Lemonsoft Oyj (HEL:LEMON)
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Apr 28, 2026, 6:29 PM EET
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Earnings Call: Q4 2023

Feb 15, 2024

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

be going through the full year statements from January to December 2023, as well as the fourth quarter in 2023 as well. So, the usual suspects here in the driving seat. So myself, Jan-Erik Lindfors, CEO of Lemonsoft since August 2023. Before that, Deputy CEO for a couple of years, accompanied by my colleagues, Mari Erkkilä, our CFO, and Alpo Luostarinen, our Director of M&A and Investor Relations. Alpo is also working a lot with our strategy and business development, so a very important role in our company. As said, we will be going through the most important highlights for 2023 and also taking your questions during the presentation.

I think you have the opportunity to write in, if there are things you want to ask, and we'll take those at the end of the presentation. But without further ado, I think let's jump into our material, and let's look at, first of all, the key takeaways for 2023. Overall, I think you could say that, despite a challenging kind of macroeconomic situation in Finland and a challenging market situation, we performed in a stable way. So, we grew profitably across the year.

Net sales growth of 17%. We had an Adjusted EBIT percentage of 27.3%. So I would characterize our business, as I usually do, as maybe not the most sexiest business, but stable, resilient, growing, and profitable. We had one major highlight of the year, I would say, and that would be the acquisition of Finvoicer. Our largest acquisition to date, which we also saw strong synergies, on the invoice lifecycle management and the digital financial management side of things.

We'll talk more about Finvoicer later in the presentation. We have a slide on that, and Alpo will do that. But suffice to say, I think, as I've been reiterating before as well regarding the Finvoicer purchase, great team, really good complementary product portfolio to us, and something that we can sell to all our customers, across the board. We also looked at, well, we worked a lot on our strategy over the year.

That recalibration is still ongoing, but what I would like to emphasize here is that we want to focus on where we have a right to play and where we are strong. So looking at the horizontals in form of, of financial management, invoice lifecycle management, work time management solutions, project management, and CRM, those are the kind of horizontal offerings where we have a really strong presence and a, a right to compete in the market.

And then complemented by those verticals where we're really good, so, so industrial manufacturing, wholesale and retail, et cetera. I truly believe that, you know, in order for the company to grow and to scale, you need to leverage the strengths that you have in the, in the, in the capabilities. So net sales for the year, EUR 26.3 million. Net sales growth, 16.8%.

Adjusted EBIT, 27.3%. A record number of customers, so 12,600, and of course, the majority of those came along with the Finvoicer acquisition. We're 208 employees, so up from 184. I said the one acquisition during the year, but then the largest one to date. So let's have a look at the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter from a kind of commercial perspective was a little bit softer than we expected, especially at the end of the year. So looking at both from a new customer acquisition point of view, as well as a consulting sales point of view.

However, we still did grow 15.3% from the previous year, with a higher gross margin than before, and with a slightly lower Adjusted EBIT during the quarter. For the comparison period for 2022, we had a really great 2022 when it comes to consulting services and delivering projects at the end of the year.

This year was a little bit softer, especially in the month of December, and that's also reflected in the numbers here. Recurring revenue during the quarter, 79.8%, but if you look at the full year, we're still above 80% in recurring revenue. And I said, 208 people that are working for us now, roughly 50/50 still.

So in R&D, a little less than 100 people, and in customer operations, 100 people, and then the rest is administration, finance, et cetera, supporting the business with the necessary capabilities as well. Then, key financial trends, net sales steadily growing, Adjusted EBIT up as well, not as much as we would have liked.

That’s also something I think I’d like to talk about more, is the organic growth base, but we’ll get there, because I think that was the one kind of major disappointment when you look at the trend over the organic growth. We had good momentum going into Q3 and during Q3, but then especially during Q4, we saw a little bit of a drop back again, on that side.

Still, you know, getting that organic growth back on track is the main focus area for 2024. We need to leverage the great customer base we have, so 12,600 customers. We have the broadest product portfolio that we've ever had available for our customers to buy. So we need to get a little bit of tailwinds from the market, as well as do better on our sales side to get to those get back on the organic growth path from that point of view. Net sales as well up rolling twelve months as well. It's a nice trend that you'll see, and of course, the number of customers as well.

