Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the SNP SE conference call regarding the third quarter results 2023. 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 turn the floor over to your host, Marcel Wiskow. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator. Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation again. After releasing the preliminary figures about three weeks ago, we published our full results for the third quarter today. As usual, all the corresponding material, and later on, the use presentation can be found on our website in the section Investor Relations. The participants on the company side are the same as for the Q2 call in August, to begin with our CEO, Jens Amail, accompanied, and for the second time in this setup, Andreas Röderer, CFO since June this year. Let's take a brief look of our agenda for today. Improvement of the first part will be presented by Jens. He will give us an overview of the first nine months and the outlook for the full year.
Second part, covering the financials, will be presented by Andreas, and the third part dedicated, as usual, to the Q&A session. With this introducing words, I will hand over to Jens.
Thank you very much, Marcel, and hello, everybody, also from my side. Thank you for joining the call, and thank you for your interest in SNP. Let me start again by thanking our customers and partners for the trust they continue to put in SNP. And also, let me thank all my colleagues here at SNP for their incredible focus on the success of our customers and partners. We have a deep understanding here at SNP that we only win if our customers and partners win. And the figures we will be discussing here today in just a few minutes are just a result of our dedication to the success of our customers and partners, working very hard every single day to really earn the trust of our customers and partners. So what are the key headlines after Q3?
So as Marcel said, we already released the preliminary numbers a little bit more than two weeks ago, so the top line was pretty much right on the money. On the EBIT side, we are actually a little bit better, EUR 300,000 better than we announced early. In terms of the summary of the headlines, we had a good Q3 from a top-line perspective, we continued to grow. We had a very good software business with an over proportional growth on the software side. We also made strong progress, and Andreas Röderer will give you an update in a few minutes on the EBIT side, but also on the operating cash flow side. All four, that's the fourth bullet here, all strategic focus areas kick in.
So, as for internationalization and our partner business, and we slightly increased the guidance, and we will keep this in this call for 2023. So when we just quickly then double-click on the five areas. So first, as I said, we continue to grow. We build on the success we had in Q1 and Q2. Overall, we are sitting at an order entry of EUR 170 million, which represents roughly 38% year-over-year growth, and the revenue increased by 20% to around about EUR 150 million after nine months, which represents 20% growth year-over-year. I mentioned that we had a strong quarter from a software perspective side.
We see a very, a very positive market response to our software platform, CrystalBridge. Our software revenue, our order entry was growing for the full year by 40%, in the quarter including Q3, 62%. So much stronger than our services business. And from a revenue perspective, the software revenue went up 31%, also here, stronger than what we've seen for the entire company. So good progress on the software side. Also, Andreas will give you most of the update here, but I still want to highlight that the EBIT, pretty much, we are at a 4x, in spite of currency headwinds, compared to nine months in 2022.
Strong improvement here. What I'm particularly proud of, and where we have a very strong focus on as a company, and again, Andreas will give you much more details here. The operational cash flow significantly improved by EUR 11 million. We are still negative, but Andreas will explain why there was a one-off effect, which was implemented last year in Q4. But overall, again, you will get the details later, not only from an EBIT perspective, also from an operational cash flow perspective, we are, we are making progress. As I said, all key strategic focus areas contribute, so we are more than doubled our S/4 business, and this represents, in the meantime, around 50% of our overall business.
The partner business is really kicking in much stronger than last year. Here, an order entry growth of 61% and a revenue growth of 32%, and I'm particularly happy with the growth we are seeing in our international markets. I will share more details on that later. As I said, we keep the guidance, which we have slightly increased two and a half weeks ago. The Q3 figures, after I gave you an overview about the first nine months, order entry is at EUR 60.2 million, so a growth of 50%, group revenue at EUR 54.1 million, with a plus of 30%. EBIT is at EUR 4.8 million.
Yeah, last year in Q3, we were at EUR 0.1 million, in spite of a very positive currency impact. So we wanted to have some fun with the year-over-year number, but this would have been then something like 3,500, whatever percent. So we're just saying +100%, but jokes aside, stronger than of course last year last year at EUR 0.1 million . So then if you look at the pile in the middle at the bottom, you see the software business, and here we can report, as I already said, a very strong 62% year-over-year on the order entry side, and a 40% plus on the revenue side. Partner business, very strong.
