Ladies and gentlemen, welcome, and thank you for joining the TeamViewer SE Q3 2023 results call and webcast. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in listen only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star and one on your touchtone telephone. Please press star key and zero for operator assistance. I will now hand the conference over to Ursula Querette, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to TeamViewer's Q3 2023 earnings call. My name is Ursula Querette, and I'm pleased to host today's call. I am joined by our CEO, Oliver Steil, and our CFO, Michael Wilkens. As always, Oliver will kick off the presentation by updating you on the quarterly business and financial highlights. In the second part of today's call, Michael will guide you through our Q3 financials in detail. As always, the presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. Please note that you can find the important notice and the APM disclosure on slides two and three. With that, I hand it over to Oliver, whose CEO contract has been extended for five years, as you may have heard last week. Congratulations, Oliver.
Thank you, Ursula. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our Q3 2023 earnings call. Before we start, a few personal words. As Ursula just mentioned, TeamViewer Supervisory Board, and I have agreed to extend my term as CEO until October 2028, which I think is great. It'll give me enough time to focus on the strategic development of the business and the sustainable and profitable growth of the company. I'm actually very excited, looking forward to this new term, and to continuing the work that we have initiated here. We'll certainly talk more about our strategic plans and the strengths and focus on innovation, technology leadership, together with our full year results. At the moment, we are really fully focused on bringing this year's results home. And with that, I think we should focus on the Q3 numbers.
So let me get back to those. As always, let me start with the key figures for the quarter. We increased our revenue by 10% to EUR 158 million. Our adjusted EBITDA grew even stronger by 19%. This is resulting in a very high EBITDA margin of 44%, and this shows once again our ability to create profitable growth. Looking at billings in the Q3 , our core SMB business delivered strong performance again, grew by 9% on constant currency. And despite the quite difficult macro environment, our enterprise business contributed with 6% billings growth on constant currency, and we were actually able to close some relevant large deals, which I'm going to talk about.
In addition, in the quarter, we announced when we will take on a new role with the Manchester United within the Manchester United partner ecosystem. We now communicated that from the start of the 2024/2025 season, so mid-next year, we will see a reduced level of marketing spend for the Manchester United partnership. As we've said before, we will invest some of the savings in other branding activities and other marketing activities, and of course, also in our product, but the remainder will have a positive impact on TeamViewer's adjusted revenue EBITDA, and I think it's very important. And we had communicated it before. The impact will amount to approximately EUR 17.5 million improvement in 2024 calendar year and approximately EUR 35 million in 2025.
We've also made significant progress in terms of product and tech collaborations through our new partnership with unified endpoint management provider, Ivanti. We've significantly enhanced our remote monitoring and management offering. For those who don't know this, Ivanti is the company that acquired MobileIron three years ago, and with Ivanti's industry-leading mobile device management capabilities integrated into our Remote and Tensor solutions, we can provide our customers with a one-stop solution to manage all their desktop and mobile IT devices in a secure and efficient manner. Another achievement on the product side was the completion of the certification process for our enterprise connectivity solution, Tensor, to become an SAP-endorsed app. This is a very important accomplishment for us, especially since our productivity solution, Frontline, has already been available in the SAP App Center for some time.
The Tensor endorsement is clearly rounding up our enterprise offering within the SAP-certified ecosystem, and this will not only lead to increased visibility, but it can also drive after-sales and support use cases for Tensor in the OT environment. It's also worth mentioning that we saw a general increase in customer interest in digitalization and innovation projects in the past quarter. This has also led to more traction for our Frontline solution across regions, and sales have very often been supported by our channel and tech partnerships. We were able to introduce our vision picking solution in the bottling industry in APAC, as well as in the logistics and supply chain industry in the Middle East. The most important Frontline project was the further rollout of our picking solution to more warehouses of Nadro, this is Mexico's largest wholesaler to the healthcare industry.
You might remember that we won that deal less than a year ago as part of our SAP partnership. And it's a good example. It's great to see how it is becoming more relevant over time and how the partnership investments start to pay off. So from our perspective, to sum it up, double-digit revenue growth in Q3 at a high profitability, while we further enhanced our product portfolio and improved our go-to-market approach. So overall, we achieved good results despite a continued challenging macro environment. Let's now take a closer look to our SMB and enterprise business over the last twelve months. You can see that the core SMB business, which is the higher value bucket with contract volumes between EUR 1,500 and EUR 10,000, is significantly growing with 25%.
And we really see this as our sweet spot in the SMB space as we constantly enhance our product, especially for larger SMB customers and managed service providers. And as always, we were successful in cross- and upselling and growing our customers' contracts again. Also, the lowest enterprise bucket, with contracts between 10,000-50,000 EUR, where we currently achieve most of our enterprise billings, saw a strong increase of 21%. This means that our largest buckets in SMB and enterprise are growing the most, and it reflects the strong contribution of core customer audiences to our LTM billings. Moreover, and important, the highest enterprise bucket, so above 200,000 EUR annual contract value, is growing again with 4% after a dip that we had at the beginning of the year.
