First of all, very warm welcome to this first quarter interim presentation from Lemonsoft. My name is Jan-Erik Lindfors, and I'm the Deputy CEO of Lemonsoft. We're responsible for our customer operations and growth acceleration, et cetera. With me today is our CFO, Mari Erkkilä, and also our Director for M&A and Investor Relations, Alpo Luostarinen. Together we'll walk you through the key takeaways from the first quarter in 2022. We'll talk a little bit about our growth strategy again and reiterate the most important points. We'll give a little bit of market update, talk about our product launches and roadmap, some things on M&A, and then we'll walk through the numbers for the first quarter as well.
If I understand correctly, then you guys have the opportunities also to send in questions in writing for us. We'll take those questions at the end of the presentation when we've walked you through the material. Kicking off then with the key takeaways from the first quarter in 2022, I would say that, as a team, our strong sales growth continued. We had a lot of focus on new customer acquisition during the first quarter. If you look at the state of our business, how that is reflected in the numbers, then our net sales growth remains strong at 29.9%.
As said, driven by new customer acquisition, also, the impact of the Metsys and PlanMill acquisitions done last year and the asset purchase of Talosofta. Now the main driver for this growth was through our SaaS business, which was 39.3%, and our gross margin remained at a good level at 88.9%. EBIT-wise or adjusted EBIT-wise, we're at 26.5% of net sales. That's in line with our expectations, a little bit increasing from Q4 profitability. As we talked in the last time we met in the presentation or in this kind of scenario, that's affected by our upfront recruitment that we've done during Q4 and part of it continuing also into Q1.
Now the number of employees at the end of the first quarter this year is then at 158. Our key numbers you can see in the table from the right-hand side. Basically, reflecting back on the quarter, continuing to execute on our growth strategy in the way we planned. Now if you look at that from a strategy and market point of view, as you know, we have two focus areas in our growth strategy. The first one is product leadership, which really means that we aim to have the broadest portfolio in the market, serving those five key segments, those verticals where we have special competence and tools to offer to all our customers.
The product portfolio roadmap is on track, and I'll go a little bit deeper into product launches and roadmap later on. We release continuously new functionality from our R&D department, contributing of course also to the growth in its own way. One thing I'd like to highlight from a strategic perspective also and a product perspective is the launch of LemonSmart, a product that we made for the accounting segment, sell through the accounting segment to small micro companies automating finance operations for those kind of customers. On the customer experience side, we continue to focus on our direct sales, both serving our current customer base as well as acquiring new customers.
We see good levels of activity in the market, you know, especially in the manufacturing industry and wholesale and retail segments. Our channel sales is focused on the accounting segment, so helping to grow that. In line with our strategy, we see that that's a really key piece in the puzzle for us to be able to continue to grow. Also our transaction business grew. 12% growth in the first quarter on our Lemon Hub business, and that's good to see. That means that people are sending out electronic invoices and salary slips and so forth. It's a good sign for us.
Summing up Q1, I would say that we saw strong market demand at the start of the year, but a little bit of macroeconomic uncertainty increasing, especially in the last month since the start of the Ukraine war. Leading indicators are still good. I mean, we generated a very strong sales pipeline for ourselves, so we have the highest lead generation numbers that we've seen. Especially, as I said, the manufacturing industry and the wholesale and retail segments are having high demand. We're seeing a little bit lower demand than our construction and professional services. We made good progress in new customer acquisition. We have multiple deals that we've won with good Finnish and international brands for enterprise resource planning solutions, and that's really good to see.
Our consulting and services sales was at a record high level for quarter one, but that also means that we have some pressure on delivery capacity and capability and I'll talk more a little bit about that as well. Cross-sell and upsell activities are continuing, of course, where we're leveraging the acquisitions that we've made. We've seen some notable expansions during Q1 for these products as well. There's a historical milestone that I'd like to lift up. Basically 10 million delivered e-invoices through our Lemon Hub service that we reached in Q1, a really good milestone and that tells you a little bit about the volumes also that we're processing in our service.
Now, I spoke a little bit about the macroeconomic uncertainty, and we saw that. We didn't see that reflected in January and February, but we saw a little bit in March as we saw a small drop in leads. We also saw customers who, due to the uncertainty of the situation, either postpone some deals or postpone some implementations to happen after the summer. If you look at the forecast from the Finnish economic institute, ETLA , it's a little bit lower growth in the economy during the year. However, there's a positive indication then that investments should still grow by 3.5% during the year, which is a lot more than 2021.
