Hello, and good morning, everybody. I would like to welcome you to the Analyst Investor Call of IONOS on the results of Q4 and full year 2023. Thank you for joining. My name is Stephan Gramkow, and I'm responsible for investor relations at IONOS. Let's have a look at our agenda for today's call. Achim Weiss, CEO of IONOS, will give you an update on the business and the performance drivers, talk about our latest AI updates and the development of our brand and the ARPU. Britta Schmidt, CFO of IONOS, will then walk you through the financial details, our outlook for 2024 and 2025, and ESG at IONOS. Achim and Britta will then be happy to answer any open questions after the presentation. I would now like to hand over to Achim. The floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Stephan. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a very warm welcome to our conference call. I'm Achim Weiss, CEO of IONOS, and I am pleased to present to you our performance of 2023. IONOS is the leading European SMB digitalization partner and trusted Web Presence and Productivity business, excluding Aftermarket, which is the largest pillar, accounting for around 65% of revenues. This business area also showed remarkable resilience and steady growth throughout 2023, with high underlying margins, which are continuously increasing. In a subscription-based revenue model, we cater to all digitalization needs of SMBs, including solopreneurs. We are the leading provider in Europe, with number one and two positions in six core European markets, as well as having a large business in North America.
The second area in the middle of the slide is our cloud business. Here, IONOS is progressively establishing itself as a trusted cloud partner for small and medium businesses. Even though this is our newest business venture, it is already self-sustaining. We anticipate this business area to contribute positively to our EBITDA in the near future. Additionally, we have our fast-growing Aftermarket business, which is about buying, selling, and parking of domains. This area accounts for roughly 20% of revenues. However, as the exceptional high growth of the last quarters is coming down to market level, as anticipated and communicated, the dilutional effect of this low-margin business on our overall EBITDA margin is already easing off. Let's now review our performance of 2023.
We've successfully increased our revenue by 10.1%, which was driven by both successful cross and upselling, as well as winning new customers. IONOS' platform model and substantial economies of scale, combined with robust growth, have led to consistently high levels of profitability for the company, and our business was already generating a very healthy Adjusted EBITDA margin of 27.4%, which is, of course, not the end of our journey. The reliability of our mission-critical products, backed by the dedicated support of our Personal Consultants , have helped us to develop and maintain a very loyal customer base. In 2023, we were able to add 190,000 customers, totaling around 6.2 million customers at the end of last year. Furthermore, our ARPU increased by 5%, despite the strong increase in customers.
Please keep in mind that new customers usually benefit from a rather large initial discount, therefore diluting the ARPU. Overall, these numbers demonstrate the successful execution of our business strategy, underpinning our predictable growth in revenue and profitability. Let's have a look at some operational KPIs on page 6. From the EUR 1.42 billion euros revenue, we have generated EUR 390 million in Adjusted EBITDA, which with a very nice 90% cash conversion. Roughly 80% of our revenue is subscription-based, providing a very reliable and stable foundation. The other 20% is transaction-based, originating mainly in our Aftermarket business, as, for example, trading a registered domain is a transaction. Our NPS score is around 32, which compares to 34 at the end of 2022.
This is not surprising, as we have introduced new pricing structures in Q3 last year, which will gradually lead to higher value contribution, but on the flip side, has a negative short-term effect on customer satisfaction. We are happy to say that the effect is smaller than expected and already leveling off. Also, please be aware that we report the overall NPS, which includes post-contact NPS and online NPS. Some large competitors only report post-contact NPS, which is usually notably higher, but doesn't reflect reality in the overall customer satisfaction. We operate very sophisticated marketing machinery with more than 14 times CLTV over CAC. That means for every euro we spend in marketing, we earn 14 euros over the lifetime of these new customers, with a typical payback period of only 12 months for the customer acquisition cost.
Britta will provide more details on the financial report shortly, but it is important to note that our strong financial performance really reflects the benefits of our mostly subscription-based business models. We distinguish between customer-facing AI features and products, and the initial, internal use of AI to enhance various aspects of our business operation. Firstly, we are continuously enhancing our product portfolio with AI features to improve customer experience and upping cross-selling opportunities.... For example, in May 2023, we launched our first AI-driven text and image generator for MyWebsite, which has simplified content creation, as this is one of the major issues for our customers. I'll talk more about this, on the next slide. Secondly, we are leveraging AI internally in many areas like coding, fraud detection, next best offer prediction, customer care experience, and a wide range of content creation, just to name a few.
