Hello, and welcome to the earnings call of Brockhaus Technologies regarding the half-year results 2024. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for your questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Marco Brockhaus.
Yeah, thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Brockhaus Technologies' earnings call for the first half of fiscal year 2024. Before we begin, I would like to point out that the slides we are presenting will afterwards be published in the investors relations section of our website, brockhaus-technologies.com. After our presentation, we will open the call to questions from your side. To be fair to everyone, please limit yourselves to one question plus one follow-up. Thank you very much in advance. Before we present our results, I encourage all listeners to review the legal notice on page two of our presentation, which explains the understanding of forward-looking statements.
Additionally, please refer to note 6 of our annual report 2023 on page 94 onwards, and page 15 onwards of our half-year financial report H1 2024, for a discussion on alternative performance measures, as well as the reconciliation of non-GAAP figures. For information on risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, we kindly refer you to the section on risk and opportunities in the management report 2023, starting on page 65. Let's go into the summary H1 2024. To give you a brief summary of what we have achieved in the first half of this year. First of all, we have an important announcement to share. We have rebranded our financial technology segment as HR Benefit and Mobility Platform.
This change aligns with our strategic vision, especially in light of our recent acquisition of Probonio, an employee benefit software as a service company. With this acquisition, Bikeleasing is taking a significant step forward in evolving into a comprehensive multi-benefit platform. This decision reflects our commitment to expanding our service offerings beyond bicycle leasing and delivering even greater value to our clients. We continue our success story in 2024 and confirm our annual forecast. The positive business development in the first half of the year highlights our highly profitable growth momentum of our technology group, despite unstable weather and general consumer reluctance in Q2 in the HR benefit and mobility platform segment, and a slower revenue realization in the security technology segment.
We are particularly pleased with Bikeleasing's record new customer growth in the first half of the year, as well as the planned rollout of additional employee benefits through our software as a service company, Probonio, which will provide further offerings beyond the existing Bikeleasing business in the second half of the year. Additionally, due to the high order backlog at IHSE, we are confident that we will see a strong catch-up in terms of revenue and earnings over the coming two quarters. Brockhaus Technologies generated revenues of EUR 109 million in H1 2024, which represents organic growth of 30% compared to H1 of last year. Adjusted pro forma EBITDA grew by 19% to EUR 38 million, corresponding to an adjusted pro forma EBITDA margin of 35%.
Adjusted pro forma EBIT also increased by 20% to EUR 36 million, corresponding to an adjusted EBIT margin of 33%. Before adjustments, EBITDA amounted to EUR 36 million and EBIT to EUR 24 million. Have in mind that EBIT is especially influenced by PPA amortization. Against this backdrop, we confirm our group forecast 2024 with revenue between EUR 220 million and EUR 240 million, and an adjusted EBITDA between EUR 80 million and EUR 90 million. The operating development in H1, as well as the growth forecast for the full year, clearly underline the resilience of our business model, even in challenging economic and geopolitical times. Lastly, we reduced the group's net debt relative to the adjusted pro forma LTM EBITDA from-...
0.87 times at the end of 2023 to 0.74 times at the end of H1 2024. This equips us with significant non-dilutive financing capacity for acquisitions and future growth initiatives, but more on this later in the presentation. Coming to the next page on free cash flow development. The next chart illustrates the development of our free cash flow before tax over the past three years, which grew at an impressive CAGR of 105%, increasing from EUR 11 million in 2021 to EUR 44 million in 2023. The slightly negative free cash flow in H1 2023 was due to a significant refinancing backlog at Bikeleasing during the peak summer months, a situation that also exists this year, but no longer presents a challenge.
High bike volumes brokered at Bikeleasing during the summer typically lead to peak working capital requirements. Due to such peaks, we usually generate most cash flow in the second half of the year. This is nicely illustrated here if you compare the -EUR 100,000 in H1 2023, against the full year figure of more than EUR 44 million of free cash flow. Let's come to the EPS development. On the income side, the strong performance across our business segments led to a doubling of adjusted pro forma EPS from 0.64 cents in 2022 to EUR 1.29 in 2023, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 77% between 2021 and 2023.
This trend continued with a strong increase of 53% in adjusted pro forma EPS to EUR 0.66 in H1 2023, compared to EUR 0.43 in the same period last year. In addition to the operating increase of earnings, this was also driven by the ongoing repayment of the subordinated loan from the acquisition of Bikeleasing. Let's turn to revenue by quarter. Proceeding to the next slide, let us look at how revenue developed on a quarterly basis. As you can see, we had somewhat mixed year so far. At IHSE, on the bottom of the page, the second quarter continued to be weak at -25%. This was caused by a large project volume, which were secured rather late in June. Also, the orders entailed extraordinary comprehensive customer-specific customizations to the products.
This resulted in a longer processing time between order placement and revenue recognition, which led to shifts into future quarters. Bikeleasing, on the top of the page, continued its growth trajectory nicely. After a plus of 29% in the first quarter, growth even accelerated to more than 50% in Q2. The strong revenue growth, despite the moderate increase in the number of new bikes, was driven, on the one hand, by the rise in disposal proceeds from bikes at the end of the contract. That component of revenue relates mainly to the growth realized three years ago, and therefore, is essentially independent of current developments.
On the other hand, over the last year, Bikeleasing has converted some 90% of employees on the platform to a variable leasing factor that floats with the current interest rate environment. That means that all other things equal, the monthly leasing rate for a new bike is now higher when market interest rates are higher and vice versa. That means, as a result, Bikeleasing earns more income per bike today compared to a year before, but is also independent on future interest rates developments. I would now proceed to the next page for the regional sales split. First, to Bikeleasing. No surprise here, the company does business in Germany and Austria, and growth in revenue was 43%. IHSE had a challenging year-to-date period in all regions.
EMEA proved somewhat solid, with sales of EUR 8.2 million. The Americas experienced a harsher decline, being down 27% compared to last year. This was mainly driven by a large single order in the Americas region in the comparative period last year. The APAC region business remains on a very low level, mainly due to China's decoupling from the West. Turning to the segment P&L table. You see the KPIs by segment pro forma. In the first two columns, we see that Bikeleasing's gross profit margin was a bit below last year's level at 64%. The main reason for this was the increased share of revenue from bike sales at the end of the contract. This sales component has a significantly lower gross profit margin than Bikeleasing's other revenue streams. Also, EBITDA and EBIT margins were a bit reduced.
This is due to the impact from gross profit, as well as increased personnel and other operating expenses to support future strong growth. Proceeding to the next two columns to the right, at IHSE, the gross profit margin was some 3 percentage points below last year, but such deviations during the year are nothing out of the ordinary for the company. What is not positive was the margin development at EBITDA level, where IHSE was down to 2.6%. This was caused naturally by the low top line level in conjunction with the fixed cost base and personnel and other operating expenses. This effect was intensified additionally by the period's lower gross profit margin. Moving two further columns to the right, in the central functions, expenses were essentially in line with the year before.
In conclusion, and summing up on the consolidated group level, revenue was EUR 109 million, showing a strong increase of 30%. Gross profit margin was at 65%, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 34.6%, bringing our group to an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 37.8 million. The group's adjusted EBIT of EUR 35.5 million corresponds to a margin of 32.6%. Last but not least, our cash balance as per the end of June amounted to EUR 41 million. Let's move to the leverage page. On the next page, I would like to run you briefly through our financial leverage structure. End of June, the debt from loans amounted to EUR 86 million. When subtracting cash of EUR 41 million, we are left with a net debt from loans of EUR 45 million.
