Hello, and welcome to Qt Group's Q4 and full year 2022 results presentation. My name is Heli Jämsä, IR Manager, and with me today are CEO Juha Varelius and CFO Jouni Lintunen to present the results. After the presentations, we will have Q&A first in the room, and then via conference call lines. Without further ado, please, Juha, the floor is yours.
Thank you, thank you. Good morning to everyone, and welcome to our Q4 results, which I can say right up front that we are reasonably very happy about them. We had a very good Q quarter. I'm gonna first talk about the business highlights, then Jouni is gonna talk a bit about the financials and then we're gonna finish up on the outlook and guidance and for further questions. Q4 highlights. Well, our net sales grew 39% against a very tough comparison. If you remember in 2021, we had a very good Q4. These numbers are really excellent when we think about the comparison quarter.
We reached EUR 51 million quarterly net sales, which is of course, it's the best in the history of the company. Growth was 31% in comparable currencies. If I look the different regions, we have three regions. We have United States, North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. They kind of are changed their pole position. They are pretty much even size nowadays, even though we started the APAC was the latest for us to start. They are about even, but on this Q4, the Europe region performed the best. They were the number 1 region for us in the Q4. Our EBIT was EUR 17 million and EBITDA reached EUR 19 million, with a margin of 33%.
Of course, we've discussed this many times before that we are in a product business, so when the top line is performing, the bottom line follows pretty strongly. I'm very happy that, if we think this Q4 environment when we started the Q4, obviously, we set our guidance and our targets were very high. The Q4, in the beginning of the Q4, the environment itself, there were lots of uncertainties. I'm gonna talk about on the future outlook that, of course, there are still uncertainties. When we started the Q4, there were quite a bit of uncertainty. Given in this these circumstances, we're very happy that we were able to reach such great results.
Personnel at the end of the year was 688, increase of 37 employees during the Q4. Overall, excuse me, been speaking too much already, although it's only morning. The increase on personnel is pretty much on target. What I'm really happy to see is that our retention rate, so our leavers, it's still a relatively small number, so people are staying with Qt. Of course, now this in current environment, I think that the labor market is cooling off in any way, specifically in IT market and specifically in the United States, but we see it everywhere. Our retention rates, so i.e. the people leaving the company, it's relatively low. It's substantially lower than on IT market on general.
We've been able to recruit people as planned. I'm gonna talk about that also in the future outlook. The pretty much the same will continue also this year. We're gonna be hiring and adding new Qt in our personnel. We had a great success in our strategy execution in 2020, although the year was very challenging. Our distribution license sales reached EUR 30 million in 2020, and that is 38% growth compared into 2021. Again, I think that the that is that's a very good results in this current environment. We all know that the distribution license sales is affected by the fact that the what is the current economic situation. How much consumers are buying different type of goods.
That's where the distribution license revenue is coming. Some customers are still behind on their planned manufacturing volumes. Well, that's obvious that the there isn't so many cars in the market that was planned and also on consumer electronics, this inflation uncertainty and rising interest rates did affect. I think now that the worst in that sense is behind. We are kind of settled in now that things are what they are, and life must go on. Now I guess the next phases are that are things gonna start getting better or getting worse. I think that the maturity of our customers are in a situation that they're looking forward, they're making future plans, and they are making future investments.
We do see that there are new product projects, beginning, starting, and going in a manufacturing phase. In that sense, I'm fairly confident looking forward that the how our distribution sales is gonna go forward. We've been able to expand our customer base and the diversity is still there. I've mentioned this many times before that the our strategy is to be a horizontal product, and it has kind of a couple meanings. First is that the with one tool, with our products, our customers can develop something for the low end and for the high end, and everything in between. With our product, people can build a digital cockpit for the entire car, for example, or they can build the whole line of washing machines.
From the low end to the high end. Horizontal product also means that there we have 70 different industries and there are a great variety of use cases where Qt is used. Well, that of course minimizes the risk to some extent. We're not relying on any specific industry. Now, we've seeing that, for example, medical has been growing very fast. We talk very often about the automotive because it's easy to understand. We've all seen cars. We don't talk so much medical, but medical, for example, has grown to be a very significant industry for us. We did invest, increase headcount last year almost by 200.