We are very committed to pushing the boundaries of AI technology to improve our products and services continuously by leveraging internal efficiency and cost improvements. After our initial release of the AI-enhanced MyWebsite product line last or early last year, we've recently had a major upgrade, introducing a suite of new features to further simplify content creation, enhance website quality. AI-driven content generation is now a core component across all our website builder packages, effectively removing the major obstacle our customers face in creating engaging content quickly and efficiently. The introduction of more sophisticated AI functionalities is exclusive to our higher-tier plans. This strategic move is designed to gradually increase customer migration to these more valuable plans. Feedback from our customers has been very highly encouraging. Notably, 63% of all users have opted for the AI-powered onboarding process.
This shift has led to a significant improvement in the quality of websites produced, characterized by more unique content. Additionally, the time to go live with the website has been reduced by over 20%, and we've observed a 30% increase in activation rate within the first week of the customer journey. These metrics are crucial as they directly correlate with reduced churn rates. In summary, the integration of AI features into our MyWebsite offering has proven to be a remarkable success, and we are committed to its continuous development and enhancement. We've recently launched the second iteration of the IONOS AI Digital Assistant in the German market, making a significant step forward in our customer support capabilities. This advanced tool is now successfully handling 50% of customer inquiries, which reach us through the Control Panel . This development is just the start.
We are excited about the potential to further streamline our operations, continuously improve our performance, and elevate the quality of our customer interactions. Additionally, the automation provided by the AI Digital Assistant is set to reduce our support costs significantly. A key differentiator for our service is the seamless integration of the AI Digital Assistant with our Personal Consultant program , ensuring around-the-clock expert support. This synergy not only improves our capacity for delivering superior customer experience, but also creates additional opportunities for up and cross-selling. Available to both customers and our support staff, this innovative solution really stands out in the market and underscores our dedication to excellence, pushing the boundaries of traditional customer support. The integration of AI into our daily lives is not just ongoing, it's accelerating, reshaping whole industries and personal experiences alike.
In healthcare, where AI predicts disease outbreaks, personalizes treatments, to the financial sector, enhancing fraud detection, customer services, AI's transformative role is evident. Retailers and cybersecurity professionals leverage AI for inventory management and early threat detection, respectively, just to name a few examples. We support these diverse applications with secure, scalable cloud environment, enabling businesses to harness AI innovations while upholding the highest data privacy standards. This broad range of use cases underscores the massive demand for AI inference products, positioning our platform as a key enabler for AI-driven solutions. Building on the momentum of AI's transformative impact, our focus is on making these advanced capabilities accessible to SMB customers. Our enterprise cloud platform simplifies the deployment of many different AI models, offering a suite of open source large language models, text-to-image, and text-to-speech models.
Since Q3 2023, we've provided selected cloud customers with early access to these services, with general availability targeted for this quarter. Our platform stands out by hosting a variety of open source AI models in a secure, scalable environment. This allows customers to integrate advanced AI models with their data seamlessly, whether for text, image, or voice applications. We ensure all customer data is securely stored and processed within our EU data centers. Of course, fully compliant with EU data protection regulations. As we move forward, we are excited to introduce features like retrieval-augmented generation, further enhancing the capabilities of our AI models to provide more accurate and contextually relevant output. This initiative underscores our commitment to making AI more accessible to SMBs, ensuring they can leverage the latest in AI technology in a secure, compliant, and cost-efficient manner.
IONOS has a very strong brand that supports us across all sales channels, including performance marketing, as well as in retaining our large customer base. Our continuous investment in our brands have led to significant increase in brand awareness in our core markets, as already shared during the last earnings calls. As you can see on page 12, these marketing investments and our efforts are paying off as expected. Investing in a brand is a long-term strategy, thus requiring patience and persistence. It is therefore very encouraging that we see great success in increased brand awareness already today. Due to the high importance of our brand building and the positive results we have observed, we continued to push the marketing of the IONOS brand in 2023.
Last year, we spent EUR 67 million in brand marketing across the group, with a clear focus on the IONOS brand. However, brand marketing spend will stay at last year's level going forward, which will mechanically result in a decrease of marketing spending as a percentage of revenue, and therefore will automatically contribute to an increase of the EBITDA margin going forward. Over the past two years, we've witnessed a 5% growth in average revenues per customers, ARPU, primarily driven by our enhanced cross and upselling strategies. This achievement underscores our ability to deliver value and deepen customer engagement through our innovative product offerings. Our approach to pricing has always been measured with a keen focus on maintaining a balance between attracting new customers, ensuring competitive positioning, achieving customer satisfaction, and minimizing churn.
The current economic landscape has provided some leeway in our pricing strategy, allowing us to explore modest adjustments. Our strong brand presence and the pivotal role our products play in our customers' digital transformation journeys have cultivated a high level of customer loyalty. This, in turn, has led to an increased openness among our customers towards price adjustments, placing us in a favorable position, leveraging our pricing power. In response, we initiated a careful refinement of our pricing model starting in Q3 2023. This gradual process is guided by clear principles aimed at preserving customer satisfaction and reducing churn. The implementation of our new pricing structure, applicable to both new and existing customers in their presence productivity, is designed with a long-term perspective. For existing customers, price adjustments will take effect upon contract renewal, ensuring a phased impact on revenue.