Furthermore, adding EUR 17.6 million from other financial liabilities and deducting EUR 8.2 million of net assets from lease refinancing, brings us to EUR 54 million in total net debt. If you compare that to EBITDA of the last twelve months, this corresponds to a leverage of 0.74x EBITDA. This is a clear reduction compared to the beginning of the year, when leverage was 0.87x EBITDA. As our limits for this KPI is some 2.5x EBITDA, we consider our current financial position as more than conservative. Thank you for now. This concludes the first part of our presentation, and I now hand over to Paul, who's in charge of our acquisition team. Paul?
Thanks, Marco, and also welcome everyone from my side. As usual, let me start the operational deep dive with a brief look at Bikeleasing. H1 2024 was another record first half year for Bikeleasing in terms of both revenue and earnings, as you saw before already. Bikeleasing was also able to further continue the growth of its corporate customers. In fact, the onboarding speed that we observed in H1 2024 was the highest of any first half year since Bikeleasing's foundation, and this underlines our focus on continuously expanding our market share. This focus is especially important to us, as those corporates that we win rarely churn once they have been onboarded to any platform, and provide the basis for future business. The number of corporate customers now stands at around 67,000 firms, with around 3.6 million employees behind them.
The number of facilitated bicycles, however, was only slightly above previous year, with a plus of 2%. Even though Q2, that you see on the right side, started very positively, with April being up 30% above the previous year, the development in May and June were negatively impacted by unusually rainy and unstable weather, as well as other factors, such as a general consumption reluctance. In addition, given the challenging economic environment out there, various companies, especially in the Mittelstand, experience rating downgrades, which forces leasing companies, and this might be external ones that we partner with, but also our own one, decline on significantly more new customers as in the past.
However, as Marco mentioned before already, even though the number of brokered bicycles was only up slightly as compared to last year, we benefited from the continued shift of our customers to a floating leasing rate system, thus significantly increasing the margin per brokered leasing contract. At the moment, close to 90% of connected employees already run on this new contract basis, and Bikeleasing is, of course, working towards switching the remaining ones as well. Turning to the next page, I would like to give you an update on the integration of the recently acquired multi-benefit software company, Probonio. As a brief reminder, upfront, Probonio is a software as a service, so SaaS provider, for the management of a wide range of employee benefits. Through their proprietary platform and app, employers can currently offer their employees more than 10 different benefits.
Benefits such as non-monetary benefits, meaning vouchers basically, meal subsidies, corporate fitness programs, or integration of providers of bicycle leasing, such as Bikeleasing. We acquired the company in April this year as an add-on acquisition for Bikeleasing, to be able to offer more employee benefits than just company bicycle leasing out of one hand, to our now already existing, extensive customer base of 67,000 corporates. In order to achieve the best upselling results and maintain the A-grade customer experience that our customers are used to at Bikeleasing, such a product expansion by way of an add-on acquisition, needs to be thoroughly integrated, before starting a wide rollout. Anything else would or could harm the trust that Bikeleasing has built with their customers, and by this would also automatically lower the upselling quotas, which we try to get as high as possible.
To give you an overview of what we actually mean with integration, we have listed here the main work streams that the teams have been working on since basically immediately after closing of the acquisition. Back office topics, such as harmonization of legal or accounting standards, contracts, and systems to front office topics, such as training both sales teams on the respectively new product. So Bikeleasing being trained on Probonio and Probonio's sales being trained on Bikeleasing. Those streams that I just mentioned have, in fact, in the meantime, been already completed. What takes more time, however, is the software and technical platform integration, as this obviously affects the deepest infrastructure of both platforms. Those work streams are still ongoing, but we expect those to be also finalized in the coming weeks.
Once the last work streams, the two that I mentioned here, have been completed then, we will commence a broad sales rollout to our existing corporate customers, supported by a dedicated marketing campaign. As mentioned before, we still expect this to kick off in H2 this year. In addition, we completed a pilot customer survey in Q2 to get a more profound data set for the planning process of Probonio. Something we also mentioned, I believe, in the Q&A in our last earnings call. While we do not expect any earnings contribution for 2024, given that the year has already progressed quite a bit, and we are naturally seeing one-time integration and rollout costs, we already expect a positive impact from 2025 onwards.