During the last quarter, and actually, despite the challenging macro environment, we were able to close some relevant larger deals, which I will tell you more about a bit later. Next, as always, a view on the regions. In Q3, development of billings and revenues showed quite a mixed picture across the regions. APAC again showed the strongest operational performance, with billings up 15% year-on-year on constant currency. Revenue was up 8%, sorry. I think in this region, we do see a continuing upswing, which was initiated by the recent investments and then also the organizational restructuring that we did quite some time ago. So it's really coming together nicely now.
Americas region, where the reorganization of the sales team set-up has been initiated in the Q1 this year, showed the lowest billings growth rates of 5% in constant currency. It's still an environment with longer procurement cycles in the current environment, which has contributed to this situation. However, we are fully committed to bringing this strategically important region back to its previous successes. And revenue-wise, the Americas region showed good growth with a year-on-year increase of 10%, and this can be attributed to currency tailwinds from previous periods' billings converted into revenue now. So, this obviously a slightly lagging indicator. Our last region, EMEA, reported good growth in Q3. Billings up 9% in constant currency, revenue up 11%, and especially in EMEA, we saw an accelerated trend towards more channel and partnership deals in the quarter.
Next slide, please. As always, I'd like to put a highlight on some customer success stories for you. This time, we brought two remote connectivity examples from the Q3 . On the left side, we talk about a major US telecommunications equipment company. Here, we were able to migrate the customer from multiple existing SMB licenses to a really large Tensor deal, which is worth more than six times the aggregated value of the former smaller licenses. We often talk about our strength in upselling, and this is one, I think, very successful example. At the same time, the new Tensor deal also provides much more value to the customer. Before, there were hundreds of small TeamViewer licenses spread across departments, regions, and subsidiaries, which had developed over the years without a systematic or strategic approach on the customer side.
Now, with one single Tensor license for the whole group, the customer benefits from enterprise-grade security, auditability, and scalability. On the right side, you can see an example from the APAC region. If you've ever been to a South Korean restaurant, you know that ordering and paying via touchscreen or tablet, tablet mostly, right at your table, is already very common there. Obviously, there is a need for maintenance and troubleshooting for the companies offering those systems. Therefore, t-o rder, which is the market leader for these systems in South Korea, decided to integrate TeamViewer into each of its devices. Customers can now very fast and reliably access the systems in the restaurants remotely and get them up and running again, which is a huge benefit for both T Order and their customers.
To give you an idea of the size of this implementations, there's an installed base of about 120,000 devices in restaurants across South Korea. I would also like to give an example of the scaling potential of deals we closed some time ago. This example on the slide is a customer from the engineering sector based in Europe. It's a multinational manufacturer of agricultural equipment, including vehicles such as tractors. Actually, some of you remember this story. We've talked about it around our IPO. The deal had been just recently closed at the time of the IPO, and the whole project was in development phase, really without almost any revenue as you probably know, tractors nowadays are packed with IT and all kinds of digital devices on board.
To support the tractors' operators when they're out in the field, TeamViewer's integrated access into these devices. Now, when an issue comes up, the operator can call customer service, and they will remote into the device to instantly solve the issue, as any downtime in the agricultural sector is critical for the business and the vehicles are far away out in the field. The value for the company and its customers, I think, is pretty obvious. Looking at the ACV development, this is a nice example to show how we scale together with our customers. Firstly, we benefit from more vehicles being sold now, and secondly, we benefit from digitalization in the agricultural sector, meaning a growing number of these onboard devices that are added to each and every tractor are being shipped. Every additional connected device means revenue for us.
Started small, and can get very sizable, as you see. One last comment, the graph you see on the slide shows the ACV development for that specific use case with the on-vehicle devices. Additionally, this customer uses TeamViewer for internal IT support, where we have a separate contract with a six-digit yearly revenue in place. So this is also an example of a successful cross-sell in two separate departments of the same company. Let me now come from customer stories to the marketing side, to explain how we target and reach those customers. After the introduction of TeamViewer Remote in the Q2 , with the associated campaigns, we have focused on comprehensive marketing activities dedicated to enterprise customers in the Q3 .
Just to give you some examples, we've introduced our new brand campaign, "Find Your Better," on the left side, and at the core of the campaign is our brand promise of helping our customers each day to become better in their business-critical operations. One example is how we support our partner, the Mercedes Formula One team, with our technology, and if TeamViewer works in the fast-paced environment of Formula One, it can definitely make a difference in any industry, and that will be added over time to this campaign. So we start with this launch campaign element, and then we'll have other customer examples that we will be quoting over time. The second campaign we launched last quarter was explicitly promoting Tensor as our enterprise-grade remote connectivity solution with all the relevant enterprise features like enhanced security and scalability.
And the motto there is, "Engineered for enterprise," that we've brought to life with obviously online marketing measures like video paid ads, social media, and the likes and the likes. These are only two examples to give you an impression of how we support our product enhancement and, the overall transition to an enterprise software provider with our dedicated marketing campaigns. I think it's worth mentioning that last summer, we welcomed Peter Turner as our Chief Commercial Officer on the Management Board, and I'm really happy to say that he and his team have done, over the last year, really makes a big difference for us. I think, as you can see from the campaigns also.
Website campaigns, content, the whole presentation, appearance of the company, have really reached a new level, which is very important to show and communicate the transition to more enterprise and more OT and IoT use cases. After customer success stories and marketing, let's get back to the financials that Michael will explain to you in more detail now.
