Operator
Welcome to this LiveQ with Formpipe. I'm joined today by CEO Magnus Svenningson and later also CFO Sophie Reinius.
I will be back later for the Q&A session, and you can already now post your questions below the stream. Now it's time for you, Magnus.
Magnus Svenningson
Thank you very much, and as always, a great pleasure to be here. Today is the first time we present Lasernet Group.
As we are working with our divestment of Public and are now coming closer to closing. We have named this quarterly report Continued Margin Improvement and Divestment.
Before going into the Lasernet numbers, which of course are very different from the Formpipe numbers, I just want to mention that Formpipe as a group came in on 143 million SEK in revenues, and comparing that to the 130 we had last year. Then we had 28 million in EBIT compared to 16 million last year, which leaves us at that margin at 19.6%, which is very close to our EBIT goal of 20%.
This is to our team back home that you have worked very hard and good this quarter. We are seeing the margin improvement we want to see.
Now, coming to Lasernet, as I said, this are now Lasernet Group that we will call ourselves. We will change name by the Annual General Meeting in April formally, but from now on, it's Lasernet Group.
Good news here is that the net sales came in on 61 million SEK compared to 56 last year. There we have a bit of a down headwind from the currency effect.
Organically, we had a growth of 13% approximately, which is a good number. With Lasernet now, we also increase our recurring revenues to 91% of the net revenue.
Which we are very pleased with of course, as well. Then our ACV, we will talk a little bit more about that, it's 6 million SEK.
It's good. I think we can do more there going forward, but it is really a good number.
We have some churns that Sophie also will talk about a little bit go forward. Then the really good thing here is the EBIT improvement that we have been talking about the last quarters, that we are going to improve the EBIT, and now you can see that for yourself in the report.
Very pleased with how we and the team has looked after our costs. Very, very good.
A little bit highlighting then the ACV. We have done seven new deals in Dynamics.
As Dynamics has been delivering very well all through the years. All the three last quarters has been very good and continue to be good, so that's very, very good news.
Really, really good is also that Temenos and the bank and finance side of our business has started to generate business, and those are a little bit bigger in terms of order value. They make an impact to the ACV immediately as they get going.
Very very pleased to see that that part of our business is now starting to move again. Also the margin improvement, that we are able to get revenues in yet keeping track of our costs.
Then that we meet one of the most important closing criterias, and that is moving 90% of our customers over to the new entity that will be transferred to STG at closing. That is a lot of hard work behind that to get there.
Just shortly about the transaction now. At closing, we will receive 775 million SEK, and then there is a loan note of 50 million running on two years, and then there is an additional 25 million after a few years when STG has got the development of their investment that they want.
That is sort of in short the transaction, a little repetition from previous presentations. I was thinking that I should explain a little bit today for some of you who hasn't followed Lasernet in that much detail.
I planned to talk a little bit about the Lasernet business in itself. We are around 100 employees today.
We have a revenue of approximately 25 million euros. We were founded in 1989, we've been around for quite some time with our softwares.
That is very important, because this is a mission-critical software we are doing. That is if our software doesn't work, then the supply chain stops and then the invoices doesn't go out.
This really has to be a well-proven and a trustworthy software, which we have and have had the chance to develop over these years and build competence around. Then we are vertical agnostic or horizontal.
That means we serve basically all verticals. A few examples.
We have a partner in the US called XAPT that serves Caterpillar. They do the excavators.
I've been talking about those in some of the previous reports. When Caterpillar supply their field service, for example, with spare parts, etc., then that is a very complicated value chain or logistic operation.
Then you need to have very accurate and dynamic documents to control what kind of spare part. They have millions.
Where does it go? Where do you send the invoice?
Where do you send the manual? XAPT has built around Dynamics a ERP system that supports that flow, and in that flow, we are very important components to support the document handling.
Another example that I like to talk about is Anaxco. It's a German partner.
They serve small, mid-sized logistics companies in Germany. You can just imagine how many documents you need to prepare in order to carry goods over Europe with dangerous goods, etc.
Then again, Anaxco has done a Dynamics tweak that supports that flow, and we are a vital part of that. That was two two very different examples of verticals where we're active.
Then in the CEO letter, I mention also Dallas Cowboys, which is the American football, which is the third vertical. Of course, also the bank and finance business of our side, which is sort of similar, very very similar product, yet another application where we serve the need to distribute, for example, account statements and other type of documents that then need to go out for regulatory purpose.
