Fortnox AB (publ)

Good morning and welcome to the Fort Knox Investor Forum. My name is Josephine Seder and I will be your host and moderator today. There are two guests with me in the studio today, Fort Knox Acting CEO Roger Hatelius and our former CEO Tommy Eklund. This stream will be maximum an hour long. The first part is dedicated to the quarterly result, which will be presented by today's guests. This will be followed by a question and answer session. Watchers have the option to call in and ask a question. Call 0046 8559 31337 and ask your question live after the presentation. That's phone number 0046 8559 31337. We'll also display the number during the stream in case you missed it. Please be aware that we only have one person manning the phone in the studio, so we appreciate your patience while waiting in line. We will, of course, also read questions from the chat as usual. You can submit your questions there at any point during the stream. Welcome to Fort Knox Investor Forum. The presentation today will, as I said, be divided between our two guests. First off is Roger with the financials, and then Tommy will present after that with the business highlights from the quarter. First off, here's Roger Hatelius with 2024's third quarter financial results.

Thank you, Josefin. So starting to summarize the quarter, it is a stable quarter where all our main KPIs are in line with or better than the same period last year. The customer growth of 13,000 customers is the highest increase of number of customers for a third quarter. The average revenue per customer, where we divide all net sales with the number of customers on a rolling 12 basis, increased by eight Swedish kronor compared to last year's seven. We had a growth of 26% compared to last year's 25%. The operating margin or the EBIT margin amounted to 45%, which is in line with last year. During the quarter, we had some one-off costs connected to the changes in executive management team. And excluding those non-recurring costs, the EBIT margin amounted to 48%. And combined growth and margin, which we call rule of Fort Knox, amounted to 71%, also in line with last year. So on customers, the positive trend remains. The increase of number of customers was in this quarter again higher than the same quarter last year. And at the end of the quarter, we had 585,000 customers. And still challenging to reach the 700,000 that we put up in our business plan towards 2025. But the most important for us is the balance between number of customers and the average revenue per customer. And on the average revenue per customer, the RPC increased with Swedish kronor to 293. And we are still ahead of plan. And that's despite the continued macroeconomic headwind. And with net sales of 523 million kronor and EBIT on 235, we show continuous stable development on both net sales and EBIT. The third quarter has some seasonal effects, most clearly seen in the customer activity and that's affected transaction based revenues mostly. But we also can see it in lower personal costs and both are due to the vacation period here in Sweden. And the rule of Fort Knox that we use to measure how we balance growth and margin. We'll add on 71, which is in line with last year, but exclude those non-recurring costs. And the rule of Fort Knox amounted to 73. So the net sales grew with 26% and the highest growth was in lending, where we increased by 43%. And the product there that had the highest growth is when we offered the customers payment directly upon invoicing. And in total, the growth comes primarily from the existing customers, followed by new customers, and to some extent, the price adjustments. And the price adjustment that was carried out earlier this year represents just above 4% of the net sales growth for the period January to September, and 7% in this quarter net sales growth. So some highlights in the P&L or income statements worth noting is that the non-recurring costs impact the cost of personnel negatively. And worth noting on the balance sheet is that since Oferta is now becoming a part of the new jointly owned company Tom Holding, in which Fortnox has 49% ownership, Oferta's assets liabilities and group surplus values have been moved to assets held for sale and liabilities related to assets held for sale. And then the last slide on the financials worth noting on the cash flow is that the accounts receivable now decreased to a more normal level since the last day of the quarter did not fall on a weekend. And together with the positive trend on profit, we had a record high free cash flow in Q3. So to summarize, it's a stable quarter where all our main KPIs are in line with or better than the same period last year.

Thank you, Roger, for that presentation. And next up, we have this quarter's business highlights. And with that, I give the word to Tommy Eklund.

