As you all probably know, All for One is an international IT consulting service provider with a very strong focus. We did last year a revenue of EUR 488 million. Our 10-year growth was 9.4%. 55% of our revenues are recurring, and our subscription part is 26%. The total cash flow last year operating was EUR 40.2 million. Our staff is approximately 2,850. We are leveraging on the potential of the cloud. This means we have a full scope of services available. We can transform the ERP system of our clients to the new S/4HANA on a public cloud with GROW and on a private cloud with the approach of RISE.
We have full scope of the Line of Business portfolio. We can also digitalize different areas regarding employees, regarding sales and marketing, and everything around analytics, purchase department, travel, and these kind of lines. You can get it out of the data centers of SAP. Of course, we would also be available to take all the other IT stuff into our own data center capacities. We have a full scope of additional services to digitalize further processes. On a nine-month basis, we had a very strong order entry already and a significant growth in our CORE segment. RISE and GROW with SAP is the CORE of our daily business currently.
We had a very high order entry in our segment CORE. In total, sales grew by 4% in the nine-month period, and EBIT before M&A grew by 81%. As SAP is forming this very specific way of moving into the cloud, we call it land and expand strategy. This is supporting our growth. We land on customer side with the CORE and can expand our additional services, our Line of Business offerings to the customers afterwards. An international transformation program is on schedule. We are really looking forward to go deeper into our regional delivery centers to fulfill the requirements of our customers to provide proper services.
We already did three SAP awards for customer projects out of four categories in the first nine months. Let's go a little bit deeper into the nine-month figures. Revenue has been EUR 379 million, which was up by 4%. We are really expecting a very strong fourth quarter due to the high order intake we had in the past few months. There is a very strong demand in our CORE segment. We already achieved a growth of 5%, and it is a little bit lower than expected in the segment of LOB, in our line of business segment.
We had - 4% according to the nine-month figures because customers are a little bit cautious on doing final decisions implementing new software. This is due to the economic situation in the market already and due to the situation that they would like to move the CORE system to the cloud as soon as possible. EBIT was up by 81%. If we adjust it by one-time restructuring expenses, it was up by 13%. It was a disproportional increase versus last year and on top of the growth of 4%. Our cloud service and support is doing well.
We did a growth of 12%, up to EUR 105.6 million in the first 12 months. Our recurring stake of our revenues, it is improving constantly. We have already achieved 56% of our revenues are recurring. It was EUR 211 million, roughly, and a plus of 6% versus last year. Let's go much more deeper into the different revenue streams we are faced with. There is the cloud, as mentioned before, which increased by 12% to EUR 106 million in the nine months period. We do have the software and license support area. There are two different revenue streams.
Number one is licenses, including commissions. We are getting more and more commissions, basically on RISE and GROW with SAP. You see there is a very strong growth of 34% in the first nine months. The support is still growing from roughly EUR 89.5 million to EUR 91 million. Of course, this will not continue on a long-term perspective because people or customers will move to the cloud. This will push the cloud service and support on a recurring basis and will decline support step by step in the future.
Consulting services and Conversion Factory did not do on a global base probably so far, the utilization was not in a good shape in the first nine months. Why is it, or why do we have a decline in revenue in the first nine months of roughly 1% or 2%? Let's be very concrete. What happens if customers transform business or they restructure their engine from SAP ECC or SAP R/3 to SAP S/4HANA? In the moment, the customer decides to change the system to the cloud. In that moment, he stops investing into his current engine, in his existing SAP system.
That is what happens now since six, eight, nine months already. A lot of customers are 100% sure that they will move to the cloud to S/4HANA. Most of them with RISE, some of them already with GROW in the public cloud. This is the only way to get access to artificial intelligence, to a proper solution, and to digitalize business very efficiently in the future. In that moment, our standard consulting demand is decreasing, because there is no demand. Customer do not invest any more in the old systems.
This was somehow to us also a little surprise, because it was faster than we estimated. We had to shift and to switch our folks to the new services and to the new end-to-end process consulting. This is something where we are sitting in now. In the moment customer is signing a contract with SAP, with RISE, going to the cloud, in that moment, the business is coming back. Usually, we thought it will be the day after, but it takes some time. The complexity of a transformation program, the complexity of the architectural situation on customer side, is quite difficult.
It takes some time. It costs us a lot of efforts also in the sales cycle to get final contracts done, how we migrate global customers in different ways. Therefore, it takes some time to come into the model, land and expand. It come into the additional services, come into the recurring services and in the migration paths. We are really looking forward to this. We have a lot of order intakes now. We are staffing projects, trying to get a lot of capacity into that projects, using our experiences we did the past, 12 to 18 months in conversions of SAP systems.