I will double-click on that a little bit later, with 97% year-over-year growth. The nine-month figures I already shared at the beginning. Here, I just want to again focus on the partner side, with a EUR 62.9 million order entry in the first nine months. Again, a +61%. We now have a share of 37% of our total order entry, which is contributed by partners. So let's double-click on that and go to the next slide, Marcel. We always talked about our partner business also for the last, let's say, two, three years, but this is really a breakthrough compared with the past.
So when we look at the order entry growth last year, after nine months, we were at 5% year-over-year compared to 2021, and in Q3 2022, we were at 10% year-over-year. So, we were always focusing on that. We were always growing the partner business, but these very, very strong numbers are a real breakthrough, with 97% in Q3 and 61% for year- to- date, for the first nine months. Some of you might have seen the announcement we did with IBM, where we announced a fully integrated delivery factory through a global center of excellence. The contracts are in place. Here, we work as one CoE globally between the two practices, and IBM resources are getting trained this week.
There is no upfront revenue associated with that, but it's a very important milestone for the collaboration with IBM, because we now have an integrated center of excellence for data migration. Then I wanna underline that we also extend the partnership with EY globally. So we already had some very good regional collaboration, and also with smartShift as a technology partner also here. Very good regional collaboration, particularly in Europe. But now we have established a global framework and a global enablement program on the sales side, and we will also explore synergies on the product side. So where is the growth coming from when we look at a deal band?
So when we first have a look at Q3 only, you see, and that's why I took the time at the beginning, that more and more customers are really putting also trust in us as a strategic partner. Yeah. We have a strong run rate business, but when you look at what really makes the difference is that we have four deals with a transaction volume of more than EUR 3 million, and this makes the difference compared to Q3 2022. Yeah. Similar picture when we look at the first nine months. So here, all the deals bigger than EUR 500,000 make a huge difference.
If we look at the run rate below EUR 500,000, we had a stronger business actually last year, but everything bigger than EUR 500,000 makes then the difference, leading to a 13.8% growth in order entry. So when we look at the top line order entry contribution by region, I wanna start with highlighting that we've been struggling in JAPAC. We had quite a few personal issues, and personal issues is now not a euphemism for not performing. These were real personal issues and private issues, which we respect and we work through it as a team. When we look at the three focus markets, we had good results, actually excellent results in Southeast Asia.
But as I mentioned, due to a few personal issues, we were significantly lacking in Australia and Japan. In Japan, we now announced a new managing director with a very strong reputation, Hosotani-san , with a background at Google and SAP. Yeah, so, that was clearly a quarter of consolidation. So we are not happy with the results here. We fully understand the reasons for that, and we will fix it. Then, I'm very proud of what we have accomplished in U.K.I. and in the U.S. I've been working for many years in both market units, six years in the U.S., three years in the U.K. These are the biggest IT markets in the world.
Very competitive, very tough markets, and we've been able to more than double our business in U.K.I. and the U.S. So we see a growth of 147% in U.K.I, and a growth of 131% in the U.S. Also, internationally in LATAM, very strong growth with a 61% year-over-year, after nine months. Still, I wanna highlight the performance of our home market here in Central Europe. When you look at the performance of Central Europe in Q3, we've been growing the business by more than 50% on a very high level, which is really a remarkable performance by Oli Schwede, Thilo Nagler, and the entire leadership team in Central Europe.
Last thing I wanna highlight are the two bullets here on the right side in terms of S/4. So, as I already briefly indicated, we could more than double our business. So now, and the precise numbers are 114% year-over-year, after nine months, and the S/4 business now accounts for a little bit more than 50% of our total order entry. Then, when we have a look at the EBIT, so we already had a little bit fun with that in terms of the percentage growth, so let's not go there.