40 came from Axivion acquisition, and majority of our people go into sales operations or R&D. That's where the majority of new hires are going. R&D obviously is very important. We are in a product business, and we're expanding our product portfolio, so we have more products. We have the quality assurance tools nowadays and many more to come, which means that we're investing on R&D all the time. We're making the Qt better product, and we're investing on our QA products, and we have new products in the pipeline yet to be announced on a later date.
Some of the event highlights, we do have lots of events throughout the world all the time, bigger and small ones, we do engage with the Qt community, we do engage with our customers, and we do have, like I said, different events. One of the main events for developers and engineers is the World Summit. This year we had it on a virtual. We had 113 countries, mostly developers and engineers. We had presentations from companies like GE HealthCare, Infineon, Autodesk, and Bricsys over there, giving presentations, great presentations, what they've been doing with Qt, how they see Qt. I'm sure we're gonna continue. This is the Qt World Summit is a major event for us to get the developers and engineers together.
There is gonna be a, yet this year of course, there will be a World Summit, and I believe that might be even a physical event if the, if the, situation so permits. Because I personally believe very much on people meeting each other and working together. Not only it energizes you, but the, it helps on the innovation as well. There are some couple highlights that the, we did on SQI's Axivion, so the, our QA, our quality assurance tools. Qt Design Studio is very important for us. It helps our customers to, see the design on a target hardware. It enables the designers to be much more effective. We've, and Qt Creator 9 was also, introduced.
The mainly user interfaces improvements, making them a better products for our end users to use. Also we're always looking for performance improvements when we do our product development. Just to give you some highlights that where do we spend our R&D resources. Like said, we take very seriously the feedback from our customers, and we do invest quite a bit on the R&D to keep our product as competitive as they are today. Which they are because, like majority of the developers giving us feedback are telling us that our product is great and it's exceeding their expectations. With these words, I'm gonna hand over to Jouni for a bit, and he's gonna talk about the numbers. Thanks.
Thank you, Juha, and welcome from my behalf as well to Qt Group's Q4 earnings call. Let's touch base a bit on the net sales in more detail. As you can see, we reported net sales of EUR 51.3 million in Q4 isolated, and it's actually more than four years back in 2018 for the full year, pretty significant result. The net sales grew by 39%, I said, we're enjoying from the tailwind of USD, specifically in Q4. That impact was EUR 2.1 million, in comparable currencies, the revenue growth would have been 31.5%. All regions performed very well, EMEA being still the strongest one for the last quarter.
Maintenance revenue is going gradually down as we have indicated earlier, that's because of the change into subscription license mode primarily. It means that the license sales and consulting did grow by 49%. For the full year, we grew by 28.2%. For the full year of 2022, the gain from FX was EUR 8.3 million. That means that the, at the constant currencies comparable exchange rates, the revenue growth were at 20% even. We did report 38% increase growth in revenue of distribution licenses to 29.5% as you have indicated earlier, there are still some delays from our expectations in that regards. Going forward, we do not change major changes in the surroundings.
We expect that the exchange rate will continue impacting us. Roughly two-thirds of Q revenues are in USD. We will see fluctuation because of large license deals and timing of the distribution license revenue streams. Income statement, you see we are executing as planned also in Q4. That we have been doing for the full year of 2020. Personnel expenses are up by Q4, up by 16% primarily because of the headcount increase. Personnel increase in Q4 isolated sequential increase was 37. Most primarily in sales operations side, and that's to start the executing next year, so 2023 targets then. Depreciation is somewhat up, and that's because of the new premises we are having at IFRS leasings.
The growth strategy implementation shows as well on the other operating expenses. We are doing plenty of third-party R&D. We are putting efforts on marketing. Travel is up from last year's and from 2020 because COVID is now pretty much over. EBITDA, the operating result, before interest, taxes, and amortization, it's up to 36.6%. That's because of the scalability of the business. Amortization is up to EUR 2 million. Now we are reporting both amortization from Froglogic and Axivion in our figures. EBITDA margin is now 32.7% compared to last year's 21.9% for the last quarter.
