Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to q.beyond's conference call regarding the third quarter results 2021. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now give the floor to Mr. Jürgen Hermann. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and hello and welcome to our Q3 conference call. My name, as mentioned, is Jürgen Hermann. I'm the CEO of the company. With me, like always, is Arne Thull, our Head of Investor Relations and responsible for M&A. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it was another quarter, by the way, the ninth one, on the execution of our growth strategy 2020plus that we launched in spring 2019. It was, from my point of view, an extraordinary quarter because we were able to sell our colocation business as promised, and from my point of view, quite successful. When we look on page three, you can see the impact of this sale. Let me start with the revenue development.
You can see that we were able to increase revenues from EUR 35.1 million in the last quarter to EUR 40 million in this quarter. This was purely from the operating result. There was no impact from the colocation side, colocation sale. The colocation side, with the impact you can see on the EBITDA and the consolidated net income, and I come to that later on, but the impact was quite high and very positive. The free cash flow increased as well to EUR 30.6 million with a small impact out of the sale. The major impact will be shown in Q4 because the closing of the second transaction was done early October.
With that, let's come to page four, where we have, because it was an extraordinary impact, you can see the colocation sale at a glance. Just to remember, that colocation business is a business that is just based on renting space, in our data centers in Munich and Nuremberg. Due to the fact that we decided not to invest or to build further data center capacity, it was consequently that we put that in a separate legal entity and sold it. This sale was quite a strategic one, and it took place in two steps. The first one was, end of July when we sold, IP Colocation, which is a separate entity mainly, or purely, serving the existing customer data.
The second one was signed in September with the larger part, the company IP Exchange. This was sold to NorthC Group, as mentioned. Both transactions, as shown in the slide before, led to one-off accounting gains and high inflows of funds. Coming back to, I think, apart from this extraordinary impact on the normal business, and you can see on page five the development in revenues. Compared to Q1, Q2, and Q3 last year, you can see that we were able to increase revenues by 10, 12, and for this quarter, 14%.
For me, quite important is the fact that nearly 80% in this quarter is based on a recurring revenue level, and 65% of these revenues came from our four focus sectors, retail, logistics, manufacturing, and energy. Another important KPI, you know that on page six, is our order entry. Order entry in the first nine months increased to EUR 141.7 million. The number for Q3 was EUR 25.4 million. Let me say at this point that we're always looking for, let's say, a basic normal order entry, which is between 20, 25, 30 million per quarter. On top of that, and this is something we cannot plan on a daily basis, there are one, two, three larger projects. I can tell you that we were able to sign a larger deal in October.
Large means in our definition, order entry with two-digit million volume. So based on this signing, I'm pretty confident that we can achieve for the full year an order entry above EUR 180 million, which is a new record in the history of the company. When we look at the segments, first on page seven, we can see that Cloud & IoT was really the main driver of that revenue development. Q3 was up by 20% compared to last year, and based on the fact that there's a huge demand for cloud solution and still digital workplaces. And we know all that this is partly driven by the pandemic situation and digitization projects.
I'm quite confident, quite happy that on the same side, we were able to increase the segment contribution from EUR 1.4 million-EUR 3.2 million in Q3. SAP, on the next slide, is still impacted by the pandemic situation because we are not able to do the project on the customer premises. There's one reason, as mentioned in the calls before. The second one is that there are still some companies that are in a certain way waiting, what's going on with the development before they start S/4HANA transformation. I do not expect, and we can see that already, because you know that the year is nearly over.
I do not expect a great change this year, but I'm still confident that we will have a positive development in next year concerning S/4HANA transformation. This is mainly driving our S/4HANA business overall. Let's have a look at page nine at the P&L, and you can see the development in revenues. You can see that gross profit rises by nearly 50%, and you can see that even the segment contribution increased from EUR 2 million to EUR 5 million. These three numbers is based on our operating performance and has nothing to do with the sale of the colocation business. The impact of the sale of the colocation business you can see below the segment contribution. There's roughly EUR 1 million one-off transaction costs included in G&A expenses.
You can see the other operating income + EUR 33.2 million. You can see the other operating expenses of -EUR 3.8 million, which is nearly 100% based on the transaction as well. When you take the 33 and the 3.8 and the EUR 1 million mentioned before, you come roughly to the EUR 27.8 million, which is net impact of the sale. The accounting gains on one hand and reduced by goodwill and transaction costs on the other hand. This is one-off. On page 10, you can see the operating EBITDA. In a certain way, cleaned by the transaction.
You can see that EBITDA increased from 0.6 or -0.6 to 1.6 in this quarter, which is quite a positive development. On the next slide, on page 11, next slide, you can see that as in the quarters before, the marginal impact is quite substantial with more than 40%. An increase of EUR 4.9 million in revenues led to an increase in EBITDA of EUR 2.2 million. Apart from the fact that we were able to successfully sell the colocation business, the operational development is in a good shape as well. Positive free cash flow in Q3, and we expect, of course, a huge impact on free cash flow in Q4.
On this slide, on page 12, you can see the net cash position end of June. There were some outflows due to the latest M&A transactions with EUR 6.3 million, and we have a positive impact of EUR 3.6 million. To explain that, there was of course the inflow of the first transaction due to dead data. There was a negative impact because with the business and the consolidation impact - EUR 7 million out of the business. We have a huge inflow that we expect in Q4, and with that, we will end up with a very positive cash balance end of the year.
This led on page 13 to a solid balance sheet. Equity ratio rises to 75%. With that, we have a very good basis to look for further M&A transactions to support the development of the growth strategy and of the company. As mentioned, M&A, there's no doubt that when we look at the five columns of our growth strategy, which is recurring revenues with the core portfolio, we have our expected next portfolio, platform-based business. We have our sector focus. We have our performance culture. As always mentioned, we have our investments concerning research and development on one hand and on M&A on the other hand.
We are still looking for targets in the area of the focus sectors, in the area of extending our product portfolio and concerning technology. The only point that changed with the sale of the colocation business is that we now can look even for higher targets, higher in the sense of revenues. Now we are looking for companies with annual revenues of up to EUR 30 million to support our growth strategy on one hand, but on the other hand as well, to compensate the fact that now colocation business is gone and you know, and you remember that it stands for roughly EUR 20 million of revenues, which we wanna compensate by M&A transactions. On page 15 is the forecast.
For the time being, we expect an EBITDA of more than EUR 31 million for this year. Of course, it was driven by the one-time impact of the sale. We are quite happy with that development. Coming to the revenues. You know, the guidance which was adjusted after we sold the colocation business because for the fourth quarter we are missing roughly EUR 5 million in revenues consequently. The former guidance from EUR 160 million to EUR 170 million is now transaction-based EUR 155 million to EUR 165 million. The same to the target last year. We will come out with the guidance for next year end of March next year, maybe early April. We are just in discussion with that.
This was in a nutshell, the development in Q3. Thank you very much so far. Of course, like always, we are happy to take your questions, ladies and gentlemen.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel your question, press nine and the star key again. Please press nine and the star key now to state your question. The first question comes from Jonas Blum. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon and thanks for taking the questions. Just perhaps firstly touching on CapEx. You mentioned in your report that you also invested in platform-based innovations. Could you just give us a bit more color here on what you invested in? Is this a finalized project or is it rather a recurring or ongoing investment?
Yeah, thanks for that question, Jonas. What we mean with platform-based innovations or platform-based CapEx is that. Platform in a certain way is mainly misleading. Platform in our definition means Software as a Service-based technology. That is what we are talking about when we are talking about platform economy. The investment here is mainly the fact that we are investing in research and development to build up those platforms, which are roughly EUR 5 million-EUR 6 million per year. We expensed it last year, and we will do it this year as well. That is what we are talking about here.
The reason for that is that although our core portfolio is well suited for the market and is still a growth driver, we want to prepare for the years 2023, 2024, 2025, where we wanna introduce new platform-based services for our sector focus.
Okay, understood. Coming back to the Cloud & IoT segment, could you just remind us on the organic growth you achieved in Q3 ex. M&A activities? Also perhaps if you could help us understand, did you already book incremental revenues from the Röhlig order? Or is it too early, and do you rather expect first revenues coming in Q4?
The impact of the Cloud & IoT segment is mainly organic. When we are talking about Röhlig , Röhlig has two elements. One is the customer Röhlig that we started to put on our platform on 1st of September. The other, let's say, chances and potential that we see in logistics is that with a new company that will, let's say, start I think next week, maybe in two weeks, where we wanna address further customers in the logistics market.
Röhlig is a normal customer in that context that we want, where we're doing just normal operating managed services business, and the transformation started in September. The Cloud & IoT segment was mainly driven by the organic development.
Okay, got it. Thanks a lot.
Okay. At the moment, there seem to be no further questions. If you would like to state another question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone now. Let's just wait a couple of moments. The next question comes from Sebastian Weidhüner. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions too. I have two left. The first one, how's the business going at Snabble? I think at the time of the investment, the solution was installed in two ALDI stores, and currently there are 17 on the website. In addition to that, IMKEREI SCHIESSER and Mey & Edlich have been acquired as new customers. Can you give me please an update here?
Of course, Sebastian, but you summarized it already very, very well. The business is going well. Of course, there's a lot of, let's say projects where the first retail stores and companies are getting their first experience with that solution. Let me just add, this is quite important, sometimes it's we're talking about scan and go. I prefer that we are talking about self-checkout because of course for the time being, scanning with the app is the preferred solution, especially Tegut is doing a very good experience here. On the other hand, we are working on further technologies to record the pricing.
At the end of the day, the platform is the main, let's say, advantage of Snabble to drive that all and to implement at the end of the day, a sophisticated, self-checkout solution for the retail stores. So far since we acquired the stake in Snabble, we are happy with the development. There are further projects in discussions with other retailers and so far we are fully in line.
Thank you. Do you have a view of the estimated revenue in full year 2021 for Snabble?
Definitely, I think it can be somewhere between EUR 1.5 million and EUR 2 million if everything works well, yeah. Which is far away from a startup from my point of view. It's already proves that the solution is well accepted and widely in place.
Okay, clear for me. The next one is you had a tax expense of EUR 4.4 million in Q3 and cash effective were EUR 3.4 million. After nine months, this is a tax rate above 20%. With regard to the loss carry forward, what tax outflow do you expect in Q4?
I have to check out. I think, it's roughly EUR 3 million, and this is mainly driven by the sale of the colocation business.
Okay, thanks a lot.
Okay, at the moment we have no further questions, so let me hand back over to your host for some closing remarks.
When there are no further questions, I think then Arne did a good job in advance, or the presentation was quite good, or both, whatever. Thank you for attending the call. Thank you for the questions. Yeah, maybe we see us or meet us on the Deutsches Eigenkapitalforum. I think next year again we plan end of March, early April to be prepared to present to you and to the market, let's say the strategy beyond 2022 and the outlook for the next years because next year's in our growth strategy 2020plus the third year, and therefore we'll come out with a follow-up. Yeah, thanks for taking part again and stay healthy and see you.