But when we start here on the left side, at EUR 0.1 million , that was, of course, not a good performance in spite of currency and tailwinds, in spite of very positive currency effects last year in Q3. Then, on top, we have EUR 12.3 million in revenue increase. Out of the EUR 12.3 million, 41% is software. Yeah. Then, of course, we have more people, we have salary increases. So, EUR 4.6 million are eaten out of the revenue increase from a personal expenses perspective. And this is something we don't wanna see too much in the next quarter, so we have an increase in OpEx of EUR 2.5 million.
These are marketing expenses still related to Transformation World, higher travel expenses than at the same point in time last year. So last year was still impacted by COVID and travel control. This year we felt it's important, particularly that the global teams get together, so everything within budget, but year-over-year an increase. We have some external consulting work which needed to be done. We had also related to the takeover bit, we had an extraordinary shareholder meeting. So a lot of also small topics add up against everything within budget, everything planned, but year-over-year, we see here an increase of EUR 2.5 million.
Then, while we had some positive currency effect in Q3 year-over-year, based on the significant positive currency effects in 2022, we still see apples to apples a negative impact here of EUR 0.8 million. So that's the EBIT bridge. Then, the next slide is just a consolidated view after nine months. Also here, when you look at it from an EBIT perspective, year-over-year, discounting the currency effects, then we have a 4x. If you take the currency effects into account, you have EBIT growth of more than 6x. Yeah.
So clearly, we are not where we wanna be yet, but also, I wanna thank Andreas and the finance organization, and the entire colleagues at SNP for the focus on costs and cash flow. So we really made progress here. Good. As I said, at the beginning, we already fine-tuned and slightly strengthened the outlook for this year when we announced numbers early. And with that, Andreas, I would hand over to you. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Jens. Marcel, if you go to the next slide directly. So let's have a look at our income statement. Jens has already elaborated on the EBIT, and I have to say, I'm very happy with the performance that we have seen. Just to recap, Q3, we see EUR 4.8 million. On a nine-month basis, we see EUR 8.3 million. The EBIT, the relative growth was even higher than you mentioned, but it doesn't matter. We made very good progress, and this is what this is all about. Let's have a look at the expenses. Jens has already mentioned on that. The personnel expenses grew by 16.4%. That's primary investments we did in our people with salary increases, inflation adjustment payments, and things like that.
But we will see later, there is also a headcount increase of 88 headcount during the year happened. If we then, Jens has already elaborated on the FX topic, and this is something I want to stress here a bit because there we do plan to change certain things that also it's a bit easier to consume our external statements, and it will be in full line with IFRS accounting standards, but we need to still discuss it internally. As you can see, our other income and expenses are higher, EUR 7.2 million. The primary portion of that comes from FX topics. Those FX effects are unrealized currency gains or losses coming primarily from short-term loans that SNP Germany is providing to SNP North America.
Those loans require us, if the currency develops in the one or the other direction, show as a gain or a loss in our P&L. There is a possibility under IAS 21 that we reclass those loans from short term to long term, and then such currency changes can be, going forward, presented in the OCI, then in equity. And in equity, there is from our consolidation activities an offsetting impact. So long story short, then we will get rid of those FX topics that just make it a bit more difficult, but this requires a formal decision that we are willing to give such funds for a longer period to our North America region. But as you have seen, the growth is there, and this is something we will carefully discuss with our supervisory board, and then the plan is to change things next year.
But the key message is, from all operational topics, we make very good progress. If you go to the next slide, let's have a look at the revenue per region. So on a nine-month basis, as Jens has already outlined, we see a very strong software performance. The revenues have increased by 31%. But also just to highlight, the software ratio has also slightly increased, not dramatically, but we are moving continuously. We also have a very good book-to-bill ratio of 1.13, and that's all to this slide. If you go to the next slide. Let's have a look at our software segment. Same story here. Software, very, very good growth. There is something I want to highlight here a bit.
If you check our detailed Q3 interim report, then you can, then you will see that our maintenance and support revenues have been stable at roughly EUR 11 million. And then, of course, the question is, how can it be if software is growing that much, software backlog is growing by, why is then this number not growing? I think there are offsetting effects at this point in time. We have some SAP resale support revenues that had been declining, whereas our support revenues from our core migration business had been growing. At this point in time, those effects are just netting off. But just to share with you, our backlog from a support perspective is EUR 4 million higher than it was at the beginning of this year. So we already have the installed base to deliver that growth going forward.
