Hello, welcome to Qt Group's First Quarter 2023 Results Presentation. My name is Heli Jämsä, IR Manager, with me today are CEO Juha Varelius and CFO Jouni Lintunen to present the results. After the presentations, we will have first questions in the room, then if we have time, questions from the conference call lines. Without further ado, please, Juha, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone. My name is Juha Varelius. I'm the CEO of The Qt Company. I have on this presentation only a couple slides, and then Jouni will continue with the financials, and then later on I will talk about the future outlook, how we see it as of today. We do have a fairly short presentation which is our typical. We do the first and third quarter a bit shorter, and then the second and fourth quarter the full interim results. If we go to the business highlights, we're very happy about the first quarter.
First quarter usually is we have a seasonality where our second quarter is stronger, fourth quarter obviously as you know is very strong, so we generate a lot of revenue and results in the fourth quarter. The first and third are usually a bit slower ones. Having said that, we are very pleased on the first quarter. I did comment on the before the silent period, we had some analyst meetings, I commented back then and earlier also that the outlook for this year looks good, so it did. Our net sales grew 27%, we reached EUR 40 million on revenue, our growth on comparable currencies, 24%. Obviously, when we are in the product business, license business more we generate revenue, more we make profit.
We are investing very much on our growth, which you can see on new hires. Mainly our investments are hiring new people and then we do quite a bit of product development our own. Despite that, we were able to demonstrate very good growth. We've said many times before that this is a very scalable business model and it also scales on the profitability, and I think that yet again, this was a very good proof of that. Our personnel was 706 in the March 31st and that will, this is already a future outlook, but that will continue. We are hiring new people as we speak and that will continue throughout the year.
Very good start for the year. We're very happy on the results. We did announce a bit earlier about General Motors. They chose Qt for full product portfolio for use on their vehicle development. We're very excited about that, the announcement. We're very excited that such a prominent automotive manufacturer chooses Qt, and I think it's a further proof that our product is very good and viable in the current market environment. We do have a very strong position in automotive, as you know, but on top of that, we of course, serve 70 different industries. Qt is a very horizontal product, and it's used in many different use cases, and we do get distribution license revenue already as of today from many different customers and different industries.
If you, we did quite a bit of product innovation and new features again, Design Studio, Creator, Coco were enhanced. There were new versions about that. Then we launched a new analytic solution, Qt Insight. That I think sells on our strategy, which is that we're gonna be adding new products. Some of them we do develop ourselves in-house, and then we do acquisitions like we did on QA, on quality assurance, where we acquired very good products to... Then we introduced them into our sales channel.
We're looking for products that fit into our current customer portfolio, and we're looking into products that fit into development software development process, which actually is, you know, like the Qt is for software development, our QA tools are for testing, and so on. With Qt Analytics, the Qt Insight, our users will be, our customers will be able to see that what buttons the end user is actually pushing and to be able to make the product even better. It fits very well into this strategy and portfolio we've set before. This will continue. Before I get a question that what about an M&A? Yeah, we're gonna do M&A in the future. When that's gonna happen, remains to be seen.
The similar acquisitions like we did on the Quality Assurance, you will see also in the future. The two companies we acquired on Quality Assurance, we've been very happy with both the Squish, Coco, and Axivion product. Obviously the Coco and Squish are a bit ahead because that acquisition habit happened a year and a half ago, almost two years ago, and Axivion last August. We've been very happy on both products and their development, and our customers been very excited about seeing those in our product portfolio. Very good Q1. We actually made it pretty much on our internal plans. We are pretty much where we were anticipated to be at this point of time.
I'll talk after the financial more about the future outlook and how do we see the market. Jouni, please.
Thank you, Juha, and welcome from my behalf as well to the Q1 earnings call of Qt Group. Let's go a little bit more details into revenues, P&L and the balance sheet then. As said, we grew by 26.6% in the first quarter. There was roughly EUR 0.7 million tailwind coming from the FX impact of USD. From the other perspective, the driver again on the revenue growth was the licenses and consulting, which grew by 34%. We do see the maintenance revenue stream going proportionally lower, and that is because of the ongoing change into the subscription mode, which then would leave less proportionally maintenance of total license revenues. We do expect still going forward, and this is no news, that the quarterly fluctuation will be there going forward.