For the full year, our EBITDA margin up from 26% to 27.2%, despite the heavy investments we've been doing for the full throughout the year. The same reason for amortization going up is here Axivion since mid-August and then Froglogic for the full year. EBIT margin remains 21 years level at 23.7%. For the full year, the financial items are giving EUR 0.8 million good guy, and that's coming from the current fluctuation, specifically USD. As you see the corporate income tax rate is rather low, and that's because of the execution of the incentive plan early in the year. The impact in the P&L group level is on, well, there's no tax impact on group level.
There are some deductible expenses in parent company, and that explains that. Net profit for the year is 22.1% or EUR 34.3 million, meaning earnings per share 1.36. Balance sheet, the fluctuation is pretty much explained by the acquisitions and volume increase. Non-current assets increase up by Axivion acquisition, goodwill and intangibles. Current assets are up by EUR 6 million. Our trade receivables, accounts receivable is up by EUR 11 million. We grew in the Q4 by EUR 14 million, that's pretty much out of that. Our cash is down year on year. Two main reasons, repayment of the loan in Q4 that we had taken for Froglogic, the LTI program execution in the first half year.
Equity, well, net profit impact and then some, Axivion-related share issue items and then LTI plan execution which offset each other then. Long-term liabilities, there's the impact of the Axivion acquisition, and then Well, the only change in the short-term liabilities pretty much is the repayment of the bank loan for Froglogic acquisition. That's short balance sheet. Now I hand over back to Juha, who will talk through the market outlook and then guidance for 2023.
All right. Thank you, Jouni. The market outlook for the 2023, well if I look the, if I look the overall that, is there still a continuous and strengthening trend towards that there'll be more software in products, there will be better user interfaces in products. The product, products itself are getting better through the use of software. That's not going anywhere. We see that trend continuing. We see the trend getting stronger. We see that the usage of Qt is expanding. We see the market growing, we see getting new customers, we see, specifically existing customers expanding the usage of Qt, and we don't see any change in that.
If we look in the competitive arena, we see pretty much the same competitors that we've had all along and we see our situation in that sense a bit of unchanged in. We don't see that we've been strengthening or weakening in compared in the competitive environment. That's gonna continue. There is no doubt about it. If I looked at what's happening in. We hear about the artificial intelligence, we hear that artificial intelligence, we're all gonna be coders soon. We're just gonna type something on a computer, and there is gonna be a lots of code coming out. For simple applications, that's probably gonna be true.
What we see is that the kind of the mass of code, the amount of code, it's just gonna grow and grow, and it's gonna expand even further, and there is gonna be more need for it. That's good for that's good for Qt because there needs to be ways to be able to produce that code more efficiently, more there needs to be better user interfaces. There is gonna be a lot more testing. I think that the our quality assurance tools, the testing, the automotive, automatic testing and also testing for the the architecture of what people been building, the demand on those will continue as we go forward.
I think that this combination where we have Qt and quality assurance, we have these testing tools, we see a very growing market for many years to go forward. Of course, in this type of presentations, I need to highlight that there are very well-known uncertainties in the market. We all know there are high energy prices, there is inflation, there is a war in Europe. We do see and when we've been giving in this, our guidance now that we have, we've of course been anticipating that there are gonna be a couple rate hikes and the inflation is gonna be on a fairly high level both in the United States and Europe for some time to go forward.
There are still some component shortages we see, although that's that's more like getting behind us. I think that in this market situation where we are, this is kind of our new normal now that we see. We do see our customers that they are making investments for the future, and that's pretty obvious. There needs to be new products coming out into the market also this year and next year and the year after, and those investments need to be made no matter what is the situation. I think that we are kind of a on a gate that are things gonna start going a lot worse this year, or are they gonna start going a lot better this year? If they remain like this, I think this is a fairly manageable situation.
I do expect, as a matter of fact, that things, you know, this spring is gonna be a difficult time for many, many companies, and the results will be in pressure. I think that the going forward, the latter part of the year, things start slowly getting better. We invest, we estimate that our net sales will increase 20%-30% year-on-year at comparable exchange rates and our operating profit margin EBIT percentage will be 20%-30%. Very strong numbers because even at the low end, if you calculate the revenue growth percentage and the operating profit percentage, it's 40. It's our numbers are very strong numbers when you think what we're doing.
