Hi, everybody. I always love being a post-lunch session, we'll make sure we bring the energy here. Yeah, my name is Faizan Ghauri. I'm Chief Strategy Officer at NetSol Technologies, and I will, you know, the safe harbor statement you've probably seen many times today. We're NASDAQ-listed. We've been in the U.S. for 40 years. We've been listed on NASDAQ for about 25 years. We are a provider of AI-enabled solutions and services that power OEMs, dealership, and financial institutions to sell, finance, and lease assets. We work with a number of Fortune 500s. We are a global business, about 1,500 employees, 300 plus successful implementations, and specifically in the automotive space, we've done about 100 plus projects. What you will find with our business is this is effectively generational technology.
When a tier one, like a Mercedes-Benz or BMW or Toyota implement our software, they're with us for minimum 10 years, and most of them, they're for 20, 30 years. As an example, Mercedes-Benz is our first customer 30 years ago. They're still our customer after multiple technology upgrades. It's really a low churn business. We're gonna talk a little bit about what the ecosystem looks like and, you know, we'll bring our CFO up in a little bit. He'll talk a little bit more about the financial profile of the business. We have developed the Transcend platform, and what the Transcend platform does, it basically manages the entire life cycle of asset-based financing. Starting with the origination or the credit decision engine, let's say when you go in for a vehicle, right?
It actually manages your risk profile, the loan and rate and terms that the auto finance company actually gives the consumer. Once you've signed the lease, it actually services the entire portfolio. It manages the collections, the remarketing, the customer support related to the servicing of an asset in a captive portfolio. That is effectively the lifeblood of a finance company. They can't operate without our technology. It basically runs their entire operations for them. On top of that, also does a wholesale finance and leasing. When a fleet of vehicles come off the ship and the dealer is buying that fleet, basically handles the whole financial transaction around that.
That's the finance side of our business, which we've been in for 30 years and, you know, across the globe, U.S., Europe, Asia-Pacific. In China, as an example, we have a 75% market share in the Chinese market. We work with not only all the traditional OEMs, we also work with all the EV players like BYD, Geely, GAC, as an example. The technology doesn't just support auto. We also work with a number of different types of assets. We have tractors on the platform. We have solar panels on the platform. We even work with IKEA's bank, Ingka, to basically manage home appliances on the platform. That's been our sort of core business.
We've taken some big bets in the last few years, and the big one being Transcend Retail. Because of our know-how of the complexities of the finance and leasing industry, we've actually taken that know-how to help the consumer and the dealer with creating a Tesla-like experience to actually be able to buy a BMW, one of our customers in the U.S., buy a BMW just sitting on your laptop and, you know, handling the entire transaction there and literally coming into the dealership just to close the deal and pick up your keys. That's our Transcend Retail product. As an example, BMW is rolling us out to all 350 dealers in America. The entire industry is watching that. They call it the Apollo mission of digital retail.
The reason is our technology, because we understand the finance and leasing space, we're able to really manage both sides of the market. The consumer wants an easy-to-use technology that allows them to basically shop like they do on Amazon, and the dealer wants to still stay relevant, which they need to in the U.S. If you know anything about the dealer lobby network and how powerful they are, right? Effectively, Transcend Retail does that. That's rolling out to dealer groups around the country. That's rolling out to more OEMs around the country. you know, we really see that as a big growth driver, particularly in the U.S. This is all backed by our Transcend Marketplace. We are API first, which means that our technology is very similar to Stripe.
You can actually go on the website, learn about what we do there, download our documentation, and actually start building even without having salespeople involved in there. The industry, global, leasing, is about $1.5 trillion in 2024. We expect, last decade, it grew about 63%. The auto finance balances in the U.S. are $1.7 trillion. In the U.S., auto sales, we're seeing about 16.2 million this year. Some growth still there. Moving on just a little bit. We're a global business. Historically, we have been strong in China and APAC generally. About $40 million of our, you know, $70+ million in revenue, comes from APAC today. Europe is a growing business for us. North America is about 18.2% of our revenue.