This will depend on the timing of the large deals, timing of distribution license bookings, and also we will see exchange rate impacting us going forward. Roughly 2/3 of our revenues or invoicing is in USD. Now in Q1 we had a good guide from that. With these current rates, there will be a headwind from USD. Remains to be by how much, obviously with the exact rates. P&L and the expenses, they are according to our growth strategy plans. We keep on executing those. Obviously, the biggest part of our expenses is headcount, which salary in expenses are up by roughly 33%. The same time, our headcount is up by 31% year-on-year, roughly 160 up from end last quarter...
end-end last year Q1. The organic growth of headcount was roughly 120, and then 40 with the outcome of the Axivion acquisition. No change in depreciation. The other operating expenses are up by roughly EUR 8 million, and that's kind of coming out of the fact that last year still in Q1, there was somewhat limited activities in marketing travels still because of COVID, and now we are running kind of business as usual on that regards. All this leads to EBITDA of EUR 7.8 million, up by EUR 2.1 million from last year, EUR 2.2 million or 40%, and the EBITDA margin is 19.5%.
Amortization is up by EUR 1.1 million. That is the outcome of the or impact of the Axivion addition to the quarterly amortization amounts. This is the level we expect that to be continuing going forward with this structure. EBIT is up by EUR 1.1 million to EUR 5.8 million. EBIT margin is 14.5%. Our financial items expense is EUR 0.5 million. The income taxes expense is EUR 0.9 million. This all leads to net profit of EUR 4.4 million for the period, 11% or EPS of EUR 0.17.
On the balance sheet side, on the non-current assets side, the pretty much only change is the some decrease in the non-current assets because of the amortization amounts of the acquisitions. No change in the contract assets. Our operative cash flow was, as expected, pretty strong in Q1, EUR 15 million. This leads us to a cash balance of EUR 23 million at the end of the quarter. Accounts receivable down by EUR 8.4 million, which is in line with the revenue or invoicing amounts in specific quarter. There's pretty much no change from last year-end on the contract asset side. Then the other receivables are somewhat down by roughly EUR 1 million, and that's driven by the fluctuation of the VAT receivables quarterly. On the equity and liability side, only minor movements.
Some decrease from December 2022 in long-term liabilities because of some earnout balance being more to short-term side. That's pretty much it also from the balance sheet side. Now I think it's time to give back to Juha to go through the guidance and outlook for 2023.
Okay. Well, nothing has really changed. I mean, we know that the typical risks are there. We know that the inflation now is high, interest rates are high, and we do know that the markets are gonna be slowing down at some point. We do see some cautiousness in North America, I think that it's the matter of time that things will start cooling off over there. We do see that some cautiousness also in Asia-Pacific. We haven't seen that much in Europe as of yet. I think that overall this year, the economy is gonna slow down. That's for sure. Is that somehow different than it was three months ago? Not really.
In that sense, our long-term view has not changed. We are keeping our guidance the same. If I'm looking the our pipeline development, how pipeline's been developing, how we've been making bigger deals along the way, and how we're negotiating them as now, the situation is pretty much the same than it's been what it was three months ago. I'm still expecting us to be very well in the guidance levels both on revenue and EBIT. We don't expect there any big fluctuations.
Jouni already mentioned that, of course, 2/3 of our invoicing is in US dollars, so the currency exchange risk is there always, or it affects our business and I wouldn't actually see it as a risk. Sometimes we get good for it, and sometimes we get headwind. Currencies, they do fluctuate, and that's gonna be part of our business as we go forward. Overall, the demand for our products is very strong, and it's remaining very strong. We do expect that the for our software development tool needs there are more and more customers coming into into our domain, so to speak, and they are doing further and more and more development using good tools.
We're also seeing more and more software being developed. There is a growing demand for quality assurance testing tool usage. On both our main product categories, we see a growing demand as we go forward, and we don't see any change on that trend on the years to come. In that sense, I'm looking forward very confident that we're gonna be able to meet the guidance we've given, we've given for the year. Just to remind you, it was 20%-30% on both, so 20%-30% on revenue growth and 20%-30% on EBITDA growth. With that, thank you, and questions.
Hi. Felix Henriksson from Nordea. I have a few questions. I can go one by one. Firstly, were there any sort of exceptionally large deals signed in Q1?
No. We always do one or two a bit bigger ones and the then. A very typical quarter in all in all.
Asking in terms of the verticals, were there any that stood out with their strength or weakness? I think last time you mentioned that medical was one that has sort of, been incrementally stronger, for you guys. How was the Q1?
Well, they, nothing, no big changes over there. Medical is growing to be one of our big verticals along with automotive, consumer electronics. It's, I don't know if you can call consumer electronics a vertical. It's a really broad definition. They, we didn't see any fluctuations on there either, and we didn't see actually any weakness on consumer demand in that sense as of yet either in. When we have to keep in mind, we always say this, but the, if you look in our business, quarter comparisons and quarter-on-quarters, it's, it, you know, our quarters do fluctuate and they are a bit different, so in that sense.
We didn't see, we actually haven't seen any big changes in our customer demand or customer activity per se.
Can you give us any additional color on the distribution license growth in Q1? I know you guys don't disclose that, but was the growth in that area, you know, better or worse than the group?
Well, it's on a good level. Given the circumstances and given the economic uncertainty, you know, I was, you would've, maybe you would've expected that the, you know. That's the first sign where we actually do see that if the economy starts slowing down. When the COVID happened in 2020, and the factories went closed, that's where we saw that the distribution license sales growth slowed down substantially. Whereas we saw that people still continued on developing stuff and buying developer licenses, we didn't see a such a slowdown over there. Now, you know, our distribution license sales, if I look for the whole year, if things go like this, it's, you know, looks good.
In, in, you know, this first quarter, if I look, there aren't really a whole lot of changes, and obviously you can see that on the numbers. The numbers are very good. The... We do have a very good business demand. If I'm looking forward, that seems to be going on. The... Of course, you know, it's only the beginning of the year. The... Looks good.
I guess we're seeing, you know, companies cut down their budgets, also when it comes to R&D and IT budgeting. You guys have quite sizable three-year license deals coming up for renewal in the back half the year. Are you sort of seeing any risk on those renewals that the customers would sort of, you know, lower the number of licenses that they would renew?
Well, that's very good question. The, and, and that is something I'm interestingly waiting that what's gonna happen. I don't think. If I think the kind of a typical development cycle, so in the beginning, you have fewer people. When you start developing and deciding, designing something, you have fewer people, then you decide that, "Hey, we're gonna go forward with this," then you add the number of developers, and you actually develop the, whatever you're developing. Then at, once it's done, then you need fewer developers for maintaining the product in the life cycle of things. If I think the, and, and this process takes on simple products it's quicker, and on more complicated products it's longer.
If I look how our customers are behaving, they are actually behaving in a way that once they get one product done and in the maintenance phase, they already have new products on a pipeline, and they move their developers working on those new products. I actually don't expect you know, quite a lot of change over there. Of course, this is the first time we are getting into three-year, you know, bigger three-year license renewals, so remains to be seen. Our churn rate is lower, is low and we haven't seen any changes on the churn rates and whatnot. I definitely don't expect that all of a sudden people would kind of stop developing stuff and not renew the licenses because that's what it, what it would take.
I mean, you know, if they don't renew, they're not developing anymore, and I actually don't expect that to happen. We've never seen something like that, so, I don't think that's gonna happen now either. The development work will continue and then the renewals will happen. The question obviously is that, are they gonna be renewing to one-year licenses or are they gonna be renewing three-year licenses? That depends on the, where their project is. Most the maturity of our customers are big companies, and they do have multiple product development projects going on, you know, simultaneously and, one following one and after each one. I don't expect there to be a whole lot of changes. The people using Qt will continue using Qt then.
I don't expect nothing else than a support for our revenue development as a matter of fact.
Thanks. Final one from me. Could you just remind us on, whether or not you've done any price increases recently, or what do you have for plans for the rest of the year?