This strategy facilitates a steady revenue growth, and the adjustments, applied to current customer base project an ARPU increase to well above EUR 15 per month per customer. In essence, a 5% growth in ARPU in our existing customer base is already secured, setting a solid foundation for further revenue enhancements through continued trust and upselling initiatives. At this point, I would like to hand over to Britta, to walk you through the financial details of the past year and our outlook for 2024 before we commence to the Q&A section.
Already pointed out, we are proud to report a very successful 2023. Our revenues increased by 10.1%, reaching EUR 1.424 billion. Notably, our revenues with external customer demonstrated even more growth, increasing by nearly 11% year-over-year, demonstrating the strength and resilience of our business in the face of global economic challenges. Furthermore, our Adjusted EBITDA margin showcased the operating leverage in the business, reaching close to 13% growth, resulting in a margin of 27.4% and an absolute Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 339.3 million. Our customer base also experienced significant expansion, with 190,000 net new customers joining us during the twelve months of 2023. This growth marked a significant increase compared to the 110,000 customers net acquired in 2022.
Additionally, we've kept our churn rates remarkably low, around 13% annually, or approximately 1% monthly. In addition to customer growth, we were also able to achieve a 5% increase in our ARPU, reaching EUR 14.70. As mentioned before, this increase reflects the value our customers place in our products and services. Our Q4 2023 performance has been equally strong, with revenues increasing by 7.6%. We will delve into the specifics of the different revenue lines shortly. Adjusted EBITDA surged by 20.8%, reaching a margin of 23%. This is a testament to our ongoing efforts to optimize cost and increase operational efficiencies. As mentioned earlier, the Q4 is typically characterized by higher marketing investments, resulting in a lower EBITDA margin compared to the first three quarters of the year.
In Q4 2023, marketing investments stood at the same level as in the last quarter of previous year. The improvement in the Adjusted EBITDA margin reflects several factors, as already discussed before. Lower dilution in the EBITDA margin from the Aftermarket business, lower marketing investments as a percentage of revenue, and as already mentioned, economies of scale and operational efficiency. Let us now quickly have a look at some specifics on page 16. As I mentioned, the dilutional impact of the Aftermarket business affected the Adjusted EBITDA margin. In the full year 2023, the relatively stronger growth of the Aftermarket business, which typically has lower margins, resulted in a 0.3 percentage point dilution. Excluding this impact, the Adjusted EBITDA margin would be even higher.
This positive effect can be attributed to higher gross margins, primarily driven by an improved product mix, and again, the realization of economies of scale.... In 2023, as planned, EUR 67 million were allocated to brand campaigns, up from EUR 54 million last year. At the same time, we spent correspondingly less on performance marketing, driven by increased efficiency, so that our marketing expenses overall are roughly at the same level as last year, slightly decreasing as a percentage of revenues. Going forward, we expect brand investments to stay at this absolute level between EUR 65 million and EUR 70 million euro, and therefore decreasing as a percentage of revenue. While performance marketing expenses will increase in line with revenues.
Let me reiterate that our focus remains on profitable growth in the allocation of our marketing spend between the different channels, which means we will continue to focus on valuable customer growth measured by CLTV over CAC. Our efforts in improving our marketing efficiency, supported by our strong success in brand building, results in a CLTV over CAC of 14 for 2023, surging from 11 in 2022. By carefully managing our marketing investments along this KPI and capitalizing on the favorable competitive environment, we aim to achieve optimal results and drive sustainable growth across our business. Let me now give you an overview of the different revenue lines. We are showing both the Q4 and the full year view. Our Web Presence and Productivity, grew 10.4% year-over-year, supported by growth in the Aftermarket business.
As expected and already guided for, the Aftermarket growth has been slowing down throughout the year. Notably, excluding Web Presence and Productivity maintained a strong 6.8% year-over-year growth, indicating the underlying strength and resilience of this revenue line. Our Cloud Solutions business, despite being the smallest business in our group, experienced a 30.3% growth in full year 2023. This growth was impacted by a one-off project with a major customer in the full first half of 2022, making year-over-year comparisons challenging. Without considering this effect, our Cloud Solutions business would have achieved a 15% growth rate in 2023. We remain very optimistic about the continued growth of our Cloud Solutions business and are excited about the opportunities it presents for expansion, both in terms of revenue, but as well in EBITDA in the future.