I don't think there's any surprises here, and I really want to iterate the kind of resilience and effectiveness of our business model, right? Things that we've been working on during the year, especially during the last half of the year, I think, when it comes to the focus on quality, the focus on delivering, you know, projects to customer, the focus on transparency that we have in the organization so that we can be more efficient, those are all things kind of contributing to the resilience of our company and the resilience of our business model as well. Churn, however, did increase. I was talking about the organic growth, and that's also visible in our numbers for 2023.

So you can see a 5.4% revenue churn compared to 3.5%, the year before, and our net revenue retention at 101%. Now, we didn't see any kind of dramatic peaks or troughs during the year. It was more like a steady progression throughout the year, and clearly, kind of market conditions are still very challenging for our customers. We saw a record number of bankruptcies in our customers in the construction section. We also saw slower demand from customers in the logistics and transportation sector. But still, you know, customer loyalty is very high, especially when it comes to our core product line, the ERP. We are very sticky in that.

Then when it comes to some of the add-on products that are not as tightly integrated to the ERP, those are then easier for customers to think of maybe as a nice-to-have instead of a, instead of a must-have. That's also one thing that we've taken to heart and, and learned from.

So, a lot of the things that we're doing in R&D is actually focusing on a tighter integration between the Lemonsoft product portfolio as a whole, to make sure that we can execute on our sales strategy, which is land and expand. So we go in with one, type of, of functionality, one type of software, and then over time, we expand. And of course, the easier it is to take a part of our product portfolio into use for the customer, the more, cross-sell and upsell opportunities we have.

So a lot of the work is being focused on that. Then, when you look at the market at the moment, as I said, we saw a little bit of a softer demand in Q4. We did, however, win new deals in industrial manufacturing and in work time management. And work time management is actually very positive for us from 2023. We've seen steady demand during the year, and we have closed deals at a steady rate, and we've also seen the average deal size go up. Then again, you know, the deals for a little bit more complex ERP solutions are still a little bit going up and down and varying from vertical to vertical.

So in Q3, we closed, you know, deals in PSA, professional services vertical, but then again, in Q4, we saw a lot more activity from the industrial manufacturing sector and those kind of companies, which is really our core offering anyway. So very happy to see that. Market conditions still challenging for our customers and for us as well.

I think if you look at the macroeconomic conditions, the main indicators are going in the right way. So inflation is going down, interest rates is going down, et cetera. It will take a while, however, before that translates into a changed buying pattern for customers because customers are still a bit protective of their investments and making sure that they their bottom line is okay.

The Finnish economy is forecasted to be more or less flat for 2024. If you look at the forecast from the major banks or from the research agencies, you can see a spread from between, you know, -1% to 1% growth, and the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Inflation projected to drop and investments to grow by 1%.

So it's still a kind of a mixed picture, which also makes it a little bit difficult to say how the full year will look like. We anyhow continue to focus on executing our growth strategy because product leadership is the cornerstone of our competitive advantage. We need to have the right products in the portfolio to be able to have a right to play and a right to win.

Our major investments is still ongoing in the Kellokortti 2 product, into the Lemonsoft ERP product for enhancements, for financial management, for manufacturing, logistics, and for warehouse management. And as I already talked about, we work a lot on integration as well, making sure that our products are tightly integrated to each other, but also that we can integrate to third-party providers as easily as possible.

From a customer experience point of view, we put a lot of work into taking good care of our current customer base during the second half of 2023. We strengthened our team, both from a pre-sales perspective, from a customer success perspective and also in sales.

From that point of view, I feel pretty confident that we have the resources available to us now to also put in the sales effort and the effort within customer success. With a little bit of tailwind from the market and the market turning, I think that's we're well set for that. If you look at from a new sales and expansion sales point of view, as I said, good demand, work time management.

Last quarter, lots of or a couple of deals from industrial manufacturing, but more leads than we expected, so that was positive. From an expansion sales point of view, we have a whole department working on integration platforms as a service, right? Or integrations as a service for customers.

Which means that we can do anything from standard connectors all the way up to big integration projects with 5-15 different integration connection points and so forth, and do that very cost efficiently. So that's good. And then again, the Finvoicer upsell, cross-sell opportunity, which I think is magnificent when you come to debt collection, factoring, et cetera.

Those are services that we're now able to deliver to all Lemonsoft customers with a tight integration between the Lemonsoft and Finvoicer products as well. So really looking to kind of emphasize that opportunity also going forward. I think I'll take also a moment to give you a brief update on what kind of operational updates and initiatives we have ongoing. So many of...