That's the key message on that slide. If you go to the next slide, on the service segment, I'm really happy to see here a Q3 EBIT with EUR 1.4 million, because this clearly shows that doesn't matter which FX effects and things like that, we have our measures to improve our services margin are getting effective. Utilization getting better, shoring ratios getting better. We have a stricter focus on profitability. There is also a question I want to pick up here that has been raised on our extraordinary shareholder meeting at the end of September from Mr. Henkes. Mr. Henkes asked, and back then, we did not answer that question because we want to focus on those government topics back then.
He asked, "How can it be that in Q2, your services business was negative, although you had a strong increase in services revenue?" Answer is, it's partially related, and the most, the biggest portion, that also from those FX topics I have also mentioned. So if we change the topic, as I have explained to you, namely reclass our short-term loans into long-term loans to our North American subsidiary, we will, going forward, also have an easier consumption of our segment services, reporting, because then we can eliminate a portion of our FX topics. Just to be precise here, we will not completely eliminate the FX topics because there is still hyperinflation discussions from Argentina and things like that, but we will make a big step forward. And the key message, again, our services business is going in the right direction.
With that, we can go to the next slide. You can keep that brief. We are in close alignment with our EXA management, and we expect a strong Q4. So therefore, I kindly ask you to assess the performance of our EXA segment, and please, on a full-year basis, once we come up with our Q4 and full-year numbers. If you go to the next slide on order entry and backlog. I just want to reemphasize, we have seen a very, very strong growth in the region, especially North America and U.K.I., but also in LATAM. As Jens has elaborated, the order entry for the first nine months did increase by EUR 47 million. Huge number. The key drivers, Jens has already elaborated on that, have been also our S/4 projects. Now, there's one thing I want to highlight briefly.
If you check carefully the order backlog, you see that the order backlog did decrease. It decreased from EUR 46 million to EUR 33 million, and now the question comes up, how can the order entry—how can the order backlog decrease, if the software goes up? The thing is, in 2022, in Q4, we did a restructure of a partner contract. It was a partner contract, I say it here with IBM, it was one of our first big contracts with our partner, and we had to restructure that because it was the first one, and certainly, this was the basis for our very successful collaboration with IBM, as Jens has just outlined above. So please be careful here because you don't compare apples with apples. So please check that then, in our Q4, because then the deduction is properly reflected.
Once again, here, going back to our recurring revenues, in the backlog, we have already included an increase of EUR 4 million in our maintenance backlog compared to the order entry beginning of the year. If you go to the next slide, you can also see that in that starting balance here, that adjustment from the restructure of the partner contract I mentioned, is already reflected. So there is nothing special to add, but just this is a pretty cool backlog we are sitting on. If you go to the next slide. Let us have a look at the balance sheet. You can also see here that there is an increase in trade receivables of roughly EUR 17 million. There are two factors to consider here. First of all, we have a higher business. This comes with higher receivables.
This is pretty normal, and there is another topic. Jens has already mentioned that. We did some one-off factoring at the end of last year, and then, of course, the balance at the end of last year, which is the comparison here, would normally been higher. So just please keep that in mind because we will also see that later when we check the cash flow. And let's go on to the decrease in other financial assets. You can see that this has been decreased. This primarily comes from a received payment from our sale of SNP Poland. We will also see that later then when we check the investing cash flow. Now, last thing I want to discuss here, to give combine a bit the cash and cash equivalent and the liability topics. So as you all know, the interest rates did go up dramatically. Yeah.
So we are trying to reduce our borrowed capital. We have already started with that. We did a EUR 5 million loan repayment, and we also had to reclass some loans that become due in March next year. That's why the non-current liabilities are decreasing, and the current ones are a bit increasing. And we already have an option for a follow-up financing. And I want to clearly outline, we would not necessarily need to do such a follow-up financing because we are also getting another EUR 5 million in cash, which is the second portion of the sale of our SNP business at the very beginning of next year. But we want to keep flexibility to do strategic investment on, and when, and if needed basis.