We're growing very fast, and we're doing it with a very high profit margin. If I look the different industries, like I said, we are growing into, we are in a 70 different industries. I think that we don't see a whole lot of difference over there. All our big customers are investing for the future. If I think that where we do have the biggest uncertainty as of today, it's obviously the distribution license sales. That is very difficult to estimate because if things start getting really on a worst scenario, and people, the economies will slow down, and people will be buying less stuff. That's obviously gonna affect our distribution license revenue.
Having said that, our distribution license revenue is coming from very multiple sources, it's a very broad range of companies where we're getting our distribution license sales. We're not relying on one specific industry or one specific product line in that sense. It is spread out. What we've seen is that in some instances, that some places there might be a project delays or there is less distribution of products going out, on some other parts we've been seeing that the our customers are actually proceeding pretty much according what they've been planning to. It kind of even outs. On developer license sales, that's much more solid. Our customers are investing for future. They are having these projects they are starting.
We've been adding also very big customers into our portfolio. Hopefully someday we'll be able to tell them. We've been deepening our relationship with many of our big customers, and they're becoming more and more strategic partners. In that sense, I see only positive development on that arena. Overall for 2023, I'm positive. It looks like now that we're gonna have a fairly good year. Having said that, remember that the quarters are not alike. Our Q1 and Q3 are usually slower. Q2 is faster, and now two years in a row, the Q4 has been, you know, really strong.
Probably we're gonna see a similar type of quarterly fluctuation, so it's better to look us in a bit longer term. If I looked at how this year has started, obviously we're not giving any numbers out at this point of time, but if I look our guidance and if I look how our year has started, I'm pretty happy. I mean, you know, we've, things are looking good in that sense. With these words, it's easy numbers to remember. 2030. Thank you.
Thank you, Juha. Let's move on to questions in the room.
Hi, it's Matti Räsänen, Carnegie. A couple of questions. If we start with the contract duration split question that we quite a lot in 2022 because there were changes to the short end of contract maturity, like one year instead of three years. How does the split look like now, what are your expectations for the split going forward, let's say in 2023 and onwards?
Yeah. It, the, indeed, in Q2 when the war started, we saw the uptick on the one-year licenses more than usual. Then it leveled out. If I now look on a yearly level, I would say that it's pretty stable, and that's what I expect it to be pretty stable also going into 2023. There are quarterly fluctuations obviously, but the, it, the, on a yearly level it looks to be pretty stable, so not really a whole lot of movement.
Okay. Just to get an idea of what the splits are at the moment, how big a share of your revenue is coming from, or the agreement pool is one-year deals, and how much is three-year deals?
I don't We haven't disclosed that number obviously, since you're asking. The Like I said, on a quarterly level there is a, there might be a difference. To give you some idea that most of our projects usually are that people build something on a long term, so obviously the three-year deal makes a lot more sense unless you somehow that there is some uncertainty. If you just wanna add one or two maybe for short term, then you may wanna buy a one-year license because one-year license is substantially more expensive. In, in that sense, the there are one-year licenses going, but the You know, if I were a customer, I would go with the three-year license.
It's just the projects take so long. I think that the, if the situation stays just like this, that it's pretty stable, then it obviously doesn't have a whole lot of effect. It did have effect on the Q2, but the then it leveled off. If it stays like this, then on a yearly comparison it doesn't have a whole lot of effect on the revenue.
All right. Thank you. I think you said last year that you are expecting many of those three-year contracts that were made when the license model was changed so that they would be under renewal this year.
Well-
Is that still the case?
Oh, yeah. Well, they're definitely gonna be on a renewal. If I look our typical customer behavior, first of all, if you've been building something for three years, you're pretty. You know, you've done a lot of stuff, right? If I looked at what are our surveys and customer satisfactions and whatnot, there is really no reason for customers to drop Qt and change to something else if they are continuing their project. Of course we do have customers, we had a wide variety of customers doing different stuff, so if they really stop the whole product, then there is no use to continue using Qt.