Complicated value chain or regulated markets, that's where our application is right. Then we have offices in a number of countries: Sweden, Denmark, UK, Americas of course, Germany, and France.
Something like 1,300 paying customers out in the world, and then 50 around 50 partners, which then, as I just explained, are very important to take us to certain geographies, but also to truly understand the verticals where we are active. This is also very important for us to have a scalable business model, because as soon as you have trained the partner, they are driving parts of our sales.
Very scalable business model going forward. If we look at this a little bit more technically, you can say that we have an application which is very, very API-driven.
That means it integrates with other sources of information, be it Salesforce, be it some sort of engineering tool, be it whatever you have in your enterprise architecture. Then bringing that data so that a human being or a machine can read it, which is of course very important to support the supply chains out there, and then distributing these documents in various forms.
That makes our applications very agnostic to ERP systems and other systems. However, the ERP systems are very important for our business model, because that's how we enter the enterprise.
We get into the enterprise through the ERP system. That is a key thing, because that is a large investment, as I said.
We build up partners, we train them, and then of course we see sales coming in. The ERP systems is a way in.
However, we are agnostic in terms of how our application works. Then just looking a little bit at our customer list, which is again underpinning the fact that we are very very horizontal.
We have IKEA there, we have Caterpillar as I mentioned, we have Fila, which is fashion goods, and we have Continental, which is in the automotive sector, and then Santander Bank and DNB, various banks that are using us as well. This was a short introduction to this very interesting company.
There are some other aspects of this, which is around our business model, how we grow our ARR year after year. That's why I hand over to you, Sophie, to talk a little bit more about our new set of figures, but with the same quality as they have always been with ARR, etc.
Sophie Reinius
Thank you, Magnus. Hello, everyone.
My name is Sophie Reinius, and then I'm the CFO for Formpipe. I just want to to highlight a little bit that now you are of course looking at numbers that you might not recognize before.
We have restated our interim reporting to comply with IFRS 5, and that means that Public, including the product Platina Q, are treated as business under divestment. We have excluded Public and Platina Q for for most of the numbers presented in the interim report.
As the numbers you are seeing here, that means then that these numbers are then only constituting of Lasernet together with our supporting functions or group functions. This is then the the new remaining business then that we will rename to Lasernet Group.
Hopefully, this will make sense to you all. If we start then on the top hand side Good.
I'm seeing some of these are not Okay, I will click through all of these. If we start then on the top hand side, it's great to see the SaaS revenue growing year-over-year with 19%.
If we look at delivery, which used to be an important factor when we had Formpipe and the Public business included, in Lasernet, we still have delivery. It's done mainly through subcontractors, we do see some variation quarter-by-quarter.
On the other hand, we're also then having higher cost for this as part of of this. That's included in sales expenses.
Even though a delivery number is important to make sure that we can deliver and cater to our customers, it's not an important factor for us in terms of the P&L, because if we do have an increase in delivery revenue, we will also have an increase in our sales expenses. I just want to to highlight that so that it's clear for everyone going forward.
Then if we look at net sales, then not the total income, but net sales, we are up 9%, and then as we mention also in the report, excluding FX, that actually is then a 13% for that organic growth, which is of course also nice to see. Then moving a little bit on the cost perspective, as I mentioned, sales expenses naturally then increases as we both have higher delivery revenue, but then also, of course, related to the fact that we are selling more.
We also have our partner margins included in our sales expenses. Then we have other costs as well.
As Magnus mentioned, it's great to see that the margin improvements are are having an effect. The work that we've been doing throughout the year is becoming more and more visible.
We also then want to highlight then that we have a great EBITDA of 21% compared then to 8% last year. That actually shows both the continuous growth in top line, but also then the margin improvements that we have worked on throughout the years or throughout the year.
We do have one-offs of approximately 4 million SEK, which is related to the upcoming divestment of Public. That means we have then an adjusted EBITDA of roughly 8 million SEK compared to minus 0.5 million SEK last year.
Then moving to the next slide, I want to just talk a little bit then about the Lasernet recurring revenue. We are now at 215 million SEK this on a rolling 12 months basis.
We have roughly 89% of net sales, not total income, but of net sales, and also a 12% year-over-year growth from a rolling 12 months perspective. I also want to highlight that the CAGR for the past 10 years in Lasernet has been over 21%.
It really shows the the strong and stable growth journey we've been on in terms of recurring revenue for the Lasernet business. In the past two year, it has been 13%.
