Good morning or good afternoon. Thank you for joining Shoper's conference call. My name is Tomasz Pokora from Investor Relation in company. It's my pleasure to have with us today Management Board, who will discuss the Q1 financial results and key events. After their prepared remarks, we will open it up for your questions. I turn the call over to CEO Marcin Kuśmierz.
Thank you, Tomasz, for welcoming our guests and for the introduction. My name is Marcin Kuśmierz. I'm CEO of Shoper. I will have the pleasure of hosting today's meeting, where we will mainly tell you about results of Q1 2023, ongoing and planned business development projects and of course, our assumptions for the entire current year. The entire Management Board of the company is present on today's meeting. Paweł Rybak, our Chief Commercial Officer, who is responsible for the commercial part of our business and of course, scaling our business. Piotr Biczysko, Chief Financial Officer, who takes care of the company's finances and provides the fuel for the further growth. Anna Miśko, Chief People Officer, who manages and takes care of development of our most important asset, our people. Let's start.
We will start today's meeting by discussing and summarizing what we have done and achieved in Q1 2023. We will then talk about business development, what we have been mainly focused on in recent months, and what will drive Shoper Group growth in the coming quarters or even years. We will talk in detail about Shoper Group financial results for Q1 of this year and share our outlook for growth for the rest of this year, and of course, again, about our growth assumptions for the next couple of quarters. Let's start with highlights. We continue our rapid business growth, which is perfectly evident in the dynamics of our revenues. 33% in challenging, unpredictable jittery market environment is absolutely unique and absolutely amazing result.
The Shoper team has done a fantastic and professional job with merchants in recent months to maintain growth at the level of many of our e-commerce competitors, were enabled to show even at the height of the pandemic. As we know, it was very kind time for the e-commerce industry. What we see, our merchants continue to grow their sales and increase their value, which contrasts with the performance of the whole retail sales in Poland. We introduce new e-commerce products and functionalities to the platform so that they win the competitive battle and can grow business at the time when consumers are increasingly cautious about spending money. After 3 months, it looks more than optimistic. 15% growth in GMV.
It looks like, you know, pretty good performance, and we see that this is, you know, promising outlook for the following quarters. Adjusted EBITDA, very strong growth, especially that Shoper, like other e-commerce players, we are under high cost pressure. We show record results for yet another quarter, remain optimistic about full year result, and thus give our investor promising outlook for the upcoming quarters. We want to present ourselves as a very stable, very predictable company. You see that, you know that the market environment is very challenging, and each of, you know, category in our financial results or main KPI we observe continue with high growth. We are very proud of the last couple of months.
A few words about what was happening in the business itself, what we were focused on, and what we put our attention into. As you see, we are focused on our offering development. You know, we developed Shoper Payments. There will be more products, more functionalities, new technology and new business partners in upcoming quarters. We also investing in developing logistics services. We have repeatedly talked about the vast growth potential of this segment many times. We have new projects open and the prospect of rapid business and margin growth. We have products using the potential of AI and more products, new products, completely new in the pipeline. This is a technology that will accelerate the evolution of the technology and e-commerce markets.
We are confident that we know how to play one of the critical roles in the market transformation that has begun with the launch of ChatGPT and other AI platforms. First of all, we already have good competencies in this area. We attract, you know, clever people, smart people to the company. We want to be on the e-commerce market, one of the first and one of the smartest players using AI technology. Regarding the target group, we address our offering, we continue to invest in development of our offerings and teams supporting mainly mid-size companies. We are stronger with or by consulting services in this segment. We also build a training offer, completely new training products to meet customer expectations fully.
We also invest in developing the partner channel in this segment, cooperating closely with some specialized IT companies, software houses or integrators who are already present in this segment of the market and they look for potentially, you know, very promising, very solid partner in e-commerce field. We can say that we have shown a snapshot of our financial results for Q1 2023. In addition to the great results, we boast much faster business growth than almost all of our relevant competitors. Whether talking about revenue growth, EBITDA or GMV, we see that our development is significantly faster than the rest of the market. We will repeat this many times during this presentation.
We stay optimistic and we see still high potential to grow even faster in upcoming quarters.
Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. Paweł Rybak here. In this part of the presentation, we will be discussing our business development. To begin with, let me remind you of the extensive ecosystem of solutions for small, medium, but as well, even large enterprises Shoper offers. Our company is growing dynamically in four main pillars, which are namely, the first pillar is omni-channel sales, where we offer e-commerce software to run your online store in various packages. That's not all. We also have a comprehensive SaaS platform for managing the entire sales process across different sales channels like marketplaces and other SaaS platforms in Poland and many other countries. These tools can be configured by merchants themselves, but it's really worth mentioning right now that we also have a full implementation and consulting capabilities.
In omni-channel segment, our revenue model is based on subscriptions, which depends on the chosen package, but also the scale of the operations, like for example, the number of orders or the numbers of chosen sales channels. The second pillar is digital ads, which are ads, for example, on Google, Facebook, TikTok, Microsoft, but also many other platforms, where we generate additional sales for our merchants, earning money from the sales generated by our campaigns. We are getting really fast traction in this ad tech part of the online business that we have. The third pillar is finance and payments, where we continuously develop our portfolio of payment services for our customers, as well as the offer of financing options for their businesses.
Our business model in this area also depends on the gross merchandise value generated on our whole platform. The last pillar is logistics, where we collaborate with external partners to provide software that facilitates shipment management process. Thanks to our scale of operations, we are able to offer very attractive rates for shipments to our customers. The revenues for the group in this area depend on, usually, on the number of packages sent using our tools and the prices of those shipments. It's really worth also mentioning in the end that many of our products and services in these four pillars are already available as an independent software or services. Therefore, our portfolio is aimed at much wider range of companies that just users of Shoper's e-commerce software.
In each of these pillars, we also introduce many new functions and improvements, which, about which we will talk in the further part of the business development presentation. Yes, here I'm very proud to share with you the exciting news of the introduction of the new solution utilizing artificial intelligence for our merchants. Today, we are launching both in Shoper and Apilo, the product called Descriptions AI. Thanks to our innovative technologies, including artificial intelligence and GPT-4 chatbot, we can offer our customers the most advanced tools for running their online businesses. Our new solution supports automatic generation of product descriptions. With the GPT-4 chatbot, our merchants can now create descriptions for new and existing products as well as services, or theme categories in an easy and fast way.
The chatbot can analyze parameters, attributes, and even competitive products and services, allowing for flexible creations of descriptions tailored to the individual needs of each customer. That's not all. The benefits that our new technology from Apilo brings, in addition to automatic description generation, the bot allows for exporting these descriptions to various platforms, such as Shoper, of course, but also other competitive e-commerce platforms, marketplaces, price comparison websites, or even social media. This makes our solution a comprehensive tool for managing product descriptions across different channels, saving our merchants a lot of time and effort.
Maybe to visualize a little bit how much this such software works, please see here that based on just a few attributes describing the product that the owner has in the product database, we are able to generate a great marketing description of the product in literally a second. The description helps not only to sell the product easier, but also make the online store much more visible in search engines. What's more, you can prepare such descriptions of even several hundred products at once. We've been using artificial intelligence in Shoper since, even since the time when it was not even as trendy like it is right now.
We are sure that this is only the beginning of the adventure and the change that is happening in the world of online e-commerce, and we are part of this world, implementing solutions much faster than competitors. In conclusion, we are very, very proud to introduce our new Descriptions AI as some kind of testament to our commitment to innovation and customer success.
Shoper Broker is a next stage in the development of logistic services for our merchants. On the one hand, this is just, you know, more extensive range of products, of course, specialized in the logistic world. On the other, higher margins for us and better customer management or relationship management, and ability to flexible create combined offers. We showed on the last meeting with you, combined offering under the Shoper Max product. Logistic services can be included in new packages in the upcoming months. We also present today Shoper Returns, and this is great example of the rapid implementation of new functionality desired by both sellers and buyers.
