Good morning, and welcome to the third quarter results presentation for LINK Mobility. I'm Tom Rogn, Head of Investor Relations, and I'm joined by Guillaume van Gaver, CEO, and Thomas Berge, CFO, who will present the results. Please post questions during the presentation or dial in to ask questions directly in the Q&A following the presentation. Guillaume?
Thank you, Tom. Good morning to all. Welcome to this third quarter report. I'm very happy to start with, first, some key figures and elements from LINK Mobility. We were founded 21 years ago. We're the number one messaging company in Europe, and we are located in 19 countries now, with more than 47,000 customers. Our last 12 months revenues have reached NOK 4.5 billion, with an EBITDA of NOK 616 million. The story about LINK Mobility, if you look at the previous years, we've been continuously delivering great growth on the revenue side since 2018, 32% growth, and on the EBITDA, 43%. But let's look at the third quarter. Some key highlights.
On the revenue side, we grew by 37% to NOK 1.1 billion, which represents an organic growth rate on local currency of 16%. If we focus on enterprise, this growth rate has been 13%, as we have also monitored higher revenue from global messaging as compared to last year. On the gross profit side, we monitor a 57% increase on gross profit to NOK 325 million, with a gross profit margin of 29%. This is a 400 basis points increase year-on-year, due to the contribution of the newly acquired entities. Our organic growth rate in local currency has been 7%, explained by a stronger contribution of global messaging.
We've been reporting an EBITDA of NOK 152 million, which represent an EBITDA margin of 13.7%, and our EBITDA grew on a year-to-year basis by 72%, which is a strong also improvement on the EBITDA margin of 2.8%. Our organic adjusted EBITDA has slightly declined due to strong investment in go-to-market, as I will explain it in our go-to-market strategy. Also, worth noting on this quarter, two important facts. First of all, we've been recognized by Juniper Research as a CPaaS leader, and we will give you more color also to this important news. And last but not least, this is the first quarter where we are reporting in a new geography with Message Broadcast in the U.S.
So let's deep dive, and we will start by reminding ourselves that LINK Mobility growth is with three pillars of the strategy. First of all, the CPaaS and the expansion of advanced use, new use cases represents pillar number one. The second pillar is the expansion and the investment in go-to-market, which is very unique to LINK Mobility, highly present and local with its go-to-market strategy. And last but not least, the third pillar of our strategy is M&A. Let's discover the three of them with the following slides. Item number one, on products, LINK Mobility continues to expand its CPaaS offering, offering a wide range of API to its customers. We also expanded it to new software as a service solutions. For instance, this quarter, we've enhanced and delivered a very attractive RCS editor, enabling advanced RCS campaign.
All of those API and this software as a service, they are supported by common foundation layers, which has done a lot of progress also on account management, data analytics, message orchestration, and last but not least, of course, on billing. This has been recognized by Juniper, which has established LINK Mobility as one of the CPaaS-established leader. And on top of the products that we have discovered, they have also highlighted our strong cooperation with CRM vendors. Also expansion, which are started in customer service and CCaaS, and last but not least, our M&A strategy and our expansion into the U.S. So this is great news for us, especially because it enables LINK to win the business. Let me give you three examples of businesses that we have won.
Sometimes we can't disclose the company name, but this is just to tell you that we have won, during an RFP, a very large global retailer with more than 100,000 employees, and we are going to provide for them all of the marketing communication, the notification for collections and deliveries, customer support, also use cases and account security, use cases. With this same company, we are now discussing the expansion beyond these traditional channels, as we are channel agnostic with new channels such as WhatsApp, Viber, and Line. And this is to show you how we can expand from the customers we win. The second example has been really something that has been growing for us, which is the requirement from companies to help them with mobile messaging, to reduce the number of incoming calls and actually to do call diversion.
