Good morning or good afternoon all, and welcome to the Cint Group first quarter 2022 results presentation. My name is Adam, and I'll be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question during the Q&A portion of today's call, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I will now hand the floor to Tom Buehlmann to begin. Tom, please go ahead when you are ready.
Great. Thanks very much, Adam. Good morning, everybody. It's a pleasure to be here for our Q1 2022 presentation. If we just go to the agenda slide, please. You can see it's the usual suspects, Joakim and myself. The one slight difference from our perspective is that we're actually physically sitting in the same room together, which is the first time ever, actually, when we've done one of these kind of face-to-face, at least between each other. That's a small ray of optimism in all the nonsense going on in the world. We're gonna talk about the Q1 highlights.
We're obviously gonna be talking about the integration of Lucid and how that is progressing, including some financials perspective around that. Financial update, obviously, of course, and then summary and a Q&A. If I could just ask to go to the sort of two slides forward, number four. Just very brief recap, as we kind of think of ourselves, talk about ourselves. As you can see, we've refreshed this slide. We think of ourselves as the global software leader in connected consumer insights or market research. As you can see on the graphic, we are a marketplace. We connect supply and demand in a real-time and a programmatic way. That's really what we do in the connected consumer insights space.
In terms of operational KPIs, just some headlines, and we'll obviously talk about those in more detail as we go through this morning. Very good progress on the operational KPIs on the left-hand side. Nice increase on both B2B customers, which is obviously demand side, connected consumers, which is obviously supply side, and as a result, also the throughput through our platform, which is the completed surveys. The pie chart there in terms of net sales by region, a little bit different from what we've shown in the past. You can see now that we're very much more of a US-centric business. That was always even in the Cint standalone context, very much our strategy, but it's now also reflected in our numbers.
You can see almost 60% of net sales by region, coming out of the Americas, which, you know, kind of as you would expect, based on what we've been trying to do and did with the acquisition of Lucid. If we move to the next slide, just a recap of our strategy. The five bubbles that you'll be getting familiar with, sort of moving left to right, increasing share of wallet with established insight companies. They are growing very nicely. As you might have read in our report this morning, and we'll talk more about that. The tech-enabled, that's people like Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, Zappi, and others, growing even more nicely.
I would say back to the pattern we would typically expect. The new customer acquisition, a very core part of our commercial strategy, as we saw in the KPIs on the previous slide. Very good, you know, good progress on that, and that really is, as I've said in the past, it's kind of one of the building blocks for our future growth. Expansion of the software platform or product portfolio. I mean, this really is right now, this is about integration, right? This is gonna be a big focus of our integration efforts moving forward. Finally, of course, M&A. Absolutely yes, part of our strategy, I would say in the medium term.
For reasons we've discussed in the past, we're gonna be, you know, probably pausing on that for the course of 2022, so we can demonstrate, you know, both to ourselves and to you, that we can actually, you know, integrate and merge our two businesses. Just a brief recap on the financial targets. It's kind of rule of 50 business, 25 in terms of organic net sales growth and EBITDA margin, both in the medium term. Obviously, for the time being, no intention to pay any dividends at this point in time. If we could move to slide number seven, please, which is really a summary of Q1.
Here I would say, I mean, I really mean this, I think we've had a really good start to 2022. I say that for two reasons. One is, we've managed to, you know, very successfully maintain our revenue momentum. Now, as we all know, with this kind of very substantial combinations, there is a tendency to get a little bit inward looking, introspective and take your eye off the commercial ball. We talked about that in October and a couple of times since then.
I said at the time that we would be very focused on the commercials on our customers both on the demand and on the supply side, and we've managed to do that I would say pretty successfully in Q1. I'm pleased with that. At the same time, I think we're making really good progress on the integration and on the synergies. We'll talk more about both of those things. Kind of really, you know, taking a step back, why did I say, why did we say a great start to 2022? It's really those two reasons. Maintaining really good positive revenue momentum while at the same time, delivering, you know, a really good progress on the integration and on the synergies.
Now, looking a little bit more detail, you can see there in the bullets, we've got organic growth adjusted for currency is 28%. On a pro forma basis, we've got excluding GapFish year-on-year growth of 32%. Really, very nicely in line with our medium-term goals. Contributions from across the board, I would say. Again, we'll talk about that more from both business segments and customer segments as well. In terms of adjusted EBITDA, a little bit down from same time last year.
I would say that's, you know, kind of partly strategy and partly math. The math part obviously is about the, you know, combining a higher EBITDA business with a lower EBITDA business. We've got some FX in there, got some costs for the LTIP and so on. So that's kind of the math piece. The strategy piece really is what I said right at the outset, which is, you know, a real focus on maintaining the revenue momentum, and that means, you know, focusing on the commercial side. It means ensuring we've got enough supply.
I'm you know very confident as we look at the next bullet, the final bullet, in terms of the synergies that we'll be kind of reaping those in good order, and we'll continue to make progress on that. Let's move to the next slide. Look a little bit more details on the net sales development. This is on a pro forma basis, so you know Q1 to Q1 comparison. Moving left to right, you can see on the business segment, we've now kind of combined the Cint core business with what Lucid called software and services. You can see that's growing 30% really nicely quarter-on-quarter.
Then the Lucid Measurement, which is a combination of the Lucid audience business and what we, you know, in the past on the Cint side had as Connected Data, growing, you know, over 65%-67% year-on-year, obviously a much smaller base. As I said, you know, consistently, from my point of view, a very strategic area. It's what we're spending a lot of time and energy on, and I'm, you know, very confident that will become a very substantial part of our overall business, in the quarters to come.
In terms of regions, as we've kind of a similar pattern to what we've had in the past, very strong growth across all three regions, which is very nice to see. The one call-out I would make here is the Americas, which is, you know, growing at the quarter-on-quarter at the fastest clip, 35% of all the regions, and it's also the biggest. That's positive. I think that's a combination of, you know, kind of scale now, combined with Lucid in the Americas. It's a function of strategy.
Both our companies historically have focused a lot on the Americas, and there's also an element of kind of overlap between the Americas as a geography and the tech-enabled companies as a segment. We're kind of benefiting from that as well, but really nice across the board growth on the regional side. On customer types, it's you know again both segments growing very nicely, 36% and 31% for the tech-enabled and established. What I would comment here is that in Q4 last year, we had a flip of those growth rates, so the established grew a little bit faster.
I said at the time, there was sort of two, three main reasons for that we expected that to reverse again. It has done now, so we're kind of back to a pattern that over the medium term we would generally expect to see. If we move to the next slide, please. In terms of operational KPIs, the first thing I would say is these are Cint only, which I'm not, you know, fully happy about, but these are Cint only. We are in the process of mapping the kind of Lucid KPIs together with the Cint KPIs. Going forward, the plan is to present combined data as soon as we can do.
We've not been able to do that this time around, unfortunately, but we will. We're working on that very hard. Just to give you a sense on the kind of Cint only operational KPIs, you can see there very nice growth on both the demand side, which is B2B customers, some of the connected consumers, which is the supply side, obviously, and as you can see, the resulting throughput, which is the completed survey. I'm not gonna dwell too much on this in anticipation of being able to kind of show the combined KPIs as soon as possible.
If we now move on to the integration of Lucid and slide 11, please. The headline really, you know, kind of summarizes my views. I think our integration is ahead of plan, and our synergies are also ramping up earlier than we had originally thought. In terms of what we've done, a lot of this has been, I would say, organizational focus. We had you know multiple work streams across you know all the various parts of the business, as you would expect. A big focus was on the organization with the leadership team, the L2s, as we call them, who are running the kind of functional business areas.
In March, we had a set of events that you know, resulted in the structural changes. The key structural changes to the organization to deliver the cost synergies were completed as well. I would say it was deliberately speedy and with a substantial focus on OpEx for the simple reason that that's a synergy bucket that is directly in our control. Some of the others, we also think we can we're definitely confident of being able to realize, but less directly or less immediately in our own control. OpEx focus.
Bottom half of the slide, you can see that, just to kind of summarize where we are, and then we've got an additional slide to go a little bit more into the detail. We were talking about a run rate EBITDA synergy rate of EUR 40 million after 24 months, with the initial benefits going to be accruing after six months. The update that I can give you here today is we're very confident of at least EUR 40 million, and we are ramping up faster than expected. That's really driven by the you know, kind of very clear and speedy focus on the OpEx synergies. We think we're gonna be starting to see those on the OpEx synergy side from Q2 onwards.
In terms of the non-recurring integration costs, we estimate those to be about EUR 40 million. We can talk more about how we see those breaking down in the Q&A section if you guys are interested. Then on the right-hand side there, you can just see a recap of how we envisage the synergies kind of splitting out. You know, a little bit over half really coming from the OpEx side. You know, that's why that's where our focus has been, partly because of magnitude and largely because that's something that's directly in our control. If we move to the next slide, please.
This really is kind of designed to give us a little bit more of a breakdown, and visibility as to what is happening on the synergy side. You can see down the left-hand side there, the three buckets, then with the total and the integration costs. And then across the top is the sort of timeline. October plan we've talked about, so I won't go into that in any more detail at this point, and Q1 forecast is where we are today, right? You can see growth synergies, you know, very much reaffirmed.
