Good afternoon, welcome to this Q2 presentation with Konsolidator. With us today, we have the CEO and CFO of Konsolidator. First, there will be a presentation, and afterwards, a Q&A, where the CEO and CFO will answer all questions submitted via Stockk.io. There have already been pre-submitted questions on Stokk.io for the Q&A, and the Q&A is still open so that you can submit questions live as well. I will now hand over the mic Konsolidator for the presentation. Your line is now open.
Thank you, very much, Anders. My name is, Claus Finnerup Robbe, and I'm the CEO of Konsolidator, and I will start the presentation, and later in the presentation, I will hand over the mic to Jack, who you can see also participating. Thank you. Let's get started. This is the agenda for today, where we first will show you a little bit of what Konsolidator is all about.
I don't know whether all of you have heard about us before and know what we are doing, so we'll give you a small introduction to what we are doing, and then we will go into, to our funnels to growth as we are a growth company before we move into the financial, which, Jack will guide you through, and ending up with the outlook before we go to the, to the Q&A. That is the, the session for today, and we believe we will spend around 15-20 minutes to the presentation before we open up for questions. First, about Konsolidator. We are a company with a SaaS software product. We are born and built in the cloud, and has always had an ambitious and have an ambition to become the preferred financial consolidation tool in the world.
With the background Jack and I have with 20 years as a CFO and auditors, we have an idea that we know what the customers are looking for, and that is what we are trying to sell around the world. That's our vision and our mission. As you also can see, we were founded in 2014, and today we have 266 customers in 21 countries, and we are around 28 employees, including some vacancies. You all know what consolidation is all about. I also made this presentation back in June.
For some of you who have seen this before, I apologize, but for you who have not seen this before, I think it's important that you know what it is we're doing, because that is also important to understand why we have this global growth potential. Financial consolidation is about consolidating subsidiaries to a set of group account, and that is on the one hand, very complex, as the accounting rule makes the complexity, that it is different kind of rules, different kind of things you have to do in order to do a financial consolidation. That's a reason why software is better than Excel. On the other hand, is financial consolidation the same all over the world?
We are not, I mean, it's not like consolidation is Denmark is different than consolidation is in United States, because whatever local gaps you might have, that is done in the bookkeeping. After that, you do the consolidation on whatever gap you are, you are reporting under. Konsolidator is on top of any accounting system, and therefore, we can sell our product all over the world. We have an advantage of the consolidation is complex. On the other hand, it's the same all over the world, the way you're doing it. That is a reason why we have this global potential. We don't need to adjust the software to local standards. This I've not shown you before. This is how Konsolidator looks like when you log in.
The reason why I, I brought this today, that is because I, I, I want you to understand how the customer journey looks like in a monthly process. The way it works is that customers upload their trial balances, their numbers, to Konsolidator, and that is done under Upload. Then you are doing whatever is needed for your group to do your consolidation. There is some around exchange rate, and there are something which we call journals, which you have to do before you can do the actual consolidation. After you've done that and been through that, then you can do the consolidation, and then you are ready to report. This is actually, in a nutshell, what a customer is doing. Upload, do some journals, exchange rate, review or do something, and then the consolidation.
The thing is that when everything has been set up and you're using the software correctly, an average consolidation for our customers takes around seven minutes. Before they start using Konsolidator, they might spending one day or maybe two, or at least a number of hours in the consolidation process, and then it might not be as correct as it is in Konsolidator. For the customers, the value proposition is both time and then also quality, and that is what we are running around in the world and trying to convince customers that a standardized software is much, much smarter than doing it manually in Excel, where there is risk of errors, and it takes a long time, where it's so much easier in a software like Konsolidator.
That is what we are and what we are doing and what we are trying to sell around in the world. We have three ways of growing the product. As I said before, our goal, our ambition, is to be the preferred consolidation tool in the world. But the world is big, so how do we then accomplish that? We have three ways in which we are trying to sell our product out in the world. The first one, that is what we call direct sales, and around 95% of our revenue or ARR is generated through the direct sales. Direct sales, that is that we somehow try to get a sales meeting, then we take the sales meetings, and then after the sales meetings, then a customer hopefully sign, and then they onboard, and then they become a customer.
