Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of Montega, welcome to the NFON AG earnings call regarding the half-year figures of 2022. Thank you very much for your interest in joining the call. We are further delighted to welcome the CEO, Dr. Klaus von Rottkay, and the CFO, Petra Boss, as well as the Head of Investor Relations, Sabina Prusa, who will give you a presentation on the financials in a moment. The floor will be open for all upcoming questions following the presentation. Let me now hand over to you, Mr. von Rottkay.
Okay. Well, good morning, everyone, and from my side, as I'm in the US right now, obviously good afternoon to everyone else. Thank you very much for dialing in. Yeah, let me just reflect a little bit on the last six months of our financial performance, and you know, give you an overview of you know, where NFON has come, you know, where the overall market stands right now and what has basically happened over the last half year. Then Petra is gonna you know, go through the financial results, and we'll conclude obviously with the outlook. Sabina, if I may ask you to advance the presentation. Okay.
All right, yeah, as always, you know, let's start off where we're heading. We want to become the leading provider of integrated business communication in Europe. It actually has become even more important now to understand what we mean with integrated business communication. I'll spend a little bit more time on that. Actually, there is even, like, market research coming in now that companies are increasingly looking to, you know, innovate, especially on that, you know, integrated component of business communication, but more to that in a second. A quick look at the numbers.
As you know, we have passed the really important threshold of 600,000 extensions being managed and run from our data centers. That's a really big and important milestone. More importantly, also the milestones underneath that we've achieved in H1, we have completed our product portfolio in a very important manner by, you know, having now a really full-blown UCaaS and CCaaS unified communication and contact center as a service solution in the market. The latter was possible by, you know, the partnership with our Czech partner company, Daktela. This is now in the market and it's being, you know, positively received.
We concluded another major wholesale partnership that we signed in Q2, which is gonna become operational sometime in Q4. More to that later, but it's important that you know we continue the journey and like tick off some of those really important milestones. In overall seat growth, obviously we also gave the guidance last time ahead that you know we had 1 big account churning in Q2, which you see basically is one of a little dip in the overall growth numbers, but you know more to that later. Let's take a step back in what's happening with the market.
As I said, like, you know, market research says that now companies are increasingly, you know, going from individual cloud investments to, you know, enterprise-wide cloud strategies.
You know, for us it means that, you know, the strategy shift we've taken from Cloud PBX to integrated business communication is actually very timely, because it's not just about, you know, replacing, you know, a point solution, although a very important one in the overall portfolio of our customers, but also innovate the entire, you know, software telco workings of a company, with the obvious benefits that, you know, that brings in terms of, you know, much, you know, higher agility, you know, less CapEx needed for that, and the possibility to, you know, further digitize and, you know, automate integrated workflows within the company.
For that, you know, we have built out our Cloudya platform and, you know, have now an offering in the market that customers can use for that. Obviously there's a lot more work to be done, but, you know, for that we have, you know, increased our technical staff and can deliver on the product roadmap now. The important part is what you have to, you know, remember is, you know, communication technologies together with business applications, you know, that is basically the field of integrated business communications where NFON is playing. Somehow, you know, to understand kinda a little bit in the situation of the, you know, development where we are.
You know, we've done significant progress in actually delivering the roadmap according to our mission. That has been mostly, I would say, like, you know, mostly launched between Q4 last year and Q1 and beginning Q2 this year. We also announced that we'll increasingly, you know, enter the enterprise segment and therefore, you know, increase our partner and customer base also on that side, like, you know, with accounts larger than 250 seats. This is something that shows steady progress. Some of it, you know, will be seen later at a later stage because the bigger the win, the longer the deployment. We have some individual examples of large wins that actually, you know, we've won, you know, end of Q1 and will take three years to deploy.
