Hi everyone, welcome to this extra investor call that we've invited to, given that we yesterday, on the 18th of November, announced the acquisition of MuSe Content, a German company. My name is Jonas Lagerqvist, I'm the CFO of Vertiseit, and this is...
I'm Johan Lind, I'm CEO of Vertiseit.
During this session, we will go through the background of the MuSe acquisition. We will give you brief information about MuSe and Stoked AI, what it is that we have acquired, and we will elaborate on the rationale and the structure behind the acquisition. In the end of the presentation, there will be a Q&A session, so you can either write your questions in the chat or you can use the raise hand function if you would like to speak with us during the Q&A. Yesterday, we announced the acquisition of MuSe Content. It is a Hamburg-based company with offerings within InStore Audio, who is on the forefront of both retail and AI within our industry. Brief figures about the company is that they have a revenue of approximately EUR 3 million.
Of this, like the majority is consulting, but there is a portion of ARR included. They are profitable and bring approximately 10 employees to the Vertiseit group.
Yeah, so looking into the acquisition rationale, it's a little bit different from what you might have been used to when we look at acquisitions. Usually, we focus purely on existing customer base and their existing ARR. MuSe is really a strategic investment into new fields, both AI and music and audio in store in particular. We take it step by step. It adds AI expertise to our consulting and product development and operations. This is very essential because we have followed MuSe and identified that they have been in the forefront of AI implementation within customer experience in store. It also adds AI-enabled InStore Audio into the group offering. This is a space, InStore Audio is a space that is big. It's a space where we haven't been present.
AI is really changing the dynamic in the audio space, where it goes from like a service offering to really a tech-enabled offering. Hopefully, we can deep dive a little bit into that. It also adds consulting expertise within fashion retail in Germany and the DACH region in particular, where they have like a handful of people that are really at the forefront in this space. Super excited about that. Of course, it strengthens the Visual Art organization because we already have a Hamburg office. Now, we will bring the team together and create a really strong hub. In this acquisition, we also acquired all the AI assets from Stoked AI with the same owners.
We have also a set of tools like SongSwipe, StoreGrid, AI Sales Agent, and AI Adaptive Audio that we will hopefully have the chance to introduce to you closer in the coming months.
Looking into the structure of this acquisition, it was valued at EUR 3.4 million. Looking at it from like an ARR multiple, it's just above four. Still, the character of this acquisition is a little bit different from the roll-up acquisitions performed. Payment is done in the majority of cash, but 35% of the purchase price is paid in new Vertiseit shares that are issued at SEK 73 per share, meaning a premium of approximately 20%. They are also associated with a 36-month lockup for the previous owners who are also, of course, joining the Vertiseit group. Together with an earn-out over three years, it's like a strong sign of the commitment and belief that the key people in this acquisition show in Vertiseit.
Yes, looking into the integration, the former two owners, Marco and Philipp, will be key players in our journey going forward, where Marco will head up as the CXO in GrassFish and also join the group management team. Philipp will head up the new InStore Audio department in Visual Art. We will establish Hamburg as Visual Art's DACH hub. We will, of course, integrate InStore Audio into all parts of our offering and also enable our partners to carry out this offering to our existing customer base. We will leverage the consulting expertise in the group, both in the field of fashion retail, but also in the field of AI in all aspects of that, from consulting to product and in our operations, of course.
They have a nice set of brands that we will work closer together with, and hopefully, we can scale with them with the broader offering that we take to the table. Their customers are purely within retail, customer experience, and lifestyle brands. It is a perfect fit to our strategy.
Yes. Now we open up for some Q&As. Please, if you have any questions, just write them in the chat or use the raise hand function. We welcome Jacob Benham. Hi, Jacob. I can't hear you, Jacob. Sorry.
Good morning, Johan and Jonas.
Good morning, Jacob.
Morning. Congratulations on the acquisition. I have a couple of questions here. Wondering if you can maybe start by talking a bit about MuSe's business model. You state that it's roughly a quarter of SaaS revenue, and then the rest is equally split then between consulting and hardware. Like what kind of hardware and consulting services is it that they are selling? Is it similar to your offering? Will you continue to run the business as it is, or will you change the strategy?
Yeah, great questions, all of them. Like MuSe is, first of all, they are a consultant firm within Digital InStore, and InStore Music, of course. A big portion of their business is the consulting offering. In many projects, they just hand over when they have designed the concept, they have designed the service blueprint, they hand over to larger integrators. There are also projects, more specialized projects, where they have delivered the full solution, including SaaS platforms and also the technology needed to realize a project in practice. They will be fully integrated into GrassFish and Visual Art, meaning that their offering will align completely with the current offering, current strategies that we have in GrassFish and Visual Art.
Okay. A follow-up on that is maybe like what's your expectation then if you integrate it into GrassFish and Visual Art? They're offering like, what's your expectations of upselling on MuSe's software to your existing customers? I mean, do your customers already have an InStore Audio supplier? Like how likely do you think they are to change?