Thank you, Josefin. And Roger, of course, a stable quarter in a macro environment, which is holding us back a bit. So all in all, a stable quarter financially. But as always, we are also heavily investing in the future. So some highlights from the product and development side. You know, you guys that are following us know that we usually pick up a couple of things from the platform that is happening, which we call fun facts. So this quarter, we are just announcing that with the ability now for accountants as a starting point to hand in reports, it was actually 15,000 annual reports that were handed in through the Fort Knox platform date in July, which is quite impressive because it's a new product that we just released. Also, you guys know that we are focusing more and more and doing things automatically. And with that said, of course, it is important to have all the transactions automatically recorded in the platform. And that was actually doubled from the previous quarter in Q3 2023. So now we almost had 9 million vouchers automatically recorded during the quarter. So that's an impressive number. And of course, a lot of efficiency gain for our customers. So a lot of customer value in those 8.6 vouchers that was automatically booked. And also we are also working on engaging more people in the platform. We know that maybe it's not driving revenue directly, but we know that over time it's important with increased usage and increased engagement in the platform. We released the ability to view our insights in the app at the 7th of October this quarter, and since this we have had more than 30,000 users that have taken advantage of those insights. So quite impressive numbers during the quarter. And with that said, we also maybe should announce that now insights are available also in the app, and that is mainly for companies, directly companies. So as you know, it was released in quarter one. It was officially released in quarter one for accountants. Now it has been released in the app also for companies to take advantage of our insights, where you can actually, you know, of course, take advantage of things like deviations that you can, you know, base your future decisions off. But you can also actually see into the future with the prognosis that we have in the app. So quite impressive things that normally only really big corporates have the ability to have. Now we have that for all companies in the platform. And also another product that I talked about was annual reports. That was actually just released for accountants before. Now companies can hand in their annual reports on their own into the accounts closing product. So an important feature that we have worked on for quite some time now. So we're happy to be able to release that. It's a lot of customers that have asked for that. And I also get a lot of questions regarding the expense management product or the business card product. And it's important to understand that it's not just the business card. It's a full business process with expense management, approvals, bookkeeping, and automatically connection to payroll. So now we think that we have deliverables. With the approval things that we released in after quarter two, we have the ability to go through accountants with this expense management product. But and we'll also release this can be work. This can work without the ability to connect it automatically to our payroll system. But of course, it will be even more efficient when we also release the ability to do to pay out things automatically through your payroll system inside this platform. so so quite a popular platform and we have gotten questions you know how is the rollout going and just to share some numbers regarding the business card so if you have followed us you know that we have had kind of a different business model connected to the business card than many other products so this product has no subscription to it so it's free for use and most other card vendors as you know has a subscription model where you pay per card So this is a really good offer. We give the ability for all our customers to give cards to all their employees, and it's for free. And usage is for free. So there is no transaction fee for our customers when you're using the card, but we earn 1% on your spend. And I think that now, when we have had the card out there for a year, we can see that The spend is quite stable. It's between 10,000 to 15,000. And since we earn 1% on that, it's like 100 to 150 Swedish kronor, taking into account that we now are up on 293 Swedish kronor in the ARPC. Just this card, of course, when all customers are using the card, contributes also to the ARPC really good. And we have a stable growth. As you understand, we think that most of the growth regarding the card will come through accountants. And since we didn't have the ability for accountants to use the card before December, of course, the growth has not been in the pace that we would have liked. But it's stable growth. And we have now over 5,000 companies that are benefiting the card. And we can see stable growth now month by month. So all in all, a sustainable business model and it looks quite promising.

Thanks. Thank you for that presentation. Then we're going to open up for a question and answer session. Don't forget, you can call in to ask questions or you can send in your questions in the chat. And we're actually going to start with a call today. We have Joakim Gunell from D&B with us. Hello and welcome to the studio. Please feel free to ask your question.