We are coming into really strong utilization in the next few quarters, probably some years. As you see on the right-hand side, we will start with additional RISE with SAP services. As announced some months ago, we have additional services where customers can speed up and getting more efficiency into their processes and into their systems. That's the strategy we are following, and we are really sure that the strategy will work out. That's the right way to do. However, we have to admit it was a very weak time the last few months regarding our utilization and consulting services.
The order intake, the order backlogs are there. Now we have to find a proper way in the summer months and in the autumn to get more volume now into that revenue line. We are really looking forward to the coming months. Segment CORE, as mentioned before, we had a growth of 5% in the first nine months and EBIT before M&A effects, that's our operating EBIT. The margin improved to 4.9%. Last year, we had only 2%. We have to be fair, we have to adjust it by the one-off restructuring expenses, we have to compare to 4.2%.
There's already an increasing margin, but it is not in final shape. There is still a way to go in the next few quarters. Coming to the lines of business segment. There's a very tricky economic situation, and there is a transformation period for all the customers which are working globally. We declined in revenues by 4%, but on the other hand, margin is still stable. We finalized the first nine months at 7.6% versus 8.5%, it declined slightly. You see there is a very robust business. There are a lot of subscriptions running into that business.
Of course, we cannot adjust capacities just due to that lead time. We have to live with that currently, and looking forward, if the economy is getting a little bit more up and the decision-makers on customer side are more safe because they know they have and they want to digitalize. Every process around people, every process around their customers, everything regarding analytics, purchase departments, and traveling. We are really sitting on the right horse, that's our opinion. If the transformation wave will support this way afterwards, because if you are landing in S/4HANA, afterwards, you will digitalize further processes.
You will step into your departments and will combine further efficiency through software. Let's come to some balance sheet performance indicators. Cash was at EUR 43 million, sorry, which is in good shape. Absolutely on schedule. We declined the first nine months from EUR 63 million. On the other hand, we also did some repayments and some payments to earn hours and to banks. Net debt was at EUR 73.4 million. It was up from EUR 58 million. We will see a very strong quarter in cash, in Q4 as well. Operating cash flow was EUR 50 million, EUR 16.1 million the year before, roughly on the same level.
Equity ratio was up by 4%, from 29% to 33%. Regarding employees, we declined a little bit, we are seriously looking on the markets, and we have to make a change. There is a transformation in our own service staff. We have to move forward. We have to train them and to exercise them on the new technologies, and therefore we are just 2,800, roughly, currently. We are coming into a growth next year again, step by step. Currently, we are a little bit serious and being aware that markets, especially in the lines of business that are not in the CORE, are quite tricky.
Employee retention is at 89.5%, declined a little bit from 90.4%. Our regional delivery centers are still at 25% of employees. We're looking forward to improve this the coming quarters. Health index is a little bit better than the year before at 96.5% versus 96.3%. Let's come to the outlook. As mentioned on November 23rd already, we are looking forward to sales revenues in the area between EUR 505 million and EUR 525 million, and on an EBIT before M&A effects of EUR 32 million until EUR 36 million.
If you're looking on our EBIT we achieved after nine months, which is EUR 20.7 million already, there is a way to go. There have been some delays in execution of RISE with SAP and GROW with SAP projects. We hope to close them this quarter. It's looking good. Sales pipeline and sales staff and managers are really close to the customer situations. We see an improving utilization now. The first of the big RISE with SAP wave, which started in December, we are now into the projects already.
Since June, July, and August, we are getting more momentum in the utilization in our CORE business, and therefore, we really believe there is still the right way of forecasting the business between EUR 32 million and EUR 36 million. Midterm targets. We would like to confirm this as well. We are feeling ourselves on the right path. We did a lot of restructuring and movements into our group, forming one group of All for One Group, servicing customers, transforming them in the mid-sized and in the upper mid-sized area to SAP S/4HANA, and rolling out further services in the lines of businesses and our own RISE with SAP one services as well in the future.
We think we are sitting here on the right horse, and we are doing the right strategy for the coming years. We are really looking forward to an organic growth in the mid-single digit percentage area. If economy supports us a little bit, we don't see a risk on this. The inorganic growth is opportunistic driven. This is something we are looking into now as well, because we feel that our transformation period is coming to an end the next few quarters, and we are ready to scale on our existing base, on our technologies, on our processes, and on our setup, and on our regional delivery centers.
The profit will rise. We see a growth, and we think that the EBIT margin before M&A effects in the coming business year, which starts on October 1st, 2024 already, will be between 7% and 8%. What are the final reasons to invest? We GROW with SAP. The cloud and the technologies are in good shape. We really believe that SAP is doing a good job on this, and we have the right strategy in place. You will see a higher profitability, so the margin will go up in the coming years. Next year, we estimate between 7% and 8 %.