Our focus geographically is, we're quite mature in, especially in China, as an example. We're putting a lot of emphasis on North America. You know, NetSol is headquartered very close to here in Encino, California. I'm a Los Angeles native. You know, we have our key sales, marketing, and delivery actually happen in Austin, Texas, where I've transplanted myself recently to support the team and our growth in the U.S. I've talked about the Transcend platform. I will just talk a little bit about this little-known term called artificial intelligence that you may have heard. You know, NetSol has been very forward-thinking about AI. We've had an AI practice since 2020. My background is a technologist. I've run venture-backed startups in the past.
We've been very focused on AI. What that looks like for us is, we have our Transcend AI Labs team. We have a head of artificial intelligence, a strong team around AI. They're effectively bringing AI in many of our use cases into our product as well as driving a significant efficiency in the way we code, the way we deliver products, the way we conceive products even. You know, the company has about 800 technical staff. With the advancements that we have in coding today, they're able to get 10x the efficiency they had literally only had access to since December onwards. Things are rapidly moving. It's gonna effectively change our industry. For finance companies, like a GM Financial has 10,000 employees today.
Effectively, our technology can help reduce the operational burden for them, allow them to lower their operating ratios and potentially pass that value back to their customer or be able to, you know, grow their margins from there. Here's some of our key clients. It's not just auto captive. It's trucking companies. It's big banks, finance and leasing companies. I've mentioned some dealership groups, OEMs, BPOs, and insurance companies. The numbers you see there is again, we usually work with them on in various countries. The numbers represent the various countries that we work with them then. All right. I'm going to hand off to our CFO, AB, who's gonna talk you through the financial profile, and then we'll open it up for questions.
Thanks, Faizan. Hi, everyone. I've been with NetSol for about six months now, but I'm really excited to share the transformation journey that we're on. Before I get started about the recurring revenue, how many of you have leased a vehicle before? To think about it, when you go to a car manufacturer or a bank to lease a vehicle, the software that is used by the car manufacturer or their financial services company or the bank to do the end-to-end transaction, that is NetSol. How many of you run your own businesses or are part of a business? Do you have assets in that business? Do you, like, have any equipment in that business? What would be an asset you would have?
All my money.
That's the biggest one. If you have equipment in addition to the, all that money, and we should speak later on, definitely, you could be an investor. If you have equipment in your business, and for some of the large equipment manufacturers, whether those are airplanes, ships, vessels, and if that needs financing, the software the, that is used to do the end-to-end journeys is a NetSol product. As Faizan Ghauri said, we're digitizing retail in the U.S. by making it easier for dealers and for customers also to do the whole lead generation and the whole transaction cycle. To the revenues. We were at $66 million last year. We have guided the market to $73 million-$74 million this year. Almost half of that is recurring SaaS revenue, and this is a strategic priority for us going forward.
It's important to note when we say half is SaaS revenue, what is the nature of our client relationships? On average, our contract term with a client is five years, but they tend to stay with us for more than a decade. In terms of the revenues that we get, when we announce a deal that we have a contracted revenue with a client of, say, $3 million-$4 million, over the course of 10 years, they end up spending about 2.5x-3x because they want changes, they want maintenance, they want more modules implemented.
Our annual revenue growth, while it's growing at double-digit, and that's going to be a strategic priority for us going forward, the recurring revenue is a strong pillar of that, a purely SaaS model, which is around 50% of our total revenue, and that's going to be a priority going forward as well. The balance sheet. I think a few points, and I'm sure some of you would have gone through our 10-Q and our 10-K. I have no long-term debt on my balance sheet. I have a short-term debt of $8 million and current assets of over $20 million. What that provides me is room in terms of funding to grow the business because it's important to note that our ambition is not to be a one-trick pony.
While we have our core business, which is high margin, which is the Transcend platform, think of it like an Oracle or an SAP. Once it goes into, and it's installed at the client, churn is something that doesn't happen, especially with the client being satisfied with us. We continue to grow that with a high margin. We're taking more big bets. Digital retail is a big bet. We see huge opportunities in software for fleet management. Telematics and EV. We see huge opportunities in the insurance space. I think the balance sheet that we have today with strong cash flows, you see the $14.7 million number I did mention in my 10-Q. We're at over $20 million of cash and cash equivalents currently because it was a timing difference.