Overall, I would sum this up by saying that we're continuing to committedly execute on our growth strategy, being the product leaders, supplying the best customer experience, and through that, creating the growth that we want to see from the market. A couple of words about our product launches and roadmap. As you guys know, we serve five different segments and for each of these segments, we have dedicated activities going on from a product development and launch perspective. In industrial manufacturing, notable activities that we're running is improving the functionality for manufacturing companies, bringing easier Kanban planning and manufacturing planning to the market.
In the wholesale and retail segment, we are focusing on making the Metsys product a SaaS product, really something that you can scale and take to market for the majority of our logistics customers. Talosofta is the major brand in our construction portfolio. We're working on the next version of Talosofta. PlanMill is the spearhead product for professional services where we serve the IT consulting industry with project planning, customer relationship management, and ERP functionality. Last but not least, you know, I really want to emphasize the good accounting segment that we have, which is both a sales channel and a customer segment for us.
The major part of our product development effort this year is spent on the LemonSmart product that we brought to market during the first quarter, ramping up through our accounting channel and then expecting to see impact then from the second half of the year. That's a little about you know the key takeaways from the first quarter, the market and then as well what's happening on the product front. Next, I'll hand over to Alpo for a little bit of input on the M&A landscape. Thank you.
Thanks, Jan-Erik. My name is Alpo Luostarinen. I'm M&A Director at Lemonsoft. I'll talk you through a few details on our M&A track. We are continuing to explore several interesting opportunities in various areas. If we look at a few of the different fields that we are in, as Jan-Erik mentioned, the accounting sector is very important to us, and we see a trend towards accounting firms utilizing software to enable them to focus more on advising their customers. Thus we try to help them to develop their business.
The reporting and BI side, as well as the transactions businesses that we are both active in at the moment, we are considering opportunities to develop new solutions ourselves, or to acquire businesses in both of those fields. If you look at the vertical side, so the specific industry sectors that we are active in, especially industrial manufacturing sector is interesting and good business for us. The sector in general is struggling to maintain its profitability. And it is a bit further along in digitalization compared to some other sectors we are active in. We see that the digitalization, there is continuing interest towards software solutions to automate processes in that sector.
That's why we say that we've been successful there. Looking at the construction side, there are, of course, raw material deliveries have been struggling. There's been cost pressure on projects, and it's made difficult to manage projects in time and in budget. The sector is still under-digitalized.
We are planning to help the sector to digitalize further along, of course. We made previously several acquisitions, two acquisitions in the field, and we are adjusting our offering currently to provide an optimal fit. Thus, it might not be relevant for us currently to make any further acquisitions in that field. Again, in wholesale and retail, especially the logistics side, the current geopolitical situation is making it difficult for companies to execute their logistics operations. There's also cost pressure coming up in the field. We see that this increases the interest towards software solutions to make it more and more efficient to manage their logistic operations.
Finally, the professional services side, PSA, we have divided the professional services sector into six different areas. For example, IT consulting, legal services and so on. They are quite different from each other, and we consider actually interesting targets in basically all of those fields. They are quite different in terms of what kind of trends there are. Interesting to see, and hopefully we'll be able to disclose some new information later on.
Okay.
Yeah.
Let's go then, figures. My name is Mari Erkkilä, and I am CFO in Lemonsoft. First, net sales. The strong growth in net sales is majority based on SaaS revenue growth. Net sales growth has been 30% in the review period, and SaaS has grown by 39% in the same period. SaaS revenue growth due to new customer acquisition and upsell to current customers, as well as previous year acquisition of PlanMill and Talosofta. The net sales of PlanMill and Talosofta were not included in the comparison period's net sales. Organic growth was 9.1% in the review period. The comparison period included exceptionally high license sales, which shows us lower organic growth of the review period.
In principle, we don't offer license basis sales as an option for new customers. In special cases, for example, for customers with public subsidies. Without license sales, organic growth of the review period would be 11.2%.
