Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Planisware third quarter 2024 revenue. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to 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. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Loïc Sautour. Please go ahead.
Good morning. This is Loïc Sautour speaking, and thank you, everyone, for attending Planisware's Q3 2024 revenue call. I will share this presentation with Stéphanie Pardo, our CFO. I would like to start with the key messages of this publication. First, Q3 revenue reached EUR 47 million. It represent a healthy 18.7% year-on-year growth in constant currency, led by the continued success of our SaaS operation. This trend continues to drive our activity mix evolution with increasing share of recurring revenue and geographical diversification, preserving growth resilience, while our most recent pillars are providing growth relays. Over the first nine months of the year, revenue growth in constant currencies reached 19.3%. That being said, Q3 performance was a bit lower than expected due to some elongated customer decision-making process since the end of the summer.
This is on the back of political concerns in France and difficulties seen in some of our key verticals, such as automotive. This wait-and-see attitude from our prospect is leading to delays in signatures and in the start of new contract. Now, with delayed signatures, on the one hand, and still a lot of interest for strategic portfolio management tools, helping companies to better align their resources with their strategic goal, and on the other hand, our commercial pipeline is reaching a record high level, providing very exciting perspectives. On the profitability aspect, we continue to deliver sustainable operational efficiencies on employee-related costs, which come on top of the structurally improving activity mix, already driving our profitability improvement.
Now, considering the uncertainties in the closing timing of delayed signatures and in the start of some contract impacting revenue evolution for the end of the year, but also the profitability improvement, we revise our 2024 objective that I will detail at the end of this presentation. Now, obviously, observing elongated customer decision-making process from some of our clients doesn't mean at all that we had a poor commercial activity in Q3. Actually, in the recurring part of our business, we signed numerous new logos and continued to expand with our existing customer. You can see on this slide a representative selection of our latest notable commercial wins, and I'll just take a couple of them, maybe one with one of our landing with Nadara. It's a very good example about one of the project economy mega trend that we've discussed at length about energy transition.
Nadara is one of Europe's largest independent power producer, mostly out of wind, and is now using Planisware to effectively drive and accelerate its growth and expansion strategy. An example about expansion is with Sumitomo Group in Japan, in the Sumitomo Rubber Industries division, where they make tires. The contract, which extends the current solution, the planning of development, project, and prototype to resource management for the same activities. It was won in a competitive environment, and for the record, we also present at Sumitomo for the management of Sumitomo Pharma R&D. Now, let me as well highlight some of the other key achievements that we have recently reached. First, Planisware's broad recognition from third parties, industry analysts, was further confirmed by the latest Gartner publication.
In its last Magic Quadrant for Adaptive Project Management and Reporting, which published in September, Gartner reasserted Planisware as a leader for the third consecutive year. This report emphasizes robust integration, dynamic reporting, and native collaboration functionality, and on a roadmap that includes investment to both your objective and OKR capabilities, automate work effort tracking, and deliver additional AI-driven features. Now, secondly, Planisware hosted, actually, last week in Paris, its annual user conference, Conference XChange 2024 EMEA. Now, together with the North American edition that was held in Philadelphia in April 2024, this edition has continued for over 20 years and lasted two full days and was highly anticipated event. It provided a platform for Planisware to showcase its latest innovations and having fruitful exchanges with the large Planisware client community and with PPM and SPM professionals from diverse industries.
Now, this year's edition has been particularly successful and a powerful testament to the strength of our community, bringing together the brightest minds in project and portfolio management. Now, we explored our latest innovation and the future of our platform. The event was also filled with inspiring insights, real-world success stories, and hands-on experience that will continue to drive success for our clients. This gathering wasn't just about showcasing what's new, it was also about pushing the boundaries of what's possible together with our incredible partners and clients through fruitful exchanges within the large Planisware client community. And finally, I'm also happy to share the very strong success of a new marketing initiative that we have launched earlier, Planisware On Tour.