Obviously though, this is also not a you know, a short-term strategy but a long-term you know, strategy that's also helped by you know, our product roadmap and just wanna be clear that this is something that will take until the end of 2024 until this journey is you know, basically up to you know, full speed that we envision now. Overall, I think what's really you know, changed in the last quarter is you know, overall market sentiment in most markets we operate in, but you know, most certainly in Germany, the Ukraine crisis you know, followed by obviously a rising energy costs and leading to overall you know, higher inflation has led to many sales cycles becoming longer and longer.
Customers may not, you know, change their mind on their investments, but they, you know, prioritize them more carefully and, you know, sometimes, you know, just postpone them a little bit. We've seen this, you know, especially like in the mid-market where, you know, I would say like there has been steady growth, but it hasn't accelerated, you know, versus the, you know, the pandemic, you know, months, but rather actually slowed down, in Q2, for a bit. We hope, obviously once, you know, companies get more comfortable with that, this will, you know, becoming a little bit more, you know, it's like more of a steady pace. But the overall economic, you know, forecast are obviously somewhat dire.
For that, you know, we have actually said like, okay, but the good thing is we have, you know, kinda like we're actually now reaching the peak of the planned investment wave. We told last year that we especially have to increase the technical resources to deliver a product roadmap. Now that's, you know, has basically been accomplished. We had to, you know, kinda like reposition ourselves with a complete product portfolio. The rebranding has now also been finished in Q2. We said like we would only invest that much marketing, you know, where, you know, there is profitable, the ROI for profitable growth is very good.
When the market's slowing down, it gives us the opportunity to, you know, like, tailor the investments to the level of growth, and that will actually increase in, you know, higher profitability, which is also something at the last, you know, quarterly results. I already mentioned that we, you know, want to be EBITDA breakeven in 2023 going forward. Obviously this is, you know, like now a clear priority, and it, you know, works basically nicely with the investment wave, rhythm that we had, you know, planned. You know, we are basically now entering the next phase. Quick view on the product portfolio. As I had mentioned it, you know, we start, you know, coming from, you know, cloud PBX.
We have continuously improved our offering on that side. We have you know a full UCaaS offering now as of you know this last half year. We have complemented it now with you know a really competitive customer contact solution. We have now with CRM Connect Plus also an important new element of integrating you know our communication platform with business applications. More of that to come, but at least you know now really the corner elements of you know our integrated business communication strategies are in place and this is something you know we can work with.
With the resources we have on hand now, we can continue to develop the roadmap as planned and, you know, don't need to, you know, plan another big investment wave. This is, you know, something we have going for now, right now. All right. A quick look at the development of our partnership. This is the Pan-European landscape we're playing on. Obviously, you know, like, big majority geographies where we play is Germany, Austria and UK. But, you know, we are present in, you know, many other European countries, be it through own sales offices, be it through partners.
This has, you know, also this footprint has helped us quite a bit, you know, supporting international customers and having a value proposition for internationally minded larger partners, and gives us the opportunity to develop those partnerships also beyond the relationships in one country. There's a steady progress after we rolled out, you know, our new partner program, and this is obviously never stopping. We will continue to acquire new partners, and have, you know, done so already in H1, which we'll also see in, you know, continued, you know, momentum going forward. On the customer side, same. We continue to develop our customer base.
We are now almost up to 50,000 business customers receiving their cloud services through, you know, our technology in our data centers. It gives us the opportunity, obviously, to address this customer base with our new premium solutions. As I said, like, it's very early since we, you know, only launched in Q2, but we are ahead, slightly ahead of plan on our premium solutions, including our contact centers, you know, services. This is obviously, you know, a longer sales cycle that we need.
There's more professional services involved because the solution has to be really custom fit into the environment of the customer, but we see some positive momentum there, and feel like, you know, this is a good start for the development over the next two years. We mentioned before some of those larger accounts we can actually conquer with those will actually plan in multiyear development cycles. It's important to get the first foot in the door and then continue the good work. Why don't we take a look at the numbers, and I'll hand over to Petra.