Usually, you know, the product goes out, and then you're on a maintenance phase and you need to keep it up and whatnot. Yeah, obviously I do expect people to renew on... That's our experience.
All right. Thank you. The second topic is the kind of distribution license revenue and where it is coming from. Do you still think that you will have structural growth in distribution licenses from such deals that where the customer start the design of a new product many years ago so that they are not just, let's say, products that are coming with fairly short time to market delay, like one year- or something that you have been working on for many years, or the customers have been working for many years? What's the kind of kick from those older contracts coming to the market now, like cars, and is it kind of leveling off that kind of back kick that you are getting?
That's a very difficult question. Let me put it this way, that if we talk about the automotive obviously is that it takes a bit of a longer time to get the product in the market, and then it stays long time in the market. Usually a one car model, it stays a longer time. The distribution revenues are accumulating over a period of time. If I look some of the deals, bigger deals we made with bigger customers this year, I do anticipate the distribution revenues start coming on a bigger scale in 2024, 2025, and they probably are peaking in 2025 or 2026.
That's why sometimes when I say that the on a longer term, I see that the there is continuous growth in this company, I do see these deals where I see that the volumes on distribution on this particular deal is like 2 or 3 years away. It's, I know that there's gonna be growth also back then. If I look on some of the products, and I would say, now a disclaimer over here, this is a feeling and this is a bit of a guesstimate. And obviously when, you know, I'm engaged more on a customers that the are the bigger ones and been longer in this business. If I look, I think that the.
What I see is that the distribution revenues they are having, they are more on a growth side. There are a couple reasons for that. I see that many of the products they are producing, I see that the products they will continue producing. They're gonna be hitting the market. The volumes are still rising on those. I also see that our existing customers are expanding the usage of Qt, which means that there are gonna be a larger product portfolio coming into the market later. It's a very typical when we see all our big customers, as of today, they started very small. They started with one product line. Then they've been expanding it, in that sense.
To specifically ask what you to answer what you asked, it's I don't have that knowledge. Yeah, I do see distribution license revenue increasing from our existing customers.
All right. Two smaller questions. Were there any large license deals in Q4 that explain the good growth even though the comparison was pretty strong already?
No. Nothing spectacular worth to mention. To even add on that, I might say that some deals were postponed to Q1, as it happens every time, so.
All right.
With a little luck it could have been even better. I mean, you know, in all fairness, we do always see that the, you know, not all the deals close on a particular quarter. They, you know, some deals go forward. We had some bigger, you know, not huge, humongous deals, but bigger deals going also to Q1. That's always the case. That's always the case.
All right. Finally, you mentioned in the report that the revenue share from medical has been kind of catching up with automotive.
Yeah
I t's increasing. Still we don't kind of have a good idea where these sectors are actually in proportion of your sales c ould you give some indication share of your sales automotive is, medical is, consumer electronics is?
Well, yeah. We've said that the consultancy revenue will be below 20% out of total. As a matter of fact, it's, and, it's not even close as of today, and it will be smaller amount going forward just for the simple reason that all the other revenues are growing so fast. The, I've said on automotive that I do expect the automotive as a whole in 2025 to be in a range of EUR 20 million. EUR 20 million, 20% out of the total, give or take, the where we are, in where we're gonna end up in 2025.
I, you know, still I think that that's roughly gonna be the range in 2025. Medical is one of the bigger verticals we're also having. Something like that.
Medical catching up with automotive's revenue share, but not quite there yet.
There is also fluctuation. It's going to be as important as automotive in the revenue-wise, yes. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you. That's all from me.
Hi. Felix Henriksson, Nordea. Continuing on the medical topic, could you give us any help with what kind of average royalty rates per device we're talking about when it comes to medical distribution licenses? You've mentioned that on average you're talking about EUR 0.60 per device. In automotive, it's around EUR 1 or $1. Where are we talking about when it comes to medical?
Well, I think, Yeah, I've said that when you do estimations, estimate with 60, 70, and you'll get, you know, you get close enough. That's. I've been trying to help your work because I know that from outside trying to analyze Qt, it's a tough nut, and specifically our quarters, to estimate our quarters. Yeah, it's really difficult. In that sense, and I would still say that kind of holds in bigger terms. We do have devices that the runtime revenue can be hundreds of dollars, right? The volume is so small that it actually from the estimation point of view, you know, it doesn't matter.