If we then go on to the cash flow, and here I really want to highlight what Jens has already indicated. I'm very happy with the development of our cash flow. If you look at the Q3 operating cash flow, we are at EUR 7.3 million, which is a huge increase. Yeah. Also, on a nine-month basis, Jens has already outlined that we are still negative, but if you check how it has been compared year-over-year, we had a very strong increase of EUR 11.3 million. There's a topic Jens has already mentioned. Note, please, that we did a one-off factoring at the end of last year, and normally this cash that we factored or the receivables that we have factored would normally turn into cash in 2023.
So just keeping in mind, we could do a positive cash flow based on the operations that we have delivered this year. We clearly can see that our internal measures, payment term guidance, we do sales trainings just to elaborate what's the difference between order entry, revenue, why it's not okay to have software delivered upfront, and you get the payment over the project duration. Those effects, they now kick in and we are continuously stressing that. The investing cash flow, you can also see it's positive because we get the first part of a sale of a payment from our SNP Poland sale. As said, there is another EUR 5 million to come at the beginning of next year.
For the cash flow guidance, operating cash flow, I will not give a precise number, but it's clearly we will be positive in the single-digit million euro space. If we then go on to the last page, yeah, we can see our headcount has developed. We have added 88 people to the group, primarily in the area of consulting, namely for the delivery resources for our projects.
Now, being with the company for five months, and usually, finance people are a bit conservative, I can say I'm very optimistic about the future of SNP. Jens, thank you very much also for your focus on cash flow, cost, and profitability, because I think it's a very good team effort, and the numbers shows that the things we have started, you have already started before I joined, start to pay off. With that, I hand over to Marcel.
Thank you, Andreas. And with that, I will hand over to the operator to open the room for questions and answers.
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 Johannes Ries. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon. Maybe, given that maybe this impressive growth figures, you now present, what have really changed the situation to the years before, where already, you had, your, your form-- So your, your, so former management had, partnerships, and S/4 was also a focus and so on. Is it partly what you have changed internally, or is it partly that the market has changed, that, SAP has definitely now get larger deals, more customers are moving? What, what are the... Really, what would you say are the two, two, three, four points, which are, makes a big difference to the, very often frustrating past?
So it's, of course, very difficult for me to comment about the past. I have full respect what has been established here. I have full respect for the company already has achieved. And what I said from the beginning here, we're in a fantastic market. Yeah, we are in a growing market, we're in a resilient market, and I think the company also has been always very substantial in terms of the quality of the people, in terms of the product itself, in terms of the category leadership we have created. So I have a huge admiration and a huge respect for what has been achieved. But also what I learned in business is that execution makes a big difference, right?
There's more science to software, go-to market, to software pricing, to software, sales franchise, pipeline development, building up an ecosystem. So that's maybe one thing where we all learned and, and improved processes. And then, second, I would say, a few things take time. Yeah, so from an ecosystem perspective, I'm hugely impressed what Lutz Lambrecht, who's with the company for three years, what he has already built up in terms of awareness, in terms of, mind share with partners, but also here, I believe, together with our services organization, we, we make progress. Yeah. And, the third thing I would like to say is, I, I believe, yeah, success creates success, right?
That's why I said from the beginning, we want to start with a good Q1. We want to create a positive momentum. We want to create a positive energy in the company and with the entire ecosystem. So very difficult to say what was the one thing which now changed the situation a little bit. So, I also want to underline that we continue to be humble, right? We now have three good quarters. Yeah, when we have three good years, let's have the conversation again. Yeah, so, still a lot of work ahead of us, yeah, but, we are happy, yeah, we are pleased, yeah, with the first results we are seeing. We are pleased with how the company responds to changes.
And, Andreas, right? I mean, if the CFO says, right, I mean, you're looking optimistic in the future, yeah, I do this as well.
Okay, super. So for looking in the future, how good is the visibility now? How much maybe does the pipeline tells you that this trend goes on?