Let us turn to page 18, focusing on capital expenditure. As you know, we have the advantage of having highly predictable maintenance CapEx requirements, which are bolstered by favorable server economics, economies of scale, and our state-of-the-art technological platform. This stable foundation allows us to effectively manage and plan for the ongoing maintenance and improvement of our operations, ensuring reliable service for our customers. On the other hand, our growth CapEx is directly linked to future revenue and customer growth prospects, particularly in the Cloud Solutions area, providing a well-defined path to achieving payback on these investments. Maintenance CapEx in 2023 remains low, with 2.7% of revenue. Growth CapEx sums up to 3% of total revenue, and therefore well below previously, partially driven by phasing effect of deliveries.
We have around EUR 12.5 million of outstanding deliveries by the end of December 2023. Total CapEx was therefore around EUR 82 million, which is below our expectation of EUR 90-100 million CapEx for 2023. Looking at 2024, we are confident that Cloud Solutions revenue will gain momentum and accelerate, aligning with our CapEx targets. For 2024, we expect CapEx of around EUR 100 million, our CapEx as a percentage of revenue between 6%-7%. By maintaining a balanced approach to our CapEx allocation, we are still in an excellent position to take advantage of growth opportunities, improve our capabilities, and drive sustained and profitable revenue growth. Our leverage and debt position is summarized on page 19.
In the past year, we have reduced our net debt by approximately EUR 100 million, bringing it down to EUR 1.7 billion. As a result, our net debt to Adjusted EBITDA ratio has improved to 2.7 times. This aligns well with our target of achieving a net debt to Adjusted EBITDA ratio below 3 by the end of 2023, demonstrating our commitment to prudent financial management. For 2024, we anticipate further deleveraging of at least 0.5 turn per year. Furthermore, in December 2023, we successfully refinanced a portion of our debt with a consortium of banks. The external bank loan, totaling around EUR 800 million, has a fixed annual interest rate and is covenant-lite . The remaining debt continues to be covered by a shareholder loan from United Internet, which also has a fixed interest rate and no covenants.
Both loans mature in mid-December 2026. The weighted average interest rate currently stands at 5.3%, which is expected to decline as we plan to gradually repay the shareholder loan. Let us look at the reconciliation from Adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow next. I would like to remind you that with the half year results, we have implemented a new presentation of cash flows to improve the reconciliation from Adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow. We have moved the cash outflows for interest from operating activities to cash flow from financing activities. Furthermore, we have eliminated the interest portion of repayments of lease liabilities from operating activities. As a result, the entire outflow of interest payments is now consolidated in a single line, providing a more streamlined view of interest-related cash flows. Let me now summarize the key components for 2023.
As already mentioned, CapEx for the period amounted to EUR 82 million. Tax payments amounted to EUR 66 million. Long-term incentive program payout. A one-off payout of EUR 14 million was made for the long-term incentive program, which was due after the IPO. This represents a one-off event and has been accounted for accordingly. IPO cost. The cost associated with the IPO were charged to the selling, selling shareholders, except for a small amount of EUR 2 million. This has been already paid. Other working capital, as expected, this reversed over the course of the year and is now showing a positive impact. Taking lease payments into account, the free cash flow after leasing for the full year 2023 amounted to EUR 219 million, as compared to EUR 168 million in 2022. This marks an impressive increase of 30.4%.
Based on the solid performance in 2023, we have already in December 2023, updated our guidance for 2024 and 2025. This decision was influenced by several factors, including robust new customer acquisition, sustained success in cross and upselling to existing customer base, continued success in our brand building, and the launch of innovative products, particularly in the artificial intelligence area, as Achim just presented. Additionally, the introduction of new pricing structures in the Q2 of 2023 instilled confidence in our ability to maintain and enhance our financial position. We are targeting a total revenue growth of 11% on a constant currency Web Presence and Productivity revenues, we are aiming for a growth rate of around 10%-12%, mainly driven by the strong core Web Presence and Productivity, excluding Aftermarket.
Throughout the past year, our SMB customers have exhibited a consistent and robust demand for Cloud Solutions offerings. However, larger cloud customers have encountered challenges, particularly in the form of delayed decision-making processes. This has led to a later conclusion of projected contracts, resulting in a reduced growth rate for 2023. Our confidence in capturing growth opportunities in this space remains unwavering, further supported by the positive indicators of renewed investment in Cloud Solutions by larger customers, which we expect to accelerate in 2024. We remain committed in driving sustained growth in alignment with our midterm guidance and anticipate Cloud Solutions to achieve a revenue growth rate of 15%-17% in 2024. Leveraging the robust fi...
Operational foundation of our business, coupled with continuous cost optimization and efficiency enhancement, we aim to continue to achieve Adjusted EBITDA growth that exceeds revenue growth. Our target is to reach an Adjusted EBITDA margin of around 28.5% in 2024, with further expansion to around 30% by 2025. During the Q1 of 2024, we have maintained our positive growth trajectory. Despite the generally weaker domain parking Web Presence and Productivity and cloud solution businesses exhibited a very solid performance, ensuring a successful start to the new year. In summary, we are highly confident in our ability to sustain our growth trajectory. Our exceptional financial profile, which strikes a balance between growth, profitability, and cash generation, serves as a foundation for our continued success. Last but not least, let me brief you, briefly walk you through another achievement of 2023.