On a medical devices, you have very, very expensive devices where the runtime is much higher, right? The volume on those devices is very low. In a bigger scheme of things, it doesn't affect. On medical, as you know, there are a lot of devices that are on a lower price range. I would still, you know, if you go and estimate the volume of products out there that we might be in it and on how many products we get, if you know, if you round up, if you use the 60, 70 cent, that gives you an idea that where we could end up. That would be my guidance for the, you know, longer-term future.
Even though we're talking about quite, you know, high tech, high value products, we should not expect to sort of give you a tailwind when it comes to the sort of average sales price in the distribution license.
Well, yeah. I mean, you know, usually when it's high tech and high value, the volumes are lower.
Right
That's, that's the, that's the case. In, in the whole mass of the runtime revenue, the effect still remains lower. Of course, on medical, you also have lots of, you know, if we're talking about kind of surgery robots and things like that, they're very expensive, and there are not very few. If we're talking about many home medical appliances, then, you know, the price range is lower and the volumes are very high.
Thanks. Next topic, is your quality assurance suite, Axivion and Froglogic. Could you perhaps touch a bit on how demand for those products develop in Q4? Can you perhaps help us out with any sense of how large of a business quality assurance is for you as of today and how large of a addressable market we're talking about?
Yeah. Well, the market itself is actually bigger than the addressable market for Qt. It's a very fragmented market. There are a lot of players in that market. We'll probably gonna see some consolidation as we go forward. If I look the market itself, the one big competitor in that market is manual testing. If I look the amount of code mass coming into the market, let's say in the next five years, there is no way that it would be manually tested. For tools that can do automotive, automatic testing, the demand for these kind of tools is gonna be growing very fast. I think that in general, the quality assurance business is a very lucrative business.
What comes into our acquisitions, if I first comment is Quiescent Coco, so i.e. the Froglogic we acquired. Obviously, Froglogic is very close to Qt. For our Qt sales force, it's very easy to say when people are building something with Qt, a graphical user interface, is the next question that, how did you plan to test it, right? It's a very close fit into that. There's been a very good demand on that respect. If I look Axivion, we did the acquisition in August, it's still very early days.
If I look Axivion, where I see a lot of interest on that is that specifically, well, you can do static code analysis and, and so on, but I think that testing the architecture, that what's being built, is the architecture good? Are there any faults on the architecture? For bigger projects, for security-related projects, which by the way are often related, for example, into automotive or into medical because in the automotive, for example, there are restrictions, security restrictions. Axivion is a very great product. If I look into future that how much code mass there will be and how more complex the architectures are gonna go, I see also a great demand for the Axivion product. I was once asked that the...
We haven't told us numbers yet, but I gave a guidance that I would not consider buying anything to Qt that would actually diminish our growth rate or our EBIT, and neither one of these companies is doing it, right? To give you some idea. If I look now that Digia bought the Qt in 2020. We got the product in 2015. We separated, and we came later public, and we set our targets and whatnot. I see the quality assurance tools, say, a bit of a similar story, so I do have big hopes. I do understand that they are not widely shared, but I'm very excited. That was a joke.
Right. Thanks. Finally from me, well, you're now also guiding for EBITDA margin and not EBIT margin, so EBIT excluding purchase price amortizations for this year. Should we read this into you having an ambition of being active in the M&A market in 2023? If so, what are the sort of gaps in your product offering that you're looking to fill via acquisitions?
Well, that's a, that's a good question. Well, first of all, let me say that we're not looking to buy revenue. We're not looking to do acquisitions just to grow. We're looking acquisition that it really adds value. If we now look on the Froglogic and Axivion, it adds value. Well, first of all, we think that there is a great need for code to be tested, architectures to be tested and so on. That's being built not only with Qt, but also outside other technologies apart from Qt. Both our QA tools you can use. The code you test, they don't have to be done with Qt. It's expanding our total addressable market. That's number one.
