Welcome to today's Cint Group year-end report for 2021. My name is Jordan, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you'd like to register a question, you may do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'm now gonna hand over to Tom Buehlmann to begin. Tom, please go ahead.
Thank you, Jordan. Good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here again. If we go straight into it on the agenda slide, you've got myself and Joakim as the usual double act, if you like, that you're getting used to on these calls. In terms of agenda, a little bit of a fuller agenda than we've had in the past. We're obviously gonna very brief recap about us Cint, because I know there's some new folks on the call. Then absolutely Q4 highlights, then the Lucid update, which is very important, of course, and a financial update with a summary, and then we'll leave some time for Q&A. Perfect.
If we go to slide four, please, and just start with our with our very brief overview. Many of you will be familiar with us, some not. Really, you know, we're the global software leader in the connected consumer insights or market research space. What we do is we effectively digitize what is still largely an analog and people-heavy industry. We do have a large customer base. You can see bottom left-hand side there, that number has crept up now to 3,100 B2B customers. I think we've added about 600 during the course of 2021, so we're pretty happy with that. And we do have a very, you know, high degree of stickiness.
Bottom right there, you can see net sales by customer vintage where, you know, almost sort of 65%-66% of our revenue comes from customers that have been with us from 2016, so, you know, six years ago and more, which is great. Very large underlying market, EUR 3.5 billion, and so in terms of, you know, kind of runway to grow, it's plenty. It really is plenty. We don't worry about that. We are a cloud-based B2B software platform. We'll talk about that, explain that a little bit on the next slide. In terms of our track record, I mean, you'll have seen the announcement that went out a little bit earlier today.
You know, very you know kind of solid year-on-year revenue growth. You can see that in the blue bubbles. Kind of comfortably in the mid to slightly upper mid-20s. We've kind of accelerated that to you know kind of 35% in 2021. As you can also see there, you know nice positive progression on the EBITDA line as well. Of course, we'll talk more about both of those trends in the next couple of minutes. As you'd expect, a lot of focus on data security and privacy.
I know there's some questions around the recent announcements of Google and Android. We can, you know, definitely talk about that in the Q&A session. Then we are a very global business. You know, very much so, we keep talking about that. It is important. Of course, with the Lucid acquisition, that's just reinforced that. We move to the next slide. You can really see, I mean, yes, definitely both, you know, us and Lucid, definitely global insights platforms, lots of complementarity and similarity between our two businesses. You can see us there on the left-hand side.
We're really a B2B software platform that connects brands or customers who want to ask questions on the left-hand side with, you know, respondents who've opted in to answer questions on the right-hand side. Lucid do very similar things there, as you can see on the right-hand side. We've got, as you can see there, a marketplace definitely, which is the one I've just talked about. We've got an enterprise proposition, you know, both of those things are, you know, key drivers of our revenue going forward. We'll talk a little bit more about Lucid in a sort of dedicated section.
If we now just move on to the next slide and talk about our growth strategy and pillars, you will be familiar with that. It's definitely increasing share of wallet with our established insight companies, and you'll see some data around that, where you know kind of the number of B2B customers has grown. I think the three-year CAGR is 25%, and our revenue has kind of exceeded that on a CAGR basis, definitely. We are gaining share of wallet. It's important for us that they're tech-enabled growing very fast indeed. You know, ultimately, I think that will be the future of market research as we see it, at least in kind of major share terms.
Then new customer acquisition, as I've said, I think we've added 600 customers during 2021. I think during the year, I said we wanted at least sort of 450-500. We've kind of over-delivered on that, which is good. That will stand us in very good stead for 2022. Then, of course, you know, we're never static. You know, by combining with Lucid, we're definitely not static on the platform side. Equally, you know, we've said we would do M&A when we did our IPO about a year ago, and we've done, you know, three during the course of 2021.
Again, we're talking about it, and we are actually doing it as well. That's a very brief overview. If we now flip on to slides to number eight and really talk about Q4. You know, it's definitely, I mean, you guys, some of you guys said it was solid in some of the early sheets that went out. I mean, I definitely agree with that. I think we're very happy with it. We've got 42% almost organic growth and adjusted for currencies. It's, I think it's a pretty respectable 28%.
Then similar, you know, pattern on the EBITDA, where we've got an adjusted EBITDA margin of 19% versus 17.5% a year ago. You know, that's. We're pretty good. Feel pretty good about that at a high level. Digging into the regions, you know, all the regions contributed in Q4, and as did both our major customer segments that we generally talk about, which are the tech-enabled and the established. Again, we'll talk about more of each of those in the next section.