That is, you can say the traditional way of acquiring customers and where we get all our customers today. If we should be successful in growing very high, very fast, with a low cost, we need somehow to crack the nut of having other channels to growth. That is what we have in the two other channels, which we call channel sales and which we call audit firms. Channel sales, that is generally try to sell your product through partners. Where we make our main bet, that is to sell through Business Central. The majority of our customers and our sweet spot are in the business, Microsoft Business Central accounting system, kind of area. We are spending a lot of time and some investments in trying to find out how can we sell through the Business Central channel.
That is, you can say, our main focus in that channel. You can see down in the bottom that is also saying e-conomic Xero, and it says D365. That is because, I mean, all the cloud ERP systems are a channel for us, and e-conomic customers, Xero customers, and other cloud ERP system are lead generators for us. So that is what we mean when we're talking about channel sales. Then we have the audit firms. It's not a secret that we have PwC Denmark as a customer, and also a very happy customers that are spending a lot of less time doing their annual consolidation for their clients.
We like a customer like PwC because both it's a kind of, quality stamp of your product that a, a leading audit firm is using your product, but they are also great lead generators. We are trying to see whether we can attract other audit firms out in the world using Konsolidator. It's not easy, and it takes a lot of time. Again, due to resources, our internal resources, we are not spending a lot of time on these audit firm, but we, we, we will and are still trying to see whether we convince audit firms to use our product, as well. These are the three funnels for us to, to, to grow. Yeah. Yes.
With that, then we are, are handing over the, the mic to, to Jack, who will say a little bit about the, the first half.
Yeah.
Of, uh, twenty, uh, twenty-three.
Just leave it. No, just leave it. Thank you. I'm the CFO of Konsolidator, Jack Schou. I will dive into the numbers, but before I do that, I will just say that our quarter has been both positive, and there have been negatives as well. As you've probably already seen, when we look at our ARR increase for Q2, it's been only DKK 122,000, which is not satisfying for us. Unfortunately, we saw the sales conversion rates drop during the quarter, which is caused by a less optimal staffing situation in sales.
It's also been that Claus, which also was involved in sales, which he also still is and has been, but we have been spending also some time on the whole capital restructure situation during that during the quarter. The churn also, which we've seen, has for going forward for for our second half of 2023, we can see that has has increased a little bit, which have led us to lower our expectations for the 2023. The positives is we're still growing. We still have increased our ARR and revenue. We we've also finalized the whole capital restructure, which I will get back to on how, how that has been done during the quarter.
Diving into the numbers, I have on the right-hand side, try to highlight some of the numbers and going from the top, the revenue has increased by 20% compared to last year. If we dig a little into our revenue situation, we can see that our subscription revenues has have increased by 32%. Our onboarding and consultancy have decreased by 28%. The decrease comes from the less onboardings during, and we've also got less employees in consultancy compared to last year. Going to the next number, the EBIT, earnings before interest and taxes. We've improved that compared to last year by 51% to DKK 6.5 million.
This is mainly for our staffing, where we've gone from last year of 38 people to 24 at the June 30th. The cash flow from operation is because of the EBIT also improved by 50, by 52% compared to last year. We have the balance sheet. We have our cash is at the June 30th, is DKK 13 million. We have not repaid our loan yet, so that's why the cash situation is at that level, and we've gone back to a positive equity with the capital restructure. If I go back to the capital restructure, I want to yeah, if you go on the switch. Yes. I want to start out.
We in our annual report, we said that we needed DKK 30 million, DKK 25 million to repay the convertible loan and DKK 5 million for our operations. We finalized the capital, the capital increase and the loans in June, July, where we received DKK 18.5 million in equity from investors and DKK 15.5 million in loan, a total proceed of DKK 34 million, net proceeds of DKK 33.8 million. We have repaid our loan to Formue Nord of DKK 22.5 million, and they have converted the remaining part up to 25, the DKK 2.5 million to equity. Our equity has increased by the DKK 21 million. The lease of with a refinancing with cash of DKK 10.8 million. If we go to the SaaS metrics, the next slide, please.