In terms of the relationships with our clients, we invoice within 30 days, the money comes in within 60. We don't have a long DSO outstanding. That's a key point. I have $40 million of stockholder equity in the books at the moment. And with the positioning I have globally, and I wanna spend a couple of minutes on that, as Farzan alluded to earlier, unlike our competition, we can say that we have done deployments across North America, Europe, and APAC. If you look at the 10-Q, all of the three segments at the moment are profitable. What does that mean? That means that if we have a headwind, a macroeconomic headwind in one market, we have the opportunity to pivot to another market, given the fact that we already have an established base there. That gives us flexibility.
If we see tailwinds in China, in the U.S., we can double down given the fact that we have blue-chip customers here. The same with Europe and APAC. That's number one. The second aspect, I think, which is linked to the strength of the balance sheet is the growing market that we're in. If the market is doing well, do you think the demand for new cars and new equipment will go up? What do you think? If the market is doing well, will people wanna buy, lease new equipment? Yeah. What if the market is not doing well? Do you think the demand for used equipment and used cars will go up? Yes. In any case, in terms of a macroeconomic headwind or tailwind, you still need the technology and the platforms to lease.
The way our contracts are structured is we have floor pricing that protects us from a downside, but gives us volumes and upside in case of more transactions going through our platform. This is not a quarter-by-quarter journey, but as the markets like to look at every quarter, it's important for me to mention that we're on this trend line where the double-digit growth is no longer a myth. We see this as something that we're committed to. We also mean when we say that we're going to be improving our margins and our EBITDA and growing it greater than our revenue growth. We see U.S. as a fantastic market. We have a client, I think I can mention BMW, it's already announced on digital retail, a big bet that we introduced just a year or two ago.
The fact that we are global in nature and local in the way we implement gives us an advantage. Over the last six months, some of you would have been following our stock. We were trading at about 2.7- 2.8 in November. We're over $4 now. We will continue to give the market more visibility on the quality of our earnings and revenue. Our ambition is, and we're gonna continue to focus and work hard on this, that not only will we have organic growth coming from our cash cow, we will also look at inorganic opportunities now. That means JVs, acquisitions, partnerships in the U.S., in Europe, in APAC, that can fuel the next wave of our growth journey. I think I've covered this. You wanna take the summary, Farzan, or should I?
Go for it.
Just to summarize, you know, what are the key highlights? I know there's been a lot of information. I just wanna take a step back as well is what is it that we do, right? We are a technology provider, essentially a fintech technology provider in the SaaS space that allows for leasing, lending of all kinds of assets. We have market leadership in China. We have strong positions and growing positions in the USA and APAC. In terms of vehicles, we have a very well-known brand in terms of leasing. That's number one. Number two, we're taking big bets and not being a one-trick pony.
We took a big bet of digital retail, making the journey simpler for consumers in America to find a car, to actually go to the dealer and buy a car, and making it simpler for dealers rather than having to look at multiple screens, have APIs connecting to a bank, have APIs connecting to a CRM, having a one-stop shop that helps them solve problems. Third point I wanna make is our global reach and the fact that I wouldn't say we're safe from headwinds, but we have a lot of optionality given we're in Europe, we're in APAC, we're in North America, and my cost structure is mostly discretionary within our control. Our cost structure is our people, it's marketing, and it's travel. I'm not bogged down that if I have a headwind in a certain market, that I cannot pivot accordingly.
My cost structure is variable. The churn is very low because these are multi-year contracts, and you cannot just replace an ERP solution overnight. If a client decides to replace us today, it takes them 18-24 months. That's not the way we operate with clients. We wanna get more of their business given the fact that we deal with them. Our core platform Transcend Finance, we're going to continue to scale that and take a leadership position when it comes to our key markets. Investing in innovation and AI is a big bet that we're taking. We're not a services company where a client has a very low switching cost and can just generate this product on ourselves. That is not what we do. Our product is more evolved. It's niche. Let's take the example of the U.S.
Just in the U.S., in 50 states, you have different tax rates and different tax codes, and there are different sales processes, and that's where our experience over 30 years is helping. We're aiming for a higher recurring revenue mix, improved margins, and of course, at the same time, we look to continue to grow our market shares as we become a platform player in the mobility and the SaaS space. I'll stop here. We've got about 6 minutes, so happy to take questions. Why don't you, Faizan, join, and Eric, why don't if you want to join as well, please.
We actually just leased a car a couple weeks ago. We used, Cartelligent?
