Danish Risk Intelligence just published a report for the first quarter of 2023. With me to comment, I have its CEO, Hans Tino Hansen. Welcome back, Hans.
Thank you very much. Good to be back with you today.
We'll head straight into the report. Reported net sales grew by 17%, landing at DKK 5.1 million for the first quarter of 2023, with invoiced net sales increasing by 43%. Net retention rate, 105%, and ARR, annual recurring revenue, now DKK 17.1 million. How do you view these numbers?
In general, they are satisfactory. I'm pleased with the 17% growth in revenue, and in particular, with the 43% growth in invoiced revenue, as well as the 105% net retention rate because that means that we sell more to our existing clients than we did last year.
Indeed. Could you tell me a little bit about the differences between invoiced net sales and normal net sales?
The normal reported net sales is the figure that comes from the changed revenue recognition that we introduced for, from 2022. That means that costs remain the same in every quarter, but revenue is carried forward and distributed during the license period when it comes to recurring revenue. It means that in a given quarter, the revenue, the reported revenue mainly comes from earlier quarters. Some remains in the same quarter, and the majority is distributed into future quarters, so along the length of the license period.
Therefore, growth is only recognized with a time lag. Obviously, this means nothing in terms of liquidity, where it's the invoiced figure that matters. The invoice figure's actually what we invoice compared to what we invoiced last year, and there you can see that the growth is much bigger.
How far back can revenue lag?
In theory, if you have the, in January, you can go 11 months back.
It's normally a 12-month period, then distributed into different quarters.
While net sales grew by 17%, costs increased by 19%, you write in the report. Could you elaborate a little bit on what costs that did increase during the quarter and whether or not this outcome was expected?
Yeah. The costs reported here are all the costs that are included in the EBITDA, so all the operating costs. While the costs are 19% above first quarter 2022, they are actually 8% down compared to fourth quarter 2022, so the most recent quarter. The costs are slightly higher than expected, as sales were also slightly higher than expected, actually, EBITDA was on par with our expectation.
If we look to your cashflow statements, there's a lot of, there's a lot happening in terms of investments. You've taken in a lot of capital during the quarter to reduce your debt. What sort of effect can we expect this to have on your financial costs, moving forward?
Yeah. Going forward, the financial costs are reduced, markedly. Even those that, those loans or credit facilities that we have that are provided by financial institutions, they have actually increasing interest rates. We are overall going in the right direction.
I also want to talk about DHL, one of your newer clients here, signed during the, during end of March. 29th of March you announced them as your client. Do we see revenues from that onboarding already in the quarter, or is that a revenue that will be coming in the next one?
As per the revenue recognition, revenue will be included from second quarter and onwards.
What of your continued work with DHL? Can we expect some upsell from that customer potentially?
We are positive to see a rollout of the products within DHL, but we cannot actually comment on the extent or the timing of that.
I see. Well, Hans Tino Hansen, thank you very much for answering my questions.
Thank you very much for being here today.