Role of the service on a full basis is only progressing, we have yet to conduct active sales and marketing activities. We're seeing great response from our customer base, already 7% of all stores have enabled this product, this functionality. We see that more than 2,000 returns have been made thanks to it. We see huge demand from merchants, also for clients of our merchants, you know, to use new products or functionalities like Shoper Returns or Shoper Brokerage services, because they expect, you know, new services, giving them, you know, freedom of choice of many services or ability to manage some processes in more easier way.
We also work on a new electronic payment platform to increase the share of Shoper Payments in total GMV generated on our platform. We want to add new technology, and we want to add new business partners, which will result in expanded offering, including also the very first time in our history, offline payments and POS solutions. Because we see that, and we talked about many times, that we want to connect or we want to merge online and offline sales and to present complete offering in the one place to meet expectations of our merchant. We also plan to offer Shoper Payments, new Shoper Payments to users or clients using competitive e-commerce platform platforms, both commercial and open source, like for example, WooCommerce or PrestaShop.
We believe that financial services and of course payments will be key growth drivers for the group in the coming years. They are very important today, but we see that they can play more important role in the future. The effect of rapid business growth is, of course, improving the take rate, more comprehensive offerings, value added services resale on, and focus on midsize or large business segments stimulate improvement. At the end of Q1 2023, take rate reached a record 1.83%, increasing by more than 50% over past two years.
it's great increase, and you see that we have ability and we have a proven track record monetizing new sales and monetizing better penetration of vast services in our customer base. now let's compare Shoper growth to the rest of the market. we have two slides showing key KPIs or these key figures giving you ability to compare growth of Shoper in comparison to the leading marketplace operating on the Polish market, but as well to one of the leading e-commerce platforms specialized in online stores. over the past four years, we have shown very rapid growth in the GMV of merchants using our platform.
Comparison with the leading marketplace operating on the Polish market shows the dynamics of our platform's development and our customers' sales. What's the reason? Online stores enjoy popularity in main categories and popular categories such fashion, home and garden, or beauty. Why? Because sellers want to invest mainly in their brands, in relationships with buyer, enjoy retention, process benefits and of course, control the cost of selling products and services. This is a trend we have observed in the past, similarly, in the North America or in the Western Europe. You know, dynamics of development of major online stores compared to marketplaces.
Today, the same is observed on the Polish market, and this is perfectly illustrated by comparing the GMV of Shoper platform to GMV generated on the leading marketplace in Poland. We see that, you know, comparing GMV and comparing % of both GMV, you see high growth last 4 years. We are sure that, of course, the further high growth will be also generated by players like Shoper, because we see that online stores, they are more and more popular. Merchants, they want to invest more to be independent and to control the whole sales process. Similar situation takes place in the market of e-commerce platforms specializing in online store.
Shoper has operated and continues to act in very competitive environment, and what you can see is doing very well in it. Comparing the dynamics of growth this time to one of the leading platforms providing online stores in the SaaS model, you can see that Shoper growth is significantly faster than the competition in terms of revenue, EBITDA dynamics. CAGR over the last 4 years almost doubled. Revenue dynamics even better, and adjusted EBITDA in 2022 higher by nearly PLN 1 million. This is, you know, big success because you see the start point of our project, of our adventure 4 years ago, and you see that all KPIs, all main figures are on Shoper's side.
Good morning or good afternoon. Regarding to team development, this year has seen a further strengthening of the role of e-commerce specialists as experts in digital transformation of our customers using the Shoper platform. That's why we are creating competence centers for multi-channel sales, digital ads, advertising, and financial and logistic services. Regarding to multi-channel sales, we use unique knowledge and experience of the Selium team, the omni-channel agency we acquired in August last year. As for digital advertising, we use the support and resources of SEMPIRE technology platform, a leading solution in Polish market. When it comes to performance marketing, we apply solutions used by world leaders in this market segment, for example, Google, Meta, Microsoft or TikTok.
In financial and logistic services, new competence centers will be launched together with the implementation of new platforms and offers for Shoper Payments or Shoper shipping, which Martin has talked about earlier. We estimate that by the end of Q2, employment in whole Shoper Group will be 340. The vast majority will be sales specialists connected with direct and indirect sales. What I would like to stress is the fact that due to our ambition goals, but also the current macroeconomic situation, we are cautious about managing teams and developing teams. We only hire where we see the prospect of quick return on investments and this investment is calculated in individual months. That's why these hires, which I mentioned about, will take place mainly in sales area.
Good morning, good afternoon. This is Piotr Biczysko speaking. Let's take a look at the financial results of the first quarter of this year. Revenues in first quarter of this year reached just over PLN 35 million, just PLN 2 million below the record Q4 2022 result, with growth of 33% compared to first quarter of 2022. The solutions segment continued to be a strong growth driver, reaching over PLN 26 million with 37% year-on-year growth. Subscription segment revenue increased by 23%, reaching almost PLN 9 million, and this was the highest quarterly result of this segment in the Shoper Group history. The revenue share of the solution segment grew by 2 percentage points to 75%. Let's move to the group's profitability.
Q1 ended with an excellent result of adjusted EBITDA, which was only PLN 1.5 million below the record level of Q4 2022, and it was the 2nd result of this KPI in the company's history. EBITDA increased by 41% compared to first quarter of 2022. This despite higher costs in Q1 2023 compared to the first quarter of last year. This allowed us to achieve an adjusted EBITDA margin of over 32%. Let's briefly summarize the results of the first quarter. First quarter was the 2nd-highest revenue quarter in the company's history, below Q4 2022 only. Profitability was maintained despite the difficult macroeconomic environment. Adjusted EBITDA also reached the 2nd-highest ever result, quarterly result, and again, just below Q4 2022.
In the first quarter, we recorded high year-on-year growth in gross and net profits, with increase of 28% and 37% respectively. The lower growth rate of gross profit in the first quarter compared to the growth rate of adjusted EBITDA is mainly due to higher depreciation and amortization that was higher by PLN 1.4 million in comparison to the first quarter of last year. In Q1 2023, it amounted to PLN 3.3 million compared to PLN 1.9 million last year. The higher depreciation amortization was driven by depreciation and amortization of assets identified on the acquisition of SEMPIRE, PLN 0.4 million, that the acquisition took place in the middle of the year in May last year.
Higher depreciation of servers following expansion of server infrastructure that we did in the second half of the last year, also by PLN 0.4 million. Amortization of software deployed as part of the development of Shoper Group platforms in the quarters after the first quarter of last year. On the other hand, the difference in the dynamics of adjusted gross and net profits is mainly the results of the non-taxable cost of incentive employees incentive programs, which means that the adjustment of net and gross profit by this cost does not affect the amount of tax, just adjusting profits at the gross and net level upwards by this exactly the same amount. Let's move on to GMV.
Dynamics of the value of orders in the sales channels of the Shoper Group or GMV in Q1 2023 was maintained at Q4 2022 levels. The value for orders on the Shoper platform, GMV of stores, grew by 14%, and GMV extended by other sales channels, called GMV Omnichannel, increased by 15%. The achieved levels of PLN 1.5 billion for GMV of stores and PLN 2.1 billion for GMV of Omnichannel are, from the perspective of the company's history, second best on levels below the Q4 2022 results only. In Q1 of this year, we also saw a further increase in take rates.
Take rate of stores reached 1.83 level versus 1.57 last year, omnichannel take rate reached 1.66 versus 1.43 last year. Let's jump to a quick look at the cash flow. In the first quarter of this year, the group generated almost PLN 12 million from operating activities. Major capital expenditures include almost exclusively investments related to the development of the group's software platforms. In terms of financing activities, the main events there were partial prepayment of the loan to refinance the SEMPIRE acquisition, PLN 2.4 million, and repayment of leases, PLN 0.9. Leases of course related to the IFRS 16 standard for our agreements for renting our offices and servers.
