing customers.
Yes.
Speaking a little bit about the cash flow, we maybe can go to that slide. Cash flow from operations Q2 was significantly higher than in Q1. What is the reasons for that is a question here? Then maybe elaborate a little bit on maybe your future expectations from both on the cash flow from investment. Is that going to stay the same level in the second year? Are you expecting to increase cash flow from operations from the first half year?
The fluctuation we had from Q1 to Q2, when we reported on Q1, there was a time issue on where we have agreed with some customer that they could pay in the beginning of after the quarter, which they did before we presented it, but that actually had a negative impact on our cash flow that was more than usual. Wherefore, we have also see a little bit more positive cash flow from operations in Q2. That's why we have netted them out in this presentation to explain that the total should be seen together, the two quarters, on cash flow from operations. If we look ahead on cash flow from operations, cash flow in Q3 is normally has been around zero or something like that, where Q4 is higher.
That's our expectation for the rest of the year that we will see a small or around a small impact on cash flow from operations, but a positive in Q4. If we look at the future investments, we will continue to invest in our platform to be where we are with our customers and gain new customers. On the cash flow from financing, we will in Q3 see an impact on the repayment of the two loans. Over a 15-month period of time, that will actually be a positive development compared to our loan agreements because we have made some other agreements on our borrowings.
Perfect. Then I got a question from an email. During the summer you have had two members joining your board from big IT giant ServiceNow and Salesforce, sorry. What are those persons bringing to the board? There's a little bit of a cheeky question also. Does this mean that you will maybe make more collaboration with those companies? In the end, you know, we are seeing a consolidation out there in the IT sector, you know. Funds and big companies are seeing good attractive buyouts in the smaller companies to put their service in. There's a question, could that mean you in the end also could be sold to one of those?
First of all, I'm very happy to welcome both Thorsten Köhler and Jan Juul to our board. I'm very happy that I will have the opportunity to work together with them, because they're both coming with, you know, high level of experience on internationalization, having a SaaS company, SaaS platform, traveling from one market to another, penetrating into them, both through direct and indirect sales models. These two gentlemen are so welcome from my perspective because they're feeding it directly into our business strategy. That's why I'm going back to this slide where our business model is based on this, our future readiness, being the best of breed product within the space we are operating, expanding this.
Our aim is actually, naturally having, their experience to be, exercised within our strategy, within our operations, and within our future readiness. That part I'm very happy. The second part of your question, I think that is a question that is the board of directors should take.
We need to try, Emre and Claus. The questions out there. Yes. A final question. You made a lot of investment in the German market. Your expectation for that market and the second part of this question is, are you seeing the impact? You know, Germany is now being called the sick child of European economy because of the energy crisis. Do you still see growth down there? Are you decisive in that you are entering this market? Does that still give you opportunities in a market that might be a little bit hit in the economy, if the economy gets hit by a lot of companies?
Let me just share my perspective, and then you're welcome to chip in, Claus. I think it's very important to mention that first of all, a lot of investments is actually in our terms. We have two direct sales team members in the German market right now, and they're focusing on direct conversations with our prospects. On the other side, we have blup lanet, our reseller, who have been in the market, and we are growing together with them. It is our greatest desire to penetrate into the market. Now, yes, you know, I always call it, you know, Germany sneezes, we catch cold over here because, you know, their impact is across Europe and for Denmark and for the rest of Nordic is quite big.
On the other hand, let's look at the German market and where they are. There is the energy crisis, and we cannot talk about how important it is and all that. We know that. Can anyone afford not to improve the status quo in the European digitalization journey? No one actually can afford that. Yes, we might have a lot of economic uncertainties ahead of us, but if you look at digitalization, the growth of the markets and the infrastructures and the future of the markets, I think there's a direct relationship between if you wanna be strong as you are now within European market for Germany, they will continue to invest.
That means that for me is I see this one as another opportunity to engage into the market together with our direct and indirect team members. You wanna?
Yeah. No, I agree.
Yeah. If you both agree, then it must be the truth, no?
Right.
I think we have gone through all the questions coming in on emails, coming in on the chat over here. Thank you very much to you, Emre Gürsoy and Claus Boysen, for taking us through the presentation.
Thank you very much, Michael. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.
Thank you. Have a nice day.
You too.
You too.