We think that there are synergies that we can offer quality assurance tools to our existing Qt ecosystem and our existing Qt users. The other thing that was important in those acquisitions was the fact that we, those products are really good. I mean, those companies that really built a very good products. We were very happy about the products. They hadn't yet invested on sales so much. There we see an added value that we bought Froglogic and now Axivion, and we're gonna put it in our global sales to sold globally, whereas before they were mainly sold in Germany, and we see added value from there. Similar type of acquisitions, yes, of course. Yeah, I do see that there is a great opportunity to expand our product portfolio even further.
To do these 2 acquisitions, you know, we evaluated like a bit over 200 companies. You know, we, it's not like that we kind of were bumped into something and bought. We're doing it as we speak. Where do we do these acquisitions? They are products that will enhance value to our customers in the software product development process, i.e. like, you know, you develop something, you test something, maybe there are some security type of things. These type of acquisitions you're gonna be seeing. Like I said, in a quality assurance, we do see a very, very much growing demand on that because the simple code mass in the world, it's basically exploding, and that can't be tested anymore by manually.
Also the architectures and related stuff around it will get more complicated, and our customers will need help sorting them out. Yeah, you're gonna see more acquisitions, but they need to add synergy, so we're not gonna be buying revenue.
Thank you.
Hey. Waltteri Rossi from Danske Bank. A lot of good questions already asked. I still have few. First one on developer license and consulting sales grew 35%. Can you split or break down the growth to number of users growing and the price hikes?
No. I can't. I don't. Do you have that? Well, we don't disclose that information. Can you elaborate that a bit?
Maybe some kind of color on how much price hikes was a driver on this, and did the underlying customer base keep on growing?
Oh, well, yeah, definitely.
At the same pace.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. The underlying customer base has been growing same pace than as before. We're getting, we're adding new customers. Having said that, the number of new customers, whether it's a small company or a big company, in the beginning, they buy very few licenses, maybe 10 or 20 licenses when they start designing or they start planning that what to produce. What really comes, say, a difference in a small company and a big company is maybe a year or two later when they are in a full-blown mode and they have, you know, like 100 developer licenses and they're gonna be looking, like millions of products going out into the market. Whereas the small company is still just few licenses and not a whole lot of revenue. We do have...
When Corona started, we introduced to our sales team that they got a special bonus for every new logo we were getting. During the Corona times, very early on, it slowed a bit that customers were looking. If I now look the growth rate, acquiring new customers, it's about the same. Of course we have, in the management, we do have an emphasis to follow that, you know, what's the pipeline, and we're making sure that we do get new customers, all the time as planned. It keeps growing. Having said that, if I look at where the bulk of the revenue is coming, it's always coming from the existing customers.
When they are expanding the usage, they are shipping more products and whatnot, so the big bulk then comes from the existing customers. Of course you need to be adding the new customers otherwise, you know, someday all the good stuff would end. No slowdown on that, not at all.
Yes. Good. Thank you. That adds actually quite a lot of color on. Essentially a lot of upselling for current customers.
Yeah
On the price hikes on the theme, did it affect a lot of your sales growth this year, and what's the outlook for 2023, price hikes?
We are executing price increases, no doubt. However, we have not disclosed any specific price KPI, if that will. I mean, we keep to ourselves.
Okay.
Do we have pricing power? We do. Do we see extensive price hikes for 2023? No. Of course we need to follow the inflation, salaries are going up and whatnot. Are we looking something massive? No, not at all.
Great. Another topic, the cash flow. It seems like the working capital keeps on accumulating quite a lot. I find it kind of concerning because as far as I've understood, your business is so that you might sell a 3-year license, recognize it as revenue straight away, and you should get the cash flow straight away. For me, this sounds like you should be running a business with negative working capital. Then again, During the last 2 years, you've accumulated EUR 30 million of working capital. Can you just describe where the cash flow is going, why the working capital is increasing, and should we expect it to, you know, turn into cash soon?
Sure. I mean, well, Q4 specifically, the, you know, revenue grew by EUR 14 million and accounts receivable by, was it, No, yeah, year-over-year by EUR 11 million or so. That's directly the impact from, well, last month revenue increase within the quarter. Sure, you will see impact on cash flow this year.