Let's take a look at Shoper Group's growth from a broader perspective. The Shoper Group has consistently pursued its growth strategy. This is confirmed by the presented basic indicators of the group's performance in recent years. The group's revenues in terms of the last 12 months or LTM exceeded PLN 130 million and were almost three times higher than the revenues of 2020. First quarter revenues comparing with the results of the same period of previous years confirm the dynamic development of the Shoper Group. In the first quarter of 2023, revenues were more than twice as high as those in the first quarter of 2021, and almost four times higher than in 2020.
At the same time, despite significant investments in human resources development, the company continues to generate high adjusted EBITDA, which is steadily increasing both from the perspective of the results of the last twelve months against the results of previous years, as well as Q1 alone. This was a summary of Shoper Group's financial results for the first quarter of this year.
Thank you both for describing in very positive way our financial results for Q1 and the past. Let's jump into market outlook and our assumptions for the rest of the year. You know, trying to summarize and looking at the ongoing projects or a pipeline of new products and of course the results achieved in Q1, we stay very optimistic for further growth, further development. We know that the market environment will remain unstable, but it looks that we found, you know, good recipe on how to operate in these crazy times. Our assumptions are all very optimistic for the next couple of quarters.
GMV, we want the sales growth rate generated by our merchants to be at least 2 times the market growth rate. Revenue, we plan very solid revenue growth in 2023, at least twice the GMV. Take rate, we assume a further improvement of this indicator. We have very good track record, so we plan to achieve the next higher or maybe the highest level next couple of quarters. Costs, we want to stay as a very conservative company in cost management. We want to continue to automate and optimize business processes. The effect of this optimization should be visible in coming quarters as higher EBITDA margin. Let's try to summarize today's presentation.
As you see, it looks very good because we achieved again record high results. We can say that we're excellent for Q1, again, on records levels. Continued expansion of the offer and development of the sales force. We want to be stronger, we want to sell more, and of course, we want to improve our margin, by thanks to providing new services, but thanks to all also selling more services, more products to the market. We stay optimistic or even very optimistic for the rest of the year. We can say that we are sure that we will positively surprise sellers, buyers, competitors, but also our investors on quarter after quarter. We have unchanged and still very good, very optimistic outlook for the entire year.
We want to stay, as a company to you, very predictable and, you know, communicating very openly, to the market. Again, you see, that.
We have received how to grow faster, not only in comparison to the whole market, but also to main specific competitors like Marketplace or other SaaS platforms. Today, great, really great results for Q1, but we are sure that next quarters will be also very good for Shoper and mainly for our merchants, because we want to grow together and to fuel their growth in the future.
The schedule of meeting with us in the near future, in May, for the first time, we will have the opportunity to meet with individual investors at the conference. In June, we invite you to meet at the conference in Warsaw. We also encourage you to contact us directly if you have any questions or would you like to talk with the board. Now, let's move to the Q&A session. To ask a question, please mark button with raised hand to give you a voice or send it through Q&A panel. We have 2 questions on the Q&A panel from Ben Ortner. Are you able to share the current penetration of digital ads within the merchant base?
How many merchants are currently using these tools, and how you expect this to evolve over time?
Hello Ben, I'll take this question. We don't show the exact numbers, but from this perspective, you know, to show you a little bit roughly an estimate, it's a small double-digit number for the time being with a huge, huge potential. Digital ads or online advertising and also search engine optimization hidden inside here. We are not only proposing those services for Shoper merchants, but also outside of our platform, which it also has a very, very huge potential, and we already just started this part of our business. We expect to grow this part, this branch of the whole Shoper Group very fast. I'm super optimistic. I've been in this digital advertising world since 20 or even more than 20 years.
Oh my God. So here, we really expect to grow not only within the Shoper base, because we invest a lot in this ad tech technologies very much. We want to be very competitive over the other available solutions. Well, I hope I answered your question. We really expect to grow here. Also, we have SEMPIRE, company that we acquired less than a year ago. This company helps to grow Shoper base search engine optimization, but also they expand in doing search engine optimization for other platforms, but also for the, you know, websites that they don't have an online store.