No. Recently we haven't done any price increases. Of course we are, you know, monitoring how things are progressing, and we're living in a world where there is quite a lot of price increases. I'm not saying there's not gonna be any towards the end of the year, but recently we haven't done, and I don't expect any huge price increases in the near future. We, I think we're pretty competitively priced as we are at the moment, and I don't see a need for price increases in the near future.
Thank you.
Hi. Jaakko Tyrväinen from SEB. I could ask a specified question on the quality assurance tools and their performance versus the traditional Qt tools in this quarter. You've stated before that these, you're not expecting these products to kind of dilute your group growth. How was it in this quarter?
Well, it is like that. We don't expect, you know, I don't see for a long period of time in the future that they would be diluting our growth numbers as a whole.
Okay. Good. Regarding the license mix between one and three-year licenses, was it normal during, if there is such thing as normal for you, but was it normal in this quarter and also last year? Which were the quarters you saw the sales mostly tilting towards the one-year license?
Well, of course, it's... There is always a fluctuation, so it's a definition what's normal. I would say that... That's where we see it. I don't... I wouldn't describe that there is a huge fluctuations. Last time when we see a bit more movement in it was second quarter a year ago. I would expect that... That's how our customer behavior will be seen. If things... If the economy starts getting really in trouble, if the companies really start saving money and securing cashflow, then they'll probably move more into buying one-year licenses because even though it's much more expensive on a lifetime of a three-year license, it's the...
On a short term, you can have the license and spend less. If our customers are getting in a situation where they need to really secure cashflow and they are concerned about their cash position, then they would probably buy a one-year license. That's what I would expect to happen if economy starts really slowing down. Which means that I actually don't expect them to stop developing and stop development work. That's. I don't expect that. If the economy really starts going bad, then some of our customers will move into buying one-year licenses. Now. Having said that, many of our customers are very large corporations, so the.
We don't see a whole lot of customer, our customers, that they would be in a position that they would be cash-constrained at the moment. Of course, things could develop into that direction because of the... We know that in the United States the local banks are in trouble. The interest rates are going up, probably the lending is tightening. Will there be a not shortage of cash, but will the cash be more expensive than what you would expect? In that situation, I would expect us to be selling more one-year licenses. Do we see that that's gonna happen? No. That's I would describe that as a scenario.
Good. Thanks. On your recruitments, you had net 80 new employees during the quarter. A bit slower pace than we've seen over the past few years. Are you planning to further slow down the recruitments or will you keep pushing the pedal to the metal?
Yeah. We're pedal to the metal. Yeah. There is fluctuations depending on, you know, the speed of recruiting on quarterly level. You know, it varies and. Yeah, we are. We do have a very big growth targets for the future, as you know, and we're driving towards those targets full speed, and we're definitely not slowing down.
Good. My final one, on the digital advertising or marketing solution you launched a while ago. Could you update us on that product? How has it performed, and when you are seeing that to contribute to the numbers in the future?
Well, our numbers are getting bigger so fast that That's hard prediction. It's up and running. The production is up and running. Which means that we are sourcing advertising. We do have customers signed up. We do have some volume customers signed up. We're growing the business as we speak. When it's gonna be substantial remains to be seen, and where it's gonna be developing, it's a bit too early to say. It's there. We're building and growing the business as we speak.
Good. Thanks. That's all from me.
Hi. It's Antti Luiro from Inderes.
Hello.
I think two questions for Juha and then one for Jouni after. First one on your sales and growth. Any comment on how the split between new customers and cross-selling or growing existing customers has been developing? I know you don't report it, but in terms of trends.
Well, when the COVID started, we were very concerned about it. How are we gonna be able to attract new customers? We put a special emphasis on getting new logos. It didn't actually change a whole lot and, we don't report it, but the... That percentage, it's about constant. We do get new customers on a same level we've been getting in the past years if I look on the new logos and whatnot. Having said that, maturity of our sales comes from existing customers. Why is that? Well, even a big corporations, when they start using Qt, they start from the one project. It's usually a... In the beginning, like I described, you don't need that many developer licenses.
You start expanding on that, and then you start adding new products into that. Like, customers like LG and Hyundai, it took many years for them to become very big customers. In that sense, even a big corporation in the beginning generates fairly little revenue. We follow the logos. Obviously we follow that, what is the lifetime of that kind of a customer. I'm very happy to say that. You know, we've... Well, GM, of course, we announced, but we've done a fair amount of deals. let's put it this way, a fair amount of deals that ended up on my desk and they are, you know, they're gonna be generating revenue in 2025, 2026, and beyond.