We believe continue to believe that they're gonna be starting in Q3 and then progressively ramping up from there. That's largely around the audience, the measurement business getting exported, if you like, into Europe and elsewhere, plus of course the enterprise proposition as well. COGS is about smart order routing. That's gonna take a little bit longer 'cause it requires some technical builds on our side. Beginning of next year, we see those starting out, but then kind of honing in now a little bit on more on the OpEx side.
We're definitely confident of at least 21.6%, which is what we had earmarked back in October, and we think we're gonna start benefiting from that already in the current quarter, i.e., Q2. That's really on the back of some cost takeout and pretty ruthless, I would say, cost avoidance plans that we've had in place since the beginning of the year. Both companies had quite aggressive separate hiring plans. We froze those right from the get-go and took some additional measures on the cost takeout as well.
You know, very, very comfortable at this point saying that we're gonna be at least EUR 21.6 million on the OpEx synergy side and ramping up faster than we originally thought. In terms of the integration costs, as I said, about EUR 40 million in total. That's sort of split two-thirds, one-third, 2022 and 2023. About half is around very substantial process efficiencies, sort of Lead-to-Cash. We've initiated a very extensive Lead-to-Cash program that includes both the CRM, which is obviously on the commercial sales outward-looking side of ERP, which is more the inward-looking sides around IT.
It's not just IT, it's about the whole kind of process efficiency, simplification and automation. That's kicked off, you know, very confident that's gonna benefit the business not just in the next two years, well into the future, as well. I'm gonna pause there on the integration side, and if we move to the next slide, hand over to Joakim for the financial update.
Thank you, Tom. Let's move to page 14 on the financial highlights. If we start to the left on this slide, we saw net sales amounted to EUR 67.3 million in the quarter, which corresponded to a 32% growth on a pro forma basis. As Tom just mentioned, we saw strong contribution from all regions and segments in the quarter. Our gross profit amounted to EUR 41.3 million, which corresponded to growth of 29% on a pro forma basis.
The gross margin was 61.3%, and the higher gross margin this quarter is obviously explained by the mix effect of the revenue streams coming with the consolidation of Lucid, where software business within the marketplace segment is accounted for on a net revenue basis, and as such, it contributes with a 100% gross margin to the mix. Our adjusted EBITDA amounted to EUR 8.1 million, and we delivered a margin of 12.1%, which was lower than last year's 16.9% on a pro forma basis, but very much in line with our expectations. If we move to the more detailed P&L on the next page, please. We have outlined our drivers to the lower profitability in the commentary. Key here, as Tom mentioned, is that Lucid previously strived to reinvest in surplus cash into the business.
Lucid ended last year with a more active investment plan, which then also meant that we are consolidating a much lower EBITDA margin this quarter than what Lucid delivered a year ago. On top of this, we had beneficial FX effects last year, and we had our LTIP cost this year, and there was a slight pressure on GM in this quarter. We expect the EBITDA margin to improve progressively during the year as we grow the business and also get the synergy effects that Tom mentioned on the previous slide. Bottom right, you will see the profitability trajectory that we have talked about the last quarters, and you will recognize that graph.
We are now, in a way, resetting the data series, but at the same time, we aim higher. To now aim towards the 25% in medium term instead of the 20% we had before, and we feel very confident about reaching it. Then finally on this slide, a comment, you'll see in the top of the table, we are introducing a new KPI, which we call Total Customer Spend as a way to measure all business volumes that are processed on our platform, regardless of the revenue recognition. This KPI includes the total value of the project, including fees and take rates. We will, going forward, use this KPI when calculating the operating leverage to allow for better comparison with our historical numbers, and you will find that calculation in that table as well.
That's all I had today, Tom. Back to you to wrap it up.
Perfect. Thank you, Joakim. Just to kind of, this is a refreshed, key attraction summary slide. You know, we really think that there continues to be significant potential, large underlying market, lots of opportunity to grow, and we've not talked about that a lot, 'cause we've been more focused on Lucid and the combo and the synergies. We really see this continued structural shift benefiting the digital players. It's really about, you know, still digitizing what in many areas is still a pretty analog, and people-heavy industry.
I mean, we've not talked about that a lot in the last few quarters, but I just wanted to kind of highlight that because, you know, as we have, you know, kind of macroeconomic and geopolitical turbulence, it's often good to think about, you know, the fundamentals, and we see this as one of the key sort of fundamentals tailwinds that we are benefiting from. We definitely see both companies and therefore the combo optimally positioned at the center of the value chain. We've got market-leading offerings on kind of the marketplace, on enterprise, on measurement to capitalize on these market dynamics and very complementary value propositions, right?
We talked about the marketplace, we talked about audience, we talked about measurement and enterprise. We really do that as we've demonstrated on a global scale, which is something that, again, we've not talked about too much, but it is important because customers increasingly are after, you know, multi-country, regional, or even global work. We are very well positioned to take advantage of that. Both organizations delivering profitable growth, a little bit of a disparity in EBITDA margin, as Joakim mentioned, but with the sort of integration work, you know, that's definitely getting harmonized and optimized.
