Morning, everybody, and thank you for joining Planisware H1 2024 result. I will share this presentation with Stéphanie Pardo, our CFO. Well, to start, I will go through a few key highlights of this publication. But really, what I want to do to start is to tell you how proud I am of the Planisware team to have accomplished what we are publishing today, totally in line with the trajectory we've planned for the year, whether it's for revenue growth, profitability, and cash generation. We continue to benefit from the evolution of our revenue mix, with a recurring portion that is now representing 88% of our top line, mainly fueled by our SaaS activities. The geographical diversification is also an asset, enabling us to have the best-performing areas compensating for softer market conditions in other areas.
Finally, I am glad to see that the most recent pillars that we have added are confirming their potential of growth relays for the future. The commercial momentum that we have remains extremely strong, whether it's with existing clients but also with new logos that are representing now significant opportunity at a commercial pipeline level that is reaching record highs. All these elements are providing us with confidence for the remainder of the year, allowing us to confirm all of our 2024 objectives today. For the midterm, the dynamism of the Project Economy remains stronger than ever. It's supporting us and leveraging the multiple strategic vectors that we have to drive a future sustainable and profitable growth. Now, let's have a look at the key figures of the semester.
Our revenue is at EUR 86.6 million. It's up by 19.6% in constant currency. It's led by the continued success of the group market-leading SaaS platform, in line with the 2024 objective of approximately 19.5% growth. Our Adjusted EBITDA increased by 29.3%. It's representing 33.5% of revenue. It translates in an improvement of 260 basis points, driven by the mix effects, with our most profitable operation being the one growing the fastest. It was also helped by the indexation of our contracts on inflation and further operational efficiencies. Here again, this is fully in line with the objective of the year to deliver an Adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 33%. The current operating profit was up by 27% and reached EUR 23.4 million in H1 2024.
Our cash generation was strong in H1 2024 as well, with Adjusted FCF reaching EUR 36.8 million and representing a cash conversion of 127%. This level is totally in line with the usual seasonality in H1 and with our plan to deliver approximately 80% of EBITDA conversion to cash in 2024. Finally, our financial structure remained very healthy, without any financial debt, and the net cash position at EUR 156 million, 10% higher than at the end of last year. Now, I would like to comment on some of the key achievements that we've had at Planisware in Q2 2024. First, we launched a Planisware Customer Advisory Board dedicated to AI. This is an example of where we develop what our customers want.
When it comes to AI, we've had many AI-driven capabilities within Planisware. I mean, we totally pioneered AI to enhance project delivery. Now, what we want to make sure is that we use AI where it brings the best value to our customers, confirming our lead in the overwhelming interest to leverage AI in strategic portfolio management. We're working hand in hand with our customers to allow us to do that and to do exactly what they want. Second, we're opening a second data center in Singapore. It's primarily to support and sustain the growth that we see in APAC, and it also allows us to build redundancies, continuing to ensure high availability and scalability for our Asian customers.
And remember, it also allows us to increase our cost efficiency with full hardware ownership, leveraging proprietary cloud infrastructure with the highest level of quality and security. Now, we released on the enterprise side the 7.1.3 version. So we brought a whole bunch of new features in this release, whether it's checklists, scenario optimization, automation flows. We brought some new modules like lessons learned in order to help our customers capitalize on what they've experienced. And we've done a whole bunch of enhancements across Planisware Enterprise, enhancements on the different modules that we have, enhancements on the platform, whether it's security, performance, and so on. But more importantly, we've also enhanced extensively our user experience, making Planisware Enterprise very smooth and easy to use for our customers.
And to finish on this slide, we've released version eight of Planisware Orchestra with a brand new design, a fully intuitive navigation with very few clicks, bulk action, personalized possibilities, a full new Gantt interface, enhancing the management of resources, timesheets, work items, allowing our customers to work on investment portfolios by changing how they look at those portfolios. We are really helping our customers, the early adopter side of our customers, to embrace the capabilities that we have. So we are very excited about this quarter that we are turning. And now I will turn to Stéphanie to give you some additional highlights from our financials.
Thank you, Loïc, and good morning to all. As we mentioned already in the introduction, but in order to put figures on the concept, let's look at the evolution of our revenue mix towards more and more recurring. In H1 2024, recurring revenue made of SaaS operations and maintenance represented 80% of the total revenue, 250 basis points higher than a year ago. This is in line with the trajectory of increase of the recurring part of the revenue thanks to the high growth of the SaaS. The SaaS model itself represents now 78% of total revenue, while it was 74% in H1 2023. That resulted in a healthy growth rate of +27.2% over the semester.