It enable some of the most promising prospects that we have to connect with their local peers in more than 10 local networking events organized in our main geographies. With that, Planisware is really staying at the forefront of the project economy thought leadership, and continues to share this with local communities with an outstanding level of engagement. We also continue to invest in our product development to ensure cutting-edge project portfolio management solution for the benefit of our clients. Recently, we released numeric enhancements and new features, and strengthened our leadership in artificial intelligence for the project management space, further empowering the users to streamline project management and drive better decision-making. Some recent announcement that we can highlight includes many UX and UI enhancements, like a Gantt revamp, and an overview in all of the modules that we have in Planisware.
Among the new features that we can call, there is a Monte Carlo simulation, which are now possible on P&L, and not only on planning, but also on risk module. We also have automation flows, providing a no-code approach to create advanced treatments, and also sandboxing with one-click simulation at project and portfolio level. Now, most of our developments are really based on the feedback that we collect from our clients. This is why we are actively leveraging the Planisware Customer Advisory Board dedicated to AI, which contributed to some of the AI-powered features that we have. Things like the Particle Swarm Portfolio Optimization, now providing the ability to manage several constraints, proposing scenarios to optimize both resources and budget allocation. Or things like data quality analysis to provide insights on how to get data of higher quality.
It's always a big topic, data quality, around AI. And also the ability to bring your own LLM connected to Planisware. But the Planisware Customer Advisory Board dedicated to AI also enabled us to foster innovation and collaboration directly with our customers, to address the customers' expressed overwhelming interest in AI for strategic portfolio management, and also to leverage the group pioneering position to take the lead on using AI to enhance project delivery. And this is a very, very exciting time for Planisware, truly benefiting from the outstanding platform that we have to bring capabilities to market faster than ever. I will now leave the floor to Stephanie to comment on the revenue evolution.
Thank you, Loïc, and good morning to all. I will start my presentation with the revenue evolution by revenue stream for Q3. Total reported revenue reached EUR 47 million, up by EUR 7.2 million compared to Q3 2023, represented a reported growth of +18.2%. This reported growth encompasses a slight negative FX for EUR 0.2 million, mostly related to the appreciation of the euro versus the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen. In order to reflect the underlying performance of the company independently from exchange rate fluctuations, I will now focus my comments on revenue evolution in constant currencies, which mean applying the Q3 2023 average exchange rates to Q3 2024 revenue figures. So in constant currencies, total revenue growth reached EUR 7.4 million, or +18.7% over the third quarter.
As expected, the key driver of this performance was our SaaS model, which represented 78% of the total revenue and grew by EUR 7.1 million, or +23.9%, fueled by new customer wins, as well as continued expansion with our large install base. Our SaaS model is made of SaaS and hosting revenue, up by 22.3%, and support activities grew by 26.1% together, including a healthy 25.2% in evolutive support. Still, in the recurring part of our revenue profile, maintenance grew by 4.1% growth over the third quarter. I now move to the non-recurring part of our revenue, which represented 12% of the total revenue and grew by +8.7% in Q3.
Planisware sold perpetual licenses for EUR 2 million, mostly to established customers with extension of formerly lost sold licenses. These new licenses will generate recurring maintenance revenue in the future. Oppositely, implementation services revenue face longer customer decision-making process, primarily for new logos in France and in the U.S., leading to revenue contraction by EUR 0.3 million. Let's now adopt a broader view on the next slide with the building blocks of our growth since the beginning of the year. Over the first nine months of the year, the total reported revenue evolution was +18.8% in constant currencies. It represented +19.3% or +EUR 21.6 million. This healthy growth rate reflects the contrasted trends between our recurring and non-recurring activities.
Recurring revenue grew by plus 22.9% since the beginning of the year, with our SaaS model up 26.1% and maintenance slightly up at 3.5%. Within the SaaS model, we have the SaaS and hosting up by 28% year to date, and the support activities up by 23.5%, with the evolutive line contributing to 74% of this growth. On the other way around, non-recurring revenue is slightly up since the beginning of the year, with plus 2% in constant currencies. This encompasses perpetual license extension and upgrade sold to established customers, combined with new licenses sold to new logos with specific on-premise needs, notably in North America and Germany. Finally, the only decreasing revenue line is implementation, as already said.