Our annual recurring revenue at June 30th is DKK 18.7 million, a 20% increase compared to last year. As you can see in the first column, we've only increased net our annual recurring increase of DKK 122,000. The net increase, meaning that it's new sales minus the churn that we had in the second quarter. This also impacts on other SaaS metrics, the customer acquisition cost over net ARR and the net ARR over cash burn. Those are a very, yeah, high number for the CAC and a very low number for the net. That's. The churn, annualized churn is also increased to 9.2%.
With all this in mind, with the sales conversion rate and the churn that we see in the second half year, we have changed our outlook for our annual recurring revenue to DKK 20 million-DKK 21 million for 2023. You can see our previous outlook was DKK 21 million-DKK 23 million. The other SaaS metrics have also been changed except for our churn %. These were some of the numbers. The next slide is our financial outlook. I, am I?
Yes, I'll take that.
Okay.
Yes, thank you, Jack. Again, before we go into the, to the outlook for, for this year and next year, as Jack, he also said, we have not been satisfied with the, the first half results, and that is also reflected in our outlook. We have reduced, as you can see in the table to the right, if we're starting with 2023, we have reduced our guidance on ARR from DKK 21 million-DKK 23 million to DKK 20 million-DKK 21 million for new guidance for 2023. Again, it is not satisfactory. We can, we, we can all agree on that, I also still have to say that we are still a growth company.
Even on a, you can say, a very poor quarter or poor half year, we are still a growth company, and we are still seeing ourselves as a growth company. You can also see this compound annual growth rate is still fairly high, obviously, because of the earlier years where we were above 70%. Again, make no mistake about where we want to go. We want to come back to very high growth rates, but it has been for various reasons, difficult for the past couple of years. We are still aiming to come back to these very high growth rate.
The guidance for 2023 is, as I said, DKK 20 million-DKK 21 million ARR, which is comparable to 14%-20% growth. Our revenue is in the same growth rate areas to, from a reduced from 20-22 to 19-20. Our EBIT, which we before had a guidance of a loss of DKK 5 million-DKK 8 million, that we have reduced now to DKK 9 million-DKK 11 million. If you look at 2024, you can see that we have maintained our ARR and revenue level for next year, that is simply because we still believe that we can grow at fairly high numbers. We believe that we can make the same ARR as we have expected before.
We think we can cover up for some of the things we have lost this year, and we are fairly ambitious about that. We have increased the cost, as you can see. With the same revenue, we are reducing our EBIT, and that is simply because of people that we first estimated around 20 people, 20-24 people, and now we have increased the number of people from next year to 24-28. You could say that the cost of sales is expected to be a bit higher next year in this regard. That is the reason why we have maintained ARR and revenue, but reduced EBIT for next year. Again, as the last thing, we are still seeing us as a growth company.
Yes, with that, I think we will spend this 15 to 20 minutes, and then I will hand over the mic to Anders, who I believe will ask some questions.
Yes, perfect. Jack and Claus, let's jump directly into the questions. The first question here: With the new AI-generated mapping add-on, is it Konsolidator as a company that is saving time, or is it your customers that save time? Have you estimated how much time is saved with this add-on?
Well, thank you. Good question. I can answer this. It's our customers that save time. It's actually a fairly a lot of time they can save by the AI mapping, because it's done all automatically. Obviously, they need to look into it to see if there are any mistakes, but before they set in an Excel spreadsheet and did the mapping. They have to save some time. Further, it will always also help our free trial process, where you can get started really quickly on the free trial and the consolidation.
Perfect. The next question is a bit around this area as well. Do you have other AI-generated add-ons coming up that could significantly save time or add a new layer to the solution?