Sorry. Can you say that again please?
We used the service Cartelligent. Is that?
Not familiar with them. Typically, we work with the captive arm of the automotive company. There'll be a BMW, there'll be a BMW Financial Services.
Yeah
which is effectively an asset bank. You know, they distribute through the dealer network. It sounds like maybe you used an online platform potentially.
It was a service they gave. We told them the original car we want.
Yeah.
They found it and financed it.
Yeah. Just, Yeah, there's, if you look at the industry, right, there's this, like, natural tension. There's four components in the industry. There's the customer, there's the dealer, there's the OEM, and there's the finance company, right? The finance company wants to manage its risks and its net interest margin, right? And select usually very high quality credit profiles, right? The dealer wants to sell as many vehicles as possible, right? The customer wants to get the best deal, and the OEM also wants to sell as many vehicles as possible. There's, like, a natural tension, and what happens in some dealerships is, or OEMs, is they have their captive finance, which is their priority dealership. Or sorry, priority finance company. If they can't do the deal, then there's all these other lenders.
There's credit unions, there's banks, and probably a platform like Cartelligent. Yeah.
All right.
Yeah, you mentioned 100%, 102% year-over-year revenue growth in North America. Just a little bit curious if that's driven by sort of one or two bigger contracts, or if it's broader adoption across many partners?
Yeah. It's a result of the big bet that AB was talking about, right? To move from not only Transcend Finance into digital retail, the validation came. Originally, we worked with MINI USA, which is BMW's sister brand. We did well with little sister, we got big sister, BMW, and that's where our revenue's doubled. As I mentioned, we beat on that deal, we went up against about 15 different companies. It came down to us and Tekion, which is a venture-backed company, about a $4 billion valuation, started by Elon's former CIO, we beat them to win the deal because of our finance and leasing background. As we scale BMW, you're gonna see a bigger component of the revenue coming in. We kinda priced aggressively there.
Now that we got into that challenger market pricing, we're gonna sell to Mercedes-Benz for four times more than we did there.
Can I just.
Yeah
Just to add. Strategically, it's not the best strategy to always go after more customers. In many cases, for us, B2B2C is best. Why? For example, BMW, in terms of the big bet digital retail aspect, it controls a lot of the dealer groups and, and the dealer network. You can get access to a much larger group with a lower acquisition cost. When we work with a bank, for example, it's not just automotives. It's very important to note we finance assets globally as well. Ikano, the IKEA bank, works with us. We have agreements with Chase Bank. We have agreements with BMO. Yeah, many more names.
When we get access to, say, a Toyota in one market, it opens up the door for us to serve Toyota in multiple markets because they want that software there. That's what's happened with Daimler. We've been with Daimler on the core automotive side, and then the whole trucking portfolio opened up for us. That allows us to scale, and that's our ambition, at a higher margin. Otherwise, when you're scaling and just going after individual customer acquisition, the cost of acquisition is going to be high, the cost of conversion is going to be high, and I think our platform is at a place now where we can get synergies from a B2B approach. Of course, new logos help, but we're looking at those opportunities very carefully. Very good. I hope we didn't bore you guys with that. Please.
Do you model rates of growth versus the number of competitors?
I think while the finance and the leasing market is a $1 trillion market, and we see CAGR growth over double digits in it, in transparency, the sales cycles are long, right? I wouldn't say two years. I know it's been quoted sometimes, but I would say that it would take one year in terms of a sales cycle for the full platform deal. But the competition, what we look at in terms of our core business, we've got four or five competitors. Some of those, they have a market cap exceeding $1 billion now. It's no secret. Alfa Financial Software, the same business model. We have FIS. What we like to say is that we're more nimble, and we have a global presence.
If you look at some of those players, they operate in one or two of the markets or segments that we mentioned, but not all three. Not North America, Europe, and a very strong position that we have in China. I think that helps. There are very few of our competitors who are, I think none actually, who are on NASDAQ, to be honest. I think that we're also hoping that that will add further credibility and transparency in terms of how we're reporting and our compliance and as we grow. Safe to say that we will continue to aim for double-digit growth. Low single-digit days are gone.
It looks like we have eight seconds, so if anyone wants a yes/no answer, we can give that. All right.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Thank you.