It is worth mentioning this has also a significant positive effect on profitability, in particular thanks to the 30%+ growth of the SaaS & H osting line, the most profitable stream of revenue. Now, Loïc will give you more color about the evolution of the revenue by geography and by pillar.
Yeah, let's have a look now at our performance by our geography. Well, clearly, the geographical diversification of the group is a precious asset that we have to face any growth slowdown that may happen in a given geography with other areas compensating. In H1 2024, Europe and Germany in particular led the growth, as well as APAC showing a very strong commercial momentum. Both areas compensated for lower performance in North America related to some elongated customer decision-making processes, primarily for new logos, leading to some delays on some Implementation projects. Now, the rest of the business there remained really, really strong with a high level of cross-selling and upselling with existing customers for our SaaS solution and support.
If we look by pillar, the revenue evolution that we have per pillar that you can see here, what we see is a very good performance. The revenue by pillar is more balanced. Our historical PD&I pillar is continuing to drive the group revenue growth together with the Agile and IT pillar. Now, in the meantime, we're very glad to see the successful ramp-up of the most recent pillars, confirming their potential of being the growth relays for the future. This is extremely clear for PC&E, which showed a very strong success in North America in particular, and also for PBA, where Planisware is making very good progress with new customer wins and cross-selling. Now, this performance also confirms the relevance of our multi-specialist approach, and that has led to tremendous commercial success in Q2.
First, remember, our growth is coming from existing clients for about 2/3 of our growth. Cross-sell has been very significant, as our customers are standardizing on our platform to now cover several of their portfolios of projects. It also primarily explains the high growth that we see in the agility and IT pillar, where we replace competitors and point solutions because they are already customers of Planisware within our pillars. Now, an industry that is worth noting is aerospace and defense, that is expanding quite nicely. Now, on new logos for about one-third of our growth, well, we secured several large blue-chip companies across many industries.
Just to highlight a few, we signed a sizable deal with a biomedical biotechnology engineering firm and multinational manufacturer of medical devices, which is further confirming the established leadership that we have in the medical device industry. We also signed a large new logo deal with one of the world's largest makers of insulation materials, or even with one of the world leaders in clean fuels, renewables, petrochemicals, polymers, and gas processing.
Clearly, the energy transition is a catalyst within the Project Economy megatrend in which we are recognized. Our IT offering allowed us to secure leaders in the consumer packaged goods industry, primarily because we are not just an IT solution. We are also bringing the best of all of the projects and portfolio management for future other pillars. Now, I'll turn back to Stéphanie to give you even more details on our financial results.
Let's start with the growth of our Group. Total reported revenue reached EUR 86.6 million in H1, up by EUR 14 million compared to H1 2023, representing a reported growth of +19.3%. This reported growth encompasses a slight negative effect exchange rate from EUR 0.2 million, mostly related to the appreciation of the euro versus U.S. dollar and Japanese yen. In order to reflect the underlying performance of the company independently from exchange rate fluctuation, I will now focus my comments on the revenue evolution in constant currencies, which means applying H1 2023 average exchange rate to H1 2024 revenue figures. In constant currencies, total revenue growth reached EUR 14.2 million, which is +19.6% over the semester. It encompassed a slight acceleration in Q2 with 19.7% of growth in constant currencies.
As expected, the key driver of this performance was our SaaS model, which represented 78% of the total revenue and grew by EUR 14.5 million or +27.2%, fueled by new customer wins as well as continued expansion with our large install base. SaaS revenue is made of SaaS & H osting, up by 31.3%, and Evolutive and Subscription support, up by 22.1% together. In the recurring part of our revenue profile, we still have maintenance activity on Perpetual licenses, which is a legacy from the former business model of Planisware before its SaaS transformation a few years ago. This activity reported a slight growth over the semester of 3.2%. I now move to the non-recurring part of the revenue, which represented 12% of the total revenue and was broadly stable in H1.
Planisware sold Perpetual licenses for EUR 4.1 million, mostly to established customers with extension of formerly sold licenses and also but to a lesser extent to new logos with specific on-premise needs. Oppositely, Implementation services revenue faced longer customer decision-making process, primarily for new logos in the U.S., leading to a temporary contraction of the revenue by EUR 1.9 million. However, we are confident in our ability to catch up most of this delay and to deliver the delayed projects by the end of the year. Let's turn now to the gross profits. I'm proud of the continued disciplined approach to expenses implemented in the group and with the 320 basis points of gross margin improvement, leading to 71.2% of gross margin rate.