We're optimistic. We're optimistic, right? We slightly increased our guidance 2.5 weeks ago, and we continue to be optimistic that we'll see growth for the company.
Okay. SAP also mentioned that the deals are, especially in the first, going clearly up or say at 50% deals or in the cloud over EUR 5 million. So for this trend, you also seeing will go on, you think, as one driver, yes?
Yeah. Yes, but we are even, which is a positive in that regard, we are one step behind SAP, which is a positive, right? So also, many, many licenses, which already has been sold at very big customers, and with all the licenses for S/4, be it on prem or in the cloud, have been sold, yeah, until the end of the history, so to say, yeah. They still have a S/4 migration planning for 300 systems in one group. I'm just thinking about a business case for S/4 migration for the next 10 years. So we are, and that's a good thing here, one step behind SAP.
And what about the other maybe areas where your products are used, for example, cloud transformation for hyperscalers, and so how is this developing? Of course, you highlighted especially now the S/4 business.
Yeah, one of the big deals, we have four mega deals in Q3. One big deal is a move to the cloud. Yeah, we have second of the big deals is a carve-out, so we still also see growth year-over-year in the other areas.
Okay. Finally, margins. Okay, it's we see this impact from FX, which will go out. The software margins looks always nice for you to say it's a margin going forward, we should expect for software and especially service as much as maybe you've seen FX effect is out, is appropriate, margin of service, is it 10% or so, above 10% you see maybe in good IT service companies, or what could be the target there?
Yep. Maybe, maybe I picked it up. I think the question was already there at a given point in time. I think our 2024 guidance is we will try, and we will grow continuously our EBIT margin. I think the guidance is 1%-2% above the actual, and this is what we try for. I just want to echo, we are doing a lot of things on the operational point of view, just bringing the delivery teams together closer across the regions, and also just checking new possibilities from the shoring topics. They are delivering out of Latin, North America, and things like that. But there is a lot of potential that hasn't been lifted, but it's a bit too early to make really a size call now. And we really want to be conservative.
It's just we can't really plan it at that level, but it will improve.
Okay. Well, final question. You, that you want to be flexible for strategic things. So, could maybe some M&A also on the agenda if the right thing is coming?
Yes.
Okay, clear answer. Thanks a lot.
Thank you for your, for your interest and for the questions. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Wolfgang Specht. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello, good afternoon. I've got four additional questions. Maybe we can do them one by one, to keep it, let's say, in a shorter form. First one is on working capital and accounts receivable. They doubled, so grew much more than your sales. Can you give us an idea when we see a balancing here? So when it's, let's say, an easing in working capital build up to be expected? That would be my first question.
Yeah. I think that's a good observation, which is pretty obvious there in the balance sheet asset. I think we rolled out a lot of new guidance to our sales teams, which we ask them, and we control it also, that they adhere to. At this point in time, I struggle to give a precise date when we will get better in there. But I think what I see from the sales team, they pick up the guidance and says, "Yes, thank you for providing the guidance. We will defend that in front of our customers." So the topic will definitely get better, and if you check the cash flow, we also made progress here.
Okay. Thanks a lot. Then you somewhat excluded comments on EXA, where sales have been down by around 10% and also quarter-over-quarter. Orders are already also down quite significantly. Is there a risk that the initial business plan is not working and that you could be confronted with write-downs on the asset value?
No, we don't see that. We don't see that. Yeah, recovery in Q4, we added one of our best leaders, Jörg Parschitzki, to the executive board of EXA. We expect to see, at least on an operational level, some synergies between EXA and SNP, so we don't see a risk here.
Okay. Thanks a lot. Then, on the personnel side, your own employees grew under proportionally, around 7% against 30% top line. So I question myself, how did you realize the sales? Has there been so much overcapacity, or are you, let's say, excessively using freelancers currently?
So, we are, we're doing... Are you talking about revenue realization or the sales productivity to realize the order entry?