We believe we're a very robust combination today and even more so in the future. We do have very kind of concrete synergy deliveries underway, which will continue to drive very strong bottom-line performance. With that, Adam, I'm going to pause and hand back to you for questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question today, that's star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. When preparing to ask a question, please ensure your headset is fully plugged in and unmuted locally. That's star one on your telephone keypad. Our first question today comes from Predrag Savinovic from Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you very much, operator. Good morning, guys. My first question is on the cash flow. There are a few moving parts here, like the working capital swing from Lucid, transaction cost integration, et cetera. I'm just wondering if we look at the cash flow on an underlying basis, what we would land on in terms of operating cash flow.
Yeah. Hey, it's a good question. I think the two things that are disturbing that are the easiest to kind of isolate, I think we mentioned them in the report. One is EUR 14.4 million relating to the transaction as such. That should be probably the last this material piece from transaction. That relates to a decrease of the payables. It was booked as a payable in the transaction, and now it was paid out in the third quarter. That had obviously a cash flow impact. That's the one thing and the biggest piece. The second piece is on the NRIs, so non-recurring items, and the integration costs.
It's kind of on the other side of the same coin, where we had EUR 4.5 million in total NRIs this quarter, where 4.1 related to the integration and the acquisition. Those are the two biggest items that you probably should adjust for.
Okay. Thank you. On the organic growth, if we look at the pro forma-based one, it looks quite strong. I mean, the reported one is also quite strong, but it's even better when you look at the pro forma base. That sounds like it's attributable to Lucid, of course. Can you reason a bit around what is behind this pace in the growth here?
Yeah. Hey, Predrag. Look, I think it's continued momentum, right? It's across the board. I think we had since standalone had pretty good very good growth last year. That's a you know at the macro level, it's a function of you know kind of a digitization offering to provide you know respondents at better cost effectiveness and much more quickly. You know that's the kind of initial talk to get us in the door.
I think that kind of momentum has carried through and is carrying through into this year from a kind of medium-term sort of structural level. Lucid have the same tailwind benefits, right? Because they're also offering a similar value prop on the marketplace. I would say what's also helped is a deliberate integration strategy to be pretty quick, particularly on the commercial side. We integrated the commercial teams, nominated leadership there very quickly. That, you know, kind of reduced the uncertainty time for the commercial guys quite substantially.
The final bit I would say is, you know, both companies landed quite a number of new customers during the course of 2021. As we've said in the past, you know, the getting those on board and on stream and connected to the platform is a good thing, right? We continue to do that. The other thing I would point out, as we've talked in the past is the ex-Lucid services business has not been growing.
We're not calling that out specifically, but I can say that I think in Q1 that declined by 3% or 4%, I think, something like that, year-on-year. The decline has slowed down. We've managed to slow that down as I said we would do, and we are working on. Therefore, you know, kind of the underlying growth is, you know, we think of that as really positive. Does that help?
Yeah. Yeah, very much. It sounds very, very encouraging. Thank you. Just a final question from my end. Mostly curious about a contract that was larger that you referenced in Q4 on the established side, which gave you a boost then, generally speaking. To me, it sounds like that is almost like a base effect, meaning that it should be a positive driver for every quarter incrementally then until Q4 2022, basically. Is that right or wrong? Could you reason around this contract in terms of organic growth for the established segment?
I think I mentioned two sort of customer specific things in Q4. I'm sort of racking my memory now. One was NPD, and the other one I think was Ipsos.
Yeah. Correct.
If we take each of those in turn. I mean, NPD was the one of our enterprise customers that we announced middle of last year. I think Q4 was the kind of the kickoff enterprise license that we were able to invoice. There, absolutely, you know, I fully expect that NPD will follow the pattern of our other large and important customers, that they kind of kinda get used to the platform and start pushing more and more volume through the platform over time, which is what happened with many of our larger customers. On that side, absolutely.
On the Ipsos side, I think I did call that out as potentially a one-off because it was pre-Christmas. Q4 for them, for the established guys is typically very strong and more seasonal than it is for the tech-enabled. I wouldn't kind of necessarily say that that's a sort of an indication of future growth that will be linear throughout the year. I think we do have a good relationship with Ipsos. They are an important customer, particularly on their API integrations. We're doing very good business, but I wouldn't necessarily extrapolate that out throughout the course of this year, no. Does that help?
Okay. No, that's perfect. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thanks, Predrag Savinovic.