We are very stable in paying dividends to our shareholders. As you can follow in the annual report, since more than 15 years, we are always raising or keep dividends stable. We have a very robust cash flow with a very low level of capital expenditures and working capital. That's it from our side so far, from my side. Thank you for being with us. I'm looking forward to additional questions, please.
Thank you very much, Stefan, for the introduction. I am now coming with the first questions. First question: Hello. Can you provide some more color why other operating expenses were up noticeably in the third quarter? What should we expect for the fourth quarter?
Other operating expenses have been up in the last quarter due to very strong customer events. We did a lot of marketing efforts. We did our own competence centers, in Q3, and we did a big customer event close to Frankfurt. All of this was driving the other operating expenses in Q3. Regarding the forecast in Q4, it will go down, basically on the level you saw in Q1 and Q2.
Thank you very much. Next question. How did the fourth quarter start? Was there an improvement in converting pipe or order pipeline basically in revenues?
Yes. We saw a very good start. We've seen improving utilization of our staff in July.
Next question. Do you expect conversion for to return to growth in the fourth quarter?
Yes. It will go up. It will grow, definitely. We have to admit that this is something which gets a little bit more, I would say, foggy, in the future because SAP is also including more and more tools into the transformation process. More and more customers decide or do not finally decide with which kind of technologies they shall move forward. This is something where we are currently trying to figure out what will probably happen the coming quarters and years.
Be aware that we are looking into that and trying to give more meat and more transparency in the coming business year because this is all somehow being combined now. Not just using the CrystalBridge tools, they are also using additional tools, and we try to find out a way to report this seriously, that people or investors and the market can see how we are improving our transformation projects.
Thank you. Do you see a tailwind from SAP's discounts to move to the cloud that are only running until the end of 2024?
So far so good. It's quite tricky because all the bonus and the incentives are basically on the calendar year. We estimate that we will see a very strong end in the calendar year, due to that. We don't know what happens afterwards, and which programs. Seriously, we don't know finally. So far we had a weak period in the first half year, we are really looking forward now to the second half and we are very deep connected, intensive connected to the SAP staff, and key accounts and sales organization. Yes, it helps.
That's one of the reasons you never know exactly when customers will finally decide to sign contracts, there are three parties involved. It is the customer, of course, it is SAP, and in the background in the beginning, it's us. We try to move this process and to push this process. SAP has a certain target as well to achieve a good quarter. We really hope that we can convince customers to start, because if they all want to start after December, there will be a very strong problem regarding capacities in the market.
Thank you. Next question. Should we see an improvement of consulting in the fourth quarter?
Yes. In the CORE segment, there is a clear yes. In the lines of businesses, we hope. We cannot stand for this so far because it's very volatile. In some areas, it's looking good. In some other areas, it's still very hard due to the economic situation.
Next question. What is the timeframe of the life cycle per customer slide you showed?
Very good. We are the number one in doing transformations. We have roughly, I don't know, finalized, I don't know the figure finally, but let's say around 40 projects, 40 transformations. All the others around us who really transformed a full business suite, not only an HR system or an analytics system or whatever, they have less experiences than we. It is very difficult. You can do it within one year, and we did it a few times without any problems. There is no technical issue, no delay anymore.
If you're a bigger group, if you have a highly complex landscape of systems, if you have different data center structures on customer side, we do it typically in waves about up to three and four years.
Next question. Can you please quantify strong order entry? What was the growth versus nine months last year, and what was the ratio between order entry and revenue?
We are not communicating these figures because due to the business we are doing, we have different kind of order entries. For instance, let's do it for support or for subscription. They have all different lengths of contracts, and it's not easy seriously to do. We are wondering sometimes about some competitors as well, how they are doing it, because it's more foggy than clear. However, the order backlog in the consulting area is much bigger than six months before or much higher. There's much more transformation in size than last year.
The split between standard consulting, SAP ECC consulting versus now migration to S/4 and S/4 consulting is totally different than one year ago. That's the reason why we train and exercise a lot of people in our different territories to the new technologies because the demand on future consultants is much more relating to an end-to-end consult who knows the entire process and how does it inflow and infect the different modules. You need much more architectural work than in the past. The relational database work, the so-called ABAP development, it's declining quite strongly.
In a few years, there will be probably, I don't know, 20% of the old volume in the market available. There is a big transformation in the consulting area because the new technology also now relating to artificial intelligence modules needs a different kind of consultancy. That's all the reasons why we are very careful in publishing these kind of figures to the outside world. Of course, internally, we are managing out of our data lake, out of our SAP Analytics Cloud, all the customers, all the orders coming in from our CRM system day by day, and we are very positive.