Yeah. Thank you, Klaus, and good afternoon to everyone. We want to look at the numbers and reflect on them, and as you can see, the seat growth is 9.4%, which might fall a little bit behind the expectations of most of you. This first half year was burdened by some factors, like we had to digest the departure of a quite big customer, a public sector one in the UK, and we were not able to win the public tender again due to the change of requirements. This was already two years ago, though we have been quite happy to have the customer longer than we expected to. Now is the time that the customer migrated.
On the other hand, as Klaus said, the overall economic skeptical situation made our customers to don't take decisions very quickly. They are very hesitant, and we are growing out of our customer base, and when our customers don't grow that much, that we don't grow on this side. But we are very optimistic that we have more seat wins and better seat growth in the second half, as we already anticipated it to be so in the budget. Like we always said that Q3, especially Q4, we hope we intend to have more seat wins, and we have a quite promising pipeline with large customers, which always have a relatively long sales cycle, but we want to harvest in Q4.
We're still quite confident, and we are able to reach our guidance, but more on the lower end of it, and Klaus von Rottkay will say some words to that later on. When we have a look at the ARPU, because it's the basis for the next slide. No. Could you please stay on this slide, Sabina? Thank you. You see a quite special effect in the first half of last year that we had been able to reach an ARPU above € 10, which normally we are around about 9.80, and the full year last year was 9.84.
It's really a special effect of the first half, which was due to Corona, that we have had more voice traffic, significantly more voice traffic in spring last year. This was not the situation this year. We have lower ARPUs in the first half of the year, but it's still on the level of last full year and above previous periods. We are not worried in any way that we have been decreasing ARPU. We do some price increases for our product, which we already did in the end of the last half year, but we'll have six months then effect in the next half.
When we look at the next slide, you see the recurring revenues, as a result of everything I've said before, grew only by 8.6%. Here we are, due to the same reasons, optimistic that we will stay in our guidance and be slightly above 10%. It's like, as I said, the ARPU is one of the main reasons that we have not had a very big growth in the first half year. But we have a very high share of recurring revenues, so we have now reached a percentage above 90%, which is very important for us because the recurring revenues are the ones with the high margin, and so they are the basis for future revenues. Slide, please.
Here you can see that the gross margin is as well constantly increasing. It's a result of our very high share of recurring revenues. As I said, they are the ones with the high margin, and the same is with the ratio of the cost of materials. It's even lower because the non-recurring revenues have been a little bit lower, and they are the ones with the low margin and the high cost of materials. You can see, as Klaus already said, that our strategic way was to have an increase in the headcounts last year, and now we have the full year effect, and as a consequence, we have a higher ratio of personnel expenses compared to the revenues.
This is only an intermediate effect for a short period of time, because from now on, we try to get into a phase of scaling and we will have a lower margin compared to the last period next year and in the future medium term will get below this ratio. We had quite significant marketing expenses in the first half of the year. This is due to the rollout of new partner program and the repositioning of the NFON brand and we will slow down on that. We're scaling as well, and with the second half, the marketing expenses will be lower than the first half.
The selling costs, the sales commissions, we had an increase from 12.6%, which is not perfectly in line with the increase of the revenues. There are various effects, mostly regarding the channel shift. When we have less direct channel, then we have more sales commissions. In the future, we expect more wholesale business, which they don't have sales commissions as well. We don't have to pay sales commissions in this area. It's not in constant development in the near future. As Klaus said, we have a clear focus on profitability and want to step into phase of where we really scale on costs and reduce investments.
The first half year was still a period of investment regarding marketing and full effect of personnel costs. We have an EBITDA of minus € 4.1 million and adjusted minus € 1.5 million. It's still definitely our goal to be breakeven next year and positive from then on. With that, I hand over to Klaus again.
Okay, sure. Let me just reiterate the guidance for 2022. We confirm the guidance you know we gave in terms of number of extensions of our customer base at the end of the year between 10% and 12%. Although, given the you know the current economic climate, we think we'd probably be rather at the lower end of this. Likewise for the recurring revenues, where we you know confirm our guidance range. I think we might be rather at the lower end of this on the recurring revenues.