Calls are very expensive, not always the channels which is preferred by the customers, and therefore, with, for instance, DNB, we've been able to implement unique solutions, dedicated IPs and algorithm in order to directly answer the customers on mobile messaging instead of taking a customer call, which provides stronger customer satisfaction and also reduction of cost for DNB. The third example that I can quote is our continuous effort in partnership with Emarsys, which is a leading worldwide automation, marketing automation solution that has been bought recently by SAP. They are very strong on retail and e-commerce, and LINK Mobility will provide a mobile messaging layer in the entire suite of Emarsys. Those three examples explain how CPaaS is going to drive even further LINK Mobility's growth.
Again, a distinct point, which is the second element of our strategy, which is go-to-market, is our continuous efforts to strengthen our go-to-market channels. We've explained several times that the potential for growth is very strong in Europe and also beside, besides Europe. As you can see, some countries are very advanced, and they continue to grow, such as Norway, as compared to countries like Germany, Spain, Italy, France, and those countries demonstrate a higher growth rate, which shows the potential going forward. For LINK, to capture that potential, we are investing in go-to-market channels, typically adding self-sign-up, which is the e-commerce solution, and also partnership. In the last 12 months, we made increased hires, especially in partner management and also expanding SSU in countries like Sweden and Bulgaria. Let's look at our third pillar, which is based on M&A.
This third pillar is very important to us, and let's have a look at how we've been performing in this third quarter regarding the recent acquisitions. In Europe, with the acquisition of WebSMS and AMM, those add-ons have brought a lot of positive value to LINK Mobility, enabling us to consolidate our presence in Italy and Austria and delivering strong results. We've been able to cross-sell new solutions to existing customers in Austria, in Italy, as well as deliver synergies for those two countries. On top of these add-ons, from a geographic standpoint, we've made the first steps to acquire a solution company. This is the case for TISMI and MarketingPlatform. TISMI brings number masking, number ranging solutions to customers, and also MarketingPlatform enables us to deliver even more advanced customer data platform management solutions, so these are very good and strong acquisitions.
One of the acquisition that we would like to spend a bit more time is on Message Broadcast, because for the first time, we're reporting Message Broadcast numbers. And as you know, Message Broadcast is very focused on four verticals: utility, telecom, healthcare, and finance and tech. Utility being their stronger vertical. The four sectors actually demonstrate the same need of high regulatory requirements, and this is why Message Broadcast is able to command a premium, because they enable those companies to be fully compliant with all rules and regulations. On utility, which is their strongest segment, you can see that there is a level of volatility in the results due to the level of critical events, and you will see it in the third quarter of 2020, that there were a lot of critical events, weather-related, that did not manifest this quarter.
But on an ongoing basis, this graph on the bottom right shows you that the CAGR has been impressive, with 57% growth. Message Broadcast also won an undisclosed utility company this quarter, which is a very strong customer buy-in on the EONS platform, which is really the platform that enables this mission-critical regulatory communication from utility to their customers. This new win shows how much Message Broadcast potential to grow is very strong in the U.S., and we are going to continue expanding with Message Broadcast for the following quarters and years to come. Very happy also on that new acquisition in the U.S. M&A, going forward, the third pillar. We are still looking at three types of acquisition: add-ons, level up, and solutions. On add-ons, we are going to remain opportunistic with companies which are A2P, relatively small to medium size.
They have not the highest level of technology, but we can acquire those entities with a low premium, and a low multiple, and that enables LINK Mobility to consolidate and increase its presence in existing geographies. Second, our level up strategy is to actually acquire entities that have multi-country positioning, and we have, of course, a lot of other geographies where the growth is strong, notably in South America, also Asia, where LINK Mobility is going to continue looking at those opportunities going forward. Last but not least, solution company, LINK Mobility is very picky, but there are some solutions that can be added to our portfolio and cross-sold to 47,000 customers.
The pipeline of LINK Mobility from an M&A perspective is vibrant, and we're very happy to continue the efforts that we have done for the previous years in order to continue the journey of growth for LINK Mobility going forward. So let's talk indeed about the forward-looking statement. We remain with the same ambition in terms of revenues, with NOK 10 billion by the end of 2024. Also, reaching an EBITDA margin of 15%-17%. And the key assumptions for this forward-looking statement is, on the medium term, a 14%-17% organic revenue growth, benefiting from the rollout of go-to-market, especially.
In the long term, 20% is our clearly aspiration as we see adoption of CPaaS, which are going to be S-curve adopted, which means that while new channels and new use cases take time to ramp up, when they ramp up, they ramp up with speed and scale, which really enables us to foresee a very strong growth for LINK Mobility for the long term. Of course, LINK Mobility will create some growth with M&A, as we have explained, as we have seen several times. For the remaining days and weeks and months of the year, our key focus is to continue our efforts in expanding our go-to-market strategy, as well as expanding our presence in U.S. from the Message Broadcast position that we have taken this year. With that, I would like to hand over to Thomas. Over to you, Thomas.
Thank you, Guillaume. Over to the financial section, starting with the revenue development. LINK reports all-time high quarterly revenue of NOK 1,112,000,000 , which is a 37% growth, including M&A, and a 16% organic growth in local currency, excluding revenue from acquired entities. In the reported numbers for the current quarter, all acquisitions, including Message Broadcast, are consolidated with the effect for the whole quarter. The appreciation of NOK towards euro and other currencies reduced the reported growth rate by four percentage points. The historical financial reporting has been impacted by lockdowns imposed by the authorities because of the pandemic, resulting in more volatile growth rates. In the current quarter, LINK observes a more normalized operating environment, where most markets are returning to business as usual. France is the only exception.
Here, it is evident that volumes are still lagging somewhat in the retail sector. Messaging volume grew 38% and on par with revenue, including all acquired entities. Over to the next slide. As Guillaume said, LINK has delivered on its M&A strategy, and the company has established a footprint outside Europe with the acquisition of Message Broadcast in the U.S. The company has closed five acquisitions in the last 12 months: WebSMS in Austria, TISMI in the Netherlands, MarketingPlatform in Denmark, AMM in Italy, and Message Broadcast in the U.S. As an addition to the reported P&L, pro forma figures will be presented to give a better overview of the current size and state of the company. Pro forma figures include historical financials of closed entities for comparable data. All closed acquisitions are included in the pro forma figures.
Starting with the pro forma organic revenue growth, which compares the growth rate year- over- year, as we had the current footprint, in the same quarter of last year. The third quarter pro forma organic growth rate is reported at 16% in local currency. A negative FX effect on approximately three percentage points. The historical quarterly growth rates vary due to volume impact from lockdowns and reopening caused by the pandemic, and extraordinary high revenue for Message Broadcast in the second and third quarter of last year. Global messaging experienced high volumes in the current quarter, with a revenue growth at 47%, positively contributing to total revenue growth.
Looking at the enterprise side, pro forma enterprise revenue growth is reported at 13% in local currency, somewhat lower than total revenue growth due to lagging volumes in the current quarter from the retail sector in France, and high volumes in the third quarter of last year in Message Broadcast. The Nordics and Central Europe are displaying normalized growth rates as the countries have restarted normal business activity. An exception is the retail sector in France, where volumes are lagging. France is one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, and the market is using more time to normalize activity and volumes, which is reflected in the 5% revenue growth rate for Western Europe.
In the U.S., Message Broadcast experienced unusually high revenue in the third quarter of last year, connected to critical events like storms, wildfires, et cetera, which this year has been unusually low. You could say that we get a double negative effect on the pro forma growth rates for the third quarter. As comparison, pro forma enterprise growth, excluding France, is 15% in local currency and more in line with total revenue growth. Year- over- year, the customer base has organically increased by 3,000 customer accounts, driven by the go-to-market initiatives that Guillaume mentioned. LINK now has more than 47,000 customer accounts. Pro forma net retention rates includes closed acquisitions to give a better overview of the growth momentum for all existing clients. Pro forma net retention rate is reported in local currency. Total pro forma net retention was 114%.