Having this line decreasing is part of the planned trajectory as a result of our continuous efforts to deliver faster implementation in order to bring value faster to customers. But this year, this is accelerated by delays in signatures and start of projects. To conclude, I would like to illustrate how this translates to the evolution of a revenue mix toward more and more recurrence. Over the first nine months of the year, recurring revenue made of SaaS operation and maintenance of perpetual licenses represented 88% of the total revenue, 200 basis points higher than for the same period a year ago. The SaaS model itself represents 78% of the total revenue, while it was 74% in the first nine months of 2023.
It is worth mentioning that this mixed evolution, beyond bringing more recurrence in a revenue profile, has also a significant positive effect on profitability. In particular, thanks to the 23% growth of the SaaS and hosting line, the most profitable stream of the revenue. This concludes my presentation, and I pass the mic back to Loïc to conclude.
Yeah, thanks, Stephanie. Well, before taking our, your questions, I will finish with our revised set of objectives for the year. Now, during our process to prepare the IPO, we communicated our 2024 objective as early as July 2023 . In September of 2023 , after having communicated strong H1 2023 result, we raised this objective to the level you know, and that is indicated on the right side of this slide. Today, in order to take into account the uncertainties in the closing timing of delayed signatures and in the start of new contract, we adopt a more cautious view for year-end revenue growth and now target revenue growth in constant currencies between 17% and 18% in 2024, compared to circa 19.5% before.
In parallel, thanks to the faster than planned progresses in operational efficiency that we are delivering, alongside a strict monitoring of our hiring timing and supported by the positive evolution of our activity mix, we raise our profitability objective by 100 basis points, now targeting an adjusted EBITDA margin this year, reaching approximately 34%. Finally, we do not change our objective of circa 80% conversion rate of adjusted EBITDA to adjusted free cash flow. This concludes our presentation, and we are now happy to take your questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please continue to stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. We will now take our first question. Please stand by. And the first question comes from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hey, good morning. Two questions, please. First of all, around your revised guidance, I'd love to hear a bit more, which end markets are seeing more pressure and those longer sales cycles you've been mentioning, any geographic or segment? And then just to see the dynamics with existing customers, you're seeing lower consumption growth with existing customers, or this revision is primarily driven by new sales and slower implementation on those contracts. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Frederic, for the question. So, in the end markets, we primarily see that in automotive in North America. And it's primarily driven by new customers, new logos, much more than existing customers. And as a result, those delayed signatures of new logos has an impact for the implementation line that we have as well. But it's primarily new logos.
Okay. And then, so the automotive is the main market, there's nothing specific to call out in some of your other large segments like pharma or energy or aero?
No, nothing particular to comment on, on those markets.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by, and the next question comes from the line of Ben Castillo-Bernaus from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead, your line is now open.
Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. First for me, what is the new outlook for this year indeed in terms of the selling environment, deal closure rates? Is this kind of more of the same of what you've seen in Q3, or does it allow for some further deterioration from here? And second question for me is, licenses up 70% year -to- date. Is this the new normal? What should we expect going forward? Thanks.
Yeah. So maybe I'll take the last question first. The license is not necessarily the new normal. If you remember, the license that we have is primarily to address markets where companies are not connected to the internet, and largely the different sector, as well as we still have some existing clients that are still on an on-premise. So those are the clients that we see. Now, this being said, it's true, like the percentage of increase is important, but it remain at about 4% of our total revenue in terms of mix. So it's where we expected it to be and where it is.
Now, the deterioration of the market that we're seeing is primarily on new logos, and it's not like those opportunities are going away. And as a matter of fact, the one that we're closing, we are extremely proud of what we have completed and how we compete. It's not that we are losing, it's that there are some delayed signature. Some of them come from availabilities for the new implementation of your availabilities of the customers. But it's not that we are losing. The pipe is very strong because those opportunities are still underway, and we expect them to close. So the deterioration is in timing, but not because we're not performing well in the market.
The question is more around, you know, you cited the weakness in the automotive sector. Does your new guidance allow for any deterioration in other sectors like pharma or like aero, like Fred mentioned? Or is it just kind of basing in what you're seeing now and assume everything else stays the same?