Thank you very much for having me, and I hope I get the opportunity to ask more than one, but I'll keep it very, very short. So from an ARR perspective, we saw that this was the first quarter where it was actually sequentially down since you provided that metric in 2018. So I would assume that this is less relevant now that your transaction-based revenues is becoming a larger part of the business. But just help us unpack what this trajectory on ARR means for subscription-based growth going forward. This is just a hiccup.

We think that the development on the ARR is in line with the increase in subscriptions. So we don't see a big deviation there. We think they are matching.

But Joachim, you are right. It's kind of hard to compare now when we're driving growth, both for lending business and for the transaction-based revenue. So it is kind of hard to compare. And as you know, we also increased prices on the transaction-based revenue more this year than we did last year. And that also has an impact to it. And then we have changed the business model on a couple of products, specifically the payroll product. where we have not moved, but we think that it's a better business model to pay per payslip than to pay per payroll administrator. And that also has a positive impact on transaction and maybe a negative impact on the ARR.

Lovely. And you say yourself in the acting CEO letter here that bookkeeping is the foundation for so much more. So it's very helpful that you provided this split for the first time with regards to what is driving growth and quantified the pricing elements. So high single digit product based or product usage based growth here. in Q3. Can you comment a bit about what is driving that increased product adoption?

Nothing is specific. We're trying this and this will be one of our main focus going forward as well to get more usage. So we're working with that in the product development, but also in the marketing and everywhere. So that's a big focus for us. So nothing specific.

Okay, and just finally, Dan, we've seen here that you've stepped up your marketing activities. Here in Stockholm, I can see ads in the subway, you're handing out coffee on Norma's story, etc. So just help us with the rationale and timing behind this, if this is to trigger further product adoption by putting the stoplight on the fact that you provide so much more than just bookkeeping, or is this any kind of indication of a competitive landscape heating up?

No, I think you should see more. Yes, we are promoting Fortnox more as a platform, more than just single products. But I think that you see it more since you are in Stockholm. We have made a campaign there to try out to get more knowledge about Fortnox and the platform. But in total, we are almost the same that we have been before. So no big changes in marketing spend.

Perfect. I'll jump back in the queue. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And then on to the chat questions. We haven't gotten a lot so far, so we might be done really early if people aren't going to get going. But the first question then is of the 25 percent growth in Q3, how much of that is pricing? And follow up question, is it more or less than 5 percent?

I think we answered that on the picture. So from the period January to September, it has roughly 4%, just about 4%. And in the quarter, it was 7% of the net sales growth.

All right. Short answer. Don't forget, you can call in to the phone number 0046855931337 if you want to ask your question live like Joakim did a minute ago. The next question then from the chat is, please, could you explain the mix of new subscribers added in terms of the size of their business? Is it zero to four employee businesses, five to nine employee ones or larger?

So we don't see a huge difference between the types of customers. So, no, I can't give you any color on that. So we have all types of organizations and all types of company sizes. So it's no direct differences between those. All right.

So the demographics in the existing customers base are not fundamentally changing. That is the important thing. So yes, of course, there are more sole traders because there are more sole traders, but we also have more sole traders as current customers. So we're not fundamentally changing the demographics of the customer base.

All right. The next question then is how are the plans to expand the headquarters going?

We're looking into it. We have our headquarters here in Växjö and we are growing and we are looking into how to grow in Växjö and still have the headquarters here. So no specific plans, but we are looking into it.

Then the next question, other external costs were flat in the quarter compared to the same period last year. This cost line has tended to grow year on year. What is driving the flat development in this quarter?

So on the question before, one of them is the rental that we are scaling since we haven't increased the rental cost. Another one is marketing there, but also that we are scaling around IT and IT operation. So scaling is the short answer.

All right. You look like you have something you want to add. No, no, no, it's fine. All right. Then the next question is, you mentioned ARR headwinds from the Aferda split. Are there any other P&L impacts of Aferda moving out of the continuing operations?

Of course it will be since Oferta we haven't had the growth and it has quite low margin. So we will see in next... No, sorry. Yeah, next quarter then we will see that we will have less revenue, but the P&L effect wouldn't be that much. And in this quarter for the group, since the deal was made on the 1st of October, It's not shown in this report, but some P&L effect, but around, I believe, 10 million that we have already have a decrease. Depreciation that will be laid back in the Q4. So nothing more than that.

All right. And the next question then is the financing asset growth has slowed. Should we expect this or should we expect this is the new normal or should we expect a re-acceleration in Q4?

Sorry, could you?

The financing asset growth has slowed. Is this the new normal or will it re-accelerate next quarter?

Probably we have lower activity in the Q3, so we expect it to increase in the Q4.

All right. And that's it as far as questions go so far. So please submit your questions in the chat. Call in if you need the number again. It is 0046855931337. Otherwise, that will be it. We'll give it maybe a few more minutes to see if people call in. Otherwise, I guess we'll just sit here and wait. If people don't have questions, I think that's good. It's probably a busy report day. We do have a call. So are you guys ready? In that case, we will welcome Mark from Morgan Stanley into the studio. Hello and welcome. Please ask your question.

Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yeah. Hi, Mark. Brilliant. Hi, Roger. Hi, Tommy. Thanks for having me on. I've got a few questions, please. You know, ARR was impacted by the offer to deconsolidation. I think that's pretty clear in terms of the impact there. But can you help quantify the impact that this will have roughly on organic growth next quarter? That's the first question. Second question is on price. You very helpfully called this out clearly in the presentation, so thank you for that. Seven percent in the first nine months, four percent in Q3, if I heard that correctly. Could you just tell us what that was in the prior year base for comparison purposes? And then just final question on new customer additions, 13,000 net new, another strong quarter continuing the trends that we've seen so far this year. Could you just give us a bit more insight into the makeup of these customers? For example, are you seeing accelerated growth among smaller businesses? Now you've really built out that offering within that segment. Just anything to try and help us contextualize that given the continued weak macro in Sweden.

Thank you. You can think about offerta, then I can take the others. So, yes, the net ads, yes, it's healthy growth regarding number of customers. Nothing new. It's what we have reported now, many quarters in row, that we are now investing more and more in bringing value, especially to accountants, that they should bring all their clients into the platform because that makes them more more efficient, so to say. So I think that is what mainly is driving the uplift right now. Then, of course, yes, as you're referring to, we're becoming better and better also on the offering for small companies. But I will not say that that is the main driver right now. The main driver right now is the accountants use more and more into the platform and see a benefit of having all their clients in the platform. something that we have reported that we are investing in and we can see that happening right now. And I think that is also why we are quite stable, although we are in a macro environment with headwinds, because, you know, this doesn't have that much impact because of macro, because the clients are already there. So it's not new clients in that sense. It's just that accountants adding all their clients into the platform. So that is, I would say, the main driver right now. Offerta?

Yeah, so on Offerta, of course, Offerta since 1st of October, then the net sales will not be reported as net sales. So the new jointly owned companies result will be reported as financials. And we provided in the report what the annual net sales is for Offerta or has been. And we haven't seen that quite stable net sales in Oferta, so that's the way to calculate the effect on Q4. And the other one was price adjustment, right?

Yes, I should have answered that maybe. So yes, the price adjustments that we have done now three years in a row, according to our calculations and predictions are pretty much on the same level then as you know it's a lot of moving parts here so it's kind of hard in detail to verify exactly if it's the same but according to our calculations it has had pretty much the same impact now three years in a row yeah brilliant thank you very much for that super helpful Thank you, Mark. Thank you.

Thank you. Then back to the chat. We have a question that says, does ARPC include financial services and marketplace revenues?

Yes. So the average revenue per customer is net sales divided by the number of subscription customers on a rolling 12-month basis.

Yes. The next question then is, do you have any plans on accelerating your efforts toward large companies? And follow-up question, are there any products you need to develop before attracting larger customers?

And yes, we are already accelerating. So and we already has larger companies. So we think we have the offer there for for those type of customers. And we also have all those integration partners that help us with the specific needs that the large corporation needs. But we are developing all the time. But nothing specific. We already have the offer for them and we are investing in to reach more of the larger companies.

So we think that we have the platform for it and we have had for several years because we're using the platform and many other big listed companies are using the platform. But we didn't have the organization before. And that is what we have invested in now for the last one or two years, building an organization and a partner organization. ship network around that and then it's a bit slower compared to our business so the ramp up it's a bit slower but of course the ARPC opportunity is of course bigger also but you should take into account that it's it's a bit slower than our you know current business so to say but since the market opportunity is really good it's worth going for.

All right, then we have another caller or rather we have the same caller again using our open phone line. Joakim Gunell from D&B. Welcome back.

Yeah, thanks for having me. And I mean, I really like that you are disciplined on cost as evidence from your profitability. But you should definitely evaluating investing in a better conference call system, to be frank. But that's another topic for the future. I was just – I had some follow-ups, and since there wasn't that many other callers, I might just take the opportunity. So when it comes to the rate cuts we have seen in Sweden, is this any sort of – call it green lights in the dashboard for how your customers think about things? And also perhaps relating to your financing business – I realized credit losses was below 1% in your 2023 annual report. How is the loan book currently performing in relation to that?

So starting with the decrease rate, and I think it's too early for us to see it in our dashboards. So no green lights there. I think it will take a while before we see the uplift. On the credit losses, still healthy, really healthy. We believe that we are really good at scoring, credit scoring. So no hiccups or deviations there either. So we are on a healthy low level.

Perfect. And you commented the drag on offerta on customers in the Q4. But similar to what we saw in a year ago, there was another, call it, freemium player who decided to throw in the towel here and raise pricing. So would you see any sort of, I mean, do you expect any tailwind in the customer intake from that player canceling out of their free offerings?

that player was in absolute terms kind of small. So, you know, I wouldn't bet on it. But of course, it's always good for us when everyone has a sustainable business model in that sense. So it's good for us. It's good for our customers. It's good for everyone in the market. So it's a good change. But then again, you know, you shouldn't think read too much into it because it was kind of a small player.

Lovely. And then just the final question, if you just raise the line of sight a bit here and talk about the more long-term trends. So you're increasing headcount by roughly 20% here year over year. Can you just comment a bit on where you are hiring? Is this still very localised in Växjö or to what extent is this becoming more of a challenge to continue to grow in that part of Sweden, and is that posing any sort of challenges for the corporate culture that has defined Fort Knox, and then potentially also cost inflation, should you start to expand beyond this footprint? Thank you.

Since we have offices both in Malmö, Linköping, Stockholm and Växjö, and that we also worked a lot with employee branding and to have a good culture, we don't see any big threats there. And on the hiring, mostly on product development, But also, of course, customer support. But we are really digital, so we can work from all our offices. So, yeah, no changes there in the future. So I think you will see almost the same correlations with the net sales and number of employees as you've seen before. Except that we will keep on scaling, of course.

And regarding the 20% that you referred to was the year before, and that didn't include BoardEaser. So, of course, that also has an impact on the 20% that you referred to, and BoardEaser sits in Linköping and Stockholm, if you're asking about cities.

Lovely. And on the corporate culture side, is there anything that, I mean, Fortnox is an entirely different company than when you joined, Tommy, and then you also highlight that a bit in in the press release when you decided to take the next step. So would you say to any sense that it is hard to retain the corporate culture as you are growing and scaling in the fashion that you currently is?

I think that we have managed to do that. Of course, we were in a sensitive phase where we were 1-200 people, where you almost knew everyone by name. We have taken that step now to being an enterprise company and being able to... keep the culture that made us possible. But of course, it's kind of hard for one person to know 900 names. So in that sense, of course, we have left some parts of this family structure. But I think that all 900 still thinks that it is a family, although you're not knowing everyone. So I think that we have managed to do that. And I think also what is driving the culture is, of course, our vision. You come into Fort Knox with a vision to improve business life in Sweden, and we have almost now 600,000 businesses in the platform. So when you are doing really good work here, you are actually improving business life in Sweden. That's for real. So many other companies have a vision that is written by a communication department that no one knows about. But this is really the DNA of Fort Knox. We're coming to work here to improve business life in Sweden. And I think that is something that is driving everyone here. And that is also driving the culture, I think.

Lovely. And yeah, thanks for today's session. Josephine, you're doing a much better job than us analysts moderating today. So have a good day.

Thank you.

Thank you. All right. We're going to go back to the chat then. Given that the 2025 customer target looks very unlikely to be achieved, but the ARPC will be exceeded and that the company seems to be running itself on the basis. Why don't you reset the targets?

So, well, we have a five year business plan and we think we are delivering on it. So no, no need for changes. And as I said before, I think it is the balance between the number of customers and the average revenue per customer. And it's right. We are focusing more and more on usage. So the average revenue per customer is becoming more important for us. And we will, during the next year, make the new plan for 2030. So yeah, let's come back then with new targets.

And it's kind of ridiculous if you set out targets there and then change them for every outcome. You know, they are targets that we're going for.

Then we have another call that's ready. So with that, we're going to welcome Erik Lindholm Reijestol from SEB into the studio. Hello. Please feel free to ask your question.

Yes. Good morning, everyone. I had some issues with calling in here and I was listening to another conference call, so I might have missed some details. But I'll start off with boring housekeeping questions before moving on to the exciting stuff. So other external expenses were flat here year over year. Is there any reason in particular why this is not growing in line with revenues? Any savings that you made? I'll come back with another question.

I mentioned it before. It's connected to scaling, for example, rentals and the offices, IT operation. So it's more of scaling, so nothing particular, more scaling possibilities.

All right. Sounds good. And then at the C&D, you talked about the launch of your entertainment product and also the AI product, I believe it's called Freya. How is that progressing? Is that coming out now towards the end of the year or is it more of a 2025 thing? Thank you.

Yeah, so if we start with the AI assistant, then you should not think that that is the only AI thing that we do because we have 50 development teams and all of them, I would say, are using AI one way or another. And then some teams are using it more than others, but it's all over, so to say. But you're right. We are also working on our own AI assistant. We have not communicated a release date, but everything looks really promising. We have both our own hardware and And we have our own model for building these machine learning models. So all in all, I think that we have the right strategy here. It looks promising. We will come back to the release late. But it would be an AI assistant that knows everything about how to run a business in Sweden. Also know everything about that we know through data in the platform. And also knows everything. about your data, your company, and an assistant that can also do everything in the platform that you can do through the normal user experience, so to say. So quite powerful, but again, you shouldn't read too much into it regarding revenue because it has not been released yet. So I think in... As always with Fortnox platform, the beauty of the platform is that it's kind of slow because it's happening all over. So you should not expect revenue pickup in the near future. But in the long run, of course, that is a game changer. And regarding the payment product, we have left the pilot period. So now we're rolling out that product not in the pilot phase anymore. We'll see about the official release date, but also a product that looks quite promising for you that don't know what it is. It's the ability to actually pay supplier invoices online. pay slips and tax directly in the platform with different payment rails. So you can pay these things with different payment rails in the platform. So a lot of user experience improvement with that, because nowadays you can almost do that in the platform because you're taking all your supplier invoices and you're pushing pay, but you still need to go into your internet back and do the payment. And of course, that is kind of cumbersome when you are a user. So I think it's a lot of customer value that there and we will come back with the business model around that when or after we have released it to the market.