In that sense, when I talk about the long-term view, not about the second or third quarter, but when I talk about the long-term view, I'm very confident and I'm very happy that this company will be growing in the future because we've done a substantial amount of very nice deals. Unfortunately, we won't be able to use them as a reference because they don't want to.
Second one on Qt's life cycle stage as a company. I know you've been talking about recruiting and investing in growth. Are you seeing, in the foreseeable future, any shortage of areas to invest in? Do you see Qt's growth maturing anytime soon?
Well, that's, you know, my personality. I don't see any limit on growth, really. I mean, you know, if you looked at the, you know, where we are as of today, you look our global footprint, that we are in the United States, we are in Europe, and we are in Asia-Pacific. We have an excellent sales network throughout there. Our customers are well-known big brands that are. They're spending billions and billions on R&D and software development. Our relative size, we are adding there, more products to offer them. Of course, there's gonna be a time when the potential market is using Qt development tools, and then they are renewing and, you know, their subscriptions, one year or three years.
We do have our share of the market on runtime revenues, but that's years to come. If I looked at how we're building the product portfolio, we're all the time adding new products into the product portfolio that are in new products in emerging to grow bigger. We're taking care of our product portfolio in a way that we don't have only products that are already mature and in a cash milking situation. We're building it so that we have new things coming to the market all the time. I don't envision the growth stopping 2026 or 2027. Obviously, you know, they are far away and we can't make predictions forever.
If you look the culture of the company and the strategy of the company, that we keep on adding products, even though if we give our guidance to end of 2026, it doesn't mean that this is gonna be flat every year after that. The management and the whole company is working hard that we're gonna be growing like this many, many years to come. Of course, it needs new products into the portfolio and new services into the portfolio because none of these products will grow forever by themselves, obviously.
That's good to hear. The final one on financials. On your working capital development, of course, your cash flow was really strong in Q1. Since you made the license model change some two years back, there has been some more capital tied up or less capital tied up in short-term liabilities. Do you see that trend stabilizing now? Can you explain a bit on what has been behind the development?
Sure. It, yeah. The subscription license model started, like, second half of 2020. Prior to that, more proportionally of the invoicing was to invoice maintenance, what was then recognized or period of the maintenance period. Now, since we are moving more and more to a subscription, the subscription license revenue recognition is, like, more upfront in that sense. Deferred revenue amount is smaller. We expect that to be kind of stabilizing now since the... Well, we don't. On the Qt side, we don't basically sell any other type of licenses or maintenance anymore, but only subscriptions.
Great. That's helpful. Thanks. All from me.
If that's all questions in the room, let's move the questions on the conference call lines.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Matti Riikonen from Carnegie Investment Bank, Finland branch. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Matti Riikonen, Carnegie. Couple of questions. I'll take them one by one. Firstly, regarding the contract maturity split, how would you comment that? I think in Q4 you said that it had returned to normal. Was Q1 also normal in terms of earlier split between one-year and three-year licenses?
Yeah. I think that question was already asked, and our reply was that we do, of course, it's not constant exactly, so we do see there a fluctuation. We would describe that as a normal fluctuation as it is now in a whole company level. I also highlighted that when do we expect people to be more interested on a one-year license rather than three-year license, what could be the driver for that kind of a change is probably the economic uncertainty and our customers' willingness to secure short-term cash flow because obviously the one-year license is cheaper, but over the three years it's more expensive.
If there is a need for a customer to reserve cash on a short term, then we would expect them to be more towards one-year licenses. I think that as we go forward this year, if the economic uncertainty and lending squeeze are really gonna start affecting our customers, then we would expect that kind of a behavior. At the same token, I replied that many of our customers are very big corporations. We're talking about LGs and GMs and Hyundais and these type of big corporations. Our license expenditure on their whole budget is obviously a fairly limited number in their whole R&D budgets and whole R&D spending. In that sense, we don't expect...