Thanks, Mari. I would like to kind of comment also on the last bullet point on the slide there. When you look at the amount of leads and offers and closed deals that we acquired during the first quarter, then that's, as said earlier, that also brings pressure on our implementation and delivery capability. We have some bottlenecks during Q1 in implementation, but we're of course taking actions to improve that situation and make sure that we get all the implementations delivered for customers as soon as possible. Basically ensuring that we have the right people in our consulting department, ensuring that we have the capacities divided according to the right priority, et cetera.
This is something that we continuously monitor week to week, how we're doing on the delivery front. Situation is improving, yes.
Thank you, Jan-Erik. Distribution of expenses. Material and services cost comprise purchase relating to hosting licenses and other external services, which is approved gross margin. Material and services cost is only about 11% of the net sales. Cost base consists primarily of personal expenses. All R&D development costs have booked on profit and loss statement. Recruitments made in the second half of 2021 and during the review period will weaken relative profitability in the first half of this year compared to the second half. Jan-Erik.
Sorry, need to put back on sound. The last year, as said, was significant for Lemonsoft. Not only did we go public, not only did we grow, not only did we make acquisitions and so forth, we also spent a lot of time in developing the organization, going through the way we work, documenting our processes, making sure that we have all the capabilities needed to basically work efficiently. Then of course, filling out the organization with roles that we needed over time. Q4, as said, or the second half of 2021, we took in a lot of people. This tempo has now slowed down during the last couple of months, and we don't foresee the amount of people growing very much anymore during the year.
We need to focus on getting the most out of the people that we have. We've already got in to make sure that the onboarding process is efficient, as I said, and continuously develop our capabilities and our business processes to make sure that we are as efficient as possible. Number of employees is up to 158, and if you look at that, you know, split by function, it's still more or less, you know, the same. We have the majority of our personnel in R&D, and then the rest is split between customer service, sales, and other functions as well. I would say, you know, a historic year for Lemonsoft behind us and of course now our first quarter as a public company as well, reporting the results.
looking to work together with our new colleagues during the year of 2022 to make Lemonsoft as efficient as possible. If you look at the outlook for 2022, we're keeping that unchanged. No current changes to the forecast for 2022. We're still looking at the 23%-28% in growth compared to 2021 when measuring net sales and then profitability at the 30%-35% level, adjusted EBIT of net sales. You know, the growth drivers are still there. We have a strong and stable customer base with low churn. Our product development is progressing nicely across all five focus segments that we serve. Of course, new customer acquisition, as mentioned, has been going well as well.
The underlying trend of digitalization, ERP penetration, is something that we expect to continue. I mean, businesses have to be more efficient than they were yesterday. They have to invest in their processes. Even though the macroeconomic climate is uncertain, we just have to live with that. I think that is not going to go away over the next couple of months anyway. That's basically the guidance for 2022 is unchanged. That's basically our main message for today is keeping the sales growth growing, keeping the costs under control, and then through that, getting to the growth and profitability target that we have for the year.
The next slide is more or less informational, but the upcoming events for 2022 is the half year report will be released on Friday the twenty-second of July, and then the last interim report for 2022 is then the Friday the twenty-eighth of October 2022. Always in all issues or questions regarding investor relations or information, feel free to contact Alpo or myself or Mari, but primarily Alpo in terms of getting information or visit our investor website at investors.lemonsoft.fi where we keep all the latest information as well. That was that for the kind of official side, and I think we could then go over to questions, Alpo, if you have those.
Yes
Moderated, yeah, we can take them from the list.
Definitely. I think we could start with the sort of bigger overview on the macroeconomic situation and the Ukraine-Russia situation. How do you see, Jan-Erik, that this has affected our business?
Well, as mentioned, we didn't see any major effect in January, February. We did see a little bit less leads coming in in March, and we also saw customers postponing buying decisions as well as implementation schedules in March. It's too early to say if that's a trend or not. I can't say yet, but for sure something that we noticed in March.
Yeah. The inflation is something that the investors are really interested in. How have we managed our sort of price increases and what's the pressure from the market towards us?
We have been very moderate for our price increases for 2022. I mean, I think we saw this, the inflation trend already last year when we were doing planning for 2022, and we decided that the moderate price increases were the way to go. I mean, our customers are in the fields of manufacturing, construction, logistics, et cetera. A lot of their costs have gone up during the last couple of months and quite dramatically. I think our customers are seeing the effects of that, but we are trying to kind of do our best to be moderate in our price increases as well from that point of view.