This strong performance is consistent with progress met in H2 last year and driven by the business mix evolution detailed by Loïc, as well as ongoing implementation of contract inflation indexation and internalization of outside services for consumption support in particular. The next slide presents the repartition of the operating expenses, which is very much consistent with the one observed during the previous period. At 12% of the revenue, R&D expenses consist primarily of staff expenses directly associated with R&D teams, as well as amortization of capitalized cost development. This is reflecting well the group ambition for continuous product development. Representing 18% of the revenue, sales and marketing expenses translate the employee-related costs in sales force and marketing team to support Planisware expansion in its domestic and international activities and corresponding at the level we intend to sustain in the future.
Finally, at 14% of the revenue, G&A expenses reflect the recent hirings made to strengthen the global function support to support the growth of the business and the international expansion of the group. I remind you that we expect in the future, as the company continues to scale up, G&A will progressively decrease as a percentage of the revenue. As a result of the gross margin improvement and consistent OpEx level, adjusted EBITDA improved by 260 basis points in H1 2024 compared to H1 2023. The increase of adjusted EBITDA reflects the translation of the revenue growth into profits, the positive mix effects, and further operational efficiencies, as well as ongoing implementation of contract inflation clause and internalization of outside services. It represented 33.5% in H1, giving some comfort regarding the 2024 objective to deliver an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 33%.
Moving now to the cash generation, which has been strong over the semester with 127% of conversion of adjusted EBITDA to adjusted FCF. This level is very consistent with the usual seasonality in H1 due to SaaS solution cash collection at the beginning of the year. It is also fully aligned with our circa 80% objective for the year. Let's move to the next slide. So looking at the detail of the conversion of EBITDA, change in working capital was positive by EUR 13.7 million in line with the usual seasonality of the beginning of the year. CapEx, which amounted to EUR 2.1 million in H1 and represented 2.4% of total revenue, is slightly below the usual level of spending, but this is related to a delay in a purchase order of servers made in early July.
So we confirm our ambition to sustain the usual 3% investment of CapEx of the revenue for this year. Finally, we have tax paid for EUR 4 million. The increase reflects the increase of the taxable profits. This cash generation over the semester, coupled with the payments in April of the dividend on 2023, resulted in a net cash position of EUR 156 million at the end of the semester, almost 10% higher than six months earlier. I remind you that except liabilities related to offices and data center facilities, which amounted to EUR 14 million and small balance on the overdraft, Planisware did not have any financial debt. Thank you for your attention. I now give the mic back to Loïc to conclude.
Yeah, thank you, Stéphanie. Well, so if we look now at our 2024 objectives, well, held by the strong recurrence of our revenue profile and our confidence in the delivery by year-end of the new logo delayed project, we confirm all of our 2024 objectives, which I remind you the main components are circa 19.5% revenue growth in constant currencies, an Adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 33%, and a cash conversion rate of circa 80%. Now, finally, to conclude and before starting the Q&A session, I would just like to quickly remind you what makes us confident for our next phase. First, it's really our leadership being a multi-specialist, bringing a mission-critical solution, a future-proof, scalable, and next-gen tech stack with global and sticky blue-chip clients and a proven land expand retain strategy.
Clearly, we are the true accelerator of the Project Economy with Megatrend that is fueling a double-digit growing market, a very large and under-penetrated addressable market with four specialized pillars addressing multiple industries vertical and different use cases, a very strong financial profile, a high recurring business model, highly profitable, no debt, and highly cash generative. We clearly have a very good roadmap with multiple value-creative levers of potential expansion opportunities with new features, new pillars, new geographies. Well, thank you for your attention, and we are now ready to take some questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. We will now take the first question from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Two questions, please. First of all, on the commentary on the U.S. business, if you can detail if you've also seen similar when you're in the cycles in Europe, in particular in the aerospace segment. We've seen a lot of other companies pointing out some softness there. So it would be great to hear your commentary around Europe in more detail. Then secondly, we'd love to have an update on competitive dynamics, what you've seen from customers, any kind of disruptive or innovation from your customers you want to single out, or pricing action that you should be aware of. Thank you.
Okay, yes. For the first comment, some elongated decision-making processes, and it's primarily for new logos. What we see is that IT spending still needs to be justified for new logos, so there is some scrutiny. In the U.S., we also had a very strong H1 2023, which we did not have in Europe in 2023. So as a result of all of that, we do see some new logos decision-making process that has taken time in Europe as well, but it's maybe less visible on the numbers because also of what happened in 2023. As for the second question, I'm sorry to ask, but the line was very not clear, and would you mind repeating the question because I did not get the question?