Most of these were started already last year, but of course, they evolve over time, and then the impact that you can have from them is also different. There's a couple of that maybe are worth highlighting here. The first is the pricing update. So last year, August, September, we changed the pricing for all current Lemonsoft ERP customers to our new bundling packages.

Now, we've also gone through the rest of the product portfolio for this year. So updated pricing for Talosofta, for example, for Logentia, for Finanssila, et cetera. Making sure that we haven't left any stone unturned when it comes to really being strategic on the pricing side as well.

From a sales and customer care point of view, as I said, focusing on the right to play, right to win areas where we're strong, and then having an even more data-driven approach to upsell and cross-sell opportunities. So really understanding across the whole customer base, what kind of offering penetration do we have? And through that, how do you identify the best potential for upsell and cross-sell?

And still the focus on product development, as I said, I mean, that's our cornerstone, and that's those investments that we've planned for this year, also for last year, they will continue as planned because that's the cornerstone of our competitive capability anyway. And then, as I said, we've been working on the strategy update. We're nearly there. We have some recalibration ongoing.

I think you can hear that already in the message when I talk about, you know, where we're strong, where we have a right to play, where the communication or where the competitive advantage is, and so forth. So, we do recognize and we want to communicate more on this one, but we think it's better than when we have some more visibility onto the market. Right now, we want to show that we are capable of taking this company back on the organic growth track, and that's the most important thing. Then we can talk about strategy more going forward. Okay, I'll give the word over to Alpo for a couple of minutes, around the M&A. So please, Alpo, go ahead.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Thanks, Jan-Erik. As usual, we've been continuing on our M&A track during the year in 2023. As Jan-Erik explained about the acquisition of Finvoicer, which was the biggest acquisition thus far, and it's been probably the most positive looking in the sort of midterm going forward. We had basically two objectives fulfilled with the acquisition.

Mainly looking at the value and functionalities that we can add to Lemonsoft's core offering. The whole offering in the invoice life cycle management and especially in the invoice financing part is completely new to Lemonsoft's offering, which is a really nice complementary acquisition.

On top of that, we are very happy to have obtained the team of Finvoicer, which has, for the past 10 years, been developing the business from scratch where it is now, which is a really, really great accomplishment from the team, and looking forward to continuing on that track.

On top of that, we are continuing to investigate the market for new opportunities, especially in the vertical space, let's say, in industrial manufacturing, wholesale and retail, logistics space, which is very interesting, interesting in terms of complementing the portfolio we have and getting products that we can easily cross-sell and be good additions to what our customers at the moment are using.

So that's one area, and on top of that, we are, of course, continuing to look at acquisitions in the administrative space, in financial management, HR, and sort of message delivery. But yeah. Let's take a look at Finvoicer in detail. We highlighted the historical financials before, but looking back on Q4 and how the whole year in 2023 developed, Finvoicer is on track to grow revenue.

They ended up at EUR 4.3 million in revenue, which is a nice growth as steadily from 2022. As for profitability, Finvoicer has actually improved their profitability at the moment, and they are continuing on that track and earning the expectations and actually exceeding the expectations we had.

As for the offering, the invoice delivery, reminders, invoice financing, and the whole digital financial management offering is a good addition, and our teams at Lemonsoft and Finvoicer have been actively working together in the second half of 2023 in acquiring mutual customers through a combined ERP invoice lifecycle management, and in some cases, also digital financial management offering.

The products we are combining together at the moment, we have released a new integrated debt collection solution at the end of 2023 for Lemonsoft customers as well, integrated to the Lemonsoft offering and provided through the Finvoicer software, which is a nice addition to have. As said, we are very happy with the team. We are looking forward to make new acquisitions that complement Finvoicer's invoice lifecycle management.

So any businesses that provide us with invoice volume to be delivered through Finvoicer is really interesting for us at the moment. So that's for the M&A part, and back to you, Jan-Erik. Or actually, Mari. Yeah.

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Thanks, Alpo. I think we'll do Mari's finance piece here, so.

Mari Erkkilä
CFO, Lemonsoft

Yes, thank you. Briefly, about the review period's net sales and cost structure. First, net sales. Net sales increased due to the acquisition of Duunissa.fi business, whose net sales were not included in the comparison period in October, November, and Finvoicer Group, whose net sales were not included at all in the comparison period.

Net sales were EUR 7.4 million, and growth was 15.1% in the review period. Transaction income increased, especially due to the acquisition of Finvoicer Group. Organic growth of the review period was -3.7% due to the challenging market situation. Especially consulting and other income remained organically at a lower level than in the comparison period. Organic growth of the recurring revenue was positive.

And then a distribution of expenses, which has been consistent year after year. Gross margin was lower than previous year. Material and service services was 14.8% of net sales, and the use of external services slightly increased during the period. Cost base consists primarily of employee benefit expenses. During the review period have been capitalized development expenses of EUR 343 thousand. Other operating expenses has increased as planned. Thank you. And then Jan-Erik, maybe.

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Thank you, Mari. So, then a little bit, we talked about the size of the organization already, but of course, we grew through the acquisition of Finvoicer, and we're now 208 people. If you look at that from a kind of distribution point of view, as I said earlier, we have almost half in customer operations and then half in product operations.

So still investing in key recruitments, both on the sales or on the customer side. We have strengthened our team in terms of customer care. We have also strengthened key positions within R&D, cybersecurity, et cetera, and so forth. So, investments, I would say, in terms of staff, is also going according to plan.

We need to have a skilled staff really driven and motivated to help us reach the goals that we have for 2024 and going forward. Of course, from a kind of mission and vision perspective, what we deliver to customers is really operational excellence, right? So we help the customers be better at their business, and so we need to have the requisite expertise also in-house to do that, in order to be able to give them the right tools.

So then, a little bit about the outlook for 2024. As I said, the market is still uncertain, and, as such, we are pretty careful with our forecast for 2024. From a growth perspective, we're looking at a distribution of net sales between 10%-18% compared to 2023.

From a profitability perspective, looking at an adjusted EBIT between 23%-28% of net sales. So, our estimate is simply that the current economic conditions are still holding us back in terms of new sales and growing the current customer base. So being pretty conservative on this one at the moment. Let's see what kind of visibility the market brings us going forward.

Then, if we look at the board's dividend proposal for 2023, we have a consistent dividend policy. The company has had that for a long time. So the board's dividend proposals for 2023 is EUR 0.14 per share, which means that we will distribute around EUR 2.6 million to our owners.

And as said, we have an active dividend policy, provided that any profit distribution doesn't undermine the targets that we've set out for ourselves in terms of growth or other targets that are relevant. So, I think that's going to be the case also going forward. As long as we deliver on our targets and our results, we will also reward shareholders with the dividend. Then, upcoming events for 2024, week 12 will be the publication of our annual report.

We will have our annual general meeting on Tuesday, the 9th of April, and then, 25th of April will be the interim report for the first quarter. Half-year report will be coming out on August the 8th, and then, the Q3 report will then be on 5th of November, 2024.

As always, feel free to reach out to Alpo or myself with any questions, or comments you might have. That was it from the material point of view. So I think happy to take questions, Alpo, if there are any anything on the line from our viewers.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Yeah, definitely. We actually have quite a lot of questions. Let's let me try to dig into those piece by piece. Let's start with pricing and customers.

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Yeah.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

First question would be: How do we view pricing? Are our customers willing to pay more for the services this year?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Yeah, I think you need to look at that from, again, from a product-by-product basis, right? So what kind of value do we, do we deliver? I think if you look at the Lemonsoft ERP, for sure, because we have a continuous delivery cycle of four times per year, where customers get additional functionality. We're also implementing new features on the warehouse management side of things, for example. So for sure, I think customers would be willing to get that value and also pay for that value. I mean, it's like Warren Buffett said, "Price is what you pay, and value is what you get.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

And going on, let's say, looking back on price increases in Q3, how were those impacting growth in Q4?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Yeah, we had, well, as I said, we did the price increases from August forward for the current customers, and we had a large customer base to go through. Our target was to get, you know, between, around, you know, 5%-10%, depending on the customers in terms of price increases during the fall. Now, we weren't able to realize the full extent of that, but we did realize a large piece of that.

There are always then, of course, historical contracts and such that you have to kind of be careful with and approach customers in a little bit different way. But all in all, I said we did quite well on realizing the price increases that we had.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

What about the increase in churn? We mentioned that it increased roughly 2% from 3.5%-5.5%, roughly. Is that more related to the tough market situation, or has there been any more unhappy customers leaving?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

I would, I would say it's more related to the, to the market situation. We saw a significant number of construction companies having a hard time during 2023, so that's one piece. We also saw customers that were using, let's say, only one piece of our complete product offering. They had an easier time switching out to save costs or to reduce seats to reduce costs.

So, we also saw, for example, you know, if you look at from a product perspective, the logistics and transportation market was heavily affected on lower volumes of transport in 2023. And as such, then you have less transport costs to optimize, and that's then reflected, for example, in the performance of Logentia for 2023.