Another good question. We are always looking into, of course, this whole new thing with OpenAI, and we also have some extra things in mind. For instance, budgeting and forecasting. We can, we can see it being used. This is not something that will be developed in, in this year, but due to, of course, resources, but, but this is definitely a way where we can see it being used. We can also still improve our current AI mapping. Yeah, definitely. There are also other things.
I have some add-on to this because I believe that AI is definitely going to be a big revolution in finance department and as in many other department. One example, again, I don't know how the audience here, how well-known they are within finance, but one thing I think you all can relate to, that is cash flow. Cash flow is one of the things that is fairly difficult to predict. A cash flow statement is made where you look, of course, of your profit and cost, revenue and cost, but you also look at your working capital. It's extremely difficult to predict working capital in the future. How much is my debtor next year, November? Fairly difficult to predict.
AI, AI is extremely good in seeing pattern that the human eye can't see. I personally, believe that Konsolidator, in the future, will come with a kind of an AI tool to kind of make a forecasted, cash flow. At least that is, that is, an obvious place where we can, use the, the technology to, to add value to, to the customers. That, that, that is one example. We also see it in coding. I mean, AI can also code, so our coders is of course using AI wherever that, that makes sense. That is both what the customer will see, but also what we can use internally to improve processes and reduce cost.
How make the coding even better and also more efficiently.
Perfect. There's a bit of a, a long question here, but I will read it from start to end. With the Q1 quarter result showing higher churn, higher CAC, and very low increase in ARR, do you still plan to have a global market focus in regards to your sales and marketing efforts? In my experience, it can be very expensive trying to capture many different industries, geographies, company sizes, and more at the same time. Wouldn't it be more feasible to going after one industry in a smaller geographic area to begin with, so that new potential customers can actually connect to the references you use?
Yeah, that, that's, that's a very good question and something we discuss a lot. We are actually extremely focused, and maybe you cannot see it from the outside, but as I start saying, the world is a fairly big playing field. We are focused. Let me explain a little bit about how we are focused. For example, on outbound, I mean, how, how, how do we reach out to customers by ourself, potential customers? That we are only doing two market, Denmark and Sweden. 80% of our customer base is in Denmark and Sweden, outbound reach is only done in Denmark and Sweden. When it come to digital marketing, inbound lead generation, there we are also extremely focused, we are focused on cloud ERP system, sweet spot customers.
We do have sweet spot customers, which is a number of subsidiaries from five subsidiaries up to a number of subsidiaries. That's what we call our sweet spot customers. Digital marketing is focused around cloud ERP system, those that are using cloud accounting system, sweet spot, sweet spot customers, and only in English-speaking markets. That's actually the only thing we are focusing on. Outbound, Denmark and Sweden, inbound on these three elements. If you are within that, then any customers. For example, I had a sales call with a customer, potential customer from Canada. They are using Business Central, they are cloud ERP, they speak English, perfectly for our. As long as they fit into these boxes, then we can actually cover a fairly large geographical area. That's the way we focus. We are actually focused.
If a Spanish customer reach out to us, Konsolidator, if we speak Spanish, then we are saying, "No, thank you. We cannot accommodate Spanish-speaking customers." If they speak English, and if they're using Business Central, perfect. That's, so that's, you can say, how we segment the market. Regarding verticals and industries, consolidation is the same. There's no different in consolidation, whether you are in transport or you are in consultancy. Consolidation is the same, so it doesn't really make sense for us to segment that way around. We segment in other ways. That's the way we are. I hope, I mean, and of course, we want to give that impression also that we are actually very focused.
Yeah, perfect. Thank you. The next question is a bit in, in the same area. It's also a long question, so I'll read it from start to end. I am a bit concerned that you have not really changed strategy. You still have a global focus, but since 2019, net ARR increase over cash burn has been 0.2. This is, in my opinion, should call for some attention and focusing on creating a funnel that works before burning too much cash. In the past three years, you have spent around DKK 64 million to gain DKK 9 million in revenue. That is a 7x spend compared to revenue. In that regard, it does not seem like you have found the formula to scale the company by increasing spend.
