Hello, and welcome to today's webcast presentation with Checkin.com Group. Today, CEO Kristoffer Cassel and CFO Martin Bäuml will present the Q1 report for 2024. Following the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. And with that, that said, please go ahead with your presentation.
Yes, thank you. So my name is Kristoffer Cassel. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Checkin. And, I think the format we will have today follows similar format as previous quarterly reports, which is I'll focus on the business and some of the points from my CEO letter, and then Martin will focus in on some of the numbers. And we will leave plenty of time for questions at the end. So, we presume that you guys who listens in, and thanks so many... that so many are listening. We presume that you have read the report and know us as a company already. So with that said, I'll get straight to the point. The revenue this quarter has been depressed by low volumes and low usage, especially in the travel sector.
This is something I'll come back to, but I think this is the main point of this report. If you see this quarter by quarter, this is a chart we have shown before. We have an organic growth of 13% year-on-year, and Q1 is our third-best quarter ever. It's our best Q1 ever, but it's of course at a significantly lower level than Q3 and Q4. That was fantastic quarters for us. Despite this lower revenues and lower volume, our profitability is up year-by-year. I reiterate in my CEO letter that we are operationally at a new level. It's...
I think the quarter shows that despite the top line being lower, we have an EBITDA that grows 73% year-on-year, and profitability and cash flow measures across the board increases, and net cash position increases as well. So we feel confident to prioritize long term, and do what we think is best for Checkin long term. And the driver behind the lower usage is mainly the travel segment, which is a very important segment for us. We expected weak volumes in Q1 due to seasonality effects, and the volume has been low throughout Q1.
The volumes are also impacted by the fact that our solution to prevent third-party bookings have sort of worked better than expected and pushed down those bookings, which means that part of the volume in the travel sector has also decreased. So it's a combination of seasonal effects and also slightly changed usage by the end consumer. But within travel, the collaboration with our largest customer, the European airline, is developing well, and we are actively working together with them to broaden the use to include all bookings. Our goal with every client we have is to reach 100% share of Checkin, so take all the bookings and all the users.
So we still believe in a strong year for the segment and also, of course, we have an operational leverage once the volumes come, which will lead, I think, to increased profitability as well as growth. So we're still quite positive to the travel segment for the full year. And although the volumes were low in terms of usage, the business itself has continued to take important steps throughout the quarter and I think progressed on many fronts. We have deliberately focused on the biggest players, trying to win more enterprise level clients. And I think our pipeline right now of potential clients is on a sort of different scale than before. We're also in deep discussions with a handful international airlines and also make progress in other segments.
I also mentioned in the CEO letter, the Swedish fintech company that entered a revenue-generating phase earlier in the winter. We are now working with them more closely on a joint project that could lead to significantly broader use of our software. So the collaborations, important collaborations with our biggest clients, as well as the sales pipe, looks really good. But as we said, the volumes in Q1 were depressed. This is sort of an intentional... I mean, we have decided to take this strategy to focus on the large clients, and to focus within travel as well. And this is a choice we have done that brings choppiness to the revenues, but also of course, leverage once the volumes comes.
So we're convinced that this is beneficial long term for the company, and we'll continue to take the steps that we believe is good for Checkin in the long run. And hopefully, of course, once the breakthroughs comes, that the upside offsets this choppiness more than enough. Our financial target remains in place. We have a variant of the classic SaaS metric Rule of Forty, which tries to measure profitable growth. And the goal for us is to maximize the sum of revenue growth per share and EBITDA margin. And our ambition level is to exceed 80% on an annual basis, and we feel confident with that ambition still.
The actuals this quarter is only 36%, the sum, and I think in a rolling 12 months, we're at 66% or something like that. But we feel comfortable with these targets, and they remain in place. Adding to that, and perhaps something I didn't mention explicitly this quarter in the CEO letter, is of course, that we still see great possibilities for additional acquisitions, to acquire leading technology within niche areas that adds to our software and makes our software even better for our clients and the end users. And this is something that me and Martin have spent plenty of time with, the past couple of quarters, and unfortunately, you guys don't see the report, the results until we push the button.
But, this is an area where we focus, and we'll continue to try to make smart acquisitions that adds shareholder value. And hopefully, we can return with some concrete news in this area as well. With that said, I'll leave to Martin.
Thank you, Kristoffer. So the report itself has a lot of numbers as usual, as I'll just cover the headlights here, and then we can go through the rest in the questions. So, net sales increased 13% compared to the same quarter last year, to an increase to SEK 21.3 million. And that growth was not impacted by any acquisitions, so the organic growth was also 13%. The gross margin was 77% in the quarter, a little bit lower than the previous quarter. I'll get back to that on that specific slide. Despite the depressed revenues that Kristoffer already mentioned, compared to Q3 and Q4, and only 13% growth in Q...
Compared to Q1 last year, EBITDA is still up 73% compared to Q1 last year, and lands at SEK 4.8 million and a margin of 23%. The cash flow has a similar development as the EBITDA and lands at SEK 4.3 million. We ended the quarter with a cash position of SEK 36.7 million and net cash. So, when you deduct the loans we have, it's actually up a couple of hundred thousand SEK compared to Q4. With low leverage and a solvency ratio or equity ratio at 85%, we have a very stable financial position.