We confirm that we anticipate to be above 88%, and as said, like right now, obviously it's you know, we are significantly above that and we're also confident that we will be within this guidance by the end of the year. Let me summarize again, like what we think we have going for NFON. We are a leading player and especially in the DACH region, the number one player in the integrated business communication market. Obviously, from a traditional focus for SMEs, you know, we continuously grow you know, towards mid-tier enterprises and considering you know, where customer going in their investment priorities, we think you know, we're really well positioned to benefit from that.
Made in Europe is, you know, a claim that can be, you know, you know, cannot be overstated enough as an important characteristic that we have for our customers. As you know, there have been, you know, recent, like rules again, in the public sector area in Germany where like, US players, even with German data centers, you know, may not be eligible for certain tenders. So I think it's, in our more local world today, it's an important factor, and many of our customers and partners appreciate you know, our German engineering hosted in Germany also in other European neighbor countries.
We have, you know, a good track record of double-digit growth. Although right now, you know, with H1 being a little bit weaker, you know, we have a clear strategy in place to continue grow that again and, you know, with, you know, increasing possibilities on new partners, new customer segments and new products. We see that we have multiple, you know, ways to achieve that. We should never forget that, you know, as you know, we provide a really mission-critical service to our customers, our churn, you know, is traditionally extremely low, and therefore we have a very robust and stable business model we can, you know, build on.
You know, with the largest network of European channel partners, who are, you know, loyal to us and who actually, you know, have good ideas of how to increase their business, betting on NFON. Thank you very much. I think with that, we'll probably go to the Q&A, if I'm correct.
Thank you very much for the presentation, first of all. We will indeed continue with the Q&A session. We already received some questions via the chat. Feel free to do so. Alternatively, you may also ask your questions by audio line. Please use the hand button on the lower part of your screen. We will start with the questions from Knut Woller. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thanks for taking my questions. It's actually the first one, more from a short-term perspective, to Petra. Petra, did I get your comment regarding the scale back on investment accurately, that the EBITDA in the second half should be better than in H1? Then overall, on the topic of profitability, it seems to be a paradigm shift from NFON, and I want to get a better feeling what that means then going forward. Looking at your focus now on profitability, is it fair to assume that growth going forward is likely to be a bit lower than the years prior to the pandemic, and therefore profitability is now going to be scaled up? Is that the right way to think about it?
Also to get your understanding in terms of the cash flow, should we also expect a cutback in terms of capitalization in the coming years, whereas with you saying that the peak of invest is behind? Lastly, just a technical question, can you share with us what the seat loss from the UK public sector customer was? Thank you.
All right. Petra, maybe I start with whatever I understood, and you take the whatever I missed, and please help me. I understand shift to you know question is is there a paradigm shift here to profitability? I wouldn't say not completely. Maybe, like, if you go you know a couple years back where it's basically just growth and we don't you know we will be profitable sometime in the future. Obviously you know a business model, and especially a scaling SaaS model, should scale at some point. I've been repeating this since I've been with the company.
We feel there's only, you know, you should invest as much as, you know, to maximize ROI on the profitability, but, you know, but not more. I think this is, you know, making, you know. We've basically implemented our strategy. I'm sorry about that. Implement a strategy, and there's no need to, you know, actually, you know, invest more. Profitability will ensue because, you know, revenues keep growing. You know, we don't have to, you know, like, go so hard after, you know, after the additional market growth, which, you know, may not be there right now. Actually it will automatically shift into, you know, into a higher profitability mode. As I said, like it's been, you know, our plan all along.
At some point, all of the investments, you know, need to bear fruit. Now it's a good time after we have the, you know, things in place that we need to deliver our growth. In terms of H2 comment, I think EBITDA H2 comment, I'll hand over to Petra.
Yeah. This one will be more profitable, definitely. Regarding the capitalization, we expect the capitalization on a more stable level. It's because we have now a certain amount of technical guys making the development, and we won't increase this, but we won't decrease the number of staff there too. We expect a certain level of constant development cost we can activate and will capitalize in the future years.
I think there was another question on the UK account.
Ah.
Which I remember. That was basically a public sector account that ran, basically had been a, you know, a long NFON customer that ran a second tender about 2 years ago or something. That was even before my days. Back then, we didn't have the, you know, the product, you know, to fulfill all those, you know, requirements of that tender and didn't win. Then, you know, decided they didn't wanna move off our platform and kinda like, you know, dragged it out as much as they could until they were legally required.
Oh.
You know, for us to turn them off actually. That happened sometime in Q2, and I think it was about 4,000-5,000 seats in as an order of magnitude. As I said, like, this is a little bit, you know, you know, cleaning up history of the past.
Thank you.
Thank you, Knut Woller. We are now hearing the questions from Stéphane Beyazian. Your line is now open.
Thank you. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?
Yes. There we can.
Yes.
Thank you. It's very useful, and I've got a question I'd like to follow up on the previous one. I just want to try to bridge the lower customer addition in the second quarter versus the first quarter and which are down by 15,000. I think you made clear that the customer losses is about a third of that. You also mentioned two of the factors. I think the repositioning and perhaps the rebranding and also the slower economic climate.
I'm just wondering whether you could, you know, perhaps help me guess between these two factors and also with the customer loss, and you'll try to help me understand by order, which one has been the most important you think in the customer addition in the second quarter, and whether you think that was again a bottom and you should hopefully do a little bit better in the second half. The second question I have, if that is possible, is regarding capital expenditures, which I can see are a little higher in the first half versus last year. I was just wondering whether we could just double that to have an estimate of the full year, which would then be around € 10 million.
I'm including tangible and intangible, by the way, in the overall calculation. Are you gonna run at much higher CapEx levels going forward, or they are just one-off payments that you've been making? Thank you.
All right. I think I'll take the first one. It was basically, you know, what is the decisive factor, you know, for slowed down customer additions. Is it, you know, the one basically big churned account? Is it, you know, overall market sentiment? I would say in Q2, obviously both, you know, played an important role. But, you know, that customer churn thing, that was a one-time effect. Also we have no visibility and, you know, for that we had, you know, quite long time, long-term visibility. We have no visibility of any other large customer that, you know, like in endangered for H2. And we have in terms of market environment, yes.
We've seen that, especially in the mass market. Basically, you know, our dealer channel, you know, has struggled a little bit in terms of, you know, just single-digit, you know, growth rates on their own. That definitely was a decisive factor. You know, considering, I mean, we're already in mid-Q3, and when you open the newspapers, I think the, you know, the market sentiment definitely hasn't improved. I think this is something, you know, obviously on top of that, you know, one-time churn, you know, there is, you know, some significant, you know, market momentum slowing down.
Obviously, you know, as I said, like, you know, even though, you know, the economic outlook might not be great, you know, many customers who will, you know, learn how to adjust that, and they will not, you know, postpone, important, you know, cloud investments forever. It's usually other things that they, you know, save money on. I'm actually confident, that, you know, we will be, you know, living, quite nicely also in a somewhat, you know, like a more difficult economic, climate, you know, Q4 and beyond. Yeah, I think, Petra, there was a question on the CapEx side.
Yes. Okay. Regarding the CapEx, to say it's like will be in the second half, more or less like in the first half. It will be lower in the upcoming years as right now we are developing CPSS system, which is a system which should support all our most of our business processes and make the order to cash process, for example, more efficient. There we have now we go full throttle with this project, but we'll have some activations next year for that, but with a lower to a lower rate. The upcoming years will have lower CapEx.
We invested this year and last year a lot into the data center, et cetera, and there we will be able to lower the investments in the upcoming years as well.
Thank you, Petra. That's useful. Klaus, please, if I may just follow up.
Please.
Trying to understand one thing because you did also the rebranding and the repositioning in the second quarter or at the end of the first quarter and between the second quarter. Did you decide to do that after starting to see that potentially the market was becoming more difficult? Or could this decision potentially also had an impact on your customer addition in the second quarter? Sorry, just to follow up a little bit, how did your partners react overall with your rebranding and the repositioning? Thank you.
Okay. No, first of all, I'm glad. Basically, it was a logical decision to do the rebranding when complementing the product portfolio and, you know, it was a decision, you know, we had done, you know, a long time ago. Obviously, you could always say, like, you know, does it make sense to do it in the moment when the market's slowing?
I would say in this case, yes, because it's, you know, very important for us, you know, to especially, you know, illustrate a new way we go forward when we also win new partners to have that. While it's, you know, I think it had zero impact on, you know, it's like mass, you know, customer acquisition in SME, and certainly not a negative one. It really has helped us positively, you know, with, you know, conversations with new partners and especially large partnerships. I mentioned one on 1&1 Versatel. As I said, like, this is gonna come, you know, become productive only sometime in Q4. This is, you know, it really helps for that.
Also other major partnerships, even existing partnerships, it's very important for them to understand what strategy we go and how we differentiate against hyperscalers, and has been very positively received. I think, you know, same as in our kinda, you know, say, like enterprise strategy, where, you know, like the contracting takes place a lot, you know, before actually the seats are being activated. I think for this it was the, you know, the right investment, the right time, and the payback will be, you know, multi-year going forward.
Very clear. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. We continue with the questions from Philipp Sennewald. Your line is now open.
Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Perfect. Thank you. Thanks for the presentation, guys. Some follow-ups to the questions from my colleagues. I would like to put the view a bit more midterm. You mentioned that the investment cycle is now over or at least next year. When I look at consensus, I see analysts expecting profitability on EBITDA level at, like, 2025. After your presentation now, can I assume that to come earlier? Second question, regarding your growth prospects. You mentioned cross and upsell and potentially your product portfolio. How much of your growth is expected to come from existing customers? Thank you.
Did I understand the first question correctly? Is it, like if we become EBITDA profitable before 2025?
Yes.
Yes, for sure. Like 2023.
Yeah.
That is our internal goal. Going forward, it's not a one-time thing, you know, we will be EBITDA profitable 2023+. On the cross and upsell, we usually look at it, you know, how much of, you know, the growth comes from new customers versus existing customers. Usually I have those numbers ready. Unfortunately, I've had fever for a week now because I have COVID, and I kinda think I lost that data point. I think it's. Is it about, how much is it?
I think in rough estimate would be two-thirds from new customers.
I think two-thirds, one-third, yeah?
One-third, yeah.
2/3 new customers, 1/3 existing customers.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, thank you.
It varies over time, but it's a rough estimation you can live with, I think.
Yeah, just wanna have like a target range for that.
Yeah.
Very, very helpful. Thank you guys.
Thank you for your questions. There are further questions from Thomas Coudry. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Thank you very much. A few questions please. First, following up on the discussion about investments. So we understand that investments are expected to decrease at least next year. Hopefully revenue will keep on growing. What would be the, let's say, the run rate CapEx to sales ratio that we should expect in your business? Then my second question, a little bit in the same idea is indeed you mentioned EBITDA breakeven target by 2023. What about cash flow? I mean or at least EBITDA minus CapEx breakeven objective. When should we expect, you know, to the company to turn profitable in terms of cash generation?
Do you feel that the cash that you currently have at hand is enough to finance the upcoming negative cash flows? Or should we expect any further capital raise at one point? If I may, one last question, more about the, let's say, competitive environment. Do you see any, in the current challenging, we would say, economic context, do you see it as more favorable or maybe less unfavorable to the leaders, like Teams or RingCentral or to the challengers? Does it make a difference here between whether you're a leader or you're a challenger? More specifically also, do you see different dynamics in this, let's say, gloomy context between your wholesale and your retail offers?
Is there something different here, or is it the same market sentiment across all offers? Thank you very much.
Klaus, I would start with the first three questions. The CapEx will stay quite stable or decrease slightly, so it will get a better ratio from year to year. But to be honest, I don't have the figure at hand, but you can if you calculate for your estimates with a stable or slightly decreasing investment CapEx rate, I think you will get along. If you have further questions, I ask you kindly to come back to me. The other thing is when we will be cash flow positive, so we don't make any guidance therefore sure, but it's like, it will be a little bit later, but not that much later.
This, I can tell you when I answer the third question, as we don't plan to make a capital increase for organic growth. We might come back to the market if we have any interesting target. We think we can get along and have enough money, but we only do so when we get cash positive at a certain time. Midterm, we definitely want to be cash positive, and we reduced the cash burn rate by growing and not increasing the cost. We are quite confident that we will have enough headroom here to work with.
Okay. You mentioned if the current environment changes that I'm sorry. Sorry.
No problem.
You mentioned, you know, it's in this competitive environment, it's better to be a leader or a challenger. I would say it's usually, you know, there's obviously exceptions, but usually better to be a leader. This hasn't really changed at this point. Question is like, who is perceived as a leader in what segment, in what market? I think that is, you know, quite different. I think the one thing that has actually improved, you know, for us, is that, you know, our local, let's say, credentials, you know, that we are, you know, a local player. That has actually, you know, become more important for partners.
I would say obviously, you know, Teams is, you know, helped by the fact that, you know, most companies have standardized on Office 365, so they kinda, you know, have a Teams solution already. According to the last publication by Cavell, it's, you know, less than 5% of Teams users are actually using, you know, the voice capabilities. Therefore, you know, it's just a, I would say, a huge market opportunity to help, you know, with additional, you know, like, offerings around that, which, you know, has been always, you know, center of our strategy.
Okay.
I think there was another question regarding wholesale versus retail. I don't think that has changed dramatically, to be honest. You know, I think for us, obviously, you know, how we handle it, you know, it's always a different thing. I think for the market, you know, there are some very wholesale-centric markets, you know, like the UK, for example. You know, wholesalers, especially large ones, are obviously in different levels of partners in how they work, how they think, how they make decisions, how fast they move. You know, we have done that for years, and we know how to do that. For us, it hasn't really changed that much.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your questions. We have one question in the chat left, as all others have already been answered. If there are still open topics, please let us know. There is one question. You already mentioned the EBITDA breakeven objective, but when do you expect to become cash flow positive? And is cash available in hand enough to fund your upcoming growth, or do you anticipate capital raise to finance further investment, for example, which are necessary to keep up in R&D?
I think this one I've just answered.
Has already been answered as well.
Yeah. Yeah.
All right. We skip this one and go over to the valuations in the UCaaS industry have come down significantly. You reported € 1.2 million on M&A costs in the first half of this year. Can you explain why you incurred these costs?
Yes. Obviously, you know, I think we always do M&A. I keep mentioning that has been part of our strategy. You know, there's not a week I don't spend time on this significantly. We've done more intensive, I would say like looks at different companies in the first half. You know, even had one larger project. Actually, since the valuations have come down, also stock prices have come down, which made financing, you know, somewhat more difficult, at least using shares.
That's also one of the reasons why, you know, we abandoned one of the projects having incurred one-time costs. You know, this was a little bit more than usual, but you know, other than that, you know, this is still, you know, like a day-to-day thing we do and, you know, where we evaluate where we can, you know, increase our profitable growth.
Um-
I think that's. Is it Stéphane's question, maybe? Because I think there's another one.
Exactly. There's a follow-up question regarding the high inflation and if you are considering to increase subscription prices.