For 2025, we expect that Probonio, on the basis of continued rollout, can contribute a mid-single-digit million EUR to Bikeleasing's EBITDA. This concludes my section so far, and I'm handing over to Yannick, our Head of Operations, for an update on IHSE.
Thanks, Paul, and also a very welcome, everyone from my side. Proceeding to our other subsidiary, IHSE, for a similar operational update. Having achieved a record first half year in 2023, IHSE revenue dropped by 19% in the first six months of 2024. While this looks like a rather negative development, there are two important effects worth noting. In H1 of 2023, IHSE received its largest single order ever in the air traffic control segment in North America, and already started to generate first revenue from it. Order intake received in the second quarter accumulated to EUR 11.9 million, as you can see on the slide on the lower right side corner, providing a very healthy order backlog for the second half of 2024.
This positive trend is driven in particular by projects that IHSE was able to win as a result of the compliance with standards for highly security-critical applications and cutting-edge technology upgrades in our products. Moving on to the next page for a quick highlight of said product upgrades that we developed together with the IHSE management. IHSE is cooperating with the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits to bring JPEG XS functionality to software and hardware-based devices, which enable ultra-low latency and high-quality video transmission. By using IHSE's JPEG XS IP core for FPGAs, innovative and ultra-low latency broadcast, in-house and other routes can be realized with predictive and precise rate control. JPEG XS is the new ISO codec for all video over IP workflows in studio environments, for local video networks, and also for topics like virtual reality applications.
The codec allows transferring high resolution and high-quality video data over standard Ethernet or other wired connections. The solution is designed to work with limited computing resources, which means that customers can save costs on their infrastructure by reduced bandwidth that is needed to use KVM. Especially the ultra-low latency feature for encoding and decoding of images makes JPEG XS an ideal candidate for KVM. As one of the most relevant drivers of the JPEG XS standard, the Fraunhofer integrated circuit solutions expert optimized the JPEG XS software library for CPU and GPU. A first result of the partnership is the integration of library into IHSE Draco CON App. With this app, a new dimension of flexibility is introduced to KVM systems... The software-based KVM solution enables users to access an IHSE KVM network via IP protocol from a standard network connected PC.
This IP core will not only be used for in-house products, but will also be available as a licensing product with different implementations available, either as a software or as an FPGA IP core. Given this flexibility, IHSE can choose the best solution for the products and customers. This concludes the operating update, and hence I would like to hand over back to Marco.
Thank you, Yannick. Flipping over to the next two pages of today's presentation, our forecast for the fiscal year 2024, as well as medium-term outlook for 2025. As already briefly mentioned in my opening remarks, we confirm our group forecast for 2024 on the back of the positive development observable in H1 this year. We plan for revenue between EUR 220 million and EUR 240 million, and adjusted EBITDA between EUR 80 million and EUR 90 million in the fiscal year 2024, which corresponds to a growth corridor of 18%-29% compared to the EUR 187 million in revenue achieved in 2023. In terms of EBITDA, this reflects a growth corridor between +29% and +45%. Our medium-term outlook for 2025 remains unchanged.
We continue to expect revenue between EUR 290 million and EUR 320 million, an adjusted EBITDA margin of 40%. Please note that this forecast assumes that there will be no further change in the scope of consolidation within Brockhaus Technologies. The reason for this approach, as ever, is the difficulty in predicting the nature and scope of future acquisitions. We do not believe that any estimates in this respect are sufficiently reliable, even though we are constantly working towards finding the next hidden gem in the market. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our presentation, and we are now happy to answer your questions. For that, I would like to hand over to the operator.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to withdraw your question, please press nine and star again. Please press nine and star to register for a question. And first up is Stefan Augustin from Warburg Research. Over to you.
Yes, hello. Thank you very much for taking the question. Maybe two. First on Probonio, and if I did my calculation correctly, this presents for next year roughly a penetration around 3% in the upselling process. I just wanted to make sure that you think this is, let's say, an intermediate ramp-up element, and not the final penetration you would like to reach. I would be happy to have any comment on what you might see as a final penetration rate at this point in time after the first test. A second one would be, you mentioned a bit that maybe not only the weather, but also some other reluctance could cause the brokerage leased bikes to grow a bit less strongly.
Do you have any comment on how July looked like? I think the weather conditions were a bit better. So are we back to likewise growth rates of May, April, or is it significantly lower? Thank you.
Yeah, I can. Hello, Mr. Augustin. I can take the questions. First one on Probonio. I mean, I have not the calculation that you did in front of me, so not sure how you came up with the 3%. But to take your, the other part of the question regarding, is that the, let's say, ultimate ramp-up that we assumed, or will this be a continued process? The latter. I mean, we will, of course, approach a vast majority of our clients, in H2, as said before, but the, and this is important to note, there is a key difference in between, selling Bikeleasing or selling Probonio. Maybe just as a brief example, Bikeleasing is totally free for a corporate to implement.
The one who is paying for it is the employee out of their gross salary. In case of Probonio, it's the other way around. So the one who is paying for Probonio is the corporate customer, while the one who gets a basically free benefit is the employee. This means, however, if you look at onboarding as many corporate customers to Probonio, you have a harder sales pitch to do, as if you would be selling Bikeleasing. And this is why we, even though we approach all our customers quite soon, we expect that there will be someone, some of them that, let's say, become customers of Probonio very quickly, but also ones where there will be internal processes being kicked off that take longer or shorter.
... but this is the reason why we, why we don't expect to have everyone, let's say, signed up by the end of next year, but this will be a continuing process. Plus, on top of that, maybe, I mean, we are not stopping to onboard new corporate customers to Bikeleasing. As I said on my slide, the new onboarding of the corporates in H1 this year was the highest it has ever been. So on a rolling basis, so to say, we will try to onboard more existing clients to Probonio, but there will also be new Bikeleasing clients coming in, we will then also try to onboard to Probonio. So to summarize it, no, this is not the ultimate penetration that we've assumed, but also noting, again, I cannot reconcile your 3% because that seems a bit low.
Second question was if we already give an outlook on Q3, so July? No, we don't do this. The weather has... I think I don't even have the, what's the English word for it? The,
Rain rates.
Rain rates for July yet, so I cannot, I cannot comment on this.
Thank you.
At the moment, there are no further questions. If you have any additional questions, please press nine and star now. Please press nine and star for any additional questions. Next up is Matthias Teich from Rothon Partners. Over to you.
Hello. An additional question on Probonio. You talked about a trial that you did with some customers. What's the feedback and what kind of take-up do you expect? I understand as a SaaS solution, this is quite different from offering bikes to for leasing to staff. How? Maybe a bit more color on how this will be integrated and how you will sell it to individual employees once a company is on Probonio and you know, what the feedback has been from the trial. Thank you.
Sure. We won't disclose the exact percentages of clients interested or not, because we are also aware a lot of competitors listen to our calls, and they can do their own surveys. But we have received positive feedback. We've received immediate declines. We've received lukewarm feedback, so everything was in there. But the guidance that we've given implicitly with the, let's say, mid-single digits, that we expect Probonio to contribute by next year already, this is the end result of our customer survey that we did. This is on that end. On the how do we approach a client question, we never approach the employees in the case of Probonio.
This is the exact point that I just explained. We only need to win the corporate customer, because when a corporate decides to onboard to Probonio and let's just take out vouchers decides to implement vouchers for their employees, around 90% of those employees immediately download the app and use it. So we don't need to do a lot of marketing, as in the case of Bikeleasing, for the employee itself, but the employees will automatically come. Why is this? Because they just get, let's say, free non-monetary value. And non-monetary value can be anything from a Nike voucher, but could also be a, in Germany, REWE voucher or IKEA voucher or Aral petrol station vouchers.
So as an employee, if your corporate has onboarded to Probonio, you're basically, let's say, leaving money on the table if you don't download the app and use it. This is the intrinsic difference between both business models. And how do we approach the corporates as the second question thereafter? With our sales team. I mean, there will be email campaigns going out. We will cover key accounts with our key account team, with the existing relationship managers there. But we will also cover the smaller ones by email campaigns, by calling them up and trying to get them onboarded.
Okay. I have another question on, you know, your continued search for additional targets. What do you notice? How is the market evolving, particularly in the space that you're looking? In the past, you've made the comment a few times that interesting targets are priced too highly to be attractive. Is there anything that you can comment on?
Yeah, Marco Brockhaus. We do see some upcoming, I would call it some upcoming light at the end of the horizon in terms that, sellers and buyers, equilibrium comes maybe the same in terms of valuations. Let's, let's see. At least we, we do see, interesting companies in our, target sector, i.e., innovation technology leaders with,
... high gross margin, high EBITDA margins, growing and high cash conversion ratios to EBITDA. Therefore, yeah, we are looking forward to you know dig deeper and see if a next hidden champion is there or not. But that's, I would say, as a more gut feeling on the market.
Okay, thank you. That's it for me.
The next question comes from Akash Vanchi Nath from P&R Investment Management . The floor is yours.
Hi, thank you for taking my question. Just a quick one. Given the more challenging demand environment for the Bikeleasing industry in the last couple of months, have you seen any change in competitor behavior, either through more aggressive leasing rates or trying to get corporate customers to switch to a competitor platform? Any change in competitive dynamics?
No, not really. So on the competition side, no changes or no significant changes observable. I mean, we track also the conditions of our competitors. There are some that are a bit cheaper, because they, let's say, they don't cover as many features as we do. There are some that are more expensive than we are. This sometimes floats up and down, but no change there in, let's say, the positioning of us versus the competition. Also, there are no, let's say, active campaigns going on for competitors stealing customers from us. And we are also not doing the same, right? So we also don't try to steal, actively, customers from competitors. Why?
Because I would say that is the hardest sales job to do, because there is no incentive for the corporate to change the provider. That's what I mentioned in the beginning, why this, let's say, new corporate onboarding quota was so important to us or is so important to us. Because once we have the corporate, they don't churn. And so also on that question, nothing observable from us.
Yeah, maybe in addition, we focus on KMUs, on small-medium companies, where we do see higher conversion rates than on bigger companies in percentage. And as you might know, Bikeleasing is focusing on small-medium companies, yeah, the typical German Mittelstand companies, we are since ever.
But maybe one interesting fact, you realize that a lot of retailers are doing more marketing now also for the concept of company bicycle leasing. So not specifically Bikeleasing as a company, but the broad concept of this benefit. Why? Because the ones that really have a hard time right now are the retailers. If you look up the market development there, they are sweating quite a bit. And they know the, let's say, biggest driver for their business right now is still company bicycle leasing. So they are pushing more and more in towards the direction to make people clear get a bicycle and get it through company bicycle leasing, because it makes it very, very cheap for you.
So this is something we've observed and is, of course, also beneficial for us without spending a euro for it.
Yep. Understood. Thank you for the color.
Sure.
If you have any additional questions, please press nine and the star key now. There are no further questions, and with this, I hand back to Marco Brockhaus.
All right. Thank you very much for attending today's earnings call of Brockhaus Technologies. I would like to use this stage a moment to thank our employees for their outstanding work and performance, as well as our shareholders for their continued trust and support. Thank you very much once again for listening, and goodbye, and have a great day. Thank you.