So if we go into the net revenue specifics, you can see here that compared to Q3 and Q4, we're down quite a bit. But also, remember, this is still our third-best quarter ever, and also our best Q1 ever, with a turnover of SEK 21.3 million in the quarter, up 13% compared to last year. And moving to gross margin, the gross profit grew to just over SEK 16 million in the quarter, with a margin of 77%, which is slightly lower than we have historically been able to achieve.
This has been discussed in previous reports as we kind of took a lot of investments last year and extended the capacity of the systems to be able to handle higher volumes, and especially server capacity, and similar things. So, now when we have kind of depressed volumes, the gross margin goes down a little bit, but when the volume comes back, we're confident that the gross margin will go up again. This is kind of natural because even though we call it direct costs and it's variable with revenues, it's not directly one-to-one perfect match with our movements in revenues. It's more kind of based on capacity steps, if you will.
So that's why we have these kind of changes when we have different or various variables, variable revenues. Moving to sales and marketing costs, we continue to invest in this area, of course. We spent SEK 4.2 million in sales and marketing during the quarter, up quite a bit compared to the same period last year, and corresponding to 20% the revenues. So more in line with historical share of revenue and also closer to our kind of long-term guidance or target of 25% that we mentioned before.
Moving to EBITDA, as we already mentioned, we managed to grow EBITDA by 73%, compared to last year, and we had EBITDA of SEK 4.8 million in the quarter, corresponding to a margin of 23%. It's a higher margin than Q1 last year, but compared to the full year 2023, and especially Q3 and Q4, it is slightly lower margins, which is, you know, a natural cost of the lower revenues during Q1 here. And then, finally, we ended the quarter with a cash position of just under SEK 37 million, which is down approximately SEK 1 million compared to December.
But since we amortize on our loans, actually a little bit over SEK 1 million, the net cash position is actually up a couple of hundred thousand SEK during the quarter. Which really shows that even in a quarter with kind of depressed revenues and margins, we are still, you know, basically self-sufficient. And the high equity ratio of 85% in combination with our low leverage also kind of highlights our stable financial position. So with that, I'll hand it back to Kristoffer for some final remarks and questions.
Yeah. Thank you, Martin. Yeah, to sum up, this quarter is, we have low usage that pushes down revenue, revenues. At the same time, the organization has continued to take important steps, and, a lot of the development with our biggest and most important clients, have been progressing well. And also our strength and profitability enable us to have a long-term focus as an organization, and we'll continue to do that. We will continue to focus not quarter by quarter, but continue to focus, long term, what builds a strong Checkin, over time. And we believe that once the volumes come back, the choppiness that we've seen this quarter will translate into leverage on the upside, going forward. But that's, of course, to be proven, during the year.
We look forward for the full year to come. With that, I'll open up for questions. Martin from Finwire.
Thank you very much for that presentation. Like you said, now I'll jump into the Q&A section here. We'll start with the first one. When can volumes recover?
I think that's the million-dollar question in terms of exactly when and exactly how much and so on. We are not hoping only to get back to the levels we had during Q3 and Q4. With a broader rollout in the travel sector, as well as the developments we see generally, we of course hope to have significant growth this year. Exactly the seasonality patterns of the travel industry and the rollouts together with our biggest partners, we will see. But as I said before, we remain with our target and ambition for this year in terms of financial target, and we feel confident in the strategy we have chosen.
Has Klarna started generating revenues to any significant extent yet?
Yes. This customer has started producing revenue already during the winter and has been progressing well. I think the key to our cooperation here is to expand the usage further, and as I said on the slide, we have big hopes for this big Swedish fintech to become a sort of transformative client for us, similar to how the large European airline has developed.
We discussed the seasonality in Q4 ahead of Q1. Is there any seasonality that will assist ahead of Q2 now?
Yes, of course, the seasonality that's pushing down Q1 hopefully comes back in the summer. I think when it comes to the travel sector, more of the volumes are towards the end of the summer and the autumn, I believe, and probably have a stronger headwind then. But or stronger, yeah, stronger seasonality than rather. When it comes to the other sectors, there is, for example, in the iGaming sector, we have an upcoming European championships, and so on. But we are not focused on quarterly seasonality, we're focusing on building Checkin long term. And I think if you're sort of trading on the quarters, probably it's not the right stock to invest in.
We are thinking long term, and we are taking decisions long term.
Do you still believe in the rule of eighty at this stage, in to date during 2024?
Yes. It remains as the goal, as I said on that slide. And, yeah, we remain with that ambition. We think that the leverage, once the volumes comes, will be substantial. So absolutely.
I'd like to talked about the volumes has been low throughout the quarter. Have you lost Ryanair, or what is happening?
No, I need to make that clear. No, we have not lost Ryanair or any other travel client, the revenue or the volumes from the travel segment is based on the fact that they in turn have lower seasonality. There is less people traveling in the winter, but also changed usage where they have fewer third-party bookings. But the cooperation we have with them is progressing well, as I said, and, yeah, that's why we feel quite quite confident about the travel sector or travel segment going forward and for the full year.