Yeah, it will not go overnight. If you look at the big full-service providers in the space, M-Cube, Mood Media, they have a bigger portion of InStore Audio than Digital Signage in their offerings. I can assume that the market is more or less 50-50 as of now. Of course, there is a huge potential for us over time to make InStore Audio a significant share of our recurring revenue streams. It will take time. It is nothing that will happen overnight. It is a fantastic opportunity to expand our offering into existing customer base. Talking about the product, like their AI-enabled audio suite has some really nice capabilities. You can generate audio messaging on demand.
Let's say if you want to tell everyone that the store is closing in five minutes and that they are welcome back tomorrow, you can do that with any voice or character. You could do that in any language globally with the new capabilities that AI brings to the table. It cost a fortune before to do this. Also with InStore Music, they have now produced a library of, I think, exceeding 4,000 tracks. You could really curate music with AI that really aligns with the brand and that are royalty-free. It is really disruptive now in the music and InStore Audio segment. I think it is a perfect timing for us to step in.
Okay, very interesting and exciting. That was actually my next question, why you think it's a good time to enter now. I got the answer there. Can you maybe talk a bit more about the competitive landscape? Like you mentioned some competitors there before, I think. How is competition?
Yeah, so traditionally, it has been like really service-oriented. It has been like a craftsmanship to curate the music over and over again, to adapt to season, to adapt to the brand's development. That is why it had been a space where we have not entered. We have had collaboration with a lot of those music InStore brands over time. What we see now is that technology changes everything and changes the dynamic. That is why it is really exciting.
Okay, very interesting. Just two more for me and then I'll get back in the queue. Can you say something? Maybe it's a question to Jonas, if you can say something about the average revenue per location for MuSe. Is it possible?
I would say that the overall offering, I mean, apart from the audio part, aligns very much with the one both in GrassFish and Visual Art. It is more or less a perfect match integrating the MuSe business into Visual Art and GrassFish.
Yeah, but from like a math perspective, you could say that you do not need as many licenses, of course, per location. But if you want to model like price per location, it is between SEK 200-300 a location a month.
Perfect. Thank you for that. My last question is if you have evaluated any other acquisitions within audio as well. If so, why did you choose MuSe?
Like MuSe was like an obvious choice for us. We know the space pretty well. The great thing with MuSe is that we have seen that they have been in the forefront of this disruption. We have also had MuSe as a really strong consultancy partner in the German market for a long time. We know them really well. When they have had the opportunity to also select technology and platforms, they have always been a great ambassador for GrassFish. It was an obvious choice for us. That said, if we will double down on this path, first, we want to see like how the offering resonates with our customers. It is also a great time, of course, to be able to acquire assets and contracts if the industry is in a big shift.
It opens up new possibilities within this part of the business.
I see. Sounds very encouraging. Looking forward to following it. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you so much.
Thank you. We have some questions in the chat. Some of them have been covered by Jacob's questions, actually. Okay, is MuSe audio only, or do they also have a visual offering?
Yeah, definitely they have a visual offering as well. It is a 50-50 play as of today. So 50% audio, 50% visual or interactive. The reason why we talk about the audio is because it is adding new capabilities to our offering.
Yeah. Have their audio offering historically been incorporated with any Vertiseit projects historically? Have we worked together with MuSe before?
Yes. They actually have been running a lot of their music distribution through technology from GrassFish and the GrassFish RXM platform. I would say at least the vast majority. It is also from an integration point of view, we are already on the same tech stack in at least two-thirds of their customers. That is great. Also, as we said before, we have worked really close with MuSe in some of the most interesting German projects before. We know that the collaboration is excellent. We know the people, and we are really excited to work closer together and really bring their expertise into accounts that are more on an international and global scale.
Okay. Can you describe the business model for audio in store versus digital signage?
Yeah, it's basically the same. When you design a digital in-store concept, you have different touch points, and every touch point requires a license. You pay for the license per month. That's our ARR. With music in-store, you define different audio zones. Every audio zone where you can address communication needs a license. You pay per month a license in that offering as well. Before, you also had lower margins because you needed to pay a lot of royalties for the music. That's what's changed right now as the offering that we will take to the market will be AI-generated.
Yeah. Can we disclose like the share, the ARR split between music and digital signage in MuSe?
It's 50-50.
Okay. From like a traditional digital signage project, how large can the audio part be, you believe?
Yeah. Once again, I do not want to overpromise or make, but in the industry, I believe it is 50-50 as of today. I believe it will actually grow faster from where we stand. If you look at the largest integrator in the world, like Mood Media, M-Cube, and Radio Post in Germany and those guys, then it is definitely 50% that is audio. I will be super happy if five years from now, 20% of our ARR consists of music in store and in store audio.
Great. I believe that's all for today. We will close down and post this recording on our web. Please don't hesitate to reach out to any of us in case of further questions. Have a great day. Bye.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye.