Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the q.beyond conference call regarding the Q1 results 2022. At this time, I'd like to ask you to please place your lines in a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now give the floor to Jürgen Hermann.
Thank you very much, and a warm welcome from my side. I'm here in Cologne together with my colleague, Arne Thull, our Head of M&A and Investor Relations. Concerning the financial markets, we are still in difficult times, and I think you know that much better than I do. However, our business is solid and developing well. We had a good start in 2022, and it's the first quarterly result after our presentation on the capital market day early April. In general, everything is in line with our expectation. Yeah, let's come to page three. What does it mean? You can see that we are on a growth course, and I think I wanna highlight the double-digit revenue growth, the very good order entry.
The fact that we were able to gain Fressnapf as a customer for our SaaS solution, StoreButler, which is well suited for digitizing the stores in the retail area and the retail sector. Further SaaS solutions, for example, our IoT platform, are doing well also. Above all that, and I will come to that later in much more detail, we are making good progress in integrating our new subsidiaries that we bought last year. Coming to the revenue on the next slide, you can see that we are up 10% compared to the Q1 last year. Still near to 80%, to be precise, 78% of these revenues are recurring.
Which is especially in this environment for us as management, as company, very important, because it gives us a stability of our business, and as said, much important in these times. As you can see as well, the majority of these revenues are generated in our four focus sectors, retail, logistics, manufacturing, and energy. As said in the introduction, we had very good order intake in the Q1 . Order entry, which is the legally binding volume of signed contracts in our definition, was EUR 76 million, which is much more than last year.
EUR 35 million, which is approximately 47%, is related to contract extensions, especially one large customer, which is Fresenius, where we were able to extend a part of the existing contract. The remaining part will follow during this year. This is reliable foundation for the growth to come in the next quarters. On the next slide, you can see that we are in a good way concerning our SaaS business. Just to repeat that. We are reporting in two segments, which is cloud and IoT on one hand and SAP on the other hand. The SaaS business is so far part of our cloud and IoT segment, but it is very important for the future.
We had a lot of slides, including our CMD presentation, as mentioned, to explain the different solutions that we developed or bought for the focus sectors. We are gaining from up to EUR 15-20 million revenues in this year, coming from a basis of EUR 8 million last year, which would be a very good development. The way, as mentioned before, is on the one hand, develop it in-house or generate via acquisitions. As mentioned, we are currently negotiating a further SaaS solution, especially for the energy sector. To be honest, we have no pressure here.
It is important that at the end of the day, the valuation that we are discussing with this party meets our expectations. So far, you can see that related to the war in Ukraine, the energy sector is a little bit under pressure. Coming to our subsidiaries on the next slide. Good news here, datac as the specialist for digital workplace business is pressing ahead. We made good progress on the integration of their solutions on one hand and our internal solutions and internal resources on the other hand. The portfolio in this important environment is aligned. In the logistics sector, you know that we have the two companies, logineer and cargonerds.
So far we had the first promising project started, which is quite positive, because only a few months after we have founded the company, we have already three SaaS solutions in place. Concerning scanplus, our latest acquisition, which really is developing as well, we have started the execution of the integration. We will move the data center in their region in our data center in Hamburg until end of this year. Concerning which is important for the sales area, we are expanding the portfolio of scanplus, which is well suited for Telekom Deutschland with SAP and other services. Overall, these new subsidiaries are doing well and are already offsetting the impact of the colocation sale last year concerning the revenue side.
Let's take a look on the two segments. We start with cloud business. Here we can see a very strong growth of 22% compared to last year, and the drivers are the rising demand for cloud and SaaS solutions on one hand, and as mentioned, the success of the new subsidiaries. On the other hand, we have two cost structures. One is the expansion of this environment, and the second one is change structure. We know that colocation business is very CapEx intensive, but with high margins, so there was a change. Definitely, and this is something that we announced during the CMD as well, we expect two-digit margins starting next year concerning ScanPlus. Overall, the segment contribution is expected to increase in quarters ahead.
Concerning SAP, we can see expected but a weak start. This has to do with the fact that projects have been delayed due to the fact that entire teams on the customer side, on one hand, as well as at q.beyond are in quarantine. We are quite sure that we are able to improve that in the H2 of this year concerning revenues as well as margins. The next slide is a full view on the P&L, which is at the end of the day, the result of the two segments. Let me just highlight the two cost factors that had an impact on the P&L. One is the investment in SaaS business, which is our entrepreneurial decision.
Second, the integration of scanplus, especially concerning data center migration and other aspects. With that, let's have a quick view on the balance sheet. Still rock solid financing. Net liquidity was affected by the redemption of the lease liabilities at scanplus, as planned and as expected. q.beyond is still in the position to finance its growth from its own resources with an equity ratio of more than 75%, and as we see that, no liabilities at all to banks. With that, we are confident to confirm the full year forecast for this year, especially headed by the strong order intake in the Q1 .
We expect that the revenues will grow to at least EUR 180 million, up to EUR 200 million, which would mean at the lower end, a growth of 16%. EBITDA is expected to rise up to EUR 8 million on the lower side and EUR 10 million-EUR 60 million on the upper side, and free cash flow at a maximum of -EUR 10 million as announced so far. Yeah, what are the key drivers that make us confident to confirm our guidance concerning revenues? It's three. It's a recovery in SAP business, especially in the H2 . It's the ongoing cloud growth that we can see even today, and it's development and positive growth in the SaaS revenues.
Yeah, with that, just let me highlight our, let's not say strategy at the end of the day, but it's the fact that we continue what we started in 2019, where we announced our strategy 2020 plus for the years 2020, 2021 and 2022. In April, we announced our prolongation of that with our strategy beyond 2022, and you can see that on that slide, where we give you a full size concerning revenue growth on one hand, and how it is split into the different, let's say, segments or business areas. We mentioned that as well, that starting next year, we will show that as a separate third segment on its own. This was the presentation of Q1. No big surprises.
On one hand, it's just what we already told early April, so no surprises. We had a good start. Yeah, I'm prepared to take your questions. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel your question, press nine star again. The first question comes from Jonas Blum with Warburg Research. Please go with your question.
Yeah. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking the questions. Three from my side, please. First, with regards to the order intake, besides the large-scale order, where do you currently see strongest demand? Just out of curiosity, is there also any inorganic factors driving this number in Q1, which was obviously very strong? Secondly, with regards to current macroeconomic uncertainties, do you forecast or do you actually already see a change in customer behaviors, especially when it comes to investing in new IT projects? Finally, just on the numbers side, could you quantify the total upfront investment in your SaaS business? Also, could you give a bit more color on what goes into higher personnel and what goes into cloud services? Do you see this number flattening out over a year, or is it more steady number?
Yeah. Thanks, Jonas, for your question. As mentioned, you can see that in the Q1 numbers that cloud business is a driver. What we can see here is still the fact that these kind of business or let's say our portfolio meets the expectations of our customers to increase efficiency. That's, at the end of the day, the name of the story. What we can see here is definitely the change from own data centers, from own operation of IT to a professional provider, which is the first driver. The second driver is definitely digital workplace. All the solutions around Microsoft 365 where we can see a strong demand. This is the main drivers in this area.
Concerning the macroeconomic environment, I can tell you that so far, apart from the SAP business, where we have a delay in projects, we can see in the cloud area and in other areas, no changes so far. Hope this will stay as so far we can see it, but this is definitely something that is on our vision list. As mentioned, for us it's very important that we have a solid, stable business concerning existing contracts. I'm pretty sure that if the macroeconomic pressure is increasing, there's still the demand of increasing the efficiency, and we have the right answer and the right solutions for that. Concerning the investment of SaaS business, we invested in Q1 between EUR 1.5 million and EUR 2 million, which is fully on P&L.
Can I just follow up, how much of those EUR 1.5 million-EUR 2 million goes into personnel and how much does go into cloud services?
At the end of the day, it's nearly all personnel because it's the fact that our own developers, our own people are not in projects that we can build to the customer. They are working on our own solutions. This is driver. As long as the solution is not generating high revenues, we are still putting on the P&L. Let's say more than 90% is headcount.
Understood. Thanks a lot.
The next question comes from Yannick Wiening from Jefferies. Please go with your question.
Yeah. Thank you. Good afternoon. Two questions left for me, pretty much. One would be on the new SaaS solutions. Is there the interest in these solutions, is it already visible from the order entry that you get to see? The second one, maybe an update on the general M&A pipeline. Just if you can, also some details on the status of the potential SaaS targets that you talked about earlier. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Yannick. New SaaS solutions, so far we can see definitely the order entry, which is included in the Q1 number as well, which is Fressnapf, which was EUR 1-9 million with a contract period of five years. In the other areas, it's more project driven so far, to be honest. Of course, we are quite confident that this will change within the next quarters. Concerning the M&A pipeline, we have, of course, always, let's say three to five projects where we have an eye on. Hot in a sense of intensive talks is the one target which we already mentioned. As said, we are not done.
We will look at that, and it's not that we have the pressure to execute that. At the end of the day, it's a question how confident we are that the development of this new business, of the SaaS solutions will be positive in a short, at least midterm period, and secondly, that the valuation should fit our expectations. So far, we are not in the position to sign it tomorrow, put it this way. I can tell you if it will be successful, it will be signed in the Q2 or not. This is my expectation here.
Okay. Understood. Thank you.
At the moment, there seem to be no further questions. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star. There are no further questions.
Yeah, thanks. Which is not a big surprise for me, to be honest, because we had intensive and good discussions early April with our strategy beyond 2022, where we have a lot of investors and analysts in Frankfurt and virtually connected as well. Thank you very much for taking part today, and hopefully you will see us on our virtual AGM on May 18th. Thanks a lot, and stay healthy.