Thank you. How much percentage points was utilization below the plan in the first nine months?
The definition of utilization, be aware, can be very different. There are some companies who just take in the consultants itself without any assistance, without any pre-sales, without any managers in that area. You come close to 20 days maximum. Of course, you have 20, 21 working days a month typically. If you involve the, I always say, entire production unit, so all things around you need that your thousands of consultants are working probably in projects, then the target is far below 21 days because you need support, you need the pre-sales, you need assistants, you need managers, you need HR coverage and everything else.
We are not The figures that I have to say, and also not deviations. We do have some areas where we are on budget, and we do have some areas where we are below budget in the first nine months. As mentioned before, we really see a very strong improvement in our segment CORE. In the segment consultancy on the lines of businesses, it will continue to be very stable. If we are coming into growth, we finally don't know. It depends on the coming weeks and months of the global economy situation, and how the decision-makers decide about the contracts offered.
Okay, thank you. You mentioned that conversion for projects were delayed. Why did that happen? Another question relating to that, how does the conversion for pipeline look like currently?
The first part of the question, I did not get through that. The pipeline, maybe I start with the pipeline. The pipeline is very strong. It is higher than three months ago, much higher than six months ago, and it's always increasing. We do have and see a very strong pipeline in the RISE and GROW area, and execution is okay even with the economic situation. However, it is always tricky. You're driving in your car, your car is running, you have a nice engine. It's called ECC or R3. Everything is all right, and it doesn't matter if you finally decide in August or in September or in October 2024, if you remove your engine in the future.
There's no specific trigger because your car works, your car runs, everything. You can speed up to 200 kilometers an hour. Of course, with SAP S/4HANA, you can speed up to 250 in some years, or 300. However, you're in good shape and there's a lot to do on a working base day by day. There's a lot of architectural and technology movement in the coming years, and it's quite tricky sometimes to push customer to final signatures. The contracts do not disappear.
The customers do not think about moving to, I don't know, Oracle or, I don't know, all the others, Microsoft tools or local tools. That's not an issue if things are delayed. It's driven by more outside related issues as mentioned before.
The first question was that the conversion for projects were delayed. Why did that happen?
I tried to mention this in my presentation before. Let's put it RISE with SAP. Probably most of you are expert in the SAP strategy as well. RISE with SAP. There's a contract between the customer and SAP, supported by us. Of course, done, let's say on the 30th of June. They sign a contract that the customer will remove in the coming quarters or years to the cloud through SAP, and there has to be done a rollout project or a migration project. Some of the customers did not take care in advance.
They just said, No, we take it because due to some reasons, due to some pricings, we do it, but let's finally agree about a migration project in July. It depends that it's not finally decided and executed in July, because during the conversations in details, they figured out that they have some infrastructure differences than before. In some countries, it's looking like this and how we found a system there and how we are connecting to the software real time, live, and so on. You're not in July, then you're in August, and maybe you do the final migration contract in September, and this happened.
A lot of contracts has been signed by SAP in connection with us in December, and we just started with the migration project in that weeks now.
Okay.
I hope this explains a little bit the situation. It's new to all of us, so there is no experiences. We cannot look backwards 20 years and saying, Okay, 20 years ago it was like this. We have a very complex landscape on customer side, and sometimes customers are not aware of things in detail, which is normal.
Next question. How should cloud transition kickbacks from SAP develop in the fourth quarter? Should they be similarly strong as in Q1?
You probably mean our business year Q1 and Q4. We don't get any kickbacks seriously or something like this. The way the channel is working on SAP side is if we help a customer into a RISE contract with SAP, then we get a commission payment one time, and afterwards we get, or we have the opportunity to get, a recurring commission in order to support and to provide services to the customer to migrate him to the new systems and to keep him stable and happy in the new systems. This is typically for a contract period of, I think in an average, four to five years.
This is also the chance and the opportunity for the partner of SAP to make a good job doing further portfolio elements into that product, doing more in the lines of businesses, help customer to get efficiency up. This provides the opportunity to renew the contract after five years, because customer is happy, he will stay in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, and we have done a good job as a partner. We get then the opportunity to get the one-time commission again.
Typically, if the customer is growing and inflation is there as well, it will be a higher level because everything is hopefully bigger than five years before. Then we come also in the recurrence as well and supporting him into the next period and time frame. That's how the model is working there.
Thank you. I think that was the last question. I don't know if there are any other questions left. I don't think so. From my side, thank you very much, and last words to you, Stefan. Thank you.
Thank you, Nicole. Thank you for hosting me today. Thank you for joining us, ladies and gentlemen. Looking to forward to see you next quarter. I hope we have good figures in the belly then. Yeah, have a good day. Thank you.
Enjoy your holidays. Bye.