Thank you, Oliver. Good morning, and a warm welcome to all of you. I'm now happy to guide you through our financials for the Q3 of 2023. On slide 12, there you see our Q3 revenue of EUR 158 million, which increased by 10% year-over-year. With this, nine months into the year, we are on track to reach our full year guidance. Our Q3 billings grew by 8% to EUR 150 million on constant currency. In Q3, we saw further increased headwinds from currency. This average US dollar exchange rate, for example, was 8% weaker year-over-year. As roughly 30% of our billings are generated in US dollars, this had quite an effect on our Q3 billings growth. As you can see on the slide, this results in four percentage points difference between reported and constant currency.
Rightfully so, we based our guidance on fixed foreign exchange rates. Our LTM net retention rate remains strong at 107% on group level and is up four percentage points year-over-year. NRR on ARR, which adjusts for the multi-year impact, was again above 100%. This shows that we operate a highly recurring and resilient business model, which is key in these times. It is also key for us to continue to invest, to be up and running when the macro situation improves. So while we continue to invest, we manage our cost base diligently. In addition, we also had some favorable currency and phasing effects in Q3 on the cost side. Therefore, our adjusted EBITDA increased by a strong 19%. This translates into an adjusted EBITDA margin of 44%.
Our levered free cash flow decreased as expected by 6% to still high EUR 46 million. I will get into that in more detail later. The adjusted EPS grew even stronger than the adjusted EBITDA by 24% to EUR 0.22 year-over-year. Let's now have a closer look on quarterly sequential developments globally and for SMB and enterprise on the next slides. I already explained our global revenue, billings, and margin growth, and the influence of currency on growth rates, especially for billings. A graph which still needs explanation is the new billings development on the bottom right. Oliver talked about some compelling use cases and deals before. T Order, for example, was a net new deal in the APAC region. We also mentioned an increase in traction in channel and tech partner deals.
Some of these also count into the net new deals of Q3. In total, we generated EUR 14 million of billings with new customers. When looking at the quarterly development, we see stable new business volumes, which on the back of the recent macroeconomic environment, is proof of our high-quality product offering. Of course, we want more than a stable new business development, and as mentioned before, we are preparing our organization for a re-acceleration. Let's move to the next slide, please, and look at our SMB business, which again delivered a strong performance. Slide 14 depicts a continued strong SMB business with revenue growth of 8% to EUR 128 million. Billings were up 9% on constant currencies to EUR 123 million. In my opinion, the highlight of this slide is the further increase of the average selling price over the last quarters.
The year-over-year ASP growth of 11% in Q3 is not only due to our pricing power, but also fueled by the strong growth in the highest SMB value bucket. This is our core value bucket for SMB, and recent product enhancements around RMM are targeted to serve customers exactly in that bucket. Oliver mentioned the Ivanti integration before. While the highest SMB bucket grew strongly in Q3, the lowest bucket slightly decreased. This is also the main reason why the number of subscribers decreased by 1% on a sequential quarterly basis. On a year-over-year quarterly basis, however, SMB subscribers grew by 1%. At the same time, churn remained rather stable. Next slide, please, where we take a closer look at enterprise. Let's start with the enterprise net retention rate.
We are definitely not satisfied with 102%, especially as the transition towards enterprise remains at the heart of our strategy. This number reflects a combination of various external and internal factors. The slow start of our enterprise business into the year, the macroeconomic environment with longer procurement cycles, negative currency effects, and the ongoing reorganization of our Americas region, to name just a few. Oliver and I told you before, we are working on this. The highlight on this slide is the development of customer numbers, a +22% year-over-year. Some of these new customers are quite large, which is a promising development and which will ultimately drive the enterprise ASP. Q3 enterprise revenue grew by 22% year-over-year, driven by successful previous period up and cross-selling, and the ongoing release of multi-year billings to revenue.
Billings grew by 6% year-over-year on constant currency with relevant deal closures in Q3. So all in all, a meaningful enterprise growth. Let's now have a closer look at our cost base. Recurring cost, consisting of cost of goods sold, and total operating expenses, increased by only 4% or EUR 3.3 million in Q3. As we gave clear explanations on each of the line items on the slide, I will focus here only on the main effects. Let's talk first about the cost savers. Favorable currency effects, especially positive natural hedge effects in sales and positive financial hedge effects in the other cost item. Over EUR 2 million of gains from improved bad debt management and positive timing effects in marketing, mainly due to temporary less digital marketing activities. Now, let's talk about the cost drivers, which are all connected to growth investments.
Increased costs due to more Frontline deployments and higher integration partner commissions, like for Ivanti. The sales cost item features more strategic partner commissions. Finally, R&D costs increased due to an accelerated product development, mainly to improve our remote management and Frontline offering. Since the cost drivers were overcompensated by the cost savers, our adjusted EBITDA increased significantly by 19%. As you will see on the next slide, the net income increased even stronger by 61%. What are the main reasons? First, in Q3, we again saw a decreased amount of non-recurring items. You can find the detailed development of these in the appendix. So deducting the non-recurring items brings us to the unadjusted EBITDA, which is 29% higher year-over-year. Second, D&A remained almost stable with our low CapEx intensity and stable PPA amortization.
And third, income taxes increased to a much lower extent than profit. This is due to our improved tax scheme, which I explained already in August. This allows for a capitalization of existing tax costs and interest carried forwards, which will result in a full-year 2023 tax rate in the high 20s. For the first nine months of the year, it was at 25%. Beyond 2023, we expect a tax rate in the low 30s, which is a significant improvement from the low 40s we incurred so far. Due to these main reasons, the Q3 net income increased significantly to EUR 26.5 million. Our earnings per share increased even stronger by 70% to EUR 0.16, which, in addition, reflects the reduced share count following our share buybacks. The adjusted EPS, which mainly adjusts for non-recurring items and PPA amortization, increased by 23%.
Next slide, please. On slide 18, I first want to focus on the nine month free cash flow development, which is very well in line with our expectations. Remember in February, when we laid out our capital allocation strategy, we targeted a circa 9% growth of our levered free cash flow on a yearly basis, year-to-date, September, we are well above this level at still 47% growth. The Q3 decline was mainly due to a lower reported billings growth in the quarter versus 2022, and higher cash outflows from sponsorships. The latter includes one-time effects from reducing the scope of the Manchester United partnership. So in Q3, the unlevered free cash flow amounted to EUR 63 million, and the levered free cash flow to EUR 46 million. Let me finish my presentation by moving to the guidance slide.
Within the first nine months of the year, and despite a difficult market environment, we already generated EUR 46 million of revenue. This corresponds to a growth rate of 12%, which is well in line with our communicated full year growth range. We therefore feel confident to reach our annual revenue guidance, targeting revenues at guided FX rates in a range between EUR 620 million and EUR 645 million. This corresponds to growth rates between 10%-14% for the year, for the year of 2023. After a highly profitable Q3, the nine months adjusted EBITDA margin is 43%, which is above our full year guidance level. While we are aware that we had some favorable timing effects, again, in Q3, we feel very comfortable with our full year margin guidance, which targets around 40% for 2023.
And for 2024, due to the adjusted scope of the Manchester United partnership, we will see a further improvement of our profitability. This will, however, not prevent us from continuing to invest into our product offering and go-to-market approach, which are at the heart of our future growth. With that, I would like to end the presentation. Thank you all very much for your attention. We now look forward to your questions. Operator, over to you.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on your telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. If you are using speaker equipment today, please leave the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star, followed by one at this time. Our first question comes from the line of James Goodman from Barclays. Please go ahead.
I'll start with a couple around the guidance, please. So at the beginning of the year, I think you talked about the old basis of guidance being 6%-11% constant FX billings growth. Just wondering, really, if that's also reiterated this morning. I think it implies maybe a wide range of about 1%-15% billings growth for Q4. Maybe you can comment where you see the likely outturn on billings within that range for the Q4 , and are you confident that it will remain positive, given what you still have around price, et cetera, that you can do in the Q4 ? And then the second question, maybe just looking a little bit further ahead to 2024. You've already made some comments clearly around the profitability, given the sponsorship developments.
But on the revenue side, given the combination of the billings trajectory this year and the multi-year deal effects, are you confident you can keep revenue at double digit or close to it next year? Thank you.
Yeah, James, let me start with your first one on billings. We didn't guide on billings. We only for a convenience and transparency factor, showed how the guidance would have looked like in the, let's call it, in the old regime of 2022. So we guided on revenue at 10%-14%, and we are in this range. And on billings, let's see how it works out. We had so far three very good quarters. Remember also comparison Q4 last year was very strong. We have now four quarters in with Q4 last year, starting on price increases, which we mentioned. So we will reduce will still do price increases, but not to the same extent. So let's see how it works out.
And Q4 is always skewed to the high end of enterprise pipeline deals. So, so far, our pipes are very well equipped. Looks all good, but it's an important quarter, and it's too early to say where we will end. On the second one, on profitability with regard to 2024-
Revenue. Revenue.
Yeah, but you started with profitability. This is what we said. And on revenue, it's too early to say. Let's first finish off the year, and then we do 2024.
Okay, maybe a quick follow-up in that case then, just around the multi-year deal effect. I mean, you're now lapping two years of multi-deal, so I think on the billing side, it's actually turning into a headwind. But obviously, it's still helping revenue. Can you comment a little bit on your expectation around multi-year into Q4 next year?
Yeah. No, exactly. It's not just two years, but already three years. Remember, we started with multi-year deals already in 2021. So from the overall vicinity of the multi-year deals in this year, we mentioned that before, 60, maybe a little bit above EUR 60 million. So next year, this will come down. But as the billings are in from the multi-year deals, as you rightfully lay out, we expect a nice development of the consecutive revenues then.
Okay. But down, down next year from the EUR 60-odd million. Okay. Thanks very much.
Yep.
The next question comes from Victor Cheng, from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, and thanks for taking my question. Maybe first of all, if you can give us some color on how TeamViewer Remote is performing, how, you know, the free base is doing and the number of downloads, just some color on the SMB side. I appreciate obviously, you know, the focus is a bit more on the higher end and enterprise, but if I look at the lower two buckets, it seems like the mid-tier bucket is growing slower as well. So the question is, you know, is the competition moving to upper markets as well? Do you see that happening? And I have one quick follow-up.
Yeah, let me take this. Hi, Victor. So I think TeamViewer Remote is now nicely established in the customer base. Obviously, customers can pick and choose whether they want to use new version, old version. I think we are through the hypercare phase in a way, and have addressed some of the concerns of long-standing customers that obviously see different user flows then which we needed to address. So that worked very well. And hence, we've decided that we now putting the TeamViewer Remote functionalities, remember web functionalities, additional security measurements, better integration of different products, that we all transition this also into the TeamViewer Tensor product, which has now been launched. So from that, I think you can see that we fundamentally believe that we've done a very good job on TeamViewer Remote.
So that's, that's very helpful. It's clearly helpful to and a good, and a good contributor to our SMB performance, which is again, 9% growth, which is, I think, strong, given this segment, and the obviously, competition in this segment as well. So we're happy with this. Competition you were asking, I think is, is pretty stable, and this is always the highest and the strongest at the lower end of our SMB range, which you can see again, but even they are mostly stable on that side, so that's good. We lost a few subscribers sequentially, but year-over-year we are positive, so this is a very small movement on the subscriber side, which I think is something you've seen over the last quarter. So, pretty uneventful.
Very good on this one. Free user ecosystem, also, developing nicely. So as you say, we, as you know, we monetize, free users to become paying customers, and then we try to refill the ecosystem. That works quite well. Obviously, with the exception of some markets where we, deliberately decided to be, kind of more forceful in, in count qualification, to make sure that we don't get, so to say, the wrong users, into the ecosystem, and that has continued. And TeamViewer Remote, in this sense, had been another stepping stone, and another development there by asking, actively asking for accounts, which I think is the way to go, to improve security, of the whole ecosystem, and make sure that, we don't have abuse of our product, for remote use cases.
So that's very important to us. Well accepted by customers. Obviously, that comes at the expense of some free users needing to generate an account, which they might not like, but we still believe this is the way to go, and qualify our customer base. So all in all, I think we're very happy with this development there, and we kind of don't see significantly increased competition there.
Got it. Very good color, Oliver. Maybe just one follow-up is on thinking about the enterprise, and obviously you have some large enterprise deals in, in the form of Tensor this quarter, which is great. But then when I think about, you know, the partnerships with SAP, Siemens, Google, I appreciate, you know, these are longer, you know, pipelines, but, you know, so far we, you know, haven't seen much, too much from, from these partnerships. How should we think about, you know, these partnerships going forward? Have you changed your expectations with these partnerships or, you know, how augmented reality plays a role within, uh, TeamViewer, or it's just taking a bit longer time so?
Yeah, good question. I think generally there's a few learnings. One is, it, as you say, it does take a bit longer to work with these large organizations. But I think we also have to be fair. All these large organizations are operating in the same macro environment. So this is also not the case that there has been significant strength in enterprise software over the last quarters, and this is where these, these people play, so to say, and we play there together. So I think we all need to put that in perspective.
I think the most important thing is that whether or not when we see customers and talk to customers about it or invite customers to our events, quite often together with these partners, whether we have the right solutions which customers are interested in, and that's absolutely the case. And you can see from the latest development now, the Tensor certification in SAP, this is spot on a use case where industrial customers want to improve their after-sales and after-sales support use cases. So do more remote, travel less, save money, save people traveling around for work. So this is spot on for the use case, and that's what customers are interested in. Same is true for the Siemens partnership with the 3D visualization of objects for trainings, remote trainings, and the like.
Very interesting use cases. And we do see the customer interest, we see traction. It just takes a longer while, and then customer try the solutions, there's a proof of concept, and then from there, it scales. So early days, and we're very, very positive on these partnerships, but we also need to be patient there. If we see a win, for example, last year with Nadro, which we also talked about quite a bit, if we see this win and the customer is really actively using the solution, in this case, the augmented reality Frontline solution for picking. And then some months later, they do the analysis of the upside, the economic benefit that has been realized in the deployment, then they're very happy with it, and then they start to scale.
So we know it takes a while until we land first, but from there, we feel very confident and very positive, and we see the development. It's been a significant rollout now, and we have more of these deals in the pipeline, as Michael said. I think we need to be a bit patient there. We do expect significant uptake as we go along, because the use cases are spot on and our customers, sorry, our partners are also very happy with it.
And to Victor, to also underpin that from the numbers, only in Q3, we had the same amount of billings in the partner deals like we had in the first half year. So we, we are not overselling. It's, it's a, it's a journey, but we see the uptake now, and also we feel a little bit of upbeat in our sales organization when it comes to the partnership management. So...
Very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Toby Ogg from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hey, good morning. A few questions from my side. So perhaps just coming back on the 2024 dynamic, some of which we've already touched on. I guess, you'll be lapping price increases, and as you mentioned, multi-year deals likely to be a year-over-year headwind to the billings growth are some of the potential headwinds. What are some of the potential tailwinds that we should be thinking about that could provide a degree of offset to this? And then secondly, just on the gross margins, slightly down year-over-year. You mentioned the Frontline deployments and the product partner commissions contributing to that. Could you give us a sense as to the breakdown between these two different components?
Is it fair to think that gross margin will probably go down rather than up from here as these two dynamics become more relevant? Thank you.
Let me start with the first one. Toby, on the tailwinds. First of all, we are investing right now a lot into our Americas reorganization, and this will be, this will be, has to be a massive tailwind coming in next week, next year, sorry. Another one is obviously what we just also discussed with Victor, our partnership. Also from what we see right now in the pipeline management, this should develop nicely. Plus also, all and everything which the marketing team around Pete has invested this year into way more content, stability, new look and feel of the web page. We also believe that there's some... That there are some elements to kick in.
And, last but not least, at least from my end, and Oliver may prolong this, with May coming in, we have now, since we did the Remote launch, both now on Tensor and on our other platform, we have now the capacity also to invest far more into Tensor and Frontline applications and grow from there.
Yeah, there's also, I think on the SMB side, we have a much better integration of, of our cross-sell products and TeamViewer Remote. All the products are in one place, so cross-sell path, upsell path are much easier done also from a marketing side campaign. So, there's also many good things that happen on the SMB side. And the other thing, I think the tailwinds, as Michael mentioned, we see the same way. There will also be selective price increases. I mean, I think we should also not see that as a one-off. Clearly, we hadn't done price increases for a very long while, but you know that a significant amount of customers are still sitting on, older subscription discounts, which we are only slowly moving towards market level.
So, there will always be a bit of price increase also for next year. So I wouldn't be so worried about next year in this respect. With all the effects that are coming into play, the performance we're seeing at the moment is actually in a relatively rough environment, plus Americas, only very early innings in stabilizations and not that big contribution from large enterprise deals, which we've seen in the past. So, on that one, I feel pretty, I feel pretty good. Gross margin question?
Yeah, it should. It's too early, of course, but it should increase slightly if we look at it right now. But we are building the entire pack.
Understood. Thank you.
The next question comes from Florian Treisch from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my question. I have two. One is coming back to the SMB part. Sorry. Around the subscriber trend in Q3, you mentioned some thousands of subscribers lost. Can you just kind of add some color to it? Was it like a specific event? Is it, let's say, a more flat assumption for the quarters to come, as we have built up over the last five, six quarters, a decent positive growth trend? And then around the, let's say, ASP assumption going into Q4 for SMB, as you mentioned, Q4 will be the Q1 with a yeah, year-over-year, or no any, not any longer, any support from these year-over-year effects. Is it fair to say it's 4, 5%? What is your kind of achievement so far in Q4?
And the second question is around the free cash flow. As you have mentioned, you are clearly tracking ahead of expectation of this 9% year-over-year for the full fiscal. So what is holding you back to lift that guidance or this implication? And, can you maybe quantify a bit? You mentioned some phasing in Q3, kind of quantify that effect. Thank you.
And let me do the first one on subscriber, and then hand over to Michael. Yeah, so subscriber color, I mean, it's a function of the development at the entry-level segment, and this is influenced by kind of customer leaving us at first anniversary, mostly, when they decide whether they need the product as a paid product or whether they can go back to free usage. And then also the free to paid conversion campaigns, which we are running. We have been quite active in the first two quarters, not so active in the Q3 . It's also summer quarter, never really like the best quarter to run free to paid campaigns. And the net of this, this time is a slight subscriber loss. As you, as you say, it's a few thousand.
In other quarters when we were running free to paid campaigns, we had a subscriber gain. So generally, I think as we've started to say, two years ago or so, we're not focusing on the subscriber numbers. We were pleased to see a little bit of uptick in Q1, Q2. Now we see a little bit of down, but over 12 months it's almost stable, 1% growth or so. And that's the, that's how I would look at the world in terms of subscriber, more or less stable, but not being the driver of growth for us and that leads us then to the second part of your question. Obviously, it's the ASP development on SMB. I don't know, Michael, you probably want to give some color on.
ASP development, first of all, we are happy with that. And, we will always push for higher development on the ASPs, but we don't, we don't track this proactively as a KPI. It obviously depends on the deals, how they come in. Maybe then to cash flow. Number one, we, we didn't guide on cash flow, but, you are exactly right. We mentioned the 9% on a full year basis. For us, by the way, it's important that, we don't steer towards quarterly cash flow development, but, we manage the full year. And, no, actually, we feel very happy with the 9% because remember, it's a non-recurring level three cash flow number, and, this is the normal course of business for us.
So please bear with us with the 9% or around the 9%, what we mentioned at the beginning of the year. We feel happy about that one. On the decomposition question, on Q3, it's in the end, twofold. Number one, it's a lower billings, EBITDA growth, in Q3, and the other decomposition items are sponsorships, and they are twofold. Number one, opposite to the P&L effect of the Formula One sponsorship, which is flat, every year around, the duration of the contract. There's a rising cash flow impact because, the payouts are higher, this is simple, IFRS accounting standard. And the other one is, Manchester United.
We had to decouple a hedge that we did on the Manchester United contract because it was in dollar, and because Manchester pulled the option, the foundation of the business fall apart, and we had to decouple the underlying hedge on this one. These are the two main drivers for the Q3 development, but all in all, for us, totally expected.
Okay. Thank you very much. The next question comes from George Webb, from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hi, and morning, Oliver and Michael. A couple of questions, please. Firstly, on the enterprise performance in the quarter, when we look at the net adds, I appreciate it's only the summer months, but +78, relatively low. Can you outline what you've been seeing on enterprise customers churn, please? Has that picked up over the course of the year at all? And then just a big picture question for you, Oliver. I guess over the last couple of years, a lot of the focus has been on repositioning the business, particularly the cost structure with Remote and exiting the United deal, or at least winding it down. On the revenue front, maybe the focus has been on go-to-market restructuring and the shift to Tensor.
When you think over the next five years, how should we really be thinking about the core focus that you and the management team have, and what's the story we should be latching onto? Thank you.
Yeah, let me start off with the enterprise churn. So we have multiple campaigns in play now, and this is, for us, a topic to improve and constantly work on churn. And it's rather stable so far, but of course all of the initiatives are in the development, so we also expect, going forward, a improvement here on churn. And then I guess over to Oliver.
Yeah, big picture. I mean, what you see is, and what we're focusing on very strongly, is two things. One is, move the company into a enterprise digitalization proposition, across multiple elements. So that's, on the IT side, this is really developing, Tensor, the Tensor proposition further, using new technologies. For example, more data-driven, using AI, and so forth and so forth, to make, process automation on the IT side, device management side, even stronger. Clearly a lot of effort on this one, and then a big focus on IT/OT convergence. We do see very good interest from customers about industry digitalization. It's a complex topic for customers in manufacturing, in service, in support.
Not easy in the OT environment, but it's due to come because of skilled labor shortages and many other trends that ask for efficiency and improved efficiency on the customer side. So customers do want it. Not many companies crack the code there to help out. If you talk to other big companies like SAP, Microsoft and so forth, they will all say the same thing, which is it should come, but technically much more complex than in the IT world. And we play in this field, and we have the right use cases, and we really drive the business to focus on this together with our partners like SAP, Siemens, also Microsoft, more and more in industrial digitalization. So this is one big focus.
And then we have the second piece, which is obviously our core business, where we come from, SMB, IT. We're constantly improving our proposition there as well, focus on the higher end of that segment, allow for more cross-sell opportunities through device management, security, asset discovery. So really actively talking to many industry participants to round up the portfolio there, to also drive the cross-sell in the segment and grow that part of the business at least high single digit. But then obviously focusing the additional growth from the enterprise IT/OT Convergence across the globe.
Understood. Thank you.
The next question comes from Gianmarco Conti from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Yeah, thanks for taking my questions. I have about three. So, on the first one, I understand that you've been reorganizing the Americas region with regards to your sales force since the start of the year. But, could you shed some color on whether you saw any improvements in the pipeline development in this quarter? And sort of like, when should we expect the sales force to be converting more meaningfully enterprise deals in the region? Is it a theme in Q4, Q1, Q2 of next year? Just kind of like any direction, that would be great. My second question is, I saw that there was a slight sequential uptick in new billings. Could you shed some color on whether this was SMB or enterprise-driven?
And then finally, if you could shed some light on the dynamics, for a continuously lower ASP in enterprise, and whether this is simply a function of needing to lower the price to remain competitive, or is there something else in the mix? Thank you.
Yeah, let me start. So Americas reorganization, yes, as you pointed out, started Q1. I think we then saw probably the low of the development in Q2, when really many things were in flux with new leaders coming on board and refocusing the teams and shifting the sales teams. I think Q3 saw a good stabilization. Definitely, clearly not where we wanted it to be. I mean, obviously, far too low for this region. But what we're seeing now is happening in a relatively difficult environment in the Americas, which we hear from other participants as well. We are looking at a good pipeline for Q4, so I think we see an upward trend there.
I think the team over there feels much more confident about Q4, in terms of our own organizational and operational performance and what we do with the pipeline, how we convert, and how we discuss with customers. We had some good scaling in Q3, which we talked about before, telecommunications operator Nar, and the likes, and the likes. So good indications, but it's all happening on the overall macro backdrop, and I think nobody really knows how the end of Q4 will play out. I think last year we did have still significant budget flush in many regions, Q4 last year. I don't think this is something that the industry participants would expect in Q4 this year. So we're operating in this environment, but we do see improvement.
For us, if I take macro out and just say, like for like, how do we develop? We see sequential improvement Q2 to Q3. We also feel good about, better about Q4. And then Q1, Q2, we will compare ourselves against pretty difficult quarters this year with a much better team and much better pipeline. So I do feel very positive about the Americas over the next few quarters.
Yeah, on your question with regard to the new billings, so on a year-over-year comparison of those EUR 40 million, this is good, a little bit more towards enterprise. So in the end, you saw that also here in the deck, especially for example, the APAC deal, which Oliver explained, very nice and, it's for us, a good sign that enterprise is ticking up again. And on the question on the lower bucket of the enterprise, it was just where it's coming from, if this was the question?
No, the question is there was whether there's a continuous trend, I think to lower ASP in enterprise. But I think what you see this year is that we do try to focus on the things which do convert and the deals that convert. Obviously, we have in our pipelines, we have very large deals, and we have the smaller deals where we move SMB customers into the Tensor and the enterprise world. The current environment, quite honestly, in most regions, the entry-level enterprise works better than the upper end.
We did see some growth in the above 200k, and we had a nice new order with T Order in Korea, and there's a few other good deals that we had, but in general, it's easier to sell into the middle part or the lower part of the enterprise bucket at the moment. This converts more easily, and that's what we focus on. There's nothing which we strategically do or is a continuous trend. It's just, I think, a testament to the current market environment where we see this development. In Q4, obviously there is a gearing towards bigger deals together with partners across the different regions, and we are in the middle of it, so we have still the, I think the important two months to go on this one.