There is always gonna be a bit of fluctuations, but nothing major we've seen now. Where it's gonna be, it was also highlighted here that on the latter part of the year, we're gonna start seeing third-year licenses coming into renewal and what's gonna happen then. We don't expect any of our customers to stop developing with Qt, so we do expect that the renewals will happen also. How the renewals will then behave, that remains to be seen. Like I said, we're not concerned about the fact that people all of a sudden would stop developing and not renewing the licenses since these development processes are very long.
All right. Thank you. Sorry if I missed some parts of.
Oh, no, no. Oh.
All right. Secondly, regarding your guidance for top line, what kind of contract maturity split does that assume? Does it assume, more shifting into 1-year licenses later over the year, or is it basically based on today's contract maturity split?
Yeah, it's today's. We've done a, we've done the budgeting that the, what was the historical development and that's how we budget it for the future as well. We do expect on a yearly level that that's roughly that's how it's gonna go. There are two-
Right
...sides of it. I mean, on the other hand, you would think that, well, it's good if people buy one of your licenses, and then they buy them each year. It's, you know, it's more money and whatnot. On the other hand, on a new customer, I like when they buy a three-year license because if you develop something three years, you're definitely gonna renew. You don't work on three years and then drop it and put it on trash. You're gonna, you know, you're definitely gonna continue. So a new customer taking a three-year license is you know, very unlikely to churn after three years of work on a product.
Okay. Thirdly, you have earlier talked about your large customers starting programs in 2023, which would have a positive impact on your business. Is that geared more towards developer license sales or distribution license sales, or is it 50/50?
The ones I'm thinking are all distribution license companies. When I'm saying that I think we're gonna see the contract value of those deals to peak in 2025 and 2026, I'm thinking differently on the runtime revenues.
All right. Was General Motors one of the big deals that you were expecting to sign?
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Not the only one.
Okay. Regarding the valuation of potential M&A targets, have you seen any change in the market valuation of non-listed companies now that we have seen the collapse of growth company stocks for the past one and a half years?
Well, yeah, of course. Yes, we have. I mean, that's for sure. I mean, you know, companies that have not made any transaction, they may say that our valuation is here, but the transactions are not happening on those high valuations anymore.
All right.
I wouldn't pay those valuations were in place 1 year ago. I just say I wouldn't pay. I mean, it. Of course, we do see companies that they think that the valuation hasn't changed, but, I mean, multiples have changed. That's the reality as of now. Will they change also in the future? Yes, they will. I mean, that's how life goes. Are the multiples same than they were 1 year ago? No. Are the multiples gonna be as low as they are today? Probably not.
I mean, what we're gonna see is that this interest rates hikes will they will kick in and the economy will slow down, the inflation starts coming down, and then the interest rates start coming down, and then all of a sudden the growth companies' multiples will go up again. As of now, yes, absolutely they've come down. It also affects that it's not that easy to get financing anymore. I mean, a year ago there was money floating around in the market. We've seen that, you know, People are a lot more cautious where they spend their money as of today.
It's, you know, if you're a loss-making startup, it's very difficult to get financing on very high multiples at this point of time. Yeah, they've come down.
Good. Second question about the any update on the conversion rate to the new licensing model? I think you last spoke about having achieved roughly 80% conversion from old clients to the new model, and there would be 20% left for this year. Where do you stand at the moment, and what's your current forecast? How much will not convert at all, and how much you will be able to convert still this year?
Yeah. That's a good question. Maybe Jouni has some more in detail. I think that when we started in this conversion, I said that 10%-20% of the customers will never convert. They will continue with the old versions. I still think that's where it's gonna end up. In a bigger scheme of things, I would already recall that the conversions are pretty much done. Of course, there will be some still this year to remain, but the bulk of the conversions in that's my guesstimate that they are done. Is it gonna stop at 10% or 20%? Well, it's probably gonna go below 20, but certain amount of customers that just there is no need to convert.
It's never gonna get into 100...
That's exactly how Juha says it. I mean, the conversions have continued, but now in the Q1, on slow pace. I mean, turning it around, I would consider this kind of a project accomplished in a way, in big picture.
Yeah. They're done.
Okay. Thank you.
I mean, there will.
