Verimatrix S.A.

Hello everyone, I hope you are well and thank you for being connected for the presentation of Verimatrix results for the 2024 exercise. I am Jean-François Labadie, I am the financial director of Verimatrix. And I'm with Amedeo D'Angelo, who is the president and director general of the group. So I'm going to start with a quick overview of the fourth quarter since the last time we talked about it was to present the turnover at the end of the third quarter and then we will make a more general review of the whole of the year 2024. The main advances in terms of business evolution and recognition of Verimatrix on these different markets. La performance financière, y compris la rentabilité et la solidité du bilan. Et enfin, je terminerai par les perspectives 2025. Je laisserai à ce moment-là la parole à Amélio D'Angelo, qui vous parlera des perspectives pour l'exercice 2025. À l'issue de cette présentation, nous allons évidemment ouvrir notre habituelle session de questions-réponses. to be able to answer all of your questions. So let's start right away with a little reminder Des deux piliers importants de l'entreprise, nous avons deux lignes de produits clés pour la transformation de Verimatrix. La première que l'on appelle anti-piracy. L'anti-piracy représente l'ensemble du business lié aux solutions de Verimatrix pour protéger les contenus. and also solutions that also aim to help customers to understand a little better what is happening around their applications and in particular to prevent all attempts of piracy on the content they broadcast. It is a business line or a very important product line at Verimatrix which represents more than 85% of the group's turnover The second product line we're going to talk about today is what we call Sweat Defense. And there, it's all the solutions that Verimatrix launched three years ago now, which concerns the protection of applications embedded on mobile. So not only is there actually a... Thank you very much. Je terminerai un petit peu la vue générale des lignes de produit de Verimatrix et de la stratégie en disant qu'on a toujours le même objectif qui est de transformer la structure du business de Verimatrix en augmentant la part des revenus récurrents. And all the new solutions that Verimatrix has deployed for three years are proposed to our clients in subscription mode, which allows us to have a much more reliable readability and forecast on the company's turnover. Vérimatrix, aujourd'hui, c'est 253 employés qui sont répartis sur 8 bureaux dans le monde, puisque notre business s'opère de façon mondiale. C'est à peu près 800 clients avec une empreinte géographique répartie entre l'Amérique du Nord et la zone Amérique du Sud, Amérique centrale, l'Europe et l'Asie Pacifique principalement. C'est des applications protégées qui sont de plus en plus importantes. C'est toujours un souci d'innovation et j'y reviendrai quand on parlera des investissements qui sont alloués chaque année au développement des nouveaux produits. Qui dit innovation dit un portefeuille de brevets actifs et importants. Et puis c'est surtout avec le lancement de nos nouvelles solutions, en particulier sur la protection des applications, une reconnaissance accrue de la part des experts des marchés que l'on adresse, une reconnaissance de Vérimatrice comme un leader important et fiable pour protéger beaucoup plus les bases de données de nos clients. So we're going to move on to the business events on the 2024 exercise. And I'm going to start with what we call the new customers, the new logos that we brought into the family of Verimatrix customers this year. We're going to start with the anti-piracy part, with four important clients that we have won, which you can see come from a slightly different geography. We have already talked about Airtel. We were particularly proud to win this offer because it was a way for us to increase our footprint on the Indian continent. Airtel being the second largest Indian operator, knowing that the first operator was already a client of Verimatrix. So it's an interesting contract that allows us to deploy solutions to protect video content for this client, knowing that it's a first step and that we have the potential to continue to grow our partnership with Airtel in the coming years. The Antena group is a telecom group in Europe. This is an interesting example of a contract where this group, which was very present on the OTT part, what we call the OTT is rather the streaming, for those who are not experts in the vocabulary of video, but on the streaming, this partner was looking for a monitoring solution, of piracy attempts on these applications and he chose the Verimatrix solutions, solutions that we proposed in the form of subscriptions. So here are two important examples of success. I will also talk to you about the protection of applications, so what we call threat defense at Verimatrix. with new clients who joined the group and who are particularly revealing of the Verimatrix strategy in the sense that you see that we are not talking here about clients who come from the world of media but rather clients who come a lot from the banking sector or applications related to banking transactions or payment systems. So here you have some examples where we have started to increase our footprint in this vertical segment through our application protection solution, once again proposed in subscription format. This success is important for us because it allows us to increase the visibility and recognition of Verimatrix on its main markets and especially on its new markets, on which we must be recognized and consulted as soon as a client needs to equip a protection solution. Another pillar of recognition that is important is all the prices, the rewards that mark the quality of Verimatrix solutions on these new markets. So here we are talking about new solutions of Verimatrix, so the StreamKeeper solution which concerns rather video customers and which consists of protecting the content but also to do monitoring on applications. This is what we call Counterspy or StreamKeeper. And then you have elements that concern more the XTD product line. line of products on which we also had some rewards on 2024. So there too, it is an element that is important for us and that continues to be the object of attention for us in order to go and win new customers on our new markets. This matrix that concerns the main actors who are providers of protection solutions for applications, you have already seen it, we are talking about it, it has been about two years that we have identified in this panel. We just had the recent update and you see that it confirms that Verimatrix is one of the leaders on this market segment. Again, this is a very important indicator because often when companies need application protection, they refer to this type of panel to consult the main suppliers and it puts us in good positions to start promoting our offers and then win these new clients. So, we're going to move on now to the performance of the fourth quarter. So, we have a performance of the fourth quarter that is disappointing. We're not going to hide it. If we redo a little bit the scheme of the year 2024 at Verimatrix, at the end of the third quarter, we were quite well aligned with a trajectory of business figures in slight growth, which was finally articulated around two poles. a sustained growth of recurring revenues, a growth of two figures, obviously mainly carried by subscription revenues, and then a good hold of non-recurrent revenues. So the non-recurrent revenues, I remind you, are all the sales, mainly of licenses and rebates that we do on our historical customer base. Le troisième trimestre, le quatrième trimestre, je vous le disais, a été décevant. Vous voyez qu'on est en baisse par rapport au quatrième trimestre de l'année dernière. On a réalisé un chiffre d'affaires de 12,3 millions contre 17 millions de chiffre d'affaires l'année dernière. Et vous voyez que le principal élément de baisse est évidemment le chiffre d'affaires non récurrent. Alors, qu'est-ce qui s'est passé sur le quatrième trimestre ? I would say in certain regions, I would quote Latin America and the countries of Eastern Europe, we had a significant drop in investments from our customers. So that's for the non-recurrent part. So the question now is to say, have we finally lost calls for offers? Have we lost deals? Or is it just a shift? The good news is that the commercial dynamic for us is still there. And the other good news is that in fact, Verimatrix has not lost an offer, but it is simply a decision of investment on the part of our customers which has been shifted in time. Par contre, l'élément de satisfaction qui est le pilier de croissance des revenus récurrents, celui-là, sur le quatrième trimestre, il a continué de se confirmer. Vous voyez 12% de croissance de la totalité des revenus récurrents à 8,6 millions. Et dans ces 12% de croissance, vous avez 25% de croissance sur les revenus issus des abonnements. So these revenues from subscriptions come from the protection of applications and then from all the solutions that we provide in the middle of the video on anti-piracy through our Stream Keeper offer. So a disappointment, but on the other hand, an element of satisfaction on the continuous growth that we have with our subscription revenues. What is the ARR amount? It is the annualized value of all the contracts that we signed at the end of December. On subscriptions, we are at 18 million, so that again is an element of success for Verimatrix. It represents 22% growth compared to the annualized value of our subscription contracts that we had at the end of December 2023. So here again, we are on a roadmap that is in line with our objectives. Voilà, vous avez sur ce slide l'évolution de la valeur annualisée de nos contrats, ce qu'on appelle l'annual recurring revenue, à 18 millions à fin décembre. Et vous voyez que chaque trimestre, les nouveaux contrats viennent s'ajouter. to the previous contract. And this is a permanent goal on which all the teams of Verimatrix work with charm. And you see that the graph goes back to at the end of 2022, but you see that since the end of 2022, every quarter, this annualized value of contracts continues to increase and it remains a valid goal for the next few years. So what does it look like in the whole of 2024? So, obviously, the fourth quarter weighs on the overall performance of Verimatrix's turnover, since we end with a turnover of 57.2 million compared to 61.6 million the previous year, or a 7% drop. Again, there is a double reading. The history of Verimatrix's transformation is a growth of recurring revenues. This growth in recurring income, in total, it was 11%. So we are always on our goal of growth in two figures of all recurring income. Why do we do a growth in two figures? We do a growth in two figures because we have a very strong dynamic on subscription revenues, which today represents 17.3 million in 2024 compared to 13.8 million in 2023, so plus 26%. And with an important resilience, of our maintenance revenues, which actually concerns the entire historical base of Verimatrix customers who keep their maintenance contracts to protect their solutions. We have a slight drop of 1% of the turnover on 2024 compared to 2023. So, the transformation of the turnover is continuing at Verimatrix. Evidemment, la souffrance et le challenge que l'on a, c'est d'arriver à compenser la baisse des revenus non récurrents. Et avec la mauvaise performance du dernier trimestre, cette performance du revenu non récurrent a pesé assez lourd sur la performance globale de Verimatrix. Now, when we look at this turnover, in the end, we reached, at the end of December, 60% of recurring revenue compared to the total revenue of Verimatrix. I remind you that our goal is to reach about two-thirds of recurring revenue by the end of 2025. Il y a un an, ce ratio était de presque 50%, donc vous voyez qu'on arrive à augmenter la part de ces revenus non récurrents et on est confiant pour atteindre l'objectif qu'on avait partagé avec vous il y a quelques temps concernant la transformation du chiffre d'affaires de l'entreprise. On va toujours rester sur le chiffre d'affaires. Maintenant, je vous ai parlé des deux lignes de produits importantes de Vérimatrix. Vous voyez que le chiffre d'affaires de l'Antipyracy, qui concerne l'ensemble des solutions que l'on fournit à nos clients médias, ça représente 89,5% du chiffre d'affaires. C'est un pourcentage qui reste très important et c'est une bonne nouvelle. C'est une bonne nouvelle parce que ça veut dire que le succès des nouvelles solutions que l'on fournit auprès de nos clients historiques médias et auprès de clients médias qui viennent du monde du streaming, ce succès il est là, il est au rendez-vous. So, through the evolution in time, we will have more and more new solutions that will be deployed in the media sector, which will allow us to stabilize the turnover of this product line, which was not the case in 2024, since the revenue dropped by 11% compared to the 2023 exercise. Et encore une fois, si on refait un petit point d'attention sur les revenus d'abonnement liés à ces solutions dans le secteur des médias, on voit qu'on a une belle croissance de 22% par rapport à l'exercice précédent. Sur la partie threat defense, donc la protection des applications, ça représente maintenant 10,5% du chiffre d'affaires. Donc c'est une part qui est en train de... C'est un chiffre d'affaires qui a connu une très belle croissance. Au total, sur l'ensemble de l'année, la partie protection des applications a généré une croissance de 39% pour atteindre 6 millions de dollars de chiffre d'affaires. I remind you that the essence of this business is subscription revenue, which is essentially linked to the new solutions that we launched at the beginning of 2022. So, an important satisfaction point for us. These are the solutions that we sell on... à peu près l'ensemble des pays ou des régions sur lesquelles on est présent. Et c'est des solutions sur lesquelles on a un go-to-market qui s'appuie de plus en plus sur un réseau important de partenariats. So this is an important element of satisfaction for Verimatrix. We see that our entire portfolio of potential business, so what we have on the subjects or the calls for offers on which we work for the future, more and more subjects are brought and carried by our main partners, which is a good marker of success for the future. If we also look by geography, you see that in the area of the Americas, it is the Latam region, Latin America, which is the most important, which represents 30% 30% of the total turnover. North America represents 17%. That said, it is important to note that most of the new logos that we sign on the application protection solutions are made in North America. So that's an important point. The historical business of Verimatrix was in any case quite little present in North America. So the 17% seems weak compared to Latin America. But in fact, you see that it's a turnover that is growing and we see an increase in the number of opportunities on this zone. We are quite stable on the IMEA and Asia zone, which are important zones since we have 38% of the turnover coming from IMEA and 15% of the turnover coming from Asia. As I explained to you, we have new logos, especially in India. So we are convinced that this geographic zone will be a source of growth in the years to come for Verimatrix. So we talked a lot about the turnover at 57.2 million dollars. Now we are going to look at what happened in terms of profitability. And there you see that we generated an EBITDA in significant growth compared to last year, I would say despite the pressure we had on the turnover. We generated an EBITDA of 2.8 million dollars against 1.3 million last year. And that's thanks to the implementation of important synergies that have been deployed during the year 2024 in an important way. During the previous years, we have worked a lot on the implementation of new processes. on the rationalization of our information systems. We also worked on the implementation of synergies between the different teams that remain divided over our different geographies. And thanks to this work, we managed to, I would say, optimize our cost base of Verimatrix without, I would say, putting at risk our ability to continue to deploy our transformation through more revenue linked to subscriptions. So, if we go down the different lines... So, the gross margin, we can have the impression that in percentage it is decreasing, since we were at 70.4% against 68.3%. This decrease is only linked to the increase in the amount of amortization, so it is an element of cash, of the product development that we have realized, of the capitalization of the products. that we have achieved in the past. If we subtract this element of augmentation of amortizations, the margin in percentage is stable around 75% between 2023 and 2024. So what does that mean? It means that in fact we have managed to vary our costs according to the evolution of the turnover. That's the first point. And it mostly means that the rise in power of our subscription revenues n'est pas dilutive en termes de contribution par rapport, je dirais, aux revenus non récurrents que Verimatrix génère chaque année. L'autre élément important, c'est l'optimisation des dépenses opérationnelles. Elles s'élevaient à 47,5 millions de dollars en 2023 et elles ont baissé pour atteindre 42 millions And you can see that these optimizations have concerned all sectors, both research and development, with an important part that remains to be allocated to innovation, because in any case, we must continue to permanently improve the performance of our products. Sur la partie sales and marketing, on a recentrer notre cible de présence dans des salons spécialisés sur les nouveaux métiers, soit de l'OTT dans la vidéo, soit dans l'application, la protection des applications. We have also redimensioned our distribution between direct and indirect. That's what I was telling you. We see an increasingly important part of our distribution realized through partnerships. And then on the G&E part, the result of the decrease. provient essentiellement de la rationalisation et de l'optimisation des process. Donc on a accéléré notre capacité à traiter des commandes et à répondre à nos clients de façon beaucoup plus optimisée et beaucoup plus courte, ce qui nous donne un avantage assez compétitif sur les appels d'offres. So, 2.8 million EBITDA. You can see that, as a result, the net result has improved. We are still in losses. We are at 7.7 million, but we were at 10.1 million losses on the 2023 exercise. On voit que les frais financiers pèsent encore de façon importante. J'y reviendrai quand je vous parlerai de la dette. Mais on est en train de voir ici une amélioration importante de la rentabilité de Verimatrix qui commence à se voir sur 2024. Et vous verrez que dans les... Dans les indications que l'on partagera avec vous pour 2025, on va confirmer notre capacité à améliorer la contribution du revenu de Verimatrix dans les années à venir A few words about the cash flow. You remember that in the middle of the year, we reduced the amount of the debt of Verimatrix. We made a refund of 6.5 million dollars. What needs to be retained in the cash flow is, finally, we improve EBITDA. On a une stabilisation des investissements dans l'innovation ou dans les nouveaux produits de l'ordre de 2 millions de dollars et le changement du business model fait qu'on continue à réduire notre besoin en fonds de roulement. Donc tous ces éléments sont évidemment très positifs. Ça veut dire que la génération de cash flow opérationnel est sur une dynamique structurelle chez Verimatrix. Unfortunately, at this stage, in 2024, the improvement of these operational cash flows was not enough to cover the weight of the debt that remains important. That is also why we decided in the middle of the year to repay part of this debt to begin to reduce the weight of interest in the consumption of cash flows. So we continued to consume cash On Verimatrix, we still have 11 million of available cash, and we see, on the other