Yeah. One specific question we received about the price increases, can you give a rough estimate on how that affects or has affected the Q1 revenue
Not materially from that point of view. We did I think for our customers a generic kind of index price rise of 2.2%. That was what the general price increase, and that was not across the board, not for every customer, not for every product, but those where we felt we had the opportunity to do something. We also have had products, services where we did not do any price increases simply because we felt it was inappropriate.
Very good. Very good. Going a bit further into what we said about our revenue or net sales development, we received a question about the license sales. Basically, what would the organic growth in Q1 be without the comparison period license sales? Can you, Mari, give a rough estimate on that?
If we take out total license sales this period and the previous period, organic growth of a review period would be 11.2% if we take out these licenses.
Very good. Very good. All right. Moving towards personnel and recruitment, we've received quite a few questions on that. Basically, the first question is that we've recruited a lot at the end of last year and in the beginning of the year, continued to invest a bit and then is that going to continue along the year and up to the end of the year? Jan-Erik?
No, no.
Yeah.
No. Not at the same pace that we did it last year and the latest couple of months back. If you look at it from an efficiency perspective, the most important thing is to get the best out of our current personnel, and then we might have some specific needs that we go and cater to in the market. If we find then of course we can recruit, but we want to make sure that we can grow our revenues and keep our fixed cost base stable. That contributes also to getting to our EBIT target for this year.
Good. About the personnel costs in more detail, our personnel costs have increased about 50%, and the amount of personnel about 30%. What's the situation on that? Are we focusing on higher salary recruitments? Are we seeing wage inflation and so on? What kind of recruitments? Perhaps this could also relate to the M&A acquisitions we've done. What's the effect on wages?
Yeah. Good question. I don't think we're consciously focusing on, you know, higher salary recruitments. I think that's basically a consequence of the type of actions being done during the year. The acquisitions of course is part of that. Also we've strengthened in a number of positions in our product management. Those are typically, you know, highly skilled people. We've also recruited into product development and so forth. There's no conscious kind of decision to up our salaries in recruitment. But of course, the market is the market and, you know, we have a limit that we stick to and then, you know, if like that's reality, you know, in the recruitment situations.
As said, no conscious decision to focus on higher salary.
Mari, perhaps from a sort of accounting point of view, how do you see the biggest influencers to our rates?
We have also done salary increases during the review period, so salaries have gone up a little bit, but no, nothing big changes.
Perhaps the amount of sort of higher end recruitments that we did last year for the IPO have affected somewhat and then finally perhaps the acquisitions we've made have had some impact. Very good. Coming back to the sort of organic growth, one question about the customer. Since customer acquisition process progresses well, what's the main challenge with organic growth and what actions need to be taken and how we see the end of the year? We've discussed this a lot already, but let's summarize this again, Jan-Erik Lindfors.
If you recap the main points, then making sure that we get our implementations that are now ongoing done with the best quality as soon as possible so that those recurring revenues start coming in from those new customer cases. Second basis is of course making sure that also our transaction business continues to grow and that we keep serving our current customer base well so that we get cross sales, up-sales, and leverage the acquisitions that we've done during the last year.
As said, we've seen some nice expansions in some of those products that we acquired during the year, but also we have nice cross-sell capabilities because we've integrated, for example, PlanMill into the financial modules of Lemonsoft, and made sure that we can actually, you know, give our sales team the possibility to compete with a kind of balanced portfolio from that point of view.
Excellent. Final question on the profitability. We've said on our profit forecast that the end of the year will be more profitable. Can you give any indication on what the first half and the second half will look like? Perhaps Mari.
Okay. Our adjusted EBIT margin was at an expected level in this first quarter, and it was 26.5%. We believe that for the whole year, like, our outlook is. That's the situation.
Yeah. Thank you.
Q3 is typically strong for us anyway, so that's something to keep in mind.
Very good. Thanks a lot, Jan-Erik and Mari. I think we've wrapped it up for now, and we'll come back to you. Hopefully we'll get a lot more to tell to the market later on.
Very good.
Thank you.
Thank you to everybody who participated. Great to see you all, and let's stay in touch. Thank you.
Thank you.