The next question comes from Daniel Ovin from Nordea. Daniel, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, Tom and Joakim, and thank you for taking my questions. I have first questions around the gross margin. I see in the report that you also have put in here, exclusive gross margin, and I calculate that it's down quite a bit on a year-over-year basis, around two percentage points. I just wanted to ask a little questions around that. You write in the report that you invest to secure supply. Can you explain a bit, around what this means? Also, is there anything that has changed in the market that suggests that also going forward, there could be some pressure on the gross margin? That's the first questions. Thank you.
Hey, Daniel. I can start with that and maybe Tom will fill in. Yes, you're right. You're totally right. The gross margin on the legacy Cint side was down approximately two percentage points. The reason for that is, I mean, a little bit the same as we talked about in the last couple of quarters, I think, that's generally in the sector and in the market, there is a shortage of supply. We see on the demand side, we see unmet demand, and then we have discussed whether we should continue to invest top line and invest to grow the business and, by sacrificing a little bit on the gross margin, or not. I mean, it's a deliberate choice to take or to make.
We did decide to do that selectively. With a few suppliers, we have invested a little bit more to continue to grow the business. We have seen this, as I said, a few quarters. It remained in Q1, and it will probably continue to be a theme. At the same time, we believe that we now with the integration of Lucid and when we get to the position where we integrate both platforms, we will benefit from each other's, if I may put it that way, supply. Since customers will benefit from Lucid supply and vice versa. We think that will be better, but we think the theme will probably continue that we would like to see more supply on our platform.
Tom, anything more to add?
No, I think that's exactly right. Particularly acute, I would say, in the U.S., which is where most supply is programmatic. As Joakim said, it is a deliberate choice to kind of get the supply that we can sell. It's not a surprise, but a choice that we made. We plan to continue to do that, by the way, during the year.
I think you know the kind of what the gross margin impact will be, I think as Joakim said is gonna be partly by how much supply is there and partly by kind of working out exactly how the synergies and the combination will pan out in the market. We're working on that at the moment.
Perfect. Very helpful. Thank you. One other question also on the adjusted EBITDA margin. I'm thinking here, especially on the ex-Lucid business. I understand from discussions we had previously that the cost base in Lucid perhaps a little bit more of a fixed nature versus Cint. And would that then suggest that you have more seasonality in that line and perhaps then Q1 a bit lower than ex-Cint would have been? Maybe you can talk a little bit about if there is any larger impact to take into consideration from this. That's the second question. Thank you.
Yeah. I can try to address that. I mean, obviously, when you integrate and combine two big businesses, like this, there is a lot to factor in, and we fully recognize that it's quite complicated for you guys to follow and to make your estimates. What we've seen in this quarter and what we plan for the coming quarters is. I mean, first of all, the integration and the kind of people related integration, organizational related changes were made at the end of Q1, which then meant that the kind of cost that Lucid had and the cost Cint had in the beginning of the year or end of last year, we carried kind of in the first quarter. Yeah, a little bit of an impact there.
What we will see when now we have implemented a new organization is that the cost base will be probably a little bit more stable in a way or constant than what you typically see on Cint, what we've seen in Cint the last year. That also means that the seasonality on the top line will flow through the more constant cost base and then have a greater seasonality effect on the profitability. By that, we would expect that Q1 probably is the lowest, and then we will see the EBITDA margin coming up the next quarters with Q4 being the strongest, if that makes sense.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much. Just one follow-up question also on the synergy gains. Now it appears that they're coming through, sooner than expected. Just the question here, you already talked about cost avoidance, et cetera. Is there any impact in Q1? Did Q1 already benefit anything from synergy gains? That's another question.
Joakim will have the specific, kind of numbers. I would say very, very modest.
Yeah. I will not give you any numbers, but yeah, very modest because of the implementation at the very end of the quarter.
I think we said, I think in one of the slides that the kind of some of the restructuring was done in March. You know, tail end of the quarter, really.
Okay, perfect. Just one last quick question here also. On the amortization for PPA, what you have here in this quarter, is that the level that we should assume also going forward?
Yes, until we give you something else. No, it's on a preliminary basis. I think you have that typically in these situations. We as of now don't see any changes to it, but it's on. It's a preliminary one.
Okay, perfect. That's all my questions. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thanks.
The next question is from Viktor Hagberg from Danske Bank. Viktor, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Could you help us a bit with historical periods of macro turbulence, how that has played out for you? You weren't that large in connection with the financial crisis from 10+ years ago. Could you help us with the usual progress throughout periods such as this one we're seeing now?
I mean, it's a good question. We probably need to, neither Joakim and I are company historians that go that far back. From you know, just to kind of recap, where Cint was founded in 1998, and so we had the kind of dot-com bubble boom bust. We had 2007-2008 and all the subsequent events as well. Of course, COVID more recently. I need to check the exact numbers, but I do recall a slide from that I've seen is that we demonstrated year-on-year growth, substantial year-on-year growth in virtually every single year since our foundation. That's kind of number one.
