Tecnotree Oyj

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Okay, good morning and I welcome you to join this TechnoTree Q2 and H1 2024 results publishing event. As you may know, my name is Timo Holopainen and I will be the moderator for this session. We will record this and make the recording available on our website later today. Today's key speakers are our CEO Padma Ravichander, and our CFO, Indires Vivekananda. And in this session, first Padma will give a business review, then Indires will present the numbers in more detail and discuss our prospects for this year. After the presentation, as usual, we have the common question and answers part. And you can always write down the questions on your screens during the session. And with this short introduction, I will hand over the presentation to our CEO, Padma Ravichandran. Please, Padma.

Thank you, Timo. Good morning. I welcome you all to the H1 2024 investor webinar. Thank you for your continued trust and belief in Technotree mission. As we navigate our ever-changing market landscape, our commitment as Technotree remains very clear. Our objective is to turn challenges into opportunities and opportunities into growth. As you see, H1 has been a very, very active and thriving quarter half for us. Our net sales have remained resilient at 34.9 million in constant currency terms, a 5% increase and a 6% year on year increase in our order backlog to 72.6 million. This isn't just growth. It is proof that our strategy is not only sound, but it's future focused. In uncertainty, we find strength. We have also focused on free cash flow in Q2 particularly, a milestone that underscores our financial discipline. It is a reminder that cash is important and it fuels our future dreams and builds investor confidence in the company. While there is a very cyclical nature to our collections, Q2 saw an improved collections as well, and an improved reduction in the DSO days. The adjusted operating result increased by 10.7% to 10.9 million euros in the quarter. Q2 also saw growth in net income to 2.1 million euros, excluding one-time impairments of 2.9 million euros. And in Q2, we are on track with our cost optimization plans, which I will talk to a little bit more. And we also In addition, we witnessed a positive trend in terms of reduction in Forex losses. In the telecommunication industry, the overall expected growth has been recommended to be modest at 2.1%. However, technotree is not just keeping pace with this growth, but we are also setting the pace. Innovation is not an option for us. It has been a necessity. Our investments in AI, cloud solutions, the marketplace, innovations have all not just been responses to trends that we have seen in the industry, they are actually setting new standards for the industry as we move forward. I want to expand a little bit in terms of the free cash flow that has been driven in Q2, the focus on free cash flow and on collections in terms of optimization. Our free cash flow in Q2 2024 was 0.8 million, a significant improvement from Q1, which it was negative 4.7 million. This is supported by a strong collection growth of 19.3% in the quarter. So it's been a better quarter in Q2 in terms of overall collections, a consistent growth in revenue and strong order backlog. The focus on operational efficiency through Think Cash, Do Cash initiative that we started in the beginning of the year has gained momentum, bringing in timely invoicing and enhanced cash management practices throughout the company to achieve significant results in Q2. On the cost reduction alone, we announced in Q2 of H1 2024, a multifaceted cost reduction program promising a 4.5 million cut in OPEX and a 7 million cut in 2025. 4.5 million in 24 and 7 million in 25. We are on track to achieve these expected results and benefits across the board. In addition to our R&D investments, which are crucial for us to stay competitive, we have been consistently focused on rationalizing our product portfolio and ensuring fair valuation to align with investor expectations. We have been consistently monitoring our R&D investments and ensuring proper impairment reviews are conducted on a quarterly basis and the capital allocation is also monitored in the senior executive board of the company. This of course has to be balanced with competitive prices for entry into new markets where we see a very effective and priced position for our products today. While The traditional return on research capital is a little high for techno tree. You have to understand that R&D expenses in telecom industry cannot be realized within a year. The actual cumulative benefits in terms of invested capital comes over a period of 15 to 24 months minimum in these large digital transformation projects that we undertake with our customers. We hope to enter mature markets for the stack, and we are continuously monitoring and evaluating the quality of our assets and ensuring consistent fair value. And towards that, we have seen that we have also realized an impairment in Q2 of 2.9 million, which includes product rationalization in it, among other things. We have also institutionalized within the company a very strict capex spend across the board, And that is because our stack, we believe, is today mature to enter new market growth markets like North America and Europe. Finally, one of the other factors that we have constantly monitored in terms of our overall collections and focus on cash is the global currencies in which we earn. Predominantly, most of our earnings are in US dollars, and we have constantly focused to reduce the exchange risks and losses on quarter by quarter. In Q2 alone, we reduced our Forex risks and losses by 50% to 0.8 million. I personally have been in this company for 14 years, and since I joined, I have noticed 80% of the revenues typically came from frontier markets where we have worked And over the last five years, since I've been CEO, we've been working very hard to shift our focus from stable markets like the Middle East to stable markets like Middle East, APAC, Europe, and North America. And I'm proud to say that today, less than 40% of our revenues come from frontier markets, market currencies. And we have established a very strong relationship with operators in Middle East, such as Saudi Telecom, Zain, Orido, Telenor Groups in the Nordics. And we plan to continue to expand into mainland Europe and North America. with a very tailored and targeted product strategy approach. With this, we plan to bring our exposure and foreign currency risks to under 15%, 20% to 15% over the next three to four years. In terms of key highlights, we completed 10 digital transformation go-lives in H1 and expanded into new markets with new logos entry into new markets like South Africa, Kenya, Latin America, Brazil, and also markets in Asia-Pac. The delivery, our product stack also, into our product stack, we were also able to introduce 600 new product features which are focusing on key areas like multi-tenancy, AI, ML, and cloud nativity. and campaign management and marketplace, which we believe are significant value creators and revenue monetization opportunities for us in terms of product investments. In addition, I think we forged a partnership with HCL and Emirates Integrated Telecommunication Corporation, both of which are very strategic in nature. SIs help us expand our footprint into newer markets like North America and Europe. And they can be resellers of our enterprise stack, which gives us greater market share and competitive advantage in the market. Today, I'm proud to say the HCL tech relationship is growing strong in North America. And we are hopeful that in Q3 and H2, we will be able to announce some new deals along with HCL technologies. The reseller concept brings de-risks our ability to capture revenue quickly. As the reseller takes the delivery responsibilities, they reduce the risk of delivery. They reduce the risk of acquiring scale in local markets and the cost of acquiring new capabilities in local markets and increases our ability to collect license revenue faster. We will align our go-to-market approaches with several of these SIs, hopefully as our product stack is now mature. And we will also have local SIs in certain markets where that would give us greater channel penetration into those countries. I'm proud to share that in H2 of 2024, TechnoTree for the very first time was recognized by Gartner in their magic quadrant for AI in CSPs for customer and business operations. I believe that this is extremely strategic as we aggressively embrace AI ML applications and use cases to improve and innovate businesses. And telecommunication industry is rapidly investing in AI technologies to improve customer experience, operational excellence, and product reach. TechnoTree has embedded Sense of Fabric into our marketplace after the acquisition of the AI ML assets from North America. And today, our solutions have AI ML use cases embedded and we have been able to offer these to our existing customers as well as attract many new customers like Omnia Jordan in the Middle East because of these capabilities on our stack. In addition, this is also the first time our investments that we made in the marketplace in techno tree moments is being recognized by Gartner in three hype cycle reports. one on partner ecosystem management, the other one on digital marketplace for CSPs, and the third one on enterprise monetization. Technotree Moments was positioned as an innovation trigger to help CSPs monetize their business horizontally and vertically over the next five to 10 years. This is absolutely a breakthrough position for us. We started an early investment into Technotree Moments two, three years ago, And today we are reaping the benefits of that as our CSPs are implementing the digital transformation, they are looking for new ways to grow their revenues. And the moments marketplace is definitely providing leadership, particularly in the areas of healthcare, e-commerce, and e-education capabilities in some of these frontier markets. We are already seeing the benefits of this with the new contracts we have won with MTN Claro and with Emirates Integrated Telecommunication Corporation, who have been early adopters of the marketplace technology. So finally, to sort of... summarize our position in the market i would say we have a very leading position in the market with very strong gross margins and high return on invested capital but our challenge has been the dso days that uh are have to be further worked upon and mitigating foreign exchange losses if you evaluate our track performance as Technotree over the last four years, we are among the best in terms of high gross margins compared to our peer set. Our profitability has been also very high, suggesting that we have created a moat in terms of our product and our value proposition to our customers. Our EPS growth has been year on year at 6%, and our return on invested capital is one among the highest at 21%, despite the heavy capex spend, which is really backed by the strong revenue growth we have been able to show above the market, and also the order backlog