So you really have to look at it kind of vertical by vertical, product by product, and then also how well- The larger- the better we have an offer penetration, so the more modules a customer is using, the less the risk of churn. And from an ERP perspective, the core product, very little churn in terms of being dissatisfied. Again, we come back to bankruptcies and difficult market conditions.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

... Good. And, and due to the acquisition of Finvoicer, we have seen a bit more different structure in our revenue. And this is probably for you, Mari. What, what are your thoughts on the relative share of SaaS decreasing in 2023, and how do you expect that to continue in 2024?

Mari Erkkilä
CFO, Lemonsoft

I think so that the sales transaction will increased because Finvoicer transaction is significant, and it is in last year only partly, whole year, not whole year. And that's why I believe that share of transaction will increase.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Yeah, and, and of course, if Finvoicer continues to grow quicker than the whole group, then, then that will accelerate as well. But yeah, good. And, and then our guidance from a few aspects. Firstly, we our analysts see that the guidance assumes clear acceleration with organic growth versus 2023. Are we expecting gradual improvement with organic growth this year or steeper improvement, for example, in the second half? Would you, Jan-Erik, want to comment on this?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Well, I think we would comment that we look for a gradual improvement, going, you know, percentage point by percentage point upwards, and let's see where that takes us by the end of the year. We expect our current customer base to bring us a certain percentage of growth, and then, of course, we have growth targets set in terms of new customer acquisition as well. So when you combine those, you get to our forecast, and that's also what we're guiding the market for.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Good. And, of course, we need to recognize the fact that Finvoicer will be organic at the end of the year, and we expect that to continue to grow, which affects a bit.

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Yeah.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Good. And, let me see if we have any other questions on, on, let's say, 2023. So, let's look at any sort of launches in ESG initiatives or ESG space. How do you see, Jan-Erik, are we seeing anything in 2024?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Yeah. I mean, we did a lot of work, background work on ESG during 2023. And I think suffice to say, it's, it's, it's a business opportunity from our point of view, but it's also a reporting capability that we need to, to develop and, deploy for, for ourselves, right? So, from our customer's point of view, they will be required, to report up the value chain in terms of their sustainability, and so forth.

So the whole directive that comes into play, even if it's not directly for them, I think their, their end customers, the big manufacturers, will demand it from, from them. So that means that they have to have the data available, which they have if they use the Lemonsoft ERP, and then we can help them make the, the right reports for that and contribute that way.

And of course, also Logentia with the transport optimization services and the CO2 analysis services that they provide is interesting for any company that has a lot of logistics and transportation in their value chain or in supply chain. Then from our own point of view, we are preparing our own internal ESG reporting project, and Mari will be responsible for that, so maybe you can say a couple of words.

Mari Erkkilä
CFO, Lemonsoft

No, nothing extra, but I think so that we start in this May, this project, and let's see what we can tell last year.

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Yeah.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Good. Staying in 2024 and looking at our guidance once more, the midpoint in our guidance means lower profitability than in last year. The question is, what's burdening our profitability, and are we increasing investments on some front? If you want to comment on this, Mari.

Mari Erkkilä
CFO, Lemonsoft

Yeah, personal cost and investments in product development will increase while organic growth is still expected to be moderate.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Good. And that, of course, affects our relative profitability. And Jan-Erik, would you like to comment on our investments in R&D, looking forward to 2024?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Sure. And as I said, and then we had listed it in the material as well, I reiterate once again, you know, in order to be competitive in the market, we need to have the correct product portfolio. We have invested last year, and we will continue to invest this year in the Lemonsoft ERP, in the Kellokortti product, into our integration platform and capabilities, into our cloud services and our delivery capabilities, and so forth. So it's just, you know, it's a price of doing business, if you put it like that. One specific product that will also come out during the year is the next version of Lixani.

We've used some external partners there to use, to work with us to speed up the product delivery there, and that will be available pretty soon as well.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Great. And final question on the guidance: Does it include any future M&A, or is it based on current operations? And I can take that. It does not include any future M&A. We only include the past M&A, and if we were to change that, we will definitely guide that in clear wording... And probably final point on last year, the positive EBIT effect from reduced earn-outs, what acquisition is this related to? If you, Mari, want to comment on this.