No, sales generation. When I compare workforce growth against sales growth, so-
So, so when, when you say with sales, right, when you, when you mean order entry, then, the productivity driven by large deals makes a huge difference, right? So large deals are very, very good, of course, for our top line, but even better for sales productivity, right? That's on the order entry side. On the revenue side, Andreas and I, we put a lot of measures in place, that we increase the utilization of the services people, so, so we are much more productive here. The shoring kicks in much more efficiently, so we've completely redone the business model, how we shore. So also here, in terms of shore utilization, we get much better. We invest a lot in project management, so we are much more efficient here.
But of course, we also leverage our partner ecosystem to help us with the delivery.
Okay, Andreas, lot to talk?
Oh, nothing to add. Yeah.
Okay.
There is still sources supporting us, but also that we are checking carefully just to make sure that we get very good purchasing conditions when we buy certain services and things like that. But as said, the key lever from my perspective is just to, to check what's possible from the international shoring mix that we, we have heavily discussed. Yeah.
Okay, final question on the quality of the order book. If I made the math right, there has been another leakage of around EUR 1.8 million in your order book. A pattern we've already seen in the first quarter, a low single-digit amount. The question is, how sure can you be with your current order book? Are the projects really hard locked in, or are there options of customers to delay, to shift projects? Or do you rather believe there's now a panic that there's not enough consulting capacity for the R/3 to S/4HANA migration and, let's say, customers are really taking it serious and highly demand you to be on the ground next year?
Yeah. So, so every big deal needs to go over Andreas's and my desk. Yeah, so we feel very confident, yeah, that we have tightened the measures here, how we recognize order entry. We only, in the meantime, recognize order entry and revenue when there is a customer. Yeah. I want to be very clear because that was not the case in the past, where we had strategic deals with partners where there was no customer. So we feel much better, much more comfortable about the order entry backlog. However, we will also think about, and maybe in Q4, we can, or at the—well, in January, when we talk about Q4, we can communicate that. We will also implement measures for Q4, but for sure, next year, to be here even more conservative.
But we feel very, very confident, much more confident than in the past, that, whatever we show as order entry will also turn into revenue, and not only into revenue, but also into cash. And here we had a big disconnect in the past.
Thanks a lot.
The next question-
Thank you.
Sorry. The next question comes from Lukas Spang. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. And, thank you for some clarification already on, on cash flow topics, for example, and also on, on the declined, software order backlog. Coming back to the cash flow topic, just a clarification question. In Q3, you didn't make any further factoring, so the, the Q3 operating cash flow is fully on operating excellence or operating, measures?
Let me make that very clear. We do not plan to do a further factoring.
Okay.
And we did. The only thing we did was last year, and this is the same now, where we just again and again need to go in to explain it, but we did not do another factoring for now.
On top, Lukas, what we did in Q4, of course, is impacting the operating cash flow in Q3, yeah, because we couldn't get the cash out of these orders, yeah, which normally would have kicked in in Q1 and Q2. Yeah. So the first nine months would have been clearly positive, yeah, without the one-off effect, the company did last year.
Yeah. And do you see now that the measures you already implemented or you are still implementing, kicking in, that we see a further improvement, on the working capital side in Q4, or will it take more time?
Will it pro-
Following on the last question from Mr. Specht.
It will probably take a bit longer until we really clearly see things completely changing, but what we see until now is that also collection work very well. We tightened here, yeah, just to put also further resources on the collection activities. But at the end, it's our salespeople at the very beginning of closing a transaction. And yeah, I just maybe one story, which was very cool for me, is that we wrote the guidance out in August, and then somehow we had some weeks later, we had a bit on our roof terrace. We had a meeting. I talked to some younger salespeople and said, "And it works. Yeah, we can just position that to the customer." And first, I thought they are fooling me, but then they said, "No, no, it works.
Customer understands it, but we have never positioned it in the past." So this is just some, also some cultural changes that they are undergoing at this point in time. And we will see that also in our working capital ratios. But I cannot predict how long it takes because there are also receivables out that have been closed with a different motion, but we will just replace that continuously now.
Sure. In your presentation, did you say that you expect single-digit million number for operating cash flow for the full year, or was it for Q4? Or was it a full misunderstanding from my side?