And then-
Sorry. Yeah. One more thing. There will be conversions, but I mean, how material in big picture they are, I mean, it's not that big a thing.
Okay. Finally, I think there was... When talking about headcount increase, you used 26% in the text in the report and 31% in the tables. I think 31% is probably right. Is that the correct assumption?
One is the ending headcount, that's the, if I recall right, the lower amount. Then the average of the quarter is the higher at 31%. That explains the difference.
Okay.
Both are correct.
Okay. That's the difference. Thanks. Okay. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Sami Sarkamies from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi. I have three questions. We'll take them one by one. Firstly, wanted to go back to the demand environment that is cooling off in the U.S. and Asia according to your comments earlier. Can you describe how this is impacting your trading at the moment and what impacts could be visible through the remainder of the year?
Well, it hasn't impacted us so far. When I commented that the U.S. economy is slowing down, You know, it's a general comment, but what we see in the United States that the economy, in our mind, is cooling off. There are a lot of layoffs in different industries and different companies and people are companies and the corporate America is getting ready for slowdown. That's what we've seen. We haven't seen that slowdown in our business as of yet. Where would I expect to see something, if any? Probably I would see at first on the consultancy business and I would envision that the...
In the beginning of the projects when there is consultancy and proof of concepts and this kind of work, there I would actually expect to see it in the beginning. Then the latter part, then later I would expect that to see that people are postponing the decision-making. When there's been uncertain times before, what we saw was that the instead of starting a project now, let's wait for a couple months and see that where the world is going, then eventually, pretty much the projects do start because our customers can't halt the development forever. There is a slowdown in decision-making. That's what I would envision. That's we haven't seen. Obviously, if you look our Q1 numbers, we haven't seen any of that happening.
If I look our Q2 pipeline and pipeline buildup, I haven't seen that happening. What we have seen, like I said, is overall a lot of layoffs in the United States and an expectation that the US economy will start slowing down if not on the second quarter, at least on the second part of this year.
Okay. Going back to price increases that were discussed earlier, can you explain why you're not even contemplating price increases? I mean, many companies are doing those at the moment because it's maybe easier than in the past. Why, why not in your toolbox at the moment?
Well, like I said, on a short term, I don't see a need. We did move into subscription licensing not long ago, and we've done price increases, so I don't see that in the near future we would go into increasing prices on a short term. Let's see on a longer term how. We do check our prices and our competitor prices on a regular basis and obviously we make our decisions so that we trend in the market in the same position where we are. Are we gonna be seeing price increases later this year? Remains to be seen. I'm a bit cautious that I don't.
We don't have them in plan, and I don't wanna promise price increases in the latter part of the year because it might be that there won't be any in this current environment for any company to that matter.
Okay. Finally, going back to the mix discussion, regarding second quarter, did I understand correctly that you are assuming now that, you know, the mix will be, let's say, more normal during Q2 unlike last year?
Yeah, I do. Yeah. I think last year the change we saw was the war in Ukraine. Like I explained a bit earlier over here, that I would assume that if people start being uncertain of the future, and because of that companies will start securing cashflow as much as possible and cash as much as possible, and they start minimizing the spend on a short term as much as possible, then our customers would move buying into one-year licenses. For maturity of our customers, the development processes, they take longer than three years. If you look to that buying a one-year license each year, it's substantially more expensive than buying a one three-year license.
In going into one-year licenses, you would have to reason to yourself that I wanna secure as much cash in the bank at this very moment, and the I'm willing to pay for it a bit. That would be the reasoning. I think the war in Ukraine kind of raised the uncertainty level short period of time to very high. That reaction we saw. Do I expect? Now if, you know, there are a lot of negative news in the market, do we hear kind of a substantially different and more negative than it was a month ago? Not really. I mean, the situation from our point of view is pretty much the same than it was, say, in the beginning of the quarter.
We don't expect that kind of a change to happen at this point of time.
Okay, thanks. I don't have any further questions.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay. Thank you very much for all the questions and coming to our event. Just couple words to remind. We had a very good first quarter. We've had a very good pipeline build-up for the second quarter, our outlook remains the same. The... We are, we are looking very excited for the remaining part of the year and, we think that this is gonna be a very good year for The Qt Company. Thank you.