We published our climate strategy 2030 in July, a testament to our commitment to environmental sustainability. The operation of our data centers is the most significant operation in terms of energy consumption and carbon emissions. Therefore, electricity from renewable sources is and will remain our most important lever to reduce our carbon footprint within our own operations. For example, we aim to source 100% renewable energy electricity long term, and to equip 50% of our data centers with low carbon power generation systems. In our value chain, we have set ourselves the target of working with sustainable suppliers, focusing in particular on the life cycle of service, which is an important source of Scope 3 emissions. For currently unavoidable emissions, for example, in connection with district heating and diesel emissions, reliable emission offsets will be purchased.
Although our offices are less energy and carbon intensive overall, they currently contribute more CO2 emissions overall. The most important levers for reducing office emissions are therefore the switch to 100% renewable electricity and an electric fleet. This climate strategy is integrated into our overall business objectives through annual reviews of target and targets and performance. In addition, PUE, Power Usage Effectiveness, an important indicator of energy efficiency of data centers, is linked to the remuneration of the IONOS management board to further align our climate strategy with our business objectives. Additionally, we aim to publish our first, still voluntary, Sustainability Report beginning of April. All right. To summarize, our business model remains highly intact, benefiting from the resilience of our customer base, high visibility on both revenues and CapEx, and strong underlying operating leverage. All in all, we are very well positioned for future growth.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may click the Q&A button on the left side of the meeting screen, and then raise your hand. If you are connected via phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two, or please press the lower your hand button. Anyone who has a question may click the Q&A and raise your hand button, or press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from George Webb from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Morning, morning, Achim and Britta. Thanks for the presentation. I've got three questions, please. Firstly, you've talked about the use of AI, both in powering new products but also on the customer support side. I think you said it may reduce your customer support cost materially. Have you done any work on estimating the size of those productivity improvements and quantifying those cost savings? Secondly, Web Presence and Productivity growth target, could you isolate out what you're expecting on the core versus Aftermarket this year? And then lastly, more of an operational question for you, Achim. You outlined a lot today about AI, talked about accelerating growth in cloud, many other areas besides those two. But when you think about your strategic priorities for IONOS this year, where are your top areas of focus? Thank you.
Could you be so kind and repeat question two, George?
Yeah. Of course. So the second question was, Web Presence and Productivity growth target, could you isolate out perhaps what you're expecting in terms of growth between the core business versus Aftermarket?
Oh, okay. Yeah. Thank you.
So first question was about AI and customer support. You know, if we had done some cost saving calculations or estimations and impact. I think, yes, of course, we have some internal goals which we set ourselves, but I don't think we are able to, you know, give you concrete numbers. The point is that, you know, this is still in the phase where we build out the systems and gain our own experience, and how many questions can be answered through AI. So for example, the next big release will be the AI, not just answering questions, but actually doing things for you.
You know, like today, you know, you get maybe a hint on customer needs to set up a new spam filter for an email address and ask the AI, and the AI tells you exactly what to do. The next iteration, it actually is going to do this for the customer. And so we're still gaining a lot of experience and see how many cases can we actually handle through AI. A step further is actually we need to enable the AI to do sales after support, you know, because this is also one of our large areas of inflow is our excellent customer support.
We, of course, are able to sell products, and if we now just have answering, you know, the AI answer questions without doing the sales pitch in the end, we would lose on inflow. So these are all the steps we are planning and building and working on with own hardware, with different services and so on. I think, to come to concrete numbers, I think we do this at a later stage where we really have proof of concept for all of that. But it's very encouraging. I mean, as you see the numbers we showed already, 50% of the inquiries we get online through our Control Panel are already handled by AI, you know?
And so the next steps, like I explained, and also, you know, doing phone calls and stuff, this is things that will come, and then we can make up the numbers.
Yeah, let me echo what Achim just said. So we are at the early beginning, so we started early to integrate it. We started in Germany, so we will roll it out to globally, obviously, but there's still a lot of changes and
It's a process.
It's a process. So, as soon as we have some targets, we will obviously share it with you, and it will be baked into any guidance we are giving going forward. In terms of Aftermarket growth for 2024, it's basically growing in line or planned to grow in line with the Web Presence and Productivity business, so 10%-12%, roughly. Keep in mind, this is a volatile... is a more volatile business than the Web Presence and Productivity, driven by its transaction-based revenues.