Minus, we are now at -EUR 1.6 million. We will clearly, a full year basis, we will clearly be positive. Yeah. But we will probably, I'm not sure where we finally end up, but Q3 was pretty good, and I think we also see pretty good progress so far until now. But I still cannot predict the precise number. But Q4 has historically been a very strong quarter for collections, and I have no doubt that this will be different this time.
Yeah. Okay. Then on the software business, in the last presentation, you shared also a number of revenue, or sold, software that you booked already in the past. Can you share this number also for Q3?
EUR 6 million. Is this the nine months? But that's the nine months number, right? Yeah, yeah, and the Q3 number was EUR 1.5 million, I believe, right? Yeah. So EUR 1.5 million for Q3.
Okay. And how much can still come from this one, from this topic?
So that's what I was trying to say. Thank you, Lukas, for actually following up. The biggest pain point was IBM, yeah, where we had huge deals, where we recognized order entry, where we recognized revenue without a customer, yeah, and hence, without cash. Yeah. And this is what we fixed. I would say out of the EUR 6 million-EUR 7 million we had in the first nine months was exclusively, except maybe one deal with the systems, but exclusively IBM. So we completed the sellout here, and we expect to see much less issues here, right? We have one or two bigger partnerships here, where we still have to do some sellout, but that was not at all the issues we had with IBM.
Yeah. And maybe also, following on the new IBM partnership, because as you mentioned, that was the first and the big partner in 2019, and you already, or also did some similar, but smaller, partnerships afterwards. So what can we expect in the next month or quarters on this topic? Are you working also on other partnerships to rework on the structure, or do you work now on a similar pattern going forward with the other partners you made these upfront deals in the past, or what should we expect there?
Yeah. I'm not sure if Lukas, if you have been at Transformation World, right? So what we said here is that our strategic ambition, and we made a little bit fun with that on stage, because we, of course, can't compare ourselves with Intel, is that we wanna be basically Intel inside, that we wanna be BLUEFIELD inside the S/4 migration engines of all the big system integrators. Up to now, 16 of the top 20, according to Gartner, SAP system integrators, partner with us. Yeah? When we look at the biggest ones, Accenture, IBM, PwC, they all have migration engines based on our platforms, yeah, and they all have own offerings like IBM with Rapid Move, yeah, based on our platform. We wanna be channel agnostic, yeah?
So we wanna be more on the software side, yeah, and we wanna allow the system integrators and the consulting companies to focus on their differentiators. We take care of the data side, of the data migration side, and they can focus in their competitive environment on their USPs. Yeah? So as I said, right, we are trying to bring a partnership with EY to the next level. We had PwC visiting us here in Heidelberg, yeah, so we clearly wanna be partner agnostic, yeah, but we invest a lot in the partnerships, particularly with the big system integrators, so we can take care of what for them is commodity, the data migration, so they can focus on their USPs. So to give one concrete example, we have customers, yeah, who do an... T hey buy SAP, yeah, and as I said, we are one step behind. Yeah, and in my old home market in the U.K., I've just seen an example where a customer said, "I bought SAP, I bought S/4, I wanna do a RISE migration. Yeah, I go out for an RFP, yeah. I have all the big ones, yeah, on the shortlist for my RFP, but I only accept proposals based on SAP, based on our software." Yeah, so we wanna be partner agnostic, but we will invest a lot in our ecosystem.
Mm-hmm. And last question from my side: looking into 2024 and the order backlog you have now on hand, how do you make sure to deliver all these projects?
Yeah. First, of course, we look into productivity, as also outlined by Andreas. Second, we are recruiting, and when we talk about recruiting, we specifically recruit in shore locations. We have, for example, huge recruiting program launched in Bratislava, yeah, our center of excellence there. Yeah, and then one question already came up, we, of course, looking at all other options as well, you know, but the first two lines of defense are productivity and recruiting in our shore locations.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you for this lively discussion. I guess we have no more, no more questionnaires. So in case of further questions, as you know, investor relations will be more than happy to answer your question afterwards. And, I guess with these closing words, we are finishing this call. Keep us in your favor, and goodbye.