The second one I would say is, you know, kind of how we more recently, which I think is more relevant, is how we weathered COVID, right? Which is pretty positive. I think it was positive. I hate to say something positive in relation to COVID, but I think it was positive from a business perspective for two reasons. One, the kind of uncertainty that COVID created in every dimension of all our lives meant that brands needed to do more research to find out what their consumers or potential consumers were thinking, feeling, doing. I would say that applies to any kind of macroeconomic or geopolitical uncertainty. There is the need for more information by brands.
In a weird way, that is beneficial for us, and it definitely was in COVID. We got work from, I would say two main buckets that we had, you know, less work the prior. One was government. Regional, local and in some cases, national governments came to us and wanted to kind of survey their citizens. Secondly was pharmaceutical, right? As you expect, we got, you know, much more work than we've done in the past from the pharmaceutical and pharmaceutical related industries. Need for more information in times of uncertainty is one thing. The other thing is, I think we reacted pretty fast and pretty sensibly to the COVID situation.
We took the right measures in terms of cost avoidance and in some cases cost reduction. You know, I wasn't here back in 2007, 2008 or indeed at the dot-com bubble. But my guess is the kind of DNA of Cint and now Cint Lucid combo is to be pretty responsive to what is thrown at us. I mean, that's really the two-part answer. One is, you know, fast responsiveness from the company, but coupled with the need for more feedback from consumers or citizens in times of uncertainty.
Okay.
Does that, Viktor, does that help?
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm thinking here on the growth comments and organic growth being in line with the Q4 level of last year. Now you're meeting harder comps in Q2. Just if you could help us with what to expect for the full year, you're reiterating the targets of at least 25% organic growth. Is that something?
Yeah
... you should read as for this year as well? Or, what could you do to help us on the timing for that one?
one of the disadvantages from your perspective, Joakim and I sitting opposite me, he can make hand signals and tell me what not to say, right? no, I mean, we don't give any guidance. first of all, I can say, I mean, we've got one out of the four annual quarters under our belt. We've kind of delivered on our medium-term guidance, I would say in Q1. I definitely reaffirm the 25% growth rate for the medium term, right? Joakim is signaling now, so I better stop there.
Yeah, no, that's probably as much as you can get from us now. Okay, fair enough. Also just to follow up on a question earlier on the underlying margin in Cint versus Lucid. Did you say anything on the EBITDA margin? I might have missed it, the respective companies.
No, we did not. What we did do in this report, you can see in the notes, note eight in the report, we have put in. I know that you guys asked for this. We put in a table with the 2021 Lucid performance. There you will see the EBITDA on what Lucid did last year and kind of the trajectory they were on. We didn't comment specifically on Lucid. We don't comment on the Lucid margin, but it's mid-single-digit %, probably something like that in Q1.
On adjusted EBITDA level?
Yes.
Okay. Well, that's helpful. Also on the progress with the service segment within Lucid, you said that it just declined by a couple of percentage points, so you've done some outflow there. What to expect from the rest of the year, once you've stabilized it, what's the plan and what to expect in terms of growth from that segment?
From services specifically, I mean, I've said in the past that we are very focused on that because I certainly don't want to be carrying on any growth dilutive segments. As you can imagine, we're ultra focused on that. Now we don't break out, you know, kind of services specifically, and we don't intend to do that kind of formally. I did wanna talk about it because it is kind of relevant in terms of understanding the overall growth picture. Now what I've said in the past is that the services was declining kind of in double digits end of last year.
It's now kind of, you know, low single digits for Q1. I do expect us to get a full grip on that in the quarter or two to come. What I would say is, I mean, we both Cint and Lucid provide what we call services as part of an important value proposition. So it's not something we're planning to ditch at all. Our services is typically provided either on certain geographies, you know, Japan and some countries around the Mediterranean. There's a high expectation of services if you're a marketing service provider like we are. Partly also it's customer journey, right?
That's the big part, where a lot of time we get customers in with a fairly high degree of service components, so they get used to a new way of buying respondents or accessing respondents. Then what we try and do is get people down the funnel. From you know, from services to self-serve, which is the you know, Access Pro self-serve user interface. Then, of course, ultimately the objective is to get down to APIs, right, which are fully automated and hands-off. It is an important way of serving our customers and particularly onboarding customers.
It's not something I wanna kind of drive into the ground at all, but it is something we wanna get the economics to the right place and the growth rate to the right place. That's the focus.
Okay. Also, you didn't include it. You spent some time on it. You didn't include the Lucid figures and the KPIs and the customers and panelists, and you're not really done with the work there. On a gross basis, it added 60% or something on both sides of the platform. What is your best guess on the overlap, the net addition to these figures once you've calculated it? Could you give us some color on what you expect in terms of a net addition?