And then for the third question, top areas of focus for IONOS. Yeah, you mentioned AI. Of course, that's one of the major focuses. Brand, you know, we're expanding our brand. We invest a significant amount of money, so we make sure this is really catching up or catching on. Then base customer sales always, you know, there's a lot of things we still can improve also through AI, but also with other means. And then we still have our Internet Factory program running, which means that we consolidate more within the group, to be faster, use synergies, in products and processes. And I think that's the most or that's the main focus areas of this year.
Perfect. Thank you.
The next question comes from Toby Ogg from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hey, morning, Achim and Britta, and thanks-
Good morning.
Thanks for the presentation. Maybe just firstly on the pricing side, just when thinking about the components of the 11% in 2024, pricing versus volume, how much do you expect to come from pricing? And then how much did pricing contribute to your 2023 growth of 10%? That's the first one. And then second, just on the cloud guidance for 2024, Britta, you talked about positive indicators from larger customers, which you expect to accelerate in 2024, and that's sort of one of the drivers of the confidence around the guide. Could you give us a little bit more detail around sort of what those indicators are? And then also, what gives you the confidence that they will accelerate?
Last question, we're obviously sort of, you know, nearing the end of March now. Could you give us a bit of a sense for how, you know, how things have been trending in the business so far year to date? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me start with the pricing component. So for 2023, pricing had a relatively marginal impact. If I would need to qualify it, it would be maybe 1 percentage point, and it will be significantly more in 2024, so at least double. In terms of current trading, as I already mentioned throughout the presentation, we have seen a very solid start, especially Web Presence and Productivity and cloud solutions. The domain parking business has some challenges at the moment, driven by market in particular, but we are still confident for the full year.
Do you want to say something?
... to Cloud Solutions? Saying versus cloud, how, why-
... are we confident that the cloud is picking up, even more than last year? Well, of course, we see the opportunities, and you see that the sales cycles in cloud are rather six months than your small medium business in the core segment, are rather days. So we see the opportunities increasing, and we also see, for example, public tenders are getting more and more right now. So all the early indicators are showing that the pickup is going to happen starting this year.
Perfect. Thank you.
Were there any question open?
No, I think we answered all of it.
Yep, that was it. Thanks, guys.
Cool. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Emily Johnson from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Morning. I've got three questions, please. The first is, can you talk about the phasing Web Presence and Productivity revenue growth throughout the year? Is there any seasonality in the underlying contract, plan, cost increases coming through and from new customers annualizing onto full price contracts, for example? Secondly, can you talk a bit about the level of competition that you're seeing in Europe by country? Have you seen any change in competition from any of your U.S. web tools partners within, or peers, sorry, within Europe? And third question is, can you just touch on the growth margin dynamics into 2024? Are there any drivers to be aware of there? Obviously, in 2023, you called out the revenue mix effect of Aftermarket, for example, and some of the energy cost reversals. So any color there is really helpful. Thanks.
Yeah. Let me start with Web Presence and Productivity. i think actually the ARPU slide, which we had in the presentation, gives you a good indication on the seasonality. So usually we have a slight uptick in Q1 or Q2. This is driven usually by the domains and the respective accounting under IFRS. But other than that, nothing in particular. In terms of new customer, we already talked about that that usually Q1 and Q4 are the main quarters to invest into marketing and therefore, as well, the the main quarters where we see new customers joining. I think in terms of competition in Europe, we still see a relatively easy competitive environment.
Yeah.
Maybe you wanna comment a bit.
Yeah, I mean, we mentioned it a few times last year already, that the pressure basically or the marketing spending of our main competitors, the larger ones, did decline, and we can see that this is continuing. As you know, one of the largest in the U.S. is also now picking up and has to maintain a certain level of EBITDA margin, and so came down with marketing spending, and this seems to be continuing. We don't see any other larger or even mid-sized competitor pushing more on marketing or, you know, perhaps being in performance or brand. So I think it's the road is clear for us to continue our path.
Yeah. Looking into the gross margin, so ceteris paribus, we would see. So the impact of the price adjustments, which we had made, will flow through to the gross margin. The Aftermarket impact, as already mentioned, will lower, as we expect it to grow basically in line with the remainder Web Presence and Productivity. so therefore, we would expect gross margin to increase throughout 2024.
Does that take care of your questions?
Yeah. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Usman Ghazi from Berenberg. Please go ahead. Mr. Ghazi, your line is open.
Am I on mute? Hi. Hi, everyone. Thank you. Yeah, can you hear me?
Yes, hear and see you.
Yeah, we can actually see you.
Okay.
Yeah.
Good. First question was just on the AI inference services that you indicated where demand was picking up. You've got a beta trial that you're going to launch in Q2. I'm just wondering, how quickly would you expect, you know, this demand translating into revenue upside in the cloud business? And just related to that, I mean, do you see the CapEx envelope of, you know, EUR 100 million, 67% of revenues as enough to meet this product or this service launch? You know, and I'm specifically referring to, you know, the GPU investments that you might need or not. The second question was around the balance sheet.