For what we are seeing, we see the other sectors are staying the same. There are some growth, really, that we see, but nothing particularly to comment on that.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by. And the next question comes from the line of Gustav Froberg from Berenberg. Please go ahead, your line is now open.
Good morning. I have a couple of questions as well. Starting with my first one, when did you begin to notice that the contracts were delayed? Was it over the summer months, or did this happen later in the quarter? Then, when do you expect some of the deals that slipped to come back again? And then finally, could you run us through a little bit what's implied in Q4 in terms of growth at the upper end and lower end? How are you getting to each of the extremes in the range, please? Those are my first three.
Yeah. So we really started to notice an impact from the delays really at the tail end of the summer. The way new logos happens typically that there is the summer is actually very active and there is typically quite a bit of signature happening for new logos during the summer. And at the tail end of the summer, we realized that those signature were not necessarily happening and were being delayed. Now, in term of when will that come back, you I mean that's a good question. Historically, what we've seen when something like that happen is that i t could come back. It could come back very early, because the need is there to cut the waste in managing those portfolios and those projects. The need is there.
So it could come back very early, but at the same time, there are some political effect that for which we don't know, and that's why we are taking this cautious approach at the moment. In terms of Q4 and directional for the upper end or the lower end, at this time, what would really change is mostly, we are so close to the end of the year, is mostly on the non-recurring part of our revenue and is on the perpetual licenses primarily. And those type of deals are an all or nothing type of deal, so that's why the range is fairly wide, because there are all things in the pipeline, but if they materialize or if they do not materialize, would have an impact, and that explains such a wide range.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by, and the next question comes from the line of Pavan Daswani from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Great, thanks. Morning, Loïc and Stephanie, and thanks for taking my questions. I've got a couple, if I may. Firstly, how should we think about the risk of slippage of these delays into 2025 , given the implied Q4 growth being around sort of the lower rate there of 11%-15%? And the second one being, could there be any impact on the pricing negotiations? And can you maybe give us an update on the pricing negotiations there?
So on the slippage, as I was commenting earlier, it's an unknown. We have historically, what we've seen in the past is that it could happen that there is a catch-up effect. It could happen that the slippage or the delays continues because, you know, availability of the customer may not be there. So that's why we are being cautious on Q4. Now, in term of pressure on our price, this is not the issue. This is not the issue. We don't feel the pressure on our price. The value that we bring to our customer is outstanding. It's totally seen at the event that we had last week in Paris.
It was absolutely commended. We are what we provide to our customer is really helping them. And so we are not allowing a pressure on the price. We are focusing on the value that we bring to our customer, and this is not the topic. The topic is really more, I believe, on the availability from our customers to be able to leverage the Planisware solution. The need is there, but pricing is not the issue.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take our next question. Please stand by. And the next question comes from the line of Frederic Boulan from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Hello, Frederic, your line is now open.
Yeah, sorry. Thanks for taking the question. So quick follow-up around your EBITDA margin. So you raised the margin target for this year, and you mentioned some actions you've taken. Is this a kind of short-term, you know, measures to offset the revenue downgrade, or are we talking, you know, new structural starting point of margin that we can extrapolate into next year? And I know it's a bit early days, but you have a long-term guidance framework as well, which, you know, does require some revenue acceleration. I'd like of what you're seeing today, any initial thoughts on that, how kind of next year can be estimated?
Yeah. So for the revised EBITDA, so, I mean, there has been what we were anticipating about the mix effect and the productivity gains, I think that we had done already. Now, we also had a very strong monitoring of our hiring timing, and we are also able to handle this timing very precisely. And so H1 was already well positioned, and with this control on the hiring timing, that's why we revised our EBITDA this way. And the other question?
Yeah. So, so the question, I mean, on EBITDA was more about, you know, this kind of new baseline, for the future. And then the second part was around longer-term, revenue guide.
Ah, yes. Yeah. So, yeah, is that a new baseline? Yeah, I mean, the improvement that we've done on the productivity gain, and I mean, that will continue. So, again, we delayed a bit on the hiring process, but yeah, it's expected to remain on the long term.