hand, a dynamic that is being put in place, which allows us to be optimistic about the production, the favorable evolution of the production of cash flows at Verimatrix in the coming years. Un petit mot sur les 2 millions d'investissements, ils sont essentiellement liés à nos investissements en recherche et développement. Le reste des investissements est très marginal concernant les investissements en infrastructure ou en équipement informatique. So the balance sheet, the numbers are a little small. I think there is an important element, it's debt. So we have a debt that is mainly constituted of an element of a bilateral with a company called Apera. La dette s'élève à 18,3 millions de dollars La maturité de cette dette c'est mars 2026 Voilà. L'information, sans vous dévoiler les secrets de ce qui est en train de se passer, c'est qu'on est en train de travailler sur le refinancement de cette dette et je serai en mesure de partager plus d'informations d'ici la fin du premier semestre de 2025. concerning the refinancing of this debt. Voilà. J'en ai terminé pour les résultats de 2024. Je vais passer maintenant la parole à le PDG de Verimatrix, Ameteo D'Angelo, qui va vous parler des perspectives pour 2025.

Hello everyone. I would like to talk about 2025 and the future of Verimatrix. During this quarter, we have made changes to the activity to increase our focus on the core of our business. In the world of pay-to-be, we started a very important program to increase share prices. We focused on the biggest clients in the world in which we have entry doors with powerful partners to increase our market share and we already have results in this quarter that show us that we can really accelerate growth. On the part of product development, now our products are quite stable. since we started the change of products in 2021, at the end of 2021, to have an offer that is an offer based on subscriptions, on the cloud. And that's why the products that Jean-François talked to you about earlier are stable products and they have a good level of acceptance from customers. And we have a complete offer on subscription, on the cloud, for the protection of video requests, whether by satellite, by IPTV, cable, or by streaming, by OTT, with all the monitoring part and offers services around the protection of security on digital content. The production part is completed, the transformation part on the more commercial activity with a very strong focus in the areas in which we are strong, such as India, in EMEA, which is Middle Eastern Europe in Africa, and Latin America. On this territory, we are well present and we have a whole strategy already declined in the first quarter of this year, for the taking of orders and the market share. Our goal for this year is to increase the turnover, both recurring and also for perpetual licenses, and at the end of the year, generations of cash with EBITDA You have seen the growth of EBITDA since 2023. Last year, we had a drop in business figures, as Jean-François presented, but still an increase of more than 100% of our EBITDA. And this year, we will focus on an even stronger growth on the profitability part and, as I said, the market share. We have increased all the strategic partner parts for the deployment and sale of our cybersecurity products, which is application protection, and in the world of IoT, for security. Thank you very much. of all companies in the whole world. All companies today are companies with algorithms and applications that must be protected. Protect the data of their customers, protect the data of citizens, but also the whole chain that communicates with companies that are not sheltered from the attacks of pirates. And through partnerships, we have signed, since the last 12 months, we have signed more than 40 partners around the world who join us to develop the sale of our cybersecurity product, which accompanies, but also the cybersecurity product, we integrate it into the offer of the APH television. Our offer today is complete, ready to take market share and we have a fairly strong traction that you will see in 2025. This is a year in which there will be an increase in ARR figures compared to 2024, an increase in business figures and an EBITDA target Our colleague Jean-François put us close to 10%. I think we will do more than 10% of EBITDA this year. And we will end the year as a society that generates cash. and to have a positive free cash flow since the arrival of Covid, which has seen a decrease, a transformation, a decrease in capacity to generate cash. This year is the year of focus, commercial strength, partnerships and growth. This is the message, very short, but I say that we must have focus and be focused with the clients who are not clients but are our partners and can take leadership in the world of video demand protection but also in cybersecurity. Well, if you have any questions, you can ask them for me or for Jean-François. We are available to answer any question.

Perfect. Thank you. Thank you, Amedeo. So I'm going to open the Q&A session.