I also want to highlight then that Lasernet Group as a stand-alone business, including then supporting functions, that we are now covering more than 109% of our fixed operating costs. That means we have a good basis for our continuous growth journey going forward.
I'm sure there will be lots of questions maybe going forward about our numbers, and I will be happy to present those going forward. With that, I hand it over to me again, because I have another slide, which is then the ACV for Lasernet.
We have a negative FX effect of 3 million SEK, similar to last year, but it's also been, strong headwinds that Magnus mentioned all throughout the year and again also then in in Q3. We had a net ACV of plus 6, similar to to last year, with an increase in SaaS of 8 million SEK and a reduction of 2 million in support and maintenance.
This reduction in support and maintenance, one of the main churns there is actually a customer called Skellefteå Kraft. It's it's not our own product, we were actually reselling eDocs by OpenText to Skellefteå Kraft and acting as as an intermediary there.
We had a an agreement of 1.2 million that churned, but we also had selling costs of about 900, so that means we're losing a margin which was roughly 26%. From an ACV perspective, the 1.2 million is of course large, but from an overall P&L perspective, it's it doesn't have that much of an effect.
We will come back to more information about these, other revenue streams that we have. Most of our ACV is coming from our core businesses and our core products.
I've mentioned before, last year we had the churn of Platina Life Science. There are some products that aren't key for us that we still have a little bit of ACV and revenue, but it's a very small portion of our total ACV.
That means then ending Q3, we had an outgoing ARR of 220 million SEK for the Lasernet Group, which is then a 7% increase compared to last year. That's despite then the negative headwinds of FX that we are having.
With that, I'm handing it over back to you, Magnus.
Magnus Svenningson
Thank you very much, Sophie. I'm just about to sum up this, because I spoke quite a bit about Lasernet and the platform we have and the role it plays in any company's information ecosystem.
Key takeaways is it's a very interesting platform that has room in all enterprises. It's also very interesting financial characteristics with a scalable business model and the ARR that we have been building for quite some time.
If anyone wants to look at where we going, it's looking at the ARR. We are aiming to continue this profitable growth journey going forward.
Highlighting the divestment of Public as well, that we aim to close 1st of December. Also the continued margin improvement, that we have done a very good job there and will continue to do so.
Now going forward, very strong focus on Lasernet and building from this very good foundation that we talked about today financially, as well as technically and commercially with the business model. That's where we will focus now.
With this little summary, I want to say thank you to you who have listened in, of course, but also to our team in Sweden, Denmark, UK, US, France, Denmark, Germany for a really good work and this last quarter, and to all our colleagues in Public, I also wish you the best of luck. It's been great working with you, and you will have a great time with STG.
Thank you very much.
Moderator
Let's start with some questions. We have quite a lot of questions from the audience, actually.
The first one is about the Capital Markets Day, which was planned for November, but that didn't happen apparently. Why was that, and do you have any new date for us to announce?
Magnus Svenningson
Yes. We need to close the transaction first.
Then we are a little bit limited in terms of our silent periods. Given that, we now aim to have our Q4 20th of February, and shortly thereafter, most likely beginning of March, we plan for the Capital Markets Day.
That is sort of We will come back when we have the date. Yeah.
Moderator
Great. What can we expect from the Capital Markets Day?
An extension of the ARR growth. No, jokes aside, of course talking about the payment we have received from Public, what we will do with that.
Also our plan for future expansion: where will we grow, how will we grow? Of course, we have touched on this, we are very good and established in the Dynamics ecosystem.
It's the fastest growing ERP system, so that is a very qualified guess that we will do more of the things we are good at, but we will talk more about that. We will also talk a bit more about the longer perspective.
There are areas, as I explained today, where our platform is sort of useful for any corporation. Now, figuring out how you get into any corporation and where we have the blue oceans, where our offering is competitive compared to, for example, OpenText and these large dragons, that will require some more time.
We will elaborate those kind of questions, and then, of course, financial targets for the near and a little bit longer future, of course, as well. I see.
Something to look forward to. Also, a question about generative AI.
How do you see generative AI interacting with output management? Can AI fully replicate Lasernet templates and workflow precision in regulated markets such as banking?
Why or why not? That's a very good question, and we see generative AI as a very good complement to the Lasernet product.
That is making the Lasernet product easier to use and to create these templates. We see that it will make our software easier to consume in the organization where it lands.