Okay. It seems like the working capital just keeps on increasing because you're growing so fast, and then especially Q4 is heavier working capital accumulation.
That, exactly. Then also the timing within the quarter has an impact.
Yeah. I definitely hope to get the cash in January, February from the Q4 sales.
Okay.
Yeah.
Thank you. The final question on the bigger picture. Reading through your annual report, on the first page, you said, okay, we're moving towards being a multi-vendor, multi-product vendor and so forth.
Looking at 2025 and forward, what will be the kind of size of the Qt environment and what's the QA tools and so forth? Do you have any envision on this?
I do. I definitely do. Maybe we'll we will come out a bit later and lay out that picture. Like I said already before, on Felix' notes, the ethical question that I do see our QA business now. It's like Qt in 2015, so to give you some idea, and it's a very profitable business.
Great. All from me. Thank you.
Hi, it's Jaakko Tyrväinen from SEB. Continuing on the topic of the license volumes and given that you have already 80% licenses in subscription, how much larger is or the renewing license base for 2023 if you compare it to 2022?
Did you understand?
My understanding.
You must have licenses to be renewed in 2023. How much larger is that base compared to 2022?
How much bigger is the license base?
Basically. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Well, I guess 2 points. We did start this project back in 2020, second half, however, somewhat limited. Whenever 3-year subscriptions were subscribed back that time. Second half this year, there will be these conversions, these renewals. Also the overall license base is growing-
I mean, that will lay the foundation gradually increase on the renewals as well.
Okay. On your website, you also offer monthly subscription. Is the monthly product currently relevant in a big picture?
No.
All right. Continuing a bit on the, on the cash flow, you made a net profit over EUR 30 million, but the operating cash flow was a bit negative. In addition to the working capital we talked here, what are the key items impacting there?
One key item is definitely the bank loan that we repaid in Q4 that was taken for Froglogic acquisition, and that we repaid in October timeframe.
All right. final one from me. China is about to be reopened. Will that be a significant tailwind for you?
We have positive trend in our forecast for China in a cautious way because, you know, it's China. They can move other direction as well. We do expect the China opening, so it's in within our guidance now. We also we can take some headwind from China opening without changing our guidance, so to give you that sort of an idea. Yeah, definitely now it looks that it's moving into more positive direction, and it has two effects. Obviously, we can make more business in China, and but it also will help on the global, the global supply chain issues because China closure has definitely affected on many on these global supply issues.
We think that the those are kind of moving into past and business is getting more into normal. The we do expect that that's kind of in our guidance now. We expect modest growth in China. It's good to realize that the I think that the 30% of the automotive market is in China, so it's the biggest single market for many automotive manufacturers, and it's also a very active market for electric cars. I think many of us are gonna be driving a Chinese car in the years to come. In that sense, it's an important and growing market.
We do have a great presence over there and I think that the business is gonna be more lucrative from China. In that sense, things are getting normal. I think that the biggest unknowns for us is that how is the war gonna develop in Europe? Is that gonna escalate or what kind of changes there are gonna happen? How high the interest rates are gonna go, and how much the consumer spending is gonna be squeezed because obviously it is going to get squeezed, right? How much? How high the interest rates are going and definitely we've anticipated that they're gonna go higher both in United States and over here in Europe. That's kind of now the uncertainty.
I would say that the biggest uncertainty for us is that if the, if things really go south, right, the consumer spending is really gonna tank, and then the runtime revenue growth is not gonna be even close what we're anticipating. That could be a risk we see, but we don't feel like that. We actually, we feel pretty good. We're pretty upbeat for this year. I don't know if it shows, but I'm relatively happy.
Good. Thanks.
Thank you. I think that was all the time we have.
Yeah
Any final remarks still?
Well, thank you for, thank you for coming. Like I said, easy numbers to remember, 2030 for both. We feel pretty confident that the start of the year looks good. If things remain pretty much the same in the environment, we do see a great growth ahead of us. If I look the market, it's still on Qt and our QA tools, they're still both in the early phases, and we see a lot more software being developed and being tested as we go forward. If I look into years to come, I see Qt as a great company that's gonna be growing very fast and making great profits along the way. Thank you very much.
Thank you.