Pro forma net retention rate for the enterprise segment was somewhat lower, but it was also impacted by the same elements mentioned on the previous slide. Over to profitability. Gross profit reported at NOK 325 million , all-time high, a growth of 57%. Gross profit margin has increased to an all-time high of 29.3%, which is 3.9 percentage points higher compared to same period last year. Gross profit margin has been positively impacted by higher profitability on acquired entities and stable margins on the enterprise segment in the existing footprint. Organic gross profit growth is reported at 77% in local currency, which is impacted by a higher portion of revenues and volumes deriving from global messaging with lower margins. As I said, gross profit margin on the enterprise segment is stable year over year.
All-time high adjusted EBITDA at NOK 152 million and a margin of 13.7%. Organically, adjusted EBITDA is impacted by incremental OpEx investments in the go-to-market initiatives and commercializing new CPaaS solutions to drive the growth momentum going forward. The next slide shows pro forma figures. Current run rate LTM numbers for revenue, including all entities, indicate yearly revenue of almost NOK 4.5 billion, and a gross profit of NOK 1.3 billion. Gross profit margin at a healthy and stable 29%, and an adjusted EBITDA at NOK 616 million with a 14% margin. The pro forma LTM numbers clearly demonstrates LINK's transformation to an established, sizable global CPaaS player.. We have been through the headline P&L figures in the previous slide, so I'm jumping straight to the lower half of the P&L.
Non-recurring costs are impacted by LINK's share option program and M&A activities. Share option cost of NOK 43 million and M&A related costs of NOK 13 million is reported for the third quarter. There is a smaller amount related to restructuring cost of NOK 4 million, which is also related to the integration of acquired entities. The reported share option costs are the accounting treatment of a future dilution effect, with no short-term cash effect and only a very limited cash outlay over time. Cost of the depreciation reported at NOK 101 million, which is mostly related to the depreciation of assets from acquired companies following the purchase price allocations, of which is NOK 75 million. Net financial items at NOK - 37 million, which is mainly the quarterly interest cost on the bond. The balance sheet is solid and has a strong liquidity.
The total balance sheet is at NOK 10.4 billion, with an equity ratio of 49%. Some details, receivables increased by NOK 150 million due to the inclusion of acquired entities. Payables decreased by NOK 476 million, mainly due to the booking of a share premium liability related to the IPO last year of NOK 414 million. This has very little, or it has no effect on cash from operating activities. It's the full effect is on cash from financing activities last year. Message Broadcast has a positive working capital due to their price model and contributes to a NOK 51 million lower receivable and payable ratio. Net interest bearing debt of NOK 2.9 billion, and as you can see, gross interest bearing debt of almost NOK 3.7 billion.
After closing the transaction with Message Broadcast, leverage will be temporarily higher than LINK's financial policy. The financial policy is unchanged, and the company have the highest focus on pushing leverage below 3.5 times through cash generation, organic growth, and potentially creative M&A. Working capital in the third quarter is negative, with NOK 76 million, mainly due to Message Broadcast diluting working capital and timing deviations. Net cash from operating activities, excluding M&A cost, is NOK 359 million on an LTM basis. So LINK is generating a lot of cash from operations. That was it for me. I'm handing the word back to Tom to take us through Q&A.
Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question for the speakers, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press five star again. We'll have a few questions being registered. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. As there are no questions at the moment, I'll hand the word back to you.
Thank you. We have some questions which have been posted during the presentation. The first one is from Petter Kongslie, and he's asking why the LTM EBITDA is slightly down from the second quarter to the third quarter.
Yeah, I can start answering that question. Petter, as you remember, from the second quarter, we announced that EBITDA for the second quarter of 2020 was higher due to cost reduction initiatives. So that is, of course, something that is increasing the Q2 LTM number. We said approximately ten million was the effect, so that explains a large portion of the gap. On top of that, of course, we have had a very good momentum in Message Broadcast due to the critical events, fueling profitability. The gross profit is very high in Message Broadcast. So when you had the very high second quarter and third quarter of last year, that of course is impacting profitability when you compare the LTM numbers of the third quarter and the second quarter.
Then we have a question from Thiago Bota, who is wanting to have some more explanation around the slight decline in organic adjusted EBITDA in the quarter, and also some color on the organic gross profit performance.
Yeah, I can start with that also. As we've said in the presentation, we have had an incremental OpEx increase over the quarters as we are investing in go-to-market initiatives and also the rollout of new CPaaS products, which both initiatives are going to drive future growth. So that is a part of the explanation. Another part is that the gross profit growth, when you look at it organically in fixed currency, it's 7%, which is caused by a higher portion of revenues stemming from the lower profitability global messaging segment. On top of that, we say both in the report and in the presentation today that we see stable organic gross profit margins on the enterprise segment.
Stable means that the decline is 0.6 percentage points, quarter- over- quarter. That is, the effect on the enterprise segment, caused mainly by abnormal country mix and the traffic volumes between segments caused by the pandemic of last year, where the public sector, the logistic companies, especially in the Nordics, constitute a larger portion of revenue, and the profitability there is higher.
Thiago has a follow-up on the CPaaS market growth in general and LINK's organic growth rate.
Hi, Thiago. Thank you for the question. First of all, when looking at the growth rates, it's important to be able to look at the 2020 and 2021 numbers, which had some exceptional events, related to the very sharp increase of one-time password traffic for large internet companies, reductions in, marketing activities, especially in the retail sector and travel sectors. But in general, when you look at the growth rates, it's important to state that the application to person growth rate, A2P, has been historically around 10%, while the CPaaS growth rate has been around 30%. If you were to establish from scratch a market, company for CPaaS, you will enjoy indeed, this type of growth rates in the 30% range.
But LINK Mobility, as well as other companies, have also a strong customer base on the A2P segment, and we are transitioning from being an A2P company to being a CPaaS company, meaning that our growth rate reflects that transition between the 10% growth rate of A2P, moving to the 30% growth rate of CPaaS. This additional growth rate is coming from new channels such as OTT, RCS, more conversational use cases, and clearly, LINK Mobility sees a lot of positive demand from customers asking for more advanced use cases, and this will drive our growth rate from the current level to higher level going forward.
Then Petter Kongslie has a follow-up on the global messaging volume growth and the link to gross profit, growth.
Yeah, that's actually quite mechanical answer, because when you look at global messaging, the gross profit level is often close to 10%. For this quarter, we have seen a very strong increase in global messaging as a total share of the global messaging within LINK Mobility, and that has diluted the gross profit profile of LINK Mobility for this quarter. As we said several times, global messaging volumes are volatile, and therefore, they need to be looked at separately. This is why we do a separate reporting for you to be able to analyze our enterprise gross profit profile.
We have Øystein Lodgaard, who is asking similar around the organic growth rates, and that also some of our peers have seen a lower growth in the gross profit and in the revenue line, and what would be the reasoning behind this in general?
I think the answer to that question is to a large extent the same as Guillaume responded on the previous question. In the current quarter, we see global messaging constituting a larger portion of the revenue base. The profitability there is lower, so then the gross profit growth will be lower than the average revenue growth. And the gross profit margins are quite stable.
When you look at the previous footprint that we had, meaning that we do not look at the acquired entities, but just compare the old footprint, we will see that we have a gross profit decline or margin decline of 0.6 percentage points year-over-year, which is not, it's not a large gap, and it's mostly caused by country mixes because of a more unusual mix last year, caused by the pandemic. We don't see, to a large extent, on a customer-by-customer basis, a gross profit decline. That's kind of stable, but of course, when you have 47,000 thousand customers operating in 19 different markets, all with different gross profit margins, then you will get mix effects quarter- over- quarter.
Lodgaard has a follow-up specifically on the specified growth targets for LINK on the revenue line, which is 14%-17%, and how that relates to the organic growth rate.
Thank you, Øystein , and I think I would also comment to the next question, which has some correlations. LINK Mobility has shared with you our working assumptions towards reaching the NOK 10 billion revenue with 14%-17% revenue growth. We do not disclose the gross profit profile and we have guided also and shared the assumption on the EBITDA margins. On gross profit, what is important to remember is that with the transition from A2P to CPaaS, we have strong demand from our customers to actually propose more advanced solution for message orchestration. To give you an example, when you do a marketing campaign for a company today, we are implementing three channels, at least, where in the past we would have used one or two channel.
That requires more orchestration. We have higher demand for security, reporting, and a very growing concerns from our customers to make sure that they are choosing a provider that enables all of those multi-channel, high-quality communication, and this provides opportunity for gross profit increase along the profiles of 2021 until 2024 . There will be always variances on a country-by-country basis, customer-by-customer basis. LINK Mobility is convinced that by having its focus on enterprise, by expanding its product portfolio to more advanced use cases and more CPaaS-related products, we are in a good position to be able to do a very strong performance on the gross profit side. Allow me just to also reiterate an important point. All of our contracts include price increase clause in the event of our channel partners, namely the mobile operator price increase.
We have had the case, for instance, this quarter in Denmark, where the operators have increased the price for the SMS traffic, and we were in a position to, of course, automatically increase our price to the customers based on the operator price increase. So we have 100% coverage from a channel perspective, knowing that also the mobile operators should always pay attention to their price decision, because now there's more alternatives with OTT channel, for instance, email and voice, which can sometimes supplement SMS as a channel. So we have more arbitrage, we have more options, and we are fully protected against those price increases.
Both Thiago and Øystein Lodgaard has some follow-up on, specifically on the carrier cost or inflation from the telecom providers and how that impacts the margins.
As I said, we are fully protected. There will be no direct impact on price increases due to mobile operator, because our gross profit will be safeguarded from absolute perspective or percentage perspective, depending on the cases, but we have those provisions 100% in our agreements with our customers.
I can just fill in here also. I've been with the company for six years, and there has, of course, been from time to time price increases from the mobile operators, but it has never had a material effect on our P&L, and we have always been. It's been easy to offload that to our clients. We do that sort of to a 99% degree, the same month that we incur the price increases. But this is not something that we see, at least in our footprint, as a sort of an escalating issue or a problematic issue. This is something we experience from time to time, and it has limited impact on the P&L, basically.
Then we have a couple of questions on M&A, both from Ole Eigil Holmen , how many will be financed, and from Thiago on the LINK share price and how that impacts the use of shares as in any acquire companies.
LINK Mobility is still very attractive to the industry. We've been in this place for 20 years. Our share price has a history of performing in the mid to long term. We know that the current share price is at a low level. On the other end, the business fundamentals are strong. This quarter is a good example of why it is good for LINK Mobility to focus on enterprise use cases. And we are in a position to share the story, the company performance and the strategy. And this three-pillar strategy is convincing a lot of people with whom we have M&A discussions, and we don't see the current share price as being a challenge for us for M&A purposes.
Then we have a specific question from Jonas Feldtmann, and he is wondering why the share price is down today.
I cannot comment on the level of the share price. What I would say is, we are happy with our Q3 results. We see the LINK Mobility strategy as being a good strategy, and it takes time to build up growth from a revenue standpoint with the adoption of CPaaS product. As we said in our statement, it's an S-curve adoption, so you don't get overnight people to adopt a new channel across all of your footprint and the 47,000 customers. We have a strong relationship, low churn, and we are in a position to protect ourselves from price increase from channels. So the business fundamentals for LINK Mobility is strong. It's a job for us to make sure that it is well understood from all of the markets so that it reflects on the share price.
Then a question from Tore Mengshoel , and he wants some color on the messaging, global messaging volumes going forward and how that will be impacted by COGS price changes.
Again, we don't do any global messaging agreements without a cost increase protection. So we will not underwrite any global messaging revenues, which has a negative impact in our gross profit. As we said, global messaging is very volatile. It varies from quarter to quarter. There's also some benefits of being opportunistic in this market to achieve certain threshold of volume discount with operators. So you can expect the gross profit profile on global messaging to remain relatively the same, around 10 percentage point, knowing that again, it's very difficult to predict. What we are focusing on as LINK Mobility is definitely the enterprise segment from which we see a positive demand on our CPaaS products.
Øystein Lodgaard has a follow-up on the go-to-market expansion, which has been impacted by the global pandemic, and more in theory, how much it's been impacted in the different channels, so enterprises, SU, and the partner channel.
We've been actually happy in our rollout of SSU with the expansion of SMS API in Sweden and in Bulgaria. We are contemplating a further expansion of SMS API in Eastern Europe in early 2022. When it comes to our partner channel, this is where we are extremely happy on the progress we've made, notably recruiting the right people across the footprint. It takes between 12 - 18 months in order to have return on investments on the partner expansion. When it comes to enterprise, we've grown the sales team prudently. It's fair to say that we have still some recruitments to conclude before the year end, and there's a global tension on the labor market.
But LINK Mobility, again, feels that the go-to-market strategy, which is expanding enterprise, partner, and SSU, is good, and we have good progress internally. This is green in terms of progress, even if, as shareholders and as the CEO of the company, you always want to do faster and more, but LINK Mobility is progressing well, its go-to-market expansion.
Petter Kongslie has a specific follow-up on the growth guidance for gross profit compared to revenue growth guiding.
I can answer that one. 14%-17% growth, that's organic, does not include M&A.
Øystein Lodgaard has a follow-up on LINK's acquired entities and how the integration and cross-selling are going with the acquired companies.
TISMI, as you know, has been acquired earlier in the year, so we've made more progress on TISMI than we have done on MarketingPlatform, which has been acquired slightly later. On TISMI, we're very happy to actually put already in production some offers with number range, number masking, which is important offering for instance, use cases where the person who delivers the parcel is able to contact the customer with a hidden number. We see a very good growth rate on the TISMI side. Regarding MarketingPlatform, we have very big ambition on customer data platform, and this will take more time, similar to the comments I made on CPaaS regarding S-curve adoption. But this positions LINK Mobility well for customer data platform and email on top of our existing strong written messaging channels.
Then we have a question from Johannes Ørbeck-Nilssen , who wants some more specific, if there's any color on the Soprano transaction which was terminated earlier, and also on LINK's financing, and if LINK is considering any equity raising.
Regarding Soprano, I'm going to take this first part of the question, and Thomas will take the second part. Regarding Soprano, we made a full disclosure of why we did not sign an agreement with Soprano during September, so we don't need to actually make any more comments that LINK Mobility asked for another amendment to the term sheet, which was not agreed by Soprano, therefore, the signing was canceled. Again, LINK Mobility looks at this current M&A pipeline, and we are very happy about the conversation we have across the piece of add-ons, solution acquisition, and also level up.
Yeah, I can also add that we cannot, of course, comment on any ongoing discussion or potential ongoing discussions with any M&A partners. So, that is difficult to comment on. Need for new equity, as of now, no. We have more than enough liquidity. Operationally, we generate a lot of excess cash. We have a large amount of liquidity in our bank accounts, which we'll use for M&A, and with M&A model that we're having, with partly paying with our share, directly issued to the sellers, then we don't see any need for any private placement or any equity issuance.
Thiago has a follow-up specifically on M&A and pricing multiples of LINK compared to targets, and given the valuation of LINK, if LINK shouldn't consider buying back shares instead of issuing new shares.
LINK Mobility currently doesn't plan any buyback shares. Again, we are looking at those three pillars for acquisitions, and our current discussions in terms of A 2P players, for instance, commands a very reasonable multiple from a price perspective, so we feel comfortable. We are capable of continuing the strategy, which has been created almost 20 years ago, which is to acquire companies and create a premium on our own valuation, even if our own valuation is lower than what we would expect at this point of time.
We have been answering the questions we have been posed. If there are any other questions, please post questions or ask directly through the operator. We will wait one minute for any more questions. There still doesn't seem to be any more questions. We thank everyone for participating in today's presentation and Q&A. We will be doing a roadshow later today, and we will be meeting you investors later. Thank you.