Okay. You think it's an opportunity rather than a threat?
Magnus Svenningson
We see it as an opportunity,
Moderator
absolutely. Okay.
No new players so far, like AI-native coming and taking some market share? You don't see any signs of that?
Magnus Svenningson
No, we don't see any signs of that yet. Of course, one should always be on the look for that, absolutely.
It's really amazing to see what these tools can do. One must not forget also that the experience that is being built up over a long period of time.
I see a complement where a solid platform is being easier to consume with generative AI as a good offering that we have. I see.
What's the income split between the different ERP systems, like Temenos, Dynamics, IFS, etc.? I think we said that in the sort of 60/40 to Dynamics, yeah.
Then we have also other a little bit in other ecosystems, but there, we are opportunistic. We put our primary focus on Dynamics, and then we also focus on Temenos.
Still were opportunistic in the other areas, very small levels there.
Moderator
That's clear. What has the conversion rate been like for the freemium concept in Lasernet?
How many customers convert from the freemium model to a payment model?
Magnus Svenningson
That is a very good question. I can't answer it properly but I'm very curious on it.
What we hear and especially when we talk to our partners is that it is especially our partners that find it useful. When they do an implementation, then they say, "Try this as well."
They see it as a good leverage to a coming sell. That is sort of what we see right now.
Sorry, no data on that yet. Perhaps at the Capital Markets Day?
Maybe, maybe. Good segue there.
Good idea. We'll dig into the numbers.
Moderator
What's the churn rate and net revenue retention in Lasernet? You don't disclose any exact numbers, I don't expect you to do that here either, but could you give some?
Sophie Reinius
I think we will come back to that at the Capital Markets Day.
Moderator
I see. Great.
The strategy of significant investment in other ERP ecosystems mentioned last webcast seems to be altered to a clear focus mainly on Dynamics. Is that a right interpretation?
Magnus Svenningson
Yes. Near term, absolutely double down on Dynamics and what we know.
Of course, going forward, there are very interesting opportunities outside Dynamics as well. That must not be forgotten, but right now in the near term, 2026, 2027, double down on Dynamics and the ecosystems where we sort of know how they work, we are well-established, etc.
Okay. Of course, taking care of the very fine business we have in the Temenos ecosystems as well, of course, naturally, but sort of doing what we know well.
We start there.
Moderator
Sounds reasonable.
Magnus Svenningson
Again, also coming back to it, because we spoke about sort of a year ago we won a deal through IFS, which is extremely interesting and that client Munter really saw a need for us. There is something there, but again, taking the investment to go all into that and penetrating that kind of ecosystem, again, we are parking that for a while focusing on where we have good competence and infrastructure.
Moderator
Sounds reasonable. Another question here.
Will the other segment, and that's basically the group common costs, be able to scale down given the divestment, and by how much? Do you reckon?
Sophie Reinius
That is of course a good question. Yes, we are of course, as always, when we talk about margin improvements, we're talking margin improvements in the Lasernet former business area, as well as in the supporting functions, absolutely.
We're not mentioning a number yet, but that is efforts that are being done, as always. Of course, it means supporting function as a whole, if we're catering to a business that's half the size compared to before, of course there's room for improvements, definitely.
Numbers, we will not mention at this point. I see.
Magnus Svenningson
Just also adding to that topic, we are now splitting the businesses into two pieces. Of course, we want to see that they work stand-alone.
The joint entity was more complicated than Lasernet alone. Going forward a few quarters, of course we will see more clearly where we can simplify things and thereby calming down in costs.
That's absolutely focus. Yeah.
Moderator
Okay. Great.
We also got a question about what you will do with the proceeds from the divestment. I think you answered that already.
We will get more info at the Capital Markets Day, right?
Magnus Svenningson
Yes.
Moderator
What other initiatives do you have to expand your partner network? What is the timeline and cost to onboard a new partner?
Magnus Svenningson
I don't think we have any really solid data that detailed. When it comes to continued expansion, yes, attracting more partners, important; being more active in the ecosystem towards the partners, but also towards the end user, investing in the go-to-market, absolutely a priority the coming year.
Really making sure that we facilitate for our partners to do business. For example, this Essentials program is one piece of that.
Then as well, attracting more partners also important. Again, we shall be much more present in the ecosystem and active in the ecosystem going forward.
Moderator
Okay. We touched upon this before this presentation when we was talking that perhaps it's even more important to strengthen the partners you already have than finding new ones.