That's a, it's a good and a, of course, a critical questions, which I, I will be happy to, to answer. I mean, first, first of all, no, no, it's not been a, a, satisfactory, especially not the, the last half year. Let, let me, let me explain. If you remember the three funnels, the, the direct sales, the channels, and the audit, we have been successful in the direct sales, and we could actually build a company around that and only be there and be successful in terms of profitable and a better CAC over ARR. We believe that it's impossible to grow very, very high number in the world on the direct sales. It, it is impossible, we believe.
We need to have the channel and the audit firm to work, so we do invest a lot of money and time in those two channel. Actually, in our CAC, you do see the investments we do in channel and ARR because in audit firms, because we have sales rep, we have marketing spend, which is included in the CAC, but right now with almost 0 ARR. If you actually look at the CAC over ARR, we don't guide and we don't present that, but if you look at our CAC over ARR for direct sales, it's actually okay. Not, maybe not impressive, but it's actually okay. With the current DKK 20 million we have in revenue, or we are guiding on, we could run a profitable company.
To grow only with, let's say, 5%, I don't know, to a very low range. If we want to become that globally preferred consolidation tool, we need to have some of the other channels to work, and that's a reason why we invest in that, and that is the reason why you have seen such a high cash spend over the last years, which has not turned out, unfortunately, yet, on a high growth. We are, what we call, we are stubborn and we are patient, not patient maybe, but we are really working hard on to get those two channels to work because then we will get back to this hypergrowth, which we saw before 2021, where growth was 70%. Also, at a high cash spend, we accept that.
That was the days back then, high growth, high cash burn. Now, we are in a scenario where we want to grow high, but profitable. We need to crack those two channels. We believe we can.
Perfect. The next question, I will cut it over in some different parts. Has the participation in the Accountex in London translated into growth in the U.K. market?
A very, very direct question, maybe from all the audience. There is a huge accounting fair in London every year in May, I think it is, and actually, we, we invest a lot in that event. We are sending, is it four or five now? I'm looking at Ida, who is sitting on the other side, who was also there. I think you were four or five people there, right?
four, yeah.
four people, which is quite a lot for us. We do actually invest a lot in that event. We did get a lot of leads, and we actually got one customer, which we cannot see in Q2 because we got one customer from that event in July from England. We do expect to get more out of that event. Actually, the event turned out to be a lot of accountants were interested in Konsolidator and came over to us and talked with us, which we are going there because of direct sales, but it turns out a lot of accountants were interested in Konsolidator. We have some pretty good lead and converted one of those company leads in July to a customer.
Yes, until now, one customer, but we, we hope to get more, and we have already signed up for the event next year again. We actually think it's a good investment.
The next question from the same investor: You gained 8 customers this quarter. What is the split in terms of country/market for the new customers?
Thank you. I'm glad I got this question before, because then I could look into it, because not always I know these kind of questions by heart. It was five from Denmark, two from Sweden, and then we actually closed a KPMG Lower Gulf in from UAE. Five Denmark, two Sweden, one UAE, and the one from UAE is, of course, very interesting because that was a KPMG. Yeah.
Perfect. From the same investor again: You mentioned that the churn is mainly driven by smaller companies wanting to save costs. Have the churn customers all returned to Excel, or do you see increasing competition that could be a further risk to the growth of Konsolidator?
Maybe you should take the first part.
Yeah. Yes, they are returning to Excel. Just on churn, just let me mention also that we've been seeing churn. There's also been questions on the onboarding, but we see kind of onboarding is falling a little bit, but we have seen some churn established. The whole world where the companies need to save cash and inflation, the smaller companies go back to Excel. We've also seen some other companies. Right now, it's very cheap to buy companies, so we've seen a lot of companies being purchased, or not a lot, but some of them have been purchased. We've also seen bankruptcy as part of the churn, which is nothing that we really can do anything about. Yeah. Then competition, Claus?
