Good afternoon and welcome to the Risk Intelligence Q1 2025 Earnings Call. Today's call will be presented by the CEO and CFO of Risk Intelligence. We will begin with a presentation followed by a Q&A session. During the Q&A, the CEO and CFO will address both pre-submitted questions and those received live during the call. If you would like to submit a question, the Q&A remains open throughout the presentation. With that, I will now hand over the call to Risk Intelligence to begin the presentation. Jens and Hans, your lines are now open.
Thank you very much, Anders, and it's a pleasure to be with you all here today to present the main findings from our Q1 report and to answer some of the questions that have been submitted. We'll start with the usual text. The agenda for today is Q1 main activities and then Q1 report highlights by Jens, something on the 2025 outlook, and then the Q&A session. First of all, the main activities during Q1 have been work on refining and further developing all five business segments, as I think I mentioned previously and also in the text. These segments are already existing, and there's already business in these segments. Some of them have been there for many years, but now they are being kind of divided into its own segment, and I'll get back to that a bit later.
We had a good renewal process with no-turn and with upsell in Q1. We had three new clients for the maritime system of the Risk Intelligence system. We had a lower activity level on advisory services, which was expected, and also as per our budget because of the Red Sea in Q1 last year. We expect that when this situation will change the other way in the Red Sea, we will get a quarter or at least a couple of months with a lot of activity again. The thing is that at the time Q1 last year, everybody was looking into risk assessments for the Red Sea because they wanted to make sure that they would go around the Cape, so going south of Africa. Obviously, when the situation changes at some point, then everyone will secure various risk assessments for entering transit through the Red Sea again.
From March, we have also started that development process of the commercial department. We'll get back to that. With that, I'll hand over to Jens.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for listening in. We'll kind of boil down the first 20 pages of our quarterly report into a few slides. Main four highlights are our recognized revenue increase by 11% compared to the first quarter of 2024, cost decreased by eight percent. I'll get back to that, and I think Hans will as well. Our total ARR grew by 18%. For the first time, our Q1 actually gave a positive EBITDA for the first time, at least as a listed company since 2018. We think that's kind of a milestone in our strategy process, our growth process. In terms of metrics, again, total ARR growth of 18%, system ARR growth 17%, our NRR 120%, which is the upsell for the or selling more for the clients we had at the same time last year.
You can see on the right side of the page, the kind of trend in our ARR growth both in quarter to quarter and quarters compared. That was quickly done. Maybe too quickly, but again, we'll come back to many of the numbers, actually.
Yeah. The outlook for 2025 is as it is. We will derive growth from all five business segments. We'll get back to that later. We have the guidance of an ARR growth between 15%-30%, and then positive EBITDA around zero in net result and net cash flow, which is positive. That takes us to the questions in the Q&A session. We will divide them into three areas: financial result, sales and growth, and geopolitical situation. Over to you, Anders.
Thank you for that. Let's start with the category within financial results. The first question here is, you maintain your guidance of a net result of zero for 2025. That seems very ambitious. Explain why you still believe it is realistic.
As I put in the text in the Q4 end of the year report and also in the annual report, the spread between growth in revenue versus the growth in costs is the most important indicator. We experienced 23% in spread in 2024, where we had 30% growth in revenue and seven percent growth in costs. In Q1, we had 19%. This means that inevitably, in due time, this will result in a positive net result. With recognized revenue, where you have recurring revenue divided over a license period and some of the major advisory service projects, timing is of essence when it comes to new sales. Our assessment is that we will reach our budget and subsequently a result as per the guidance.
On your homepage, it is mentioned that each new license improves future cash flow with an average recurring revenue value of about DKK 1.1 million. However, in your report, you give an APU of DKK 148,000. Does that mean that the value mentioned on the homepage is an attempt to put a value on an extra ARR of DKK 148,000, e.g., discounted future cash flow in the lifetime of a customer?
Yeah. First of all, the APU report in the Q1 report was DKK 165,000. That is the average revenue per unit or client. The lifetime value based on license average lifetime, 2024 APU, and license-based price increases was DKK 1.538 million. We have corrected since we got the question, the LTV on the webpage from DKK 1.1 million- DKK 1.5 million. The lifetime value is also described on page seven or is depicted on page seven in the report.
That takes us to the next category, sales and growth. The question here is, during the transition, your CCO position and with a new profile in charge, it would be interesting to hear more about scaling up your market activity and building of pipeline, not only to meet the targets, but also to provide a bigger spread of risk when key accounts drop out or will be delayed with their renewals. Could you elaborate a bit here?
Yeah, I have, since the beginning of March, launched a process of reorganizing and optimizing the whole commercial department to change the way that we do communication, marketing, lead generation, and ultimately how we grow the pipeline, as well as how we manage client relationships over the client lifetime, what we call from cradle to grave, even if that's a little bit a negative way to put it. Of course, we do have clients that churn, all merged by each other and similar. Part of that process is to improve how we communicate with our clients and during their renewals. This should all lead to timely renewals and upsell and ultimately even higher client satisfaction. It is not that we actually do not manage our renewals now. We just need to get better at it, and we need to increase the upsell and the client satisfaction.
