Good morning. On behalf of Montega, welcome to the earnings call of the NFON AG regarding the publication of the Q1 figures 2023. We're looking forward to the results, I hand over to Claudius Krause from Investor Relations.
Thank you very much, Fleur, for hosting us today. Dear ladies and gentlemen, also from our side, a warm welcome. This morning, we published the information on the business development of the first quarter. The documents are available on NFON's website as usual. Today, I'm very happy that we have NFON's former CEO, Klaus von Rottkay, the company's new CEO, Patrik Heider, as well as Petra Boss and Jan-Peter Koopmann with us. They will give us some more insights into the latest developments, we'll be happy to answer your questions afterwards. For now, I want to hand over to you, Klaus. The stage is yours.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for dialing in. Well, it'll be our pleasure to present the financial results of the first quarter. As you're all aware, you know, within Q2, we have transitioned to a new CEO, Patrick, and it's my pleasure to have Patrick introduce himself before I basically tell you about Q1 results before he joined.
A warm welcome from my side. Thank you, Klaus. I'm completely excited to be back in the public market after being three years and now in private market. I don't need to introduce in detail myself. Maybe you know me still from the Nemetschek story we had together, also in the public markets from 13 markets- 20 markets, I was the spokesperson of Nemetschek. I'm completely excited about the NFON only being eight days in business. I can't tell you too much about, I'm really positive and confident. My credo, as you know, also from my Nemetschek times, is that a healthy development of a company also is always combined with a positive profitability, we are well on track, what you can see then afterwards.
Also, obviously, growing stronger the business is something we will elaborate the next days, and I'm excited to work with you, and I'm looking forward to the cooperation. This is why I'm handing over to Klaus back. Thank you, Klaus, and then you will see the results. Thank you.
Excellent. Thank you, Patrik. Let me take a step back and, you know, basically remind us, you know, what, you know, our vision was as a company when we, you know, set out on our course for profitable growth. It's to become a leader of European integrated business communication. I, you know, I, as like I highlight, you know, that we want to have, you know, obviously focus on business communication. We want to have integrated business communication, bringing, you know, several of the silos together and really supporting and integrating also with business apps on the company side and focusing on Europe as our turf to play.
There are actually our goals for this year, obviously our financial goals that you're aware of and will that we'll reiterate at the end of the call. There are certain components of growth, which you see as the three pillars here. Obviously, growth on product-driven growth, bringing out new features, new functionalities, additional products, own products that have been developed further, partner products that we are selling. This is one important pillar of growth. A second one is to continue to create the best-in-class channel. We are a channel company, have a large and loyal followership by many partners.
You know, we continue to improve our capabilities and make business, make business with our, you know, partners, for our partners more attractive. At the same time, you know, the, you know, besides the day-to-day, I would say, transactional partnering, we always look, you know, for strategic, you know, alliances and partnerships that, you know, will add on to the business, and this is our third pillar of growth. You know, a little bit more long term, that, but nevertheless, important as, you know, some examples of the last year's show. Obviously, you know, we know that, you know, we can't be profitable without being operationally excellent, and, you know, that's why, you know, it's good to, you know, take a first look under the hood of where our, you know, profitability efforts have taken us.
Last but not least, obviously, sustainability has grown more and more an intricate part of our, of our company agenda. That kind of belongs towards the, you know, our top priority goals. With that, I'll hand it over to Petra to lead us through the financials for Q1.
A very warm welcome from my side, and first we have a look at our first quarter results in a nutshell, with the most important facts. It's like we were able to grow the recurring revenues by 5.3% compared year-over-year with the first quarter 2022. We increased the share of recurring revenues again with now very high 93% percentage, which is higher than we had in the last years, and we significantly improved our EBITDA with EUR 2 million. You see, we are well positioned to reach our full year's target, and now we go a little bit more into details of the figures.
recurring revenues, which are the important ones for us, grew by 55.3%, as I said, and the total revenue growth was only 2.6%. This is quite low, but this is a consequence of we had a decrease in the non-recurring revenues, especially hardware. The non-recurring revenues are very volatile, we are very confident that we will have an higher total revenue growth by year-end. The non-recurring revenues are not that important for us, and the reason for that is that they have a very low margin. You have seen that we have a good EBITDA, we are not harmed very much by losing non-recurring revenues because they have a very small impact on the gross profit.