Yeah. Could you elaborate on that perhaps?
Magnus Svenningson
Absolutely. We won, for example, Alysea, which is a large partner.
Making sure that everyone in that organization know about us, that we're in all of their deals, that we come in early to the deals, but also that we bring something to the table in terms of leads, etc., nurturing that and building that cooperation is absolutely very important. We have our large partner tabella that we have been working with for a long time.
Deepening those type of corporations with joint marketing and joint activities is of course absolutely key and in line with our strategy to do more of the things we know that we do well.
Moderator
I see. You mentioned a 21% CAGR the last 10 years, but only 13% the last two years.
Will the higher growth come back, or can you elaborate on the slowdown?
Magnus Svenningson
FX.
Sophie Reinius
Yeah. No, but I think, our journey going forward, I think, looking at the past fewer years, we've had a stable growth journey, and in the short term, I don't think we see large deviations from that growth journey.
Then that will need to come with more investments. We've had investments historically, where we're saying now we want to grow with profitability.
I think 20% growth is not probably the growth journey we are on
Magnus Svenningson
No. right now.
Obviously not right now. Again, coming back to where we want to be, of course we want to do more.
Again, Dynamics is the fastest growing ERP system in the world. Dynamics is growing in terms of how they chase low-end SAP, they are going up in ticket size.
That will have an impact on us. We are not in that ecosystem.
We are not working with all the customers in there. We are primarily targeting the F&O segment, for example.
There is a lot of things we can do within that ecosystem to grow our revenues with our scalable business model, and of course that will be focus going forward.
Moderator
I see. I think we have touched upon this question actually, but it's about other ERP systems.
I think you touched upon it already, let's move to the next question.
Magnus Svenningson
It is a big world out there with the different ERP systems, and there is a lot of legacy products that does similar things to ours, there is a lot of opportunities out there. Again, I'm emphasizing that there is a lot of opportunity, and near term we do more of what we do well now.
There are very interesting things that we are looking into.
Moderator
Yeah. Okay.
What's your take on a share repurchasing program compared to a dividend program from the money obtained from the divestment? I guess it's a question for the board of directors, but do you have any comments on that?
Well
Magnus Svenningson
No, not really. No.
We'll come back to that one shortly.
Moderator
Yeah. Great.
What's the customer acquisition costs in Lasernet?
Sophie Reinius
That's also something we'll come back to at the Capital Markets Day.
Magnus Svenningson
Great. With that, I want to give you one last opportunity to ask questions.
Moderator
You touched upon e-invoicing in your CEO letter, and you're seeing some orders coming from that. Could you elaborate a bit, why is that increasing the demand for Lasernet?
Because so
Magnus Svenningson
our business is driven by the fact that our ecosystem is growing. I touched upon that.
Then it is driven by value chains being digitized. Then finally, these standards increases the number of variants of documents and a number of documents you need to have.
That's why these standards are important to drive automation and variants of the documents flowing back and forth. That is one of several drivers of our business.
It is interesting to see that this is now starting from very We're starting to see a movement there, because people have been talking about this for quite some time, but now we start to see something there, it's little trend coming.
Moderator
Interesting. Also, you come from a quite soft Q2.
We saw a rebound in the ACV, and especially considering that the churn and also that Q3 tend to be a bit softer due to vacations and so on. Could you elaborate a bit, what's driving the improvement, and what can we expect looking forward?
Is this momentum here to stay?
Magnus Svenningson
I would say so, because we see good momentum and have seen good momentum in the Dynamics business, and now we see the bank and finance business starting up. We see this level as realistic going forward.
Then, of course, in our business model, we are dependent on partners. We are a part of a solution, we are not driving the solution.
That means that we are not totally in control of how a sales cycle is developing, and that was very clearly seen in Q1 and Q2 when our bank and finance business was soft.
Moderator
I see. We have one last question from the web: "Do you have a five-year or longer-term plan in discussion?
What is the margin target?"
Sophie Reinius
Good question.
Magnus Svenningson
That's to the point, that question. Very good.
Sophie Reinius
Of course we have internally a five-year plan, but
Magnus Svenningson
externally we'll share our targets and what they will be externally at the Capital Markets Day.
Moderator
I see. Sounds like we have a lot to look forward to in March.
With that, we conclude the Q&A session. Thank you, Magnus, and thank you, Sofie, and thank you to the audience.
Thank you. Thank you.
Already premium?