Yeah, I, we, we do see higher competition out there, no doubt. We are seeing, especially, competition from the bottom. There's some BI solution are selling, some kind of, consolidation, we call it aggregation, but which can be good enough for some of the, the smaller groups. We are also seeing some, some, some little bit more competition from, from the top, segment. Which is actually both good and bad, because, we, we actually felt sometimes we were kind of the only one who was running out there and, and trying to convince customers that software is better than Excel. Now with the competition, there's a little bit more PR out there in the market.
We can feel that we're actually not spending so much time in convincing customers that there is an alternative which is better than Excel, that they actually know now. That part is positive. Of course, the negative part is that we have to compete against some other. We still believe that the way we think consolidation, simple, very correct, is the way to do it, and we are still fairly alone of seeing consolidation in that way. Just for you to understand, what are we doing against this competition? In the lower segment, we are working very hard on what we call no hands, which for us is that we should be able to onboard, sell, and onboard a customer without touching their customers.
That is some of our strategic initiatives. On the top side is that, we are also working on, on functionality, where we, there is some specific functionality which the larger clients are, are using. We still can compete and we, take our fair share of the large one and also on the lower one. To make that answer long, yes, we do see, a larger competition, but we do believe that we have some response to, to, to that.
The next question from, from another investor: Are you sure you have the right sales strategy and the right people employed in the sales department?
That's, of course, always a tough question to say yes on. On the other hand, yeah, and yes, we feel. I mean, again, it's coming a little bit back to the, to the growth strategy. Of course, sometimes it will be better for us if we have much more funds. No doubt. I mean, we, we are, on a aim to be a profitable growth, and of course, that sets some limitation. We do feel that we have good people, definitely. Would we like to have more people? Yes. You can say I'd actually like to have more people of the same kind of, type. Yes, we, we, we, we do feel we have the, the, the, the right people.
Also that was said, I mean, for, for some of you who knows, we've been through a, a round, end of March 2022, we fired some people because we have to reduce costs. Of course, when you are in a round where you have to lay off people, you of course looking, do you feel you have the right people? So if we at that time felt that there were some people who might not be the right for Konsolidator, then we had the opportunity at that time to, to, to, you would say, yeah, to, to, to lay them off. So, so now we are few people, and people have to perform. I mean, we laid off a, a Swedish sales rep end of June. I mean, you have to perform.
I mean, otherwise, yeah, we are not the place to be. Yes, we definitely think that we have the right people.
The next question from the same investor, there's also a question about churn, but I think you have answered that one, so I will jump to the next part of the question. Are you sure the product is attractive and beneficial enough for new customers, or should you perhaps rethink some of the product-related issues as well?
It's also always difficult to say, to say yes. Again, when we have 266 customers, and they are, I mean, they are generally happy, right? Otherwise, they would churn. I also said in the beginning, Jack and I, we have 20 years of experience, each of us in as a CFO and, and auditors. So we also have some experiences, what is it that a consolidation tool should should have? Of course, when that is said, technologies are moving very fast, and of course, we, we need to be sure that we also follow the, the customer's requirements and needs. Of course, we are trying the best we can in that regard. But yes, I still think we have a compelling product.
I think actually one of the, you can say, the, the reason why we are not growing faster is that you need to take some of the burden off buying a product. There are so many apps available out there for customers, so you can say that the sick con to convince a potential customer to buy, and then after you have convinced, also the onboarding process, that has to be narrowed down to almost nothing today. It's actually more about that friction between someone who is maybe want and actually being full on board, get the full value. That time has to be very, very narrow today. That has changed a bit. It's actually more in depth, you can see that you have to be extremely sharp than in the actual product.
The product is still fairly sticky when you have onboarded Konsolidator and you kind of got the value, then you stick to the product. We still.
Perfect.
Yeah.
That was all the questions. Now I will hand over the mic to you to, for some final remarks.
Thank you. It's been an excellent... This is the second time that, Jack and I, we are actually, first time for Jack, second time for me, that we are, we are using this event. I think it's, it's, for me, it's very positive. I think the question that is coming in, is extremely relevant, and I kind of like also to take the critical questions. thank you from, from me.
Same here. Thank you very much for participating. Hope to see you again after our Q3 report.