The most important figure for us is that we have the high share of 93% recurring revenues, and you can see that this figure is constantly growing year-over-year the last periods. The basis of our growth, as always, is the seat growth. As we are now focusing on profitability, and the profitability is not only dependent on the seat growth, because we sell additionally Premium Solution, et cetera, and we want to increase our RPU. Therefore, we are not guiding, it's not a key performance indicator for NFON, but it's still important that we are for constant growth, which we can show here, and this is based on our very low churn rate.
Even though economic circumstances haven't been that easy in the last period, it's, we have not observed a higher churn rate by higher amount of bankruptcies or something like that. We still have about 0.5% per month on a very stable basis. Following the very high share of recurring revenues, we've been able to improve the gross margin as well, constantly growing all periods. You see the decline of the cost of goods sold, the cost for goods sold. This is because we haven't sold that much hardware. We have higher revenue, but lower COGS, and therefore, the gross profit is still very good.
We told you the last time that we now focus on profitability. We have now implemented the measures. We reduced the personal expenses. We made the business more efficient. We looked at all areas where we really need people and where we can be a little bit more conservative on spending on personal expenses. There you can see that we have reduced the personal expenses in not only the ratio, but in absolute figures as well. We are very confident that we will have a further decrease in this ratio during the year. Some measures will only be effective from Q2 on.
You see, we decreased the average number from the weighted average number from 503- 468, which is a minus of 77.5% in the headcount figures. The EBITDA figures look very good, as you see it, EUR 2 million. You see, we have been profitable before in the past. That shows and demonstrates that we can be profitable whenever we want, when we have lower investments. But in the past, this was caused more or less, that we have been a little bit conservative on the investment side during the Corona period. But now we change that. We want to be profitable on the long run, on a very steady basis. We are very confident that we are able to achieve full year target on the EBITDA side.
What I want to set the expectations right, that I think we should not just quadruple the figure and for expectation for last year. As you can see, the first quarter in 2022 has been positive as well, and we had more investments in the second half. Of the year, we have some more, we'll have some more marketing investments, but we will be EBITDA profitable for sure, and above EUR 4 million, which is our target. There's potential for overachieving it, but not for just what I want to set it too high by the first quarter. As you can see, we have not adjusted that much in the EBITDA figure.
It's 1.9, it's the EBITDA, and adjusted, it's 2 point, it's like we've only very minor adjustments on the personal costs by focusing on core markets. In the past, we adjusted the stock options, which is not necessary anymore. Here you can see, as I said, in the positive EBITDA development, that we significantly reduced the marketing and the headcount expenses. With that, I give back to Klaus.
All right, let me summarize that in terms of, you know, reiterating our guidance we gave for this year. We will expect recurring revenue growth to remain in the mid to upper single digit percentage range. We expect also recurring revenue to be, you know, larger than 88%. Why do I say 88% if we had 93%? Because I said, like, sometimes you have, like, a high or low quarter in terms of hardware sales, and that can, you know, have, you know, short-term deviation. The long-term trend, as Petra explained, that, you know, the recurring revenue share is growing, which is something we like, because obviously it's good high margin revenue and very stable. You know, that's something, you know, a continued focus for us.
We also reiterate the guidance of being adjusted EBITDA above EUR 4 million, as Petra has pointed out, where you can see that we are on a very good track for. In summary, basically, if I give you the same points you obviously know, we are well positioned in the, you know, European market for integrated business communication, especially in the DACH region. There is still large untapped market potential. Just, you know, it's like temporarily slowed growth doesn't mean that the long-term potential is any smaller, so it will come at some point. Cloud penetration is not, you know, going through the roof right now.
We are, you know, a business made in Germany, hosted in Germany, you know, with a stack tailored to European needs. They're not, you know, a lot of European competitors actually who can claim that. Customers, you know, really look for that. We can, you know, obviously augment our historical growth record with, you know, additional strategies for profitable growth. It's not just adding another extension. You know, we have other things in store, like, you know, Premium Solutions. As you've seen from the results, our business model is rather stable as it, you know, really relies on a large, you know, socket of recurring business, which is, you know, good.
obviously we have a large loyal network of partners that, you know, makes this business model really robust. with that, I'd like to open it up for Q&A.