Mari Erkkilä
CFO, Lemonsoft

Finanssila acquisition.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Yeah. Yeah. And actually, we recognized roughly half of the earn-out liability we had and eliminated the rest, and this is also related to our restructuring in the group regarding Finanssila and Finvoicer, which have some parallel functions.

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Yeah, maybe a couple words on what we did on Finanssila. I think we recognized that it would fare best as a pure-play product company. So it now provides purely the SaaS-based budgeting, forecasting, and reporting platform, and the financial kind of consulting services were consolidated into Finvoicer as the CFO as a Service, for example. And we look at that as an opportunity to scale that service across mid-sized and small customers, whereas previously we had quite a lot of bigger customers in that space.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Excellent. Thanks, Jan-Erik. And then a few words on M&A. We've gotten a question whether we would consider doing M&A transactions in 2024. What kind of targets? Well, I'll reiterate that we are actively looking at targets in many fronts, and we would, to be honest, expect to make acquisitions in 2024 as well as usual.

And the targets we are at the moment looking at this is mainly in the industrial manufacturing, wholesale, logistics space, the vertical side, but also always looking at the horizontal side if there's something of interest. And another question on M&A: How do we see our M&A firepower after the Finvoicer acquisition, since we took a bit of leverage? Do we have any rules in place when it comes to capital structure?

Maybe I can take that one as well. We were happy to use some leverage since we have a good... We have a good cash position anyway, but we're happy to take on some leverage. The interest rates are a bit high, but if we can consider doing acquisitions that have a good return on investment- invested capital, the return on equity still remains very high if we take a bit of leverage.

And we have net debt at the moment, roughly zero, and we are probably going to increase that going forward if we have good acquisition targets, but still going to remain sort of on a moderate level, I would say. Let's say significantly below 2x, in terms of the current investment activity at least. Any comments on that, Jan-Erik, from your side? How do you see leverage?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

I think we're in a position where if we want to take more, we can take more. It all depends on the target. It needs to be the right target, right? So again, we come back to what to focus on. As I said, we need to leverage our strength and then complement those if we can. So if the right target is available, then let's see what the best way is to finance that kind of an acquisition.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Good. And then we have a few questions remaining on the strategy side. Maybe first one: What's the most important strategic target for the group in 2024?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Yeah, look, we have a couple of—I would call them—kind of must-win battles or strategic focus areas that we are using as the kind of inspiration for ourselves and our staff in order to go forward. And the first one is really product leadership. And so executing on those product development projects that we have ongoing and taking those to market as planned is, of course, as said before, really the cornerstone of our competitive advantage. Then the second area is accelerating sales, and there, we're working on the sales side, on the cross-sell, upsell, as we talked about earlier.

Also, one of the focus areas is making sure our deliveries go as smoothly, and with as good quality as possible, which means that the quicker we can get the deployment done, the quicker we get the monthly recurring revenue to roll, and it also leaves the customer with a quicker time to value from what he has bought from us.

And then the third one is on the organizational side, so really being a lean, cost-efficient organization, where we try to eliminate all kind of waste. So going through our processes from a kind of quality mapping perspective and see, you know, what kind of waste do we have, for example, in a certain process? Can we eliminate that? Can we make sure that we don't do double work? That's kind of incremental, continuous improvement that goes on all the time. In that, in that order, I would say.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Yeah, steady growth and profitable growth. What's on the other side, what's the most significant risk you see?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

I think the most significant risk is if this kind of macroeconomic climate and headwinds kind of continue and our customers keep having difficulties in their operations, then that, of course, will be reflected in our numbers as well. If the current customers base doesn't buy enough, that means we won't reach our organic growth targets, and so forth. So we need to make sure that we really take well care of them.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Great. The final question: When are we planning to publish our strategy update?

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

As soon as we can. Like I said, I mean, the main pieces are all kind of put together, but we still want to see first that we can execute on the kind of short-term things before we put more emphasis or more communication out on the long-term side. But I think you can already see and hear from our messaging that focusing on where we are good, right to play, right to win, product leadership, sales acceleration, and a little bit kind of less focus on construction, for example, and those kind of things are evident here.

Alpo Luostarinen
Director, M&A and IR, Lemonsoft

Excellent. Thanks a lot, Jan-Erik and Mari, both.

Mari Erkkilä
CFO, Lemonsoft

Thank you.

Jan-Erik Lindfors
CEO, Lemonsoft

Thank you. Those were good questions. As always, if you have questions, comments, please reach out to any one of us on the call, and we'll do our best to help you. Otherwise, I thank you for your attention and your time today, and have a great day, everybody.

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