Of course, you know, a big focus for us was the acquisition of Lucid, very time-consuming, and you know, a big focus, and you know, kind of delivering these results while doing, for us, a very big acquisition, you know, again is testament to the team and also our kind of business model and go-to market. If we now move to the next slide, and you'll be familiar with this format. Really this shows on the left-hand side, the net sales by customer segment. Again, you know, kind of this is on a yearly basis now because I think it's sensible to look at this on a yearly basis.
You can see, you know, the key growth drivers are really being the tech-enabled and the Americas, almost 50% CAGR since 2018. You can see that, you know, kind of the multi-year CAGR there on the tech-enabled on the left-hand side, you know, comfortably above the more established. Now that sort of flipped around in Q4. If anybody wants us to talk about that, happy to in the Q&A. Fundamentally, the trend that we see here, we expect to continue as we think about the future as well.
In terms of the regions, we can maybe move to the next slide and look at that in a little bit more detail in Q4. You can see here we've got all three regions growing very nicely indeed. We've got the Americas at +38%. EMEA now nudging just above 50%, which a lot of that is due to GapFish. Excluding GapFish, I think it's 28%. Yes, it's 28% year-on-year. So still, you know, very respectable indeed. On APAC, we've got you know really good momentum, and that continues to translate into kind of well into double-digit growth year-on-year.
Broad-based growth is something that I've talked about in the past, and I think that is important both geographically and by our customer segment. You know, pretty pleased with that. It's not a kind of blip in one area or one geography. It's really across the board. Business KPIs on the next slide, please. Also positive, very much so. I talked about the B2B customers moving kind of left to right, 3,100. Oh yes, here it is. We've got the 25% CAGR since 2018 on B2B customers, which of course is superseded by our revenue CAGR. We are definitely gaining share of wallet there, which is good.
In terms of connected consumers, a nice uptick on that as well now for the year. Of course, yes, finally happy about that. We've reached 100 million completed surveys for the year which is good and it's kind of a very nice psychological milestone for us. That's kind of the Q4 update for us. If we now move to Lucid and flip on two slides to number 13, please. I'll just talk a little bit more about the kind of Lucid also in comparison to Cint. This is the same slide as we saw previously, but focusing now on the right-hand side on Lucid.
I mean, they are also a they have a software platform shown in blue there. Again, they connect B2B customers on the left with respondents on the right-hand side. They do that in a very kind of automated and tech-enabled way, which is fantastic. Very similar to us. You can see that in terms of their net sales by region, very complementary because they are much bigger than old Cint was in the U.S., which is great because that's a great complementarity. Conversely, you know, we are much bigger than they are in EMEA, and you can see that in their net sales by region.
In terms of business areas, some of you may recall they've got three that they talk about. We've got the software, which is effectively the platform of s ervices. They've called that research as a service, which is kind of analogous to the managed services that the old Cint also does. Really encouragingly, we've got their audience business, which is online ad effectiveness measurement, which has grown incredibly well during 2021. We now have the full- year numbers. It's +85%, I believe. We'll see the numbers in a second, but growing very strongly.
I think that's gonna be a very interesting addition to our value proposition of the group as we grow forward. Now, moving on to the next slide, please. 2021 performance for the Lucid Group overall. You again, moving left to right, revenue development +20%. I think that's very much in line with what we were expecting when we were talking about the deal last year. Now, I think it's interesting to break that down into the three segments, which is the second bullet point we've got here. Really we've got the software business, which is the core kind of platform growing at 30%, which is fantastic.
We've got the audience 84, I was wrong, it wasn't 85, 84% year-on-year. That is a little bit offset by decline year-on-year on the services. Now, I mean, the way I think about that is that, you know, fundamentally, we do want to move from services to software. In other words, from medium and high touch to low and zero touch. Strategically, this is absolutely the right thing for us to be doing. Nevertheless, you know, w e do need to.
We are gonna keep an eye on it and we do have some ideas on how to kind of be more managed about that transition. Rather than having too much year-on-year decline. Also, you know, Lucid had a lot of political polling in 2020. If we kind of exclude that, it is overall the total company growing by 30% year-on-year, which is fantastic. Gross profit margin is, you know, very positive indeed, as you can see here, well in the upper 70s, which obviously is gonna be very positive for the group, as well. Then the EBITDA, you know, again, it's in line with our expectations.
Lucid did some kind of strong COVID-related measures in 2020, which increased their EBITDA overall and margin, and then went back into more investment mode. We're all, you know, familiar with kind of generally the pattern of U.S. investors and shareholders, you know, quite aggressive investment into growth. As a result of that, they had a 2020 EBIT margin of, I think, 11%. Of course, you know, now as part of the group, we'll be kind of working with that and adjusting that to what we want to do on a go-forward basis as part of the Cint Group.
That's a very brief update on Q4 and the Lucid Group. I'm now gonna hand over to Joakim who will take us through our financial update.