Thank you very much, Dr. von Rottkay, Mr. Heider, and Mrs. Boss for detailed presentation. We will now move over to the Q&A session. Questions can be asked by audio line or chat. If you would like to ask a question directly to the management, please raise your virtual hand. If you have dialed in by phone, please press the star key, follow up by number nine to enter the Q&A queue. You'll be then asked to unmute yourself by pressing the star key, followed by number six. We already received the first question via audio. Please go ahead, Philipp Sennewald.
Yeah, perfect. Can you hear me well?
Yes, we can hear you very well.
Perfect. First of all, welcome, Mr. Heider, from my side. I heard all the best from my colleague, Mr. Christian Sander before, who covered Nemetschek in the past couple of years. On the other hand, of course, congratulations on the significant profitability improvement in the first quarter. I have a question or a couple of questions regarding the cost side throughout the year. Petra, you mentioned personal costs. You already reduced staff significantly in the last quarter. Now, at 468, what is your target figure there for the end of the year? You said you aim to reduce staff further.
May I jump in there? Like we don't aim to reduce staff further, but, you know, some of the people that we reduced, you know, just left at the end of Q1. The 468 basically is the number, you know, the average number for Q1. There might be, you know, maybe like 10 people, 15 people, you know, more people leave. Basically, the wave of, you know, headcount reduction is through. You know, not all of that was fiscally, you know, active in Q1, but we had lower marketing expenses in Q1. That's why, you know, it ended up as, you know, positive profitability anyway.
All right. Well, well, well understood. Maybe on the marketing side as well, you already said it, significant reduction on marketing spend also year-over-year. From top of my head, when I calculate the marketing to sales ratio is roughly 1% right now. You mentioned already that might go up again throughout the year. What is like a marketing ratio you're aiming for on a midterm basis to also enable the growth you're striving for?
In, in terms of like overall marketing, I think we, you know, in terms of revenue, we are, you know, actually rather closer to 10% than 1%, you know, on the long-term average. Obviously, you know, Q1 sometimes, you know, is a slow quarter because you have to, you know, set up. You have some measures you have already launched that are still active in the channel. When you set up new measures, you know, not all of them are basically becoming fiscally active in Q1. I would say we have probably a shift of, you know, maybe like a short of EUR 1 million, you know, from Q1 to the later quarters.
As I said, we always adjusted marketing a little bit to, you know, where the business, you know, opportunity is, and when the market's a little slower. You know, sometimes it's actually a good, a good time also to slow down marketing spend because the ROI is becoming substantially worse.
For sure. All right, thank you very much. That's it from my side at this point. Thank you very much, and to you, Mr. Rottkay, all the best. Yeah, thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Sennewald. We received a few questions from Mr. Knut Woller, to Mr. Heider. Should we expect any changes of strategy going forward?
First of all, thank you very much, Knut, for the warm welcome, and also to all other colleagues. I do believe that Klaus and the team did a great job in creating that strategy. No, there won't be any big changes in the strategy. As you know, my credo is always profitability growth means that you need to grow EBITDA stronger than revenue, and revenue needs to be stronger than market. This is the aim we have. What I definitely do the first weeks, I do a so-called relevance check. What does that mean? I do believe, and I'm a strong believer into that one, that focus, and focus for a company is the right thing. Given the, the capacity we have, we need to make sure that the output is going stronger.
That's what I do. Companies like in this size we are in, having great ideas, and by the way, that's positive that people have great ideas, but maybe we have too many. This is why I would like to support the company in a great focus, and then coming into this circle that EBITDA growth is bigger than revenue growth, and revenue growth is bigger than market growth. That's what I call a healthy company. Hopefully, that makes sense, from a general, let's say, strategic positioning, I think Klaus and the leadership team did a great job, and that's exactly the right thing to do.
Thank you very much. Two follow-up questions: How should we think about NFON in the market going forward under your leadership, Patrick? Will you focus on growing organically, or do you always aim to be consolidator going forward?