The gross margin has dropped compared to your previous reports. Why is that? And should similar levels be expected in the future?
Yeah, I think Martin gave quite a good commentary on the gross margin, and, and I can just reiterate that it's the variable costs, or direct costs, rather, are related to sort of tiers. When you have a larger server, it doesn't scale exactly per transaction. You scale up in terms of capacity, and for Q1, we have had higher capacity than what we have used due to the low volumes that has come in. So once we have higher usage, we can sort of remain with the cost structure that we have, both in terms of direct costs, but also, to be honest, also in terms of indirect costs. So the whole cost structure, I think, should remain, which means that once the volumes increase again, gross margins should increase as well as overall profitability.
You mentioned that the software has been so effective in travel that third-party bookings have decreased, which in turn has reduced your volumes. Is there a risk that the same effect will affect other customers or industries using the software?
I don't think so. I think so. I don't see that. In this case, the third-party bookings have been translated or changed in terms of the end user's behavior. They have booked straight with our clients instead, which is a success. And for us, it's important now to make sure we get rolled out to all direct bookings as well. So our goal is to have all bookings, and then this shift of end user, if they book via third party or directly, will matter less. So it's quite a specific situation to travel. But as I said in my CEO letter, I think we have gained momentum in the travel sector by our success in helping preventing third-party bookings.
Your new financial goal is set at 80%, but now in Q1, it lands at 36%. Will you need to adjust your goal?
Same here. I think I've commented on that. The goal remains, and rolling 12 months, I think we're at slightly shy of 70%. So no, we feel confident. Of course, we need the seasonalities to change and the volumes to grow, but we feel quite confident.
In the CEO statement, leverage, leverage is mentioned when volumes come. Can you elaborate on that?
Yes, it's basically what I said regarding the gross margins as well as the indirect costs, that we have a cost structure already that is based on much higher capacity than what we have seen volumes in Q1. So when the volumes increase and when the revenues increases, the costs shouldn't increase as much, which means more will trickle down, and the gross margin will increase. So we have guided for a long time now that as we grow the revenue, the EBITDA margin should increase step by step, and I think you can see that in most of our reports or for a long time, that when the top line grows, the EBITDA margin and basically all profitability measures grows, so yes.
How can profitability and cash be strengthened when your volumes are low?
It's, I think this is, like I said, in maybe the first or second slide, that I think this is one of the strong points of this quarter, that despite this weak volumes and sort of challenging seasonality, we were able to remain and actually even build some net cash, although it's marginal. But still, we are in a good position, thanks to our efficiency, thanks to the strategy that we have taken, which enabled us to be laser-focused on the clients that we think can be transformative for us long term.
Isn't it risky as a SaaS company to invest so much in travel if the volumes there are so variable? Doesn't it become difficult to plan, long term?
In one way, of course, you can call it risky. It's, we have taken this decision, and we know that in the short term, before we have a critical mass of large enterprise clients in this sector, there will be choppiness. We have flagged for that before, and this quarter is an example of that. But we think it will be more than offset once the breakthroughs comes and the volumes increases. And again, we are not optimizing quarter by quarter. We are optimizing on a longer scale than that.
...Do you need to do more of a push in sales and marketing?
Long term, we have guided of cost of 25% of revenues going into sales and marketing. This quarter, we landed at 20%. So yes, longer term, we will increase the spending a bit, I think is fair to assume. But it's not any big changes. We will go gradually and make sure that we have a good return on investment. But over time, I think, yeah, 25% should be a healthy figure.
For several quarters in a row, you have talked about the large fintech company. When will we see any financial impact from that collaboration?
I think I might have answered that question already in my first reply. So, yeah, as I said, we have already seen revenue from that, but they are not yet as transformative for us as we hope they can be. But we look forward for that cooperation, and we think it's opens up a lot of possibilities, not only in terms of revenue generation, but also to penetrate into the sort of banking and larger financial institutions as well.
And in which other segments are you having conversations with major customers besides travel?
I feel that the size of the leads in the pipe are bigger in all the verticals. And as you know, we focus on travel, fintech, and iGaming. But we have more than 20 other industries where we have clients already, and I think there is quite a broad spectrum of potential leads of the larger size, so to speak.
We'll take one final question here. According to in Q4, you were going to spend a lot of time identifying new acquisitions. How is that going?
Yes, I mentioned it on my last slide, and how should I say? It's... We're spending a lot of time. I can't really comment on how it's going, except that we're spending a lot of time. We still believe this can create significant shareholder value. It will increase our technology leadership if we can add niche technologies to our software that makes our product better and better for the end consumer in the end. So this is something me and Martin has spent a lot of time on, and which I personally will spend even more time on going forward.
Okay, that's a wrap of the Q&A section here. Thank you very much, Kristoffer and Martin, for presenting and answering our questions. Also, thank you everyone who tuned into this webcast presentation with Checkin.com. Until next time, thank you very much!