So you're at 2.7 times net debt to EBITDA. Now, you're saying you will delever by at least half a turn. So by the end of 2024, you know, you're gonna be at the lower end of your 2-2.5 times kind of range that you indicated as a comfort zone at the IPO. Any early thoughts on, you know, whether you might look to instate a dividend, or any thoughts on that would be great. And then just looking at the... Yeah, and just final question again was going back to cloud. You've got a guidance for the margin, EBITDA margin for 2025. Does that guidance bake in the cloud business area turning profitable in 2025? Thank you.
So let me start with the AI inference services. We see a high demand, is first thing, and we see a lot of customers asking for these services now. We have a bunch of customers in beta, so early access, and we'll launch as a generally available product within the next weeks. And so we will add customers to that base. And of course, these customers are paying customers, and we modeled a little bit of that potential into this year's numbers, but we have to see how this develops. So we are more out on the careful side, I would say, rather on the careful side of revenue, which we planned. On the hardware side, though, we have the CapEx for, you know, sustaining our efforts here and our new products.
So we just got a new shipment of a lot of GPU cards, and it's all planned into the EUR 100 million CapEx for this year.
Yeah. And let me maybe comment on the leverage. And Usman, you are absolutely right. We will come to between 2 to 2.5, so at the lower end of this, actually. So something where we need to start the discussions with our whole shareholder base today in order to find out what would be the best use of cash. I think we remain committed to drive further growth, which means if there are M&A opportunities which fit into our M&A strategy, which we laid out, that might be an opportunity. But if not, as well, any, any cash out towards shareholder might be something we end up with. But as I said, nothing, nothing fixed yet.
For Cloud Solutions, we expect it to contribute a little bit to absolute EBITDA in 2025. So it will turn positive, but by a relatively small amount.
That's because-
This is as well-
This is as well, depending on, first of all, we continue-
Yeah
... to invest into the product with the new opportunities-
... we see around AI coming up. As well, it's a little bit driven by the success which we will see-
... by the really new products now being on the roadmap-
... to contribute to revenue, and therefore, EBITDA margin.
Yeah, that's exactly what we. Like we always said, we're not absolutely keen or not, you know, not overdoing it with generating cash in the cloud business. It's a huge business for the future, and it's one of the largest opportunities we have, including AI. We're not so smart to, you know, to squeeze it right from the beginning, but rather now we have to invest to make sure we have the best product portfolio out there in Europe at least, and that needs some investments. But we are careful enough so that we don't dilute our EBITDA margin from the core business. And so this is our largest investment or one of the largest. The other one is brand, as you know.
But, you know, we have to look in the future, and we just don't want to don't look only in the revenues and in the EBITDA margin of this year, but for the future. And that's a huge chance for us, so we need to, we need to take this.
Yeah. That, that makes sense. I mean, I just, just to clarify then, I mean, so your guidance for 25, you know, does not rely on, you know-
No
... cloud? Yeah.
No, it isn't.
It's an add-on.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. I have two questions. The first is on the strong net additions number you did in Q4, nearly 50,000. Could you tell us the source of these customer additions in terms of whether there are certain geographies that were stronger than others, or certain products that were more popular, where you were able to get more customers? Some color there would be great. My second question is on the AI advantages that you're now pushing into WP&P. What's the advantage of an existing customer if they want to switch to an AI-enabled product for their web hosting, et cetera? Could you give us some color there and maybe what the ARPU uplift would be if they do switch, on average? That's my second question. Thank you.
Let me start with the customer additions. So I think we haven't seen any particular market standing out. We see a very strong development across all our geos, largely driven Web Presence and Productivity, where we had a lot of new customers additions. We have seen strong customer additions in terms of domain, which is good actually, because it provides a lot of upside in terms of up and cross-selling going forward. But nothing which stands out in particular. For sure, we have as well added customers in cloud, but the main driver of the strong customer growth, just in terms of numbers, because cloud is still a little bit smaller, is Web Presence and Productivity.
Why does it make sense to switch to more AI featured products for customers, the base customers, I think was the question. So of course, I mean, once you have your web page, you could say, "Oh, I'm actually more or less done," but that's not the truth, really, because you need to update your web page frequently. If you want to have a good Google ranking, you need to do something. You have to produce more content, and so on, and so forth. That's where AI really shines and helps you. With very little time, effort, you can be always on a up-to-date web page, you know, better Google rankings, which in turn usually means more business for our customers. Also, the addition then of, you know, better communication with your customers.