Perfect. Thank you, Tom. Before getting into numbers, I would just like to clarify there has been no impact on the income statement from the acquisition of Lucid. However, the consolidated financial position and certain items on the cash flow statement does include Lucid. With that, let's move to page 16 and the financial highlights. Here I will start with our Q4 highlights on this page, and thereafter on the next page, we'll add it up to the full- year. As Tom mentioned at the beginning of the call, we are very happy to end the year on a positive note. We reported net sales growth of 42%, taking us to EUR 44.8 million net sales. If we exclude the contribution from GapFish and look at the organic growth, it was 28%.
Our gross margin declined slightly from last year to 50.8% as the gross profit amounted to EUR 22.7 million. Finally, and to your right, our adjusted EBITDA increased by 55% from EUR 5.5 million to EUR 8.5 million and showed a margin of 19%. Let's move to the full- year on the next page. Starting to the left, net sales grew during 2021 by 41% or 36% organically excluding the currency effects. That growth took us up to EUR 138.9 million of net sales. Gross profit grew almost at the same rate or 40%, and the full year gross margin was 51.2%, which was more or less in line with the 51.9% the year before.
Adjusted EBITDA amounted to EUR 25.8 million after a solid 58% growth during the year. The adjusted EBITDA margin improved during the year from 16.6% to 18.6%. If I move to the next page, we have included a more detailed overview of the operating expenses and the longer trend of our margin. A couple of comments to this page. First of all, and as highlighted in the table to your right, we are happy to see that operating expenses in relation to net sales is continuing down. For the full year, as stated in the table, it corresponded to 32.6%. Second comment on this slide relates to the longer trend to improve profitability as shown by the bottom graph.
The 18.6% in margin for the last 12 months full year 2021 is contributing another good data point to the graph, and we are continuing to see good development towards our financial targets of improved profitability. Next page, please. For the ones that have listened to our presentation on the Lucid acquisition, you will remember our synergy targets. As a reminder, you can see on this slide that in connection with this acquisition, we had identified EUR 40 million of run- rate EBITDA improvement when fully ramped up. The drivers to this synergy number are threefold. We have growth-supporting synergies, we have COGS synergies and OpEx-related synergies. We will see these synergies start ramping up at the end of Q2 and onwards to being fully ramped up at the end of 2023.
These synergies and the potential we see in the acquisition of Lucid made us revise our financial targets. From having been a Rule of 40 company, we have increased the bar, and we now aim to be a Rule of 50 company instead in the medium term. We are increasing our targeted revenue growth from 20%-25%, and we are increasing our profitability target from 20%-25%. The dividend policy stays the same, and that means that we have no intention to pay out any dividends to our shareholders in the short term. With that back to you, Tom, to summarize.
Great. Thanks Joakim. If we move to the final slide, really, you know, just to summarize the key attractions as we see it of both ourselves and the combo. Very massive potential in a very large underlying market. I think with the audience business that actually extends the underlying market. I think that's a very good thing. Of course, we've got, you know, structural shifts that benefit digital players like both old Cint and old Lucid, and definitely therefore, also the combo. We think we're both, you know, very well-positioned in the middle of this value chain with very good offers.
We've got both the marketplace, we've got enterprise, we've got audience, so you know, very good and robust value proposition. We've got you know, flexible business models and definitely now an even more global footprint, which is gonna be very helpful for increasingly global customers as well. We've got both organizations, you know, poised for profitable growth. It's gonna be a very robust combo from a financial perspective. We of course do have tangible synergies that are gonna drive very strong bottom- line performance. We've outlined what our synergy targets are. You know, if there are questions on that, I'm happy to take those shortly.
Overall, I think, you know, we feel, you know, very good about our Q4. We feel good about our 2021 overall, and we feel very good indeed about our combo with Lucid and how that is starting out in the first few weeks. Overall, very optimistic and positive. With that, Jordan, I'm gonna pass back to you to moderate the questions, please.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two, and please ensure you're unmuted when speaking. Our first question comes from Daniel Ovin with Nordea. Daniel, the line is yours.
Yes. Good morning, Tom and Joakim, and thank you for taking my questions. First question is on the gross margin. I see that it's down a bit on a year-over-year basis. I also remember that GapFish had a kind of a positive impact on the gross margin. Perhaps could you talk a little bit about what are the drivers that are impacting your gross margin negatively, and perhaps also if you expect this to continue over the next few quarters? Thank you.
Yeah. Joakim, do you wanna kick off on that?
Yes. I can do that. You're right, Daniel. Hey, by the way. You're right. GapFish typically contributes a positive gross margin, which has been the case in Q4 too . I mean, we are quite happy with the range that we are trending in. We've said before that we are typically trying to be within the 50%-53% range in gross margin. This quarter we've seen some continued pressure on the supply side as we talked about last time, as for Q3, and then Q4 too. That's been slight pressure on gross margin from the supply squeeze. That's probably the answer or the driver to that.