The second question, further, are you able to share your definition of mid-sized companies, preferably by the turnover, and how these companies to your small or micro companies?
Well, it's somehow, you know, our internal definition that if a merchant exceeds half of a million GMV per year, they land into the bucket of the bigger merchant, I would say. It's only internal for us. We know that this is a real store. They have customers. There is a turnover and somehow this is our definition between very small merchant and a bigger merchant.
Another question from Sebastian. Retiring the Series D shares later this year, how do you plan to use cash and cash flows long term? Mainly for acquisitions or also for growing dividend and share buybacks? Are there any specific acquisitions discussed currently?
Marcin or me? Maybe I will start and Marcin will add something to this. Generally, our view of the board is that we want to be focused on development of the company and following that strategy. Definitely our preferred way of using the cash flow that we generate is to invest into the business. As you know, actually just acquisitions are the point where we
Eventual need, any financing. It's quite natural way that the best usage of that will be investing into some eventual acquisitions. However, I'm not saying that anything is in the pipeline or anything like this. Simply this is just a view of the managing board thinking about the growth of the company. Of course, the Series D story will end up if the dividend will be paid in the amount that was announced recently by the board. However, of course, it's in hands of a general meeting, so we'll see in the middle of May. Generally, we are rather focused on the growth, so we think to use the cash for the development of the company.
I just can add that what was Piotr saying, that we want to use all or almost all generated cash to accelerate our growth because we have very stable number 1 position in the Polish market. Of course, we are very strong in comparison to almost anyone operating on the Polish market. The truth is that comparing the size of the business or scale of operations to companies from the Western Europe or the U.S., we are a relatively small company. So our ambition is to build one of the leading e-commerce platform in Europe. Of course, we need financing for this project. So our view as a management board is that we should mainly use generated cash to accelerate our growth in the future.
Of course, it's not luckily only our decision.
Another question from Bailey. What are the key drivers of take rate going forward?
I can also take this question. Starting from the simple one, you know, upselling, higher packages of services like from Shoper Standard to Shoper Premium, from Shoper Premium to Shoper Enterprise. You know, upscaling the merchants, they get more, but they also pay us more. Somehow in the subscriptions part, it's also the, you know, pricing strategy from our perspective. We, you know, as you've seen what I've said, what Marcin said, we add multiple new services, multiple new cool add-ons that really help doing your business. This is also somehow shows that we can rise prices for what we do. From other perspective, we have this value-added services that we give to the merchants like online advertising, like, you know, logistics and payments.
We cover more of, you know, the customer base with our Shoper Payments where, you know, we get much more provision out of this. It's basically, you know, still we have space and, you know, to cover more of our GMV with our services, but also now by generating more GMV for the merchants. Basically, you know, pricing strategies, adding many new services to what we've already do, really adjusting to the merchant needs. We really analyze more than now, more than 500 parameters on the merchants, our merchant customer base, and, you know, really adjust the products that will perform very well to the merchants. This is what we do.
Of course, we, as Ania said, Marcin said a little bit, we also expand our sales force. It's sometimes, you know, it's really worth to talk to the customer to negotiate some, you know, additional initiatives and they simply, you know, pay us for our good work.
Hi, Steven. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Congratulations on the good numbers. I have one quick question. There is one slide I did not understand. It is the slide where you compare yourself to another SaaS platform by growth. What I do not understand is the other platform seems to be bigger than you, but you are the biggest in Poland.
We are biggest by the number of merchants using the platform, on the revenue side, but it's in some ways incomparable, because the, let's say, one of the leading platform operates in the different segment of the market, also including B2B clients, some wholesalers, for example. But on this slide, we gave, you know, comparison by revenues or EBITDA or different parameters, showing how we grew very fast in the last couple of years. Even if we are not operate in absolutely the same segment, we grow so fast that we can expect that, you know, maybe this year or maybe next year, we will be larger by all possible, you know, parameters.
Okay, understood. Thank you very much.
Any other questions? If there are no more questions, then we will be finished. I remain at your disposal, and thank you for your presence at the conference.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye.
Bye-bye.