To be honest, Viktor, I understand the question and I understand the need to provide combo KPIs, which we're working on, but I don't like guessing, so I'm not gonna try because I will be wrong. I'd ask to wait till we
Let's talk on it then.
We've actually done the numbers and come up with the right KPIs.
We'll spend more time on it in connection with Q2 then.
Yeah.
Also, last question. On the working capital profile now with Lucid integrated and consolidated the different revenue recognition models in the marketplace, should we expect anything to change in terms of working capital profile for the new group?
That's a very good question. Well spotted. I think, I mean, you know, you know the Cint way now, and I'd say that Lucid works in a similar way. They're obviously in the same sectors. They have the same issues, call it, where paying out the suppliers faster and when they are getting paid from the customers. The difference between Cint and Lucid, as you rightly point out, is that they then recognize revenue on a net basis, but they process the payments on a gross basis. They get paid from the customers for the full project, and they pay the suppliers for the full project, for the full amount, but they only recognize revenue on a net basis for the fees.
If you look at kind of the driver or the ratio of working capital to sales, it will look very different, which is why we also now are introducing this new KPI. It will be more kind of similar when you do model, and we internally as well model the drivers to different well items. Fundamentally the same kind of way of dealing with it, but there is a difference in the driver and the KPI, as I mentioned. Does that make sense?
Okay. Should expect to tie up some cash as you grow?
Yeah, exactly. It will show the same pattern, but I'm really longing to get into the details and get a better understanding for it. We're now in the integration of the organizations. We now have a dedicated team, and we have combined the Lucid and the Cint finance teams as well. We have a dedicated team that are working on collections and working capital. I'm hoping to get a better feel and better efficiencies out of it.
Obviously it's kind of a sector thing, so it's fundamentally more difficult to change this behavior, but really to drive and try to call it squeeze out cash from the working capital is something we will hopefully be able to do now, going forward.
Okay. Sorry, just the last final question for me.
Sure.
Integration costs, can you help us with how to expect the phasing on that one? You said, two-thirds of it in this year, EUR 4 million already recognized. What to expect, peak now in Q2, Q3, and then count down or evenly distributed?
Yeah. I think what we said that EUR 40 million in total, two-thirds now and one-third next year. I think you can expect that to be fairly linear. We don't see any kind of big bumps there. We had EUR 4.1 million, as you say, and as we wrote, yeah, the rest will come now, obviously Q2, Q3, Q4. That, there's nothing. I don't think there is a need to model that more in a more detailed way.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Maybe, sorry, maybe 2023. I mean, probably more.
Front loaded.
Front-loaded, yeah, in 2023.
Front loaded. Yeah.
Even now, it's not linear in 2023. Probably only the two first quarters, actually.
Two first.
Yeah.
The next question comes from Daniel Thorsson of ABG. Daniel, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Thank you very much. Lots of good questions on the financials so far, so I'm happy with that. I go to a platform technical question here. How is the developing going on integrating the platforms, and have you so far decided to merge them fully, like one front-end platform for users and one back-end solution for suppliers, or will this be two different platforms in the future?
Hi Daniel, thanks for the question. The intent is to have one entry point on the demand side and one entry point on the supply side from a technical perspective, right? The customers and suppliers just have one point of entry to the marketplace. That is definitely the intent. In terms of the underlying kind of technology and business models, that is still the area where we're exploring and we're discussing with demand and supply side partners extensively 'cause it's important that we do the right thing for them, as well. From a technology perspective, I mean, the plan is to ultimately go to one platform, right?
I think the road there will be fairly extended for the simple reason that we need to be extremely thoughtful about how we do that. I expect that to take, you know, many quarters to fully happen. In terms of what we've done so far is we've opened up the connection between the two supply platforms, so that is good. You know, we got kind of Lucid supply for the same platform and vice versa. So that is in the process of happening. In terms of actual kind of coding integration work beyond that has not started because we're spending a lot of time and energy on the thinking and the planning, right?
You know, we use the word coding. I don't expect that to start for a couple of quarters actually, 'cause I think the important thing is to get the thinking right and the planning right. Then the kind of the actual kind of coding work will follow elegantly thereafter.
Okay. I see. Depending on what route you're deciding to take here, will it be a massive change for either the demand or supply here?
No, I don't think so. I think massive change is not a good idea, because you know, we wanna maintain the growth rates. We want to kind of keep growing the way that we have. Clearly the value propositions that we offer on both the demand and supply side are positive. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to grow. No. I don't expect there to be, you know, either forced change or massive change. I think that would be conceptually wrong.
Yeah. Fair enough. Thanks. Secondly, on the supply side and the gross margin here. I mean, given that the gross margin fell in the quarter, declined slightly here, I guess that the suppliers and the panel owners are not that unhappy because of the merger, because they are basically gaining some more money right here short term. Have you met any unhappy suppliers so far or panel owners that may cause a problem for you when merging the two largest player in the industry?