So, newsletter tools, you know, any communication offerings we have, there's many different tools, which with AI support, helps our customers to stay better in touch with their customers, in turn, again, creating value for our customers. So there's a lot of a lot of incentives to upgrade to AI products. How much did we model into our numbers? Yes, of course, we did this. You know, we have a roadmap of AI features. But again, I think it's rather on a conservative side, you know, seeing how things develop. And technology is developing so quickly right now, it's hard even to predict what the AI is able to perform end of the year.
So, like we traditionally do, we plan on the careful side to obviously hit our numbers, and that's how we plan the AI as well.
Thank you.
As a reminder, anyone who wishes to ask a question may click the Q&A button on the left side of the C-M eeting screen and then raise your hand. If you are connected via phone, please press star followed by zero on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Ben Castillo-Bernaus from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Oh, I'm sorry. One second.
Ben flew out of the line.
Yeah. We will get Mr. Bernaus soon.
Maybe he just raises his hand again.
Take some other questions in between or?
That's Q, yeah. Okay.
Yes. Now Mr. Ben Castillo-Bernaus has registered again. Please go ahead.
Can you hear me? It's Ben, yeah.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Oh, there we go.
Sorry, Ben.
That's all right. I don't know if it was my end or your end, but thanks very much for the presentation. And my questions are... A couple from me, just on the AI side and the those premium pricing tiers that you've announced late last year. Can you give us a sense of maybe adoption or the traction you've seen since they were launched? Perhaps, you know, if you look at your cohort of new customers you added since you launched those features, roughly speaking, what sort of penetration or adoption are you seeing of those higher price point AI tiers? And then the second question was around the growth CapEx, which came down last year. You're sort of implicitly guiding that step up quite materially for 2024....
Given, I suppose, what's the key driver that I know revenue's accelerating a little bit? But should we expect a bit more efficient kind of growth CapEx to incremental revenue in that cloud business going forward? Thank you.
So for the AI adoption rate, basically, I think that was a question for WordPress for the website product. So basic AI, well, not basic, but pretty advanced already. Actually, AI features are included in every package, like I just tried to explain, because that's the biggest hurdle, and we see the improvement here through less churn rates, for example. I don't think we break out the, you know, what's the addition from the AI to that product line, but the product line Web Presence and Productivity, and in that the website builder tool product line is doing very well. So, you know, you have to see the overall picture in the end.
Customers not just decide, "Oh, I want to have this one AI feature, and that's why I buy the whole package." They look at the different packages and say, "Okay, this is, you know, base feature is everywhere, and then some more advanced AI features, but it also comes with other additional features." So it's a little hard for us also to do, you know, to dissect off, you know, did this customer buy it just because of the additional AI feature or because of the whole package, which is in itself larger? I think we would not give these numbers in detail.
No, I don't think so, but I think it's good to see that we actually have a good adoption rate across our customer base. We see the websites being published earlier, which definitely will help to drive churn down going forward. Because activation of a product is one of the main drivers for early churn or not activating the product, to say it correctly. So I think... And we see, and Achim shared a couple of numbers-
Yeah
... on the AI slide, so we see a good uptake here in-
... in terms of the AI products. Looking into the growth CapEx and how it will develop going forward, first of all, I think, keep in mind, we built a data center in the U.K., so we had some additional, growth CapEx there, in mainly 2022 and a little bit in 2023. We are working constantly on the efficiency of our CapEx, be it maintenance, but as well as on growth CapEx. And going forward, I think the 6%-7% provides a very. And it will have some deviations throughout the years, so it will not always be a 5.7% each year, because it's as well, depending on the timing of deliveries and major changes, which we might need to do across the data centers, et cetera.
But the 6%-7%, and therein, the growth CapEx provides enough room as well to foster growth opportunities which we see from AI, maintaining our data centers in good shape, et cetera. So I think this is how you need to think about it, and the guidance we gave at the beginning, at the IPO and as we gave it as well now, remains intact for both maintenance and growth CapEx.
Got it. Thank you. Last quick question from me, just on the pricing side. So aside from discrete price increases that you put through, is there an element of automatic, say, inflation indexes in any of your contracts for the core-
No
... Web Presence and Productivity? no. okay.
No.
Great, thank you.
There, there's a lot of reason for that. There's. It's legally complicated in some of the countries, and you would have to do it in the other direction as well, and so on and so forth. So, we are, you know, if we want to increase prices, we have means of doing this-
Yeah
... like we, we've proven in the past, so.
Yeah, and then we strongly believe-
... that price increases should come with additional values provided to customers.
... in order to really have sustained impact on revenues going forward.
Understood. Thank you.
So there are no further questions at this time, and I would now like to turn the conference back over to Stephan Gramkow for any closing remarks.
Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for attending our today's call. Please don't hesitate to get in touch for any follow-up questions. Have a nice day, stay safe, and goodbye.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you, everybody.
Have a good day. Bye bye.