Mm-hmm
Is this possible given the competition in the market?
Okay. Yes and no. Yes, obviously, you know, in certain we have done a couple of reach outs to individual customer segments to increase subscription prices. In this case, it has been, you know, mostly customers, you know, who have, you know, had you know special conditions on on the current tariff, and we reached out to a couple customers on old tariffs. You know, in terms of, you know, say, rather homogenizing, you know, the customer base in terms of their tariffs, rather than just, you know, increase the prices. There has been basically a mixed impact from that.
Some have higher prices, some have lower prices, but you know, a more modern tariff that we can, you know, more easily manage. This is obviously something, you know, we you know will have to do on a continuous basis, with the inflation. It is always a tricky business, but you know, most competitors are, you know, in the same situation. So far we have not increased our new prices. The price list, you know, has been stable. This is definitely something, you know, we continuously look at by customer segment, and is, you know, obviously we cannot exclude that because, you know, we have to you know digest inflation as well, and we will continue to do so.
All right. Thank you. There is a follow-up question from Mr. Beyazian.
Thank you. Yes, two quick ones just to follow up. Assuming, you know, obviously we, well, I say obviously, but we enter a recession scenario. First, do you expect market consolidation, or do you think it will favor market consolidation between relatively large scale UCaaS players in Europe? Second question, would you then be considering also closing some markets where you're potentially not getting as much traction as you wanted, and which are unprofitable today? Thank you. By the way, thank you and congratulations for doing that call with COVID, by the way.
Thank you. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe the one or the other has made the experience personally. Now, in terms of market consolidation, yes, in general, you know, I would say that, you know, that drives market consolidation. I think it's just, you know, what you see now is that, you know, many, you know, strategic players like ours, you know, have basically the means to finance, you know, the consolidation have, you know, become a little bit more restricted. You know, some boards have also become a little bit more, I would say, restrictive in terms of, you know, how, you know, at what time, you know, to do, you know, a major move. You know, just smaller consolidation, obviously, you know, will still, you know, continue.
You had, sorry, another really smart question after that in terms of.
Closing markets.
Oh, yes. Exactly.
Which are unprofitable.
Exactly. Yeah. I think that's an excellent point. That is actually, you know, the case. You know, we have actually started to do that in the beginning of this year, where we, you know, ramped down our operation in France a little bit because we need to, as I said, like, we need to focus our investments where they're most profitable. If profitability is the focus, you know, there are, you know, obviously some dollars that go further than others. This is, you know, we go through our, you know, portfolio, you know, I would say like on an ongoing basis, especially when it comes to sales and marketing and headcount investments.
Yes, it's entirely conceivable that we also ramp down, you know, some areas when we find good ways to invest in others. Yeah. For us, you know, I always say, like, you know, kinda like what our core markets are. Obviously it's good to have, you know, new markets with high growth perspectives. You know, it all has to be, you know, kinda like, you know, fit into the portfolio.
You know, our goal is not to you know like glow all in a dark blue color, but to you know really select you know where you know we can grow fastest you know with the you know with the Euro invested.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thanks for the follow-up questions. We did not receive any further questions in the meantime, which means that we are coming to the end of your earnings call. Thank you very much for listening and all your questions, and also again to you, Mr. von Rottkay and Petra Boss, for your presentation, taking the time. I hand over to you for some final remarks.
All right. You know, it was my pleasure to discuss with you. Thank you for the very, you know, the many really good questions. Obviously, we're you know in very interesting you know point in time, like in terms of you know both where we are in terms of development in the country, where we're actually quite happy where we are, but you know like you know meeting a different you know a different market environment. We think that we actually have the right things in place now and the right strategy to succeed in that.
I'm really looking forward to, you know, getting some of the, you know, the promising beginnings and partnerships that we have started, and, you know, to see them bear fruit in, you know, the coming quarters and years. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Get well soon, Mr. von Rottkay, of course.
All right. I'll do my best. Thank you.