Unhappy? No. I would say there are some slightly nervous players out there on the supply side, which we're doing our best to reassure. If any are listening in, we wanna partner with you in the medium term and beyond. The reason is that in the past, you know, us and Lucid were seen very much as head to head competitors, and in some ways we were. As a result, you know, some both supply and demand folk kind of played us off against each other a little bit. Now with the combination, obviously, that is no longer possible.
Some people who may have kind of done that a bit more overtly are feeling a little bit nervous, but we're doing our best. I mean, we have no intention of kind of taking advantage of our position. And equally, we wanna partner with all supply partners going forward. Some are a little bit nervous, I would say. And we are doing our best to kind of reassure them because, you know, we are a marketplace. We do need breadth and quantum of supply. We need both. And therefore, you know, all supply partners are important. We wanna work with them, and new ones too.
Okay. Sounds good. My final question is on competition. Have you seen anything happening on the competition side from the larger social media platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn entering this market? I actually got a request myself from LinkedIn asking if I could do a survey related to software companies, which I thought was pretty well spotted because they could target specific target groups for consumer insights. Anything you see there moving in the competitive landscape? They actually offered $5 to complete the survey. They have a similar model at least.
Yeah. No, they do. I mean, look, you know, success is copied, right? In a way, it's a compliment. No. I mean, LinkedIn we talked about I think in the last quarter. In terms of competitive development in Q1, nothing unusual that would need mentioning. I mean, taking a step back and taking your question more broadly, I mean, yes, the social media networks are obviously a group that we do monitor closely, because they do have, you know, large kind of consumer bases underlying them or underneath them, and therefore, there is a possibility to do qualitative research.
We talked about this in the past. You know, there's a scale question, there's an independence question, there's a GDPR question, and then there's also a profile taxonomy question, right? It's important to kind of categorize all your respondents in a standard way so that we can provide the real-time respondents for the questions. We think we've got good kind of moats or barriers to entry. Nevertheless, we keep a close eye on the social media side. Nothing that's popped up in the last quarter. No.
Excellent. Thank you.
The next question is from Charles Brennan of Jefferies. Charlie, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Just a couple of questions for me, actually. You've spoken a fair amount about the unfulfilled demand and the investments into the supply side. Given that dynamic, you've clearly got some discretion over the rates of organic growth that you're reporting and ultimately the margin. I'm wondering whether actually talking about organic gross profit makes more sense than organic revenue, and whether that's a metric we should be paying more attention to. The second is just a small financial follow-up. It feels like you're flagging up capitalized R&D a little bit more explicitly now. Should we expect that to materially change as we go through the course of the year? Thank you.
Hi, Charlie. I'll pick up both of them, probably. Yeah, you're absolutely right, and actually I intended to mention this, the gross profit growth point when we talked about the supply squeeze and how we invested a little bit there. I think you're right. That's also the way we discuss this internally in the team. As long as we see that the investment in more revenue contributes with growth in gross profit, I think it's a good thing. Not saying that we will lose sight of the gross margins. That's kind of a key KPI for us, and we do discuss that too. I agree with you. Gross profit is probably going to be more and more important and more interesting to follow.
Should we assume that your midterm targets for 25% organic revenue growth are consistent with 25% gross profit growth?
Conceptually, I think that's an interesting thought, and we haven't really. I mean, we have our financial targets. I wouldn't be. I'm not in a position now to kind of confirm that. Conceptually, I think it's interesting. That's a vague comment to it.
Okay.
If I move on to the capitalization of development costs, I mean, it is now the line you see in the P&L is now with Lucid obviously. We have the Cint CDC policy on the one hand, and we have the Lucid CDC policy on the other hand, and those two add up. In the integration work, we are looking into it and drilling deeper into it. We have confirmed that the policies on each side is relevant and makes a lot of sense, and obviously we have auditors having reviewed them as well standalone. We are now looking into it more as we also have combined our development teams on both sides.
That work ongoing to make sure that we are mapping out the relevant hours or the relevant costs that we take in the development team to the capitalization. You shouldn't expect it to change dramatically. I mean, early conclusion is that you shouldn't expect it to change dramatically. First assessment is that we are probably on a decent level on both companies and also combined.
Perfect. Thanks.
Thanks, Charlie.
Nothing further in the queue at present, but as a reminder, that's star one on your telephone keypad to ask a question. As we have no further questions, I'll hand back to the management team for any closing remarks.
Thanks, Adam. Thanks all for joining. Just to recap, we really do see this as a very strong quarter, combination of continued revenue momentum with very solid and good progress on the synergies. Thank you for your time and attention and questions this morning. Look forward to speaking again in due course. Thank you.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you very much for your attendance. You may now disconnect your lines.