Okay. Is that a situation that you see also continuing now into 2022?
Do you wanna comment on that, Tom?
Yeah, no. I mean, look with the combo, Lucid does have a high gross margin, given the way that they account for revenue, and some of their product mix. I think, you know, kind of from a reporting perspective, it'll definitely improve, as we said in our pro forma. I think from a kind of business operational perspective, we do see a lessening of the kind of supply squeeze that we talked about for the last couple of quarters. There's a reduction of that, which is a good thing.
From kind of operationally, I think we'll, you know, we'll still be within, there'll still be fluctuation absolutely, especially quarter-on-quarter, but I think we'll definitely be within the range that Joakim was talking about in plus, minus a couple of percentage points.
Okay, perfect. Thank you. I have another question on the Lucid numbers. What you now disclosed, and if I remember correctly, what you were guiding for in the end of October when you acquired Lucid, I think you talked about an adjusted EBITDA margin of $12.8 million, and now it came in at $13.4 million, so about 5% ahead for the full year. I just wonder, is that due to extremely strong Q4 for Lucid or is there anything else that you kind of recalculated? Perhaps you can shed some more light on that.
Yeah. Joakim, do you wanna kick off on that one?
Yeah, I can kick it off. No, I think that it's more or less in line, exactly in line with expectations. It's nothing in particular driving it. There is a slight change since they had transaction costs hitting their Q4. When looking into the numbers and making adjustments, taking that out, there is a slight uplift. I would say the forecast we gave in October, compared to what we now are showing as the adjusted EBITDA, is more or less exactly compared.
Okay, great. Just one final question, and that's on future integration costs. You have not really disclosed any estimate for that. Do you expect them to be so small that it's not even noticeable or is that something that you will disclose later on, or do you have anything in mind on what they could land at?
I mean, we're putting together the detailed plans right now, right, Joakim, so.
Yeah. No, exactly. No, it's. There will definitely be integration costs. As you know, I mean, we are looking into it. There will be integration costs when it comes to the platforms. There will be integration costs when it comes to systems, back-end and front-end systems. There will be other OpEx- related integration costs too. There will be integration costs. It's definitely not that it's kind of so small to be neglected, but we haven't really come with. We are at the very end of assessing it, but we don't have a number, but we will come back with that.
Okay, great. Well, I thought maybe one final question also. I realized here that the established, your established consumers, or customers were growing now quite much faster than the tech-enabled and, it used to be the other way around, previously. I just wonder, is there any particular reason? Is there a kind of, perhaps a pandemic effect, or is there anything else to say about this?
Yeah. Yes. I mean, you're right. There is a reverse of that shift, although both are growing really nicely. What happened in end of last year was that first of all, the established customers are generally much more seasonal than the tech-enabled. And as you will remember, Q4 is always the biggest quarter for market research. There's a lot of kind of events in there, like you know, kind of Thanksgiving and Christmas and holidays around which brands wanna do a lot of research.
There's also an element of kind of spend it or lose it kind of behavior by some brands as well, given that they have a calendar year fiscal as well. There's a number of things that kind of make the seasonality more acute for the more established players. What happened in particular is that they had an amazing kind of resurgence during Q4.
The reason that's kind of positively impacted us is that in general, again, this is directional, the established players do longer research kind of surveys than the tech-enabled as I think I've talked about in the past. That means that the CPI, the cost per interview is higher, and therefore, the kind of revenue benefit for us, it kind of, it's very positive. That's one. The second within that, I would say, there's some very specific activities by the more established. First of all, it was the first quarter where we started invoicing NPD. You might recall that's one of the enterprise customers that we landed in the course of last year.
That's the first quarter of NPD. Secondly, Ipsos, again, a very important to us established customer is shifting a lot of their kind of business to buying via an API. We have a sort of high share of wallet within their API business. Those two things kind of were kind of specific events that happened. Combination of trends and specific events kind of flipped the general pattern that we've seen.
Okay, perfect. That's very good. Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Thanks, Daniel.
Thank you.
Good to speak.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Predrag Savinovic with Carnegie Investment. Predrag, please go ahead.
Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, guys. Tom, I think that you mentioned it in your intro, but on the privacy part in Google, there's been quite a few discussions, you know, first since Apple introduced their changes, now Google said they will roll out certain changes as well to how they handle privacy. Maybe if you could spend some time talking about how this might affect the business in Cint generally.
Yes. Yes, absolutely. I mean, overall, our view is that we're well- positioned to operate and lead in this environment, right? That's kind of the one-liner. There's sort of three elements within that. First of all, it's called the Privacy Sandbox, right? Call it by its proper name. The Privacy Sandbox, it's not new and it's been evolving for several years. Now Google has said, in terms of their overall approach, that they're gonna take a thoughtful approach and to try and balance two things. First of all, make sure that the Privacy Sandbox does indeed protect the privacy of consumers and their right of choice.
Also at the same time, you know, Google wants to preserve the measurement needed to support the overall ecosystem, right? They're gonna be definitely thoughtful about it, and I'm sure they have been in the past, and they'll continue to be that. First of all, it's not new, and I think Google will continue to be thoughtful. Now, the reason I think we're gonna be in good shape is fundamentally our platform is opt-in by default, right? That means survey takers opt into the supplier, and they opt in consent to share their information with clients. That's a sort of fundamental principle, and it's been like that for forever, right? For many years. That's a good thing.
Secondly, our identity graph is built on first-party connections, right? So it's not third-party connections, it's first-party connections, and that solution is gonna allow us to continue to connect with media exposure in a privacy-friendly manner, and without, you know, kind of having a reliance on a single identifier. So for those three reasons, we think, you know, we are gonna be well-positioned to continue to operate and succeed in this environment.
Yeah. Fantastic. A follow-up to that. There are, of course, you know, competing technologies to what Cint delivers, and given what you said here, that's also the gut feeling we have. It doesn't really affect your business, but relative to competing technologies, you should be even better out. Right or wrong? Can you reason around that topic also?
Just to make sure I've understood the question. When you say competing technologies, who or what are you thinking of?
I would say other ways to gather consumer insights without, you know, people's consent, be it social listening or some kind of enterprise feedback management, measuring whatever is done on different platforms, et cetera, which is unconsented.
Got it. Okay. What we do is we make a distinction between, you know, quantitative data, which is things like social listening, point of sale data, you know, payment card data, things like that, and qualitative data, which is what we collect. You know, some of the quantitative data may be collected without consumer being aware. They're increasingly moving to kind of consent there as well. The quantitative data, which is things like social listening and point of sale data and, you know, maybe geolocation data and so on, is really important, and brands do use that for insights. What it tells them is what the consumers are doing, not the why.
For us, you know, we're gonna be continue to be very focused on the qualitative data, which is the why. We provide the why to the what, and we see those as very complementary data sets that the brands can use to gain deeper insights around their consumers. Within the qualitative, I mean, as I said, and as you know, I mean, we're definitely opt-in by default and will continue to be that, right? To make sure that we're A, fully compliant, and secondly, that the consumer is, you know, fully aware of what their data is being used for. Does that help?
All right. Yeah. No, that's great. Thanks, Tom. On the organic growth here, it's quite a strong figure on a plus comparable. Would it be reasonable to assume that you can reach your revenue guidance already in 2022, for example, given this momentum?
It's a good question. You know, I feel very positive, but I don't want Joakim to press the red mute button.
It's a good question without any answer.
No. Look, I am very positive. I'm positive because I mean, all the fundamentals that we've talked about, right? We're gonna have a much bigger marketplace in the combo. We're gonna have the kind of Lucid bigger customers to go and talk to about the old Cint Enterprise proposition. Then we've got, you know, kind of audience measurement overall, which is growing both phenomenally well within Lucid standalone and will grow, I hope very well as well. We're planning to kind of when we kind of unleash the Cint sales force on that as well.
Those are all, you know, very positive, very positive trends and we're working really hard to harvest those as much and as quickly as we can. You know, on the other hand, you know, we do have a, for us, very sizable integration to get right as well. Some of us are a little bit more introspective than externally focused. But I, you know, we did three acquisitions last year, and we did deliver good results. I really expect that we'll be able to deliver very good results this year as well while still doing the integration. Without kind of committing to a number, I'm very optimistic.
Yeah. It sounds great. Just a final question to Joakim on cash flow for the quarter. There are a few one-offs in the P&L which of course impact the cash flow profile. You have some working capital aspect from Lucid also impacting. Can you reason a bit around you know cash flow in Q4 when adjusting for these things that are extraordinary so to speak?
Yes. Yes, of course. It's a little bit messy, based on the half we now consolidated Lucid in the Q reports. I get that. But I mean, the starting point for us is the operating profit and loss. Within that, we have the non-recurring items, so transaction-related costs. If you want to kind of clean that out, that's probably the first thing you need to do. Then when it comes to the current working capital, that's the kind of reported number include a payment on transaction costs for Lucid. What happened was that the kind of sequencing was that we closed the acquisition, and we then acquired the balance sheet.
Within the balance sheet, there were payables related to transaction, which were paid out. It's after we closed, but they would then record it as changes in working capital in our P&L or in EBITDA, sorry. Those are probably the two main items you need to consider when you work it backwards to get to the kind of unaffected cash flow.
All right. Good stuff. Thank you very much, guys.
Thank you. Good question.
Thanks, Predrag Savinovic.
Our next question comes from Daniel Thorsson with ABG. Daniel, please go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much, Tom and Joakim. My first question is on the underlying Lucid EBITDA margin. We knew it's gonna be around 11% for 2021. You say that that was a result of their aggressive investment profile. How should we think about that underlying number going into 2022 if we exclude the synergies you're trying to reach? Will we see it be around 11% in Q1, Q2 here and the total margin that you will deliver will be the margin just shy of 20% that you have with the 11 here? Or should we expect that to go up to some 15, 16% similar to 2020? What's your strategy for Lucid underlying here?
I mean, Joakim should chime in as well. I mean, the approach that we're taking is we're not thinking of these businesses now as separate on a go-forward basis. We're doing a combined budget planning exercise. You know, within that, we're being pretty aggressive on the synergies that we talked about earlier. Now, the kind of external-facing, the sort of public targets we've said is we're not gonna have any synergies, sort of, for H1. They'll start accruing as of kind of Q3 effectively.
As you would expect, I mean, we're being pretty aggressive on some of the cost avoidance and OpEx side of things to try and get ahead of the curve. No, I wouldn't think of those as kind of being a mathematically weighted a kind of EBITDA margin for 2022. We wanna be more kind of aggressive than that.
Yeah. That works for H1 as well, excluding the synergies.
Yes. If I may.
Yeah.
I mean.
Sure, go for it.
Some more nuances to it. Just to take a few steps back, start with, I mean, Lucid operated on a 5%-8% EBITDA margin in the past and have had that kind of priority. I think we talked about this when we announced the transaction, the kind of background to where they used to be. Now, when we are integrating Lucid and Cint in one company, what we wanted to do now, in this report, we want to follow up and show you what Q4 and 2021 actually looked like for Lucid standalone.
As Tom said, we are right now very close and tighter together and integrating, and the idea will not be to show Lucid numbers and Cint numbers as kind of standalone entities in the future. We are merging the P&Ls, and we will show you one P&L. Well, the starting point would be to add Lucid with Cint, but then we have the synergies and all the work that is going into that. Then we also have the financial targets and the objective of getting to the 25% EBITDA margin in the medium term.
Yeah. That's clear. A second question regarding the B2B companies. You added around 600 in 2021 here. When we look at your customer list today or a year ago in the IPO, you basically cover all the big tech-enabled and established insight firms already, as well as a bucket of strong brands. Which customers did you really add in 2021 to get a feeling on the onboarding of customers today? What's potentially left to grab in the market in terms of sizable customers?
Oh, I think there's loads left, right? I mean, if you just look at the overall spending, right? I mean, the market for a third-party sample is EUR 3.5 billion. Even in the combo, you know, we have a very modest market share, so there's still a ton to go, number one. Number two, you know, I mean, you'll know this from all companies, right? Just having a logo doesn't give an indication of how much they spend with us. We've been growing share of wallet and substantially on many of our B2B customers. I mentioned Ipsos specifically.
I mean, they were doing, I think our kind of revenue at Ipsos, on the particular API that I was talking about more than doubled during 2021, which is very positive. Also, you know, NPD, again, something I talked about earlier, I mean, that was not an enterprise proposition that we were working with them on prior to the signature. You know, this is all kind of incremental revenues. I think we both have loads of new logos to go for, as well as working on share of wallet.
I mean, to give you some idea, the last time we looked, which was I think a little bit more than a year ago, so it is dated data, I think we had something like 600-700 invoicing points in the U.S. This is Cint standalone. If you look at any kind of published market research directory in the U.S., I mean, there's over 5,000 market research companies. Now, of course, we don't wanna work with all of them necessarily 'cause they might be a little bit too small. But nevertheless, it gives you some sense. There's still plenty of runway to go after. So I don't worry about growth opportunities at all.
Excellent. That was very clear. My final one is on future potential competition from other players with large customer-specific databases. I saw, for example, a very similar survey request coming from LinkedIn the other week, offering a few even dollars to complete a survey or alternatively give the money to charity. Is this something they source from your platform or have they, for example, developed an own competing solution to yours?
I can't speak to LinkedIn specifically, but what I would say is, I mean, we do think about companies with large respondents or potential respondent or membership pools as potential competitors. That's absolutely correct. You know, LinkedIn will probably be more business- type people, I would imagine. You can also think about possibly Facebook or Google, you know, both having enormous respondent pools. The reason that we think that they're not necessarily gonna go into direct competition with us is the following. First of all, it's what you know, the addressable market they're going after is small compared to their core business, right?