That is actually the ultimate goals. That will obviously impact on growth as well. The spread of risk comes from the business segmentation strategy, and we'll come to that in a moment.
The next question, from your Q1 comments, we can read that during 2025, we are working on further developing and implementing the new commercial strategy with well-defined business segmentation of commercial maritime, energy, insurance, government and defense, and land-based logistics, which will drive growth, new clients, and client satisfaction during 2025 and onwards. Will this not lead to higher OpEx, et cetera, not the least from scaling up the obvious and necessary market activities, building a broader and bigger pipeline?
We already have a pipeline for all five segments, which has been part of the development. This pipeline has been developed, you can say, not from a strategic point of view, so not from a sales lead generation strategy. They have just been created over time. Now we are developing each business segment, and the work is held with the current staff and current budgets, meaning that it will not impact on OpEx, at least in the short to medium term. It is a focus exercise in communicating to each business segment's own language with an emphasis on their exact challenges, which are very different, obviously, as you can see from the areas above, and how we can assist them to further grow our pipeline.
The price sensitivity, decision-making level that we are addressing and budgets, as well as APU for the system, is quite significantly different from segment to segment. We will also drive a targeted approach to each segment. Down the road, we will increase the commercial department with more people as we aim to have more power on the sales side for the relevant segments, not necessarily for all five segments, but for those.
I think we shortly lost connection there. Hans, can you just repeat the last thing that you said?
Yeah. What I said is that while I started saying that we won't have higher OpEx, then we will over time because we are looking to increase the commercial department with more people as we will aim to have more power on the sales side for relevant segments.
That leads us to the next question. After successfully increasing your pricing structure leading to zero or very little churn, do you now see any other relevant optimization of your current activities chasing profitability, better segmentation/pricing on sales activities and/or adding pricing to relevant features previously handed out as free services, et cetera?
First of all, we have very few free services. We do have some white papers, and we do have some briefings that we do for free to clients and other interested parties. That is part of the lead, the sales lead generation process, where we gain contacts in that respect. The segmentation will ultimately lead to more specialized products that are still provided on the same platform, which means that it will have the same scalability. Ultimately, while you can say that Land Risk Logistics is already a product for its own segment and has very little to do with the others, there will be more tailored versions of the Risk Intelligence system for the other different segments over time. The relevance to the end user and thereby the client will increase.
Instead of having a general product, which is mainly made for maritime, you can say segments-wise as the commercial maritime, we will have a version for each going forward. 80%-90% will be the same, and thereby we are securing the scalability. This will, in combination with the above-mentioned different profiles, lead to price differentiation as well. As I mentioned before, there is a different price sensitivity, different budget levels, and different decision-making levels in the different segments. One example is the higher demand for API integration, so integration of our data into client platforms instead of the web-based solution, and that is primarily large commercial organizations and not least government organizations. This comes at a higher price. That is one of them.
We move on to the last category, geopolitical situation. The first question here is, do you see any impact of the uncertainty caused by the trade war initiated by the Trump administration, e.g., companies withholding their investments until they have more clarity?
Yes and no. It is clear that investments connected to the dollar, the U.S. dollar, and the oil price, such as obviously oil and gas, are impacted in the short to medium run. Because when the oil price goes down to $60, then investments almost end. If at the same time the dollar goes down as it has, then you have like a double situation that impacts investment models. While investments in other parts of our business segments seem to continue, importantly, we have seen no immediate impact on operations in energy or commercial maritime segments. This is where our core product, the Risk Intelligence system, is used.
When we do work on investment projects, so future projects, that is mainly in advisory service, or it is in advisory service where we do risk assessments for future infrastructure projects or oil and gas projects or offshore wind parks or similar. The system is for operations. That is for the already existing operations for the various segments. When it comes to government and defense segment, obviously, as everybody knows, we see a very large increase in investments in all areas. They cannot have enough production facilities. They cannot have enough products. Everyone is kind of almost fully up in the order books in the defense industry.
That leads us to the last question. Despite popular focus on the Trump factor across much of the worldwide investment spectrum, please also address and compare the European area security through planning and development factors, public and/or private, related in real commitment terms that you believe impact on or influence Risk Intelligence own P&S range present or future.
Yeah. The main impact from the public side would be on defense and on infrastructure projects. In terms of defense, we already experienced an increase in demand from both the public side and the defense industry side. The same applies to infrastructure projects where we are discussing and analyzing the military security implications of these projects, similar to some of the reports that we did last year that are actually public. As an example, in Finland yesterday, we gave a briefing to a naval shipbuilding company, and today we are providing a presentation on the military security implications of a large infrastructure project. In addition, we are doing more work on the protection of critical maritime infrastructure, which is relevant both to the energy as well as the government defense business segments.
That was all the questions, so that finalizes the Q&A. Before we end the webcast, I will just hand over the word for you for your final remarks.
Yeah, first of all, thank you for listening in, and thank you for some really good questions. It is sometimes questions like these that get you to think about how you address these questions in communication. It is also a learning process and very helpful for us. Thank you very much for joining in today. Over to you, Jens.
Yeah, I can just say the same and thank you in my own words. Thank you.