So let's see how this comes out then.
All clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Deepshikha Gupta, from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking my question. So, first, just following up on the question on enterprise ASP. So we see that the ASPs have been, like, going downwards from, like, Q1 onwards. So would it be fair to assume that, like, Q4 would be the last quarter where you would see this trend around, like, you know, people more bending towards the smaller size deals in the enterprise bucket, and then it will stabilize post that? And then, this is more on SMB. So like you talked about pricing, so should we, like, given, you know, you had upside from pricing increases for the last three, four quarters, what is the normalized level of growth that you see from pricing?
Would it be, like, more 3%-4%? And again, in that SMB itself, you have the you talked about free-to-paid campaigns, where, like, it was indicated that, you know, the relevance of it is reducing, as compared to how it used to be previously. So any color on how that will track going forward?
Yeah, let me start from the back. So exactly as you assume, free-to-paid campaigning, it's not the most important part of the equation anymore, so we are also careful. Now, we rebuild our free base, and then we will continue, but on a careful element, as we, by the way, did already in this year, a complete different approach versus the other years. On pricing, you're spot on in the vicinity of 3%-4%. This should become, for us, a normal part of the equation, exactly as you say. And on the enterprise ASP, quite honestly, right now, and Oliver explained that, so far, or right now, we are obviously more successful in selling into the lower and middle part.
But, you saw the deals, especially the major ones, and if macro eases up a little bit, we believe also from what we see in the pipe and from the status where we are with our partnership deals, which are obviously bound to more towards higher ASP deals, we believe that we have also a chance that the ASP will increase again going forward.
Yeah, I think. Look, sequentially, clearly, Q4 is the quarter where high ASPs are possible because this is when the big deals are being discussed. So that should, that should be good. And then Q1, Q2, as I said before, we're comparing to the starting of the trend where ASPs came down quite significantly, as you rightly point out. So, I think from, from here onwards, enterprise ASP development should see positive movement. And, and we're going into this Q4 now with a, with a good pipeline for this.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Ben Castillo-Bernaus from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Good morning. Yeah, one from me, please. Just around the enterprise net retention rate, which obviously slipped quite materially in Q3. Could you just unpack a bit the moving parts there? How much was that lapping the multi-year deal impact, and how much was sort of less cross-sell and upsell from your installed base? You said churn was stable, so I assume that's the only other variable in there. And then, I guess, what should we expect going forward? Should that eventually return back to that 110% or above level that it was running at before? Thanks.
Yeah, so the decomposition of the enterprise NRR is. The biggest chunk is currency-related. Remember, this is a reported KPI which we release. And then there are two other impacts. Number one is multi-year deal a little bit, and the other one is obviously the contraction of the enterprise segment, which we have seen. So that's a natural development of what we have seen yet so far. And with what we have explained before, we, of course, indeed believe that it's improving from here.
Okay, understood. Thanks very much.
Our last question comes from Gustav Froberg from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions as well, on the end of the call here. Three quick ones for me, just on pipeline first, but on SMB. You talked about not doing free-to-paid conversions in Q3. How is the pipeline and ecosystem around your SMB business developing into Q4? Then, you now kind of revamped remote and you've revamped Tensor. What comes next on the product side for TeamViewer, and what should we look for next year? And then last question is on capital return and share buybacks. How do you feel about your balance sheet at the moment, and what should we expect looking into next year in terms of share buybacks or returns to shareholders? Thank you.
Yeah, let me start with the capital allocation question on share buyback. First, we want to finish this current running share buyback, and for us, this is always a very attractive tool in the overall equation of the capital allocation. In the vicinity of whatever it will be, but in 2024, we will make up our mind. But we are positive on that one, as we could say today.
Yeah. So then two others. So first of all, I think question one, SMB pipeline. I don't think that's the right way to look at it, honestly, because this is velocity business, where it's not so much about a pipeline management, but campaigning, and the kind of very active, inside sales folks and then also webshop, driving this. Free-to-paid campaigning will not play a big role in the, in the Q4. I think we see good, healthy, business development there across the regions, honestly. Weakest of kind of is the Americas, but that's also improving. So we, we do feel, good about stability of the SMB segment. Again, last year, Q4 was very strong, so we need to see how that plays out in the year-over-year growth. But overall, healthy development, that we see there.
And we have more, more to talk about and more to sell, with the managed devices integrations, so MDM. We have the patch management. We have security features now that can play. We have better cross-sell, so I feel good about this. And what we hear from our inside sales people around the world is that they go confidently into the Q4, so that's good. Second question, products next year. I suggest we talk about that later when we do the annual results. We'll be full focus now on delivering this year, and we are very, very active at the moment in partnership discussions and call it tuck-in M&A alliances, smaller acquisitions in different areas. I mean, not a secret, it's around IT/OT Convergence.
It's also collaboration around AI with some of the larger players. So there's a lot going on at the moment in the business development and corporate development teams to have additional products out there in the market for the second half of next year. But I think it's better if we talk about the concrete items and propositions there with the full year results. We're in the middle of working through many of these topics at the moment.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, Gustav.
Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further questions, then with this, we conclude today's conference. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. You may disconnect now. Goodbye.