that we carry year on year in terms of retiring revenue from the orders that we have won over the past several years. The order book is also strengthened by the ARR revenue that is available in the backlog. And today, I would say about 60% of the revenue is segmented towards ARR revenue. However, it is important to note that we do face heavy winds in terms of current operations in frontier markets with collections, foreign exchange losses, and DSO days. The forex losses and the lack of free cash flow have therefore taken a beating. We hope that the operational measures that we have put in place, including the cost reductions and the cap expense that we have implemented, will definitely help our free cash flow and improve our position in terms of entering growth markets. Telecom market is evolving and Technotree I believe is extremely well positioned to capture a good market share with our innovative solutions and strategic partnerships, which I've already explained in the slides before. The most important factors to note is the forecast by Gartner for growth in the industry is still 2.1% between 2022 and 2027. However, the telecom industry itself is looking to diversify its revenue streams. And that is where some of our innovative products such as the marketplace and the AI ML use cases and the cloud native solutions are enabling us to enable our customers seek new revenue pastures. We have doubled our addressable market with these innovations in the last four years, as you can see, creating a strong demand for our AI ML capabilities on our digital marketplace and our campaign management and cloud enabled solutions on our digital stack. Our partnerships with hyperscalers like Microsoft and SIs like HCL Tech and more announcements to come, I think will help us expand our footprint. One important product launch that we shared in the beginning there was a video that we played on sensor certify which is a new product launch that we have brought in in q2 you will hear more about this product it is absolutely tailored to make a strong foothold for techno tree in the european markets what we are observing very strongly in europe and middle east is that there is a key requirement for trust, governance, transparency, and explainability of the AI models that our customers are using, especially CSPs who carry a lot of GDPR compliant subscriber data. 50% of the CSP consumers today believe that there are ethical issues in the AI ML models that are being used. And over 75% of the community, both enterprise and consumers, are requiring the regulators to imply compliance in the use of AI. So the European Union has been among the first in the world in terms of imposing a regulation with the EU AI Act on certain industries, including telecom networks. While our competitors and partners have been focusing on traditional AI ML use cases, such as generative AI, co-pilots, chatbots, et cetera, we at TechnoTree, through the acquisition of our AI ML sensor fabric stack and the 137 patents, have focused on this key requirement of trust, governance, explainability, and transparency of the AI models. And today, I'm Proud to announce the launch of CENSA certified product that is tailored to the European requirements and ready to address key areas like risk management, governance, cybersecurity with CENSA certified. We believe we are compliant to the EU AI Act for trust, transparency, and human oversight features. We believe with this, we will enhance the accuracy and robustness of the use cases that we deliver to the European telecom operators, and we will ensure cybersecurity and quality assurance. Once again, this is one of our innovative products and strategies that we have brought to market just in time and hope to realize benefits as we further forge ahead in the Nordics and Europe. Finally, I'd like to conclude that we continue to focus our efforts on growth markets, expanding into North America, taking strategic initiatives to displace our competitors in these markets with our standardized product portfolio, which is TM Forum certified and recognized by a number of industry analysts for its capabilities. and strong feature sets. We believe we also have a healthy order backlog and a healthy pipe ahead of us, and an increased focus on recurring revenue, which will ensure our continued growth in terms of revenue capability. Our second important focus will continue to be remaining competitive in terms of our product portfolio with very careful measured innovations in growth areas such as AI, trust, governance, cloud, and marketplace. We really have created a moat in terms of competitive advantage of our products, and we have brought many of these products first time to market and fastest time to market to our customers against our competition. We will also remain highly competitive in pricing and we will be compliant in terms of the European Union requirements for ESG. We have some new solutions that can even make our customers compliant in terms of their ESG norms. and we continue to work very steadily for further recognition with industry analysts and forums. Finally, we will never miss our target in terms of our focus on operational profitability. The OPEX control, as I said to you, will continue. Indresh in his presentation will further expand on the areas of controls that we have brought in. We will continue to focus on Forex risk mitigation and ensuring a free cash flow that ensures profitability and a healthy balance sheet. I will now call upon Indresh to take us forward in terms of explaining the financial results. Thank you.