$3.5 billion compared to what Google and Facebook are going after is tiny. What we do is quite complex. We think from an economic point of view, it's not so necessarily that attractive. The second point, really important is GDPR, right? Whatever we do or whatever anybody does in kind of with customer data does need to be GDPR compliant. What we provide is, you know, GDPR consent engine as part of our platform, and it's part of our workflow. Kind of the GDPR compliance piece is for us very important. You know, we don't wanna think about negatives, but you know, it is possible to get, I think, up to 4% of global turnover fines.
You know, obviously, we're not thinking that's gonna happen, but if you're a Google or a Facebook, that's a massive number potentially as a fine if there is an alleged infringement. And then finally it's the breadth of respondents. you know, if you go to, you know, LinkedIn for example, you might get business folk or people with a kind of business mindset because that's why they're registered on LinkedIn. What we get with the Cint Group combo is a very broad customer base and respondent base.
In terms of having impartiality and a representative sample set, we do feel that from a, if you're after, you know, B2C customers, that's, you know, kind of second to none. Does that help, Daniel?
Yeah, absolutely. Just to follow up on that, can we rule out that LinkedIn, for example, has joined your platform as a panel owner on the supply side?
It's not an answer.
I don't know, but I can check. I mean, from our point of view, we'd be delighted to have them as a panel partner on our platform. Absolutely.
Excellent.
If you have any good connections there, we'd be very delighted. You know, because we would profile the respondents as we normally do. We'd apply the Cint taxonomy as we normally do. Of course we'd provide them with a revenue share as well, and every questionnaire would be LinkedIn branded as well. We think our kind of panel value proposition is strong and if they were to join, we'd be very happy.
Okay, thanks. Thanks for the flavor.
Thanks, Daniel.
Our next question comes from Viktor Högberg with Danske Bank. Victor, please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. A lot of good questions already asked, but trying to get some more flavor on Lucid and the audience segment growing 84%. Could you help us with what to expect there? 'Cause the products were recently launched and they're coming from a low base. This is the fastest growing segment. Could you help us with how the mix might look in the next year or maybe in a couple of years, especially with the managed service segment d eclining or stabilizing?
I mean what we expect is the marketplace, which is analogous to our platform, to continue growing very nicely because that's a very similar value prop to what we have. A s I said earlier or tried to say earlier I do wanna get more of a handle on the services side on the Lucid and have more of a kind of managed transition from services to software. I think the fundamental migration, as I said, is a good thing and we do wanna do it. I'd rather do that in a more kind of controlled way.
The audience business I am very optimistic about and it is very early days. I think they had something like $27 million of revenue in 2021. Yes it is a small base, but it's now getting a little bit more sizable. The reason I'm optimistic about that is twofold. Yes, the commercial team is obviously gonna be much bigger in the combo to be able to sell it, but more fundamentally is we have a much bigger supply pool that we can kind of tap into. We're gonna have not just the Lucid respondents, but the old Cint respondents as well.
That's the bit that excites me because therefore we'll be able to have a higher match rate and be able to, particularly outside the U.S. I think, get a lot of commercial opportunities on the back of the combo. Now, in terms of specific numbers, we can't comment on exact numbers 'cause otherwise Joakim will again be on his red button. I'm definitely excited about this and personally spending significant time to understand and kind of help shape the plans for the future growth of that segment.
Okay. And speaking of the supply side and also the demand side, if we were to adjust for the overlaps of the Lucid and the Cint platforms in the number of consumers and the B2B customers, what would they be? We have them on a gross basis. What are your best guess on potential overlaps?
We're just doing that exercise now.
How large is the platform?
I don't wanna guess. We are doing that exercise 'cause you'll appreciate pre-closing, we weren't allowed to have insight into each other's customer lists or on both the demand and supply side. We're just doing that exercise now.
Okay.
Fundamentally, I mean, if you look at the revenue, which again is not a perfect indicator, but nevertheless, it is a proxy. I mean, if you look at the revenue split of old Cint versus old Lucid, I mean, it is very different, right? In terms of geography. It's, you know, I don't think it's gonna be substantial.
Okay. On both sides, both demand and the supply side, I would assume.
Definitely on the demand side. The supply side, we're digging into at the moment.
Okay. Speaking of Lucid, could you help us with the seasonality? Of course, audience growing fast from a low base, services declining or stabilizing potentially, and the marketplace seems to have or should have the same drivers as Cint, maybe a different geographic exposure as we talked about. The seasonality, should it mirror Cint now in 2022, or anything special to think about when thinking about the revenues from Lucid in 2022 on a quarterly basis?
It's a good question, Viktor. Joakim, do you have a good answer? I don't have the Lucid historical seasonality in my head.
No, I mean, I would say generally, Viktor, you can assume that it's the same seasonality as in Cint. So Q4 is the strongest, typically the strongest quarter, and then it's kind of spread over the other quarters, similar to Cint. That would be just a assumption.
Okay. Also, yes, final question. I think the non-recurring items here in the transaction cost in Q4 of EUR 17 million or EUR 18 million were a bit lower than what you communicated in connection with the transaction announcement in October. Is there anything yet to come in Q1 or in the P&L to adjust for or was that it for the transaction? You took it all in Q4.
I'm talking about the integration cost for the transaction cost.
No, exactly. I was going to clarify that. No, yeah, right. The transaction cost is taken in full. There's a split between P&L and equity treatment of it. The total number, I mean, cash out should be fairly in line with what's communicated in October. I think it's a little bit lower. We had, as you can imagine, we had estimates when we announced the transactions and the actuals came in a little bit lower. You shouldn't expect anything more to come on that, I believe.
Okay, thank you. That's it. Thanks.
Thank you.
Great. Thank you, Viktor.
Our final question comes from Charlie Brennan of Jefferies. Charlie, please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Can I continue on the Lucid line of questions? In particular, can you talk about the revenue momentum in the fourth quarter? I think when you announced the transaction, you were expecting revenues north of $123 million. They've come in at $121 million. That's only a small delta, but that delta is obviously all come in the fourth quarter. Then can you talk about the likely outlook for 2022 at Lucid? I normally expect acquired companies to run pretty hard into the transaction date, and then growth to fade once the transaction's concluded.
When I listen to you talking about trying to de-emphasize some of the services, is it realistic that we should expect organic growth in Lucid to fade this year before re-accelerating? Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, Charlie. I'll start, and then I'll let Joakim chime in as well. I mean, yes, you're right. In a lot of transactions, you know, they run hard into it, and then there's a bit of kind of foot off the gas. I don't expect that to happen with us, because we have already combined the commercial teams. I don't want to talk about old Cint and old Lucid necessarily, but it's the ex-Cint head of commercial who's running the combo commercially. We've integrated the sales teams. We've got a kind of combo leadership team the next level down. We're in the process of allocating accounts.
We've got in the process of rolling out a kind of a unified commission and bonus scheme on the commercial side. You know, that's being communicated to customers. They know who their single point of contact is or primary contact. In terms of momentum, I think we've deliberately chosen to be pretty quick with our especially commercial integration to try and minimize exactly what you said, which is a little bit of potential loss of momentum. I don't expect that actually.
On a kind of overall basis, the bit that I'm thinking about a lot and we're all thinking about a lot is of course the services bit, 'cause I never like to see year-on-year declines. That's the bit that we're all focusing on to, and we have some I think some hypotheses and some good ideas to kind of action over the next quarter or two. On that specifically on the services.
Is there anything you can say specifically about the fourth quarter? Because it was obviously a couple of million light of where you wanted it to be. I would normally expect you to be conservative when you give these numbers. What happened in Q4?
Joakim, do you have the specific numbers there?
No, we don't have a lot of nuances on that. I mean, there is a story also on the services and software where there's a migration. Lucid has been working on moving customers over from service to software. What that typically also means is that you lose, now it's getting a little bit technical, but you lose gross revenue on the services side, and you get net revenue because there are different revenue recognition principles. Maybe if there is a big drop, there could be a big drop on top line, on consolidated top line, but it could be kind of a positive move in any case because you're migrating customers from service to software.
Some of that, but I mean, overall, it's not a big loss, or a big deviation from what we expected, and it's nothing that we worry about more than the general concern around the services and how we now are addressing that with the broader team.
Perfect. Just lastly from me, is there anything you can say about the net retention rates both in Cint and Lucid as we stand today that gives us comfort about the growth momentum into this year?
The Lucid numbers we're just pulling together because they measure them slightly differently. On the Cint side, I mean, I think we've said recurring sort of loyalty we measure is the customer who spends once a quarter. That's been in the sort of 96% for you know several years. There's no change on that.
97 even
97 even. Okay. It's even upticked a little bit. No change on the old Cint side. On the Lucid side, we're just trying to get comparable numbers, and we're able to share those kind of in due course.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thanks, Charlie.
Thank you.
We have no further questions on the phone line, so I'll hand back for any closing remarks.
Thanks, Jordan. Thank you all. A little bit longer this time, but I really appreciate your time and your interest. I hope we've been able to answer your questions satisfactorily. Just to recap overall, you know, we're happy about Q4. We're very happy about 2021 overall, having delivered very good results and three acquisitions. As I said, in trying to give a flavor, I mean, we're very optimistic about 2022 as well, both in terms of business results and the integration that we're gonna be doing in parallel. Thanks again for your time and I look forward to speaking in due course.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.