Yes, of course. So the question is around the level of pricing in competitive environments. So if there's any specific changes from competition that you want to flag or any pricing action that you've seen, that would be very helpful.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah, I got it this time. Thank you. Yeah, great question. The pricing? No, we don't necessarily see from the competition some big changes there. But now, keep in mind that pricing is not necessarily a very strong driver in making the difference with the competition. What makes the difference is ensuring success, ensuring the right visibility, ensuring the right control on the portfolio. The pricing of the solution itself is not necessarily a strong driver. The warranty that the customer is successful is the driver. That's where we make the difference with our competition. We make the difference by ensuring them that they will have that visibility, they will have the control of their portfolio, they will be successful. This is really why being a multi-specialist is really important because we ensure that success.
Pricing is not necessarily a big factor in the competition.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Gustav Froberg from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my questions as well. Firstly, just to follow up on the North America environment, I mean, we've all heard it from elsewhere in the wider software space, but what do you think might make the environment in North America better again and essentially turn what is a headwind on the macro side into a tailwind? And then the second question, you talked a little bit about new logos during the presentation. Could you talk a little bit more about what pillar you would put these new logo wins in? Where are they coming from? What do they want to use Planisware for? Thank you.
Okay, yeah. Thank you, Gustave, for the question. Yeah, great question again. Well, in the U.S., we've seen elongated cycle, but it's not like they disappeared. The projects are still ongoing. There is some scrutiny into the spending. Actually, toward the tail end of the quarter, several of those new logos got signed. And the level of commercial activity that we have primarily in the U.S., in North America at the moment, is extremely high. Clearly, aerospace and defense, I mentioned it, is very dynamic. We believe that it's a little bit of headwind, but the reality of being successful managing portfolios of projects, the reality of being successful in the Project Economy, the reality of curbing all those waste of missed deadline, missed scope, missed budget is still there.
And it's there as people need to react to changing environments. That's why we are very confident because we see the need from our existing customers, but also from potential new logos. It's just a question of a little bit of time, but the need is there.
Yeah. And then maybe on the pillars, just quickly, if you don't mind, on the logo side?
Yeah, on the pillars, it's a cross pillar, honestly. The new logo side is a cross pillar. So obviously, we have our historical pillar, PDNI, so new logos that are coming from this angle very strongly. I mean, we are the uncontested absolute leader within that pillar. We do see now some new logos coming, especially on the agility and IT pillars because we have the multi-pillar approach. IT organizations are here to serve the need of their internal customers. And we benefit from a competitive environment on the IT pillar that is really helping us. There is a little bit of dissatisfaction on several other providers in the market.
And people are turning to us. New logos are turning to us. They enter as IT, but they enter as IT because they also feel that they will be able to serve their internal organization for PC&Es and R&Ds. So it's working well. PC&Es is nice across the board. The PBA pillar is the one where we've seen a growth that is not as high as the other pillars. But remember, this is a fairly new pillar for us. It's a growth relay. We are really making a difference now with our offering within that pillar. And so we have no doubt that this pillar will be very strong in the future. It's our growth relay.
Amazing. Thank you very much, Loïc and Stéphanie.
Thanks.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one-on-one. We will now take the next question from the line of Ben Castillo from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Yeah, thanks very much for having me on. Two for me. Just one on Evolutive support. It looked like the Q2 growth rate decelerated quite a lot over Q1. Can you just unpack what happened there and what are your expectations for Evolutive support growth in H2? And the second question was on the seasonality of your EBITDA margin. Last year, it looked like H2 saw a step up over H1 sequentially in the EBITDA margin. You're already running at the full-year guidance here at H1 for this year. So should we expect a repeat of seasonality as we saw last year? Thank you.
Yeah, on the Evolutive support, no, we don't expect some major changes there. A few customers also transitioned to our managed services, which is a Subscription support. So as they go through their journey of really leveraging everything out of Planisware, it's a fairly long journey that we have this Evolutive support to help them with. And then they transition to the Subscription support. Now, in regard to the EBITDA, we've made several hirings that will be impacting H2. So that's why we don't want to revise our full-year guidance. We don't necessarily expect the full seasonality of the one that we've seen last year because of those decisions. And that's why we are maintaining those levels.
Understood. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time.
Well, thank you all for attending.