That's a good question, being eight days in business. Obviously, as you know from my history, that I'm also a strong supporter in tech companies and tech environments to really consider strong M&A. Given the opportunities at the moment with the free cash flow situation we have, we need to work first on organic growth machine in order to become independent, financially wise, and then also going into M&A opportunities. I'm a strong supporter of having both balanced, and sometimes it's just too long to develop something by our own, and buy might be interesting, especially when you see market environment at the moment, and definitely multiples are going down and becoming more interesting for us. I would say it's balanced. It should be balanced, but the first focus will be on organic growth and development.
Hopefully, that makes sense for the moment. Give me some more couple of days.
Okay, thanks a lot. Just a quick reminder, if you still have questions, it's possible to ask them via chat or audio line. Another question from Knut Waller regarding seats growth. It's not your major guidance metric any longer, but is there room to accelerate seats growth?
I think that, well, we. Obviously, we always want to, you know, profitably grow our seat bases. The reason why we defocus a little bit, because, you know, there are many ways to do that in a not very profitable manner. I think I'd rather focus on accelerating other things, like growing the right number of seats and doing the right upsell, you know, driving, you know, increased Premium Solution sales. I would say, yes, there would be many ways to increase seat growth, you know, going through hospitality, for example, going through large, you know, tenders, where the, you know, the seat price is really low. But, you know, we don't want to do that. We want to focus on profitable seat growth. That's why we, you know, also initiated changes that we do.
I would say the focus number one is growing the profitable seats more than rather the metric. Yeah.
Thank you very much. I received another question by audio line. Please go ahead, Stéphane Beyazian.
Yes. Can you hear me? I think you can.
Yes, I can.
Beyazian from ODDO BHF. Is it possible that therefore, we could see even slower net additions of seats in the next couple of quarters versus, you know, 11,000 that you added in the first quarter? Is it possible that there is further slowdown because you want to refocus on profitability? A side question to that, is there anything such as a new product or potentially, you know, big tenders going on in the market that could actually have a positive impact on your net addition, customer addition in the next couple of quarters, something big that you think can reaccelerate a little bit there? Thank you.
Okay. In terms of, you know, as, growth, I think it is, you know, I would say, as we said, like in terms of, you know, the guidance, I wouldn't expect, you know, a major slowing of the growth because we are already now focusing on the profitable seats, you know? I think, you know, you probably see like a, you know, a run rate in order of magnitude, which we think is sustainable for profitable growth. In terms of major events, and obviously, we are, you know, we are finishing our Teams app in Q3, which is, you know, a big milestone for us, and which complements basically it's our fourth offering that we offer, you know, to grow with the Microsoft Teams momentum. But it's not gonna, you know...
Even, you know, if it's received, you know, super well and, you know, the sales go up, it will not, in, you know, the number of installed base will not increase drastically short term. You know, those, you know, the bigger the deals, the longer the sales cycles and the longer the deployment cycles. It's not gonna be, you know, a, you know, a massive change on the organic side. It's rather gonna be, you know, like an increased run rate over whatever, two or three quarters.
Very good. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We received another question from Knut Waller regarding the operating cash flow. Do you expect it to be positive in 2023?
I think if it's not positive, it's very, quite close to it. We're still improving on the EBITDA side over the years and, but it's all absolutely on that, our target to reach operating and positive operating cash flow on the short term.
Okay, thank you very much. It seems right now that there are no further questions, I would say thank you very much for your question, and thank you very much, Dr. von Rottkay, Mr. Heider, and Mrs. Boss, for the detailed presentation and your time answering all those questions. For some final remarks, I hand over to Dr. von Rottkay.
Okay, well, thank you very much for, you know, dialing in. Also, you know, thank you for, you know, giving me the opportunity to share with you the progress of NFON over the last couple of years, which I'm very proud of. You know, for next, you know, call, basically, Patrik will will take over. You know, I wish him, obviously, in the company, as also, you know, a shareholder, obviously, best of success. I'll still be around until the end of my term to support the transition to my best efforts. Thanks very much for the partnership.
Thank you very much, Klaus, and thanks to the community. Thank you. Looking forward to the cooperation.