Excellent. Sounds promising. I'll just end with a final question. I know you don't guide for growth next year, but I mean, if we think about the puts and takes into next year and in this year, you've done some price increases driving around 4% growth, I believe you said. and usage growth is sort of the main driver. But still, it's the weak macro environment. I mean, how should we think about growth going into next year? I mean, in a stronger macro environment, would you see sort of accelerated growth all as equal? Thank you.

Yeah, as you know, we're not guiding, so I guess we should not start to do that now either. But the only thing that we can say regarding macro, yes, it's holding us back a bit now, and it has been doing that for over a year right now. So that is the only thing that we can clearly communicate. Then exactly what will happen next year, we'll see. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. And then we're going back to chat questions for a little bit. Could you elaborate on the non-recurring cost of 13 million crowns on the one-off staff cost? What is the driver behind that?

Yeah, so we have two persons in executive group management that left in Q3. So that's the sum of those changes.

All right. Then the next question is, as you focus more and more on price optimization over time, should we expect that price action going forward will be more than historically or the same?

Yeah. So when we're talking about price optimization, it's also that we want to connect it more to the usage or the benefits of the platform. So be smarter in the pricing. So as you asked questions before about larger corporations. So today we have a... Not optimize the price model to have the larger and the smallest ones since we have almost every type of organization. We try to work with price pricing that fits the type of user or the type of customer. So that's what we're working on with the price optimization.

All right. One more chat question that I think will be pretty fast before we have another caller is how is the CEO search progressing with two both former and current CEOs in the room? This is an interesting question. Do you have any update on timing?

No update on timing. The board are working, are in the process. That's the update we have.

All right. Short answer, as I expected. Then we have a caller ready. We have Peter Savinovich from Carnegie with us in the room, hopefully. Please feel free to ask your question.

Hi everyone, thanks for taking my questions. Can you hear me? Brilliant. I just want to start with a clarification question on ARR, because there's been some debates whether it's declining in sequential or not, but if we adjust Oferta from the previous calculations, it looks like ARR is in fact growing nicely quarter over quarter. Is this the right way to see it, do you think?

Yeah, we believe that it correlates to the subscription revenues.

All right, good. Then I would like to just touch on a different debate, because there's been some discussions in the financial markets around negative points on Fort Knox. So if we could take those questions as well. I think the first one I want to ask is, Some people have claimed that Fort Knox is underinvested, that there's technical debt, which is not my impression. But I would like to hear your answers to if the platform requires significant upgrades in the coming years, if that's going to impact profit margins and so on.

Of course, I'm kind of biased, but I would definitely not say that. I have been working at many software companies and I have looked into many software companies. I haven't seen a single company that is investing as much in the future as we are doing. Most of the investments that we're doing are not driving revenue this year or even next year. So I think that we are still heavily investing in the future, I would say. We have 50 development teams that are working on the platform every day. And we are able to attract really, really good developers also. So we are also really good at doing development. So we are a tech company. That's our core. We are best at tech. So I would say that, no, that's definitely not our interpretation on the inside.

That's very clear. That's my impression as well. If we can move on to some growth drivers, Dan, and I respect you, you don't give guidance, but if you could maybe reason a little bit around continued customer growth, is it more challenging or is it status quo similar as before? What do you think of the penetration levels on the existing products? platform and portfolio currently have, new product launches for the next two to three years from here?

You know, we're not guiding, but again, I think it's quite obvious that we're keeping up net ads. And we have said that we have invested in both our channels, both the indirect channels through accountants and our own website. And I think that is seen by the numbers, being able to go from 10,000 to 13,000 increase in net with ads in the quarter three where many companies are actually struggling. That's quite impressive. And I think that we're showing that we are a solid platform that is improving our net ads. Then, of course, as Roger is referring to, the 700,000 is it's quite it's quite aggressive and we probably need some help in the macro environment. If we continue to be in the recession state that we are now, it will be maybe too challenging. But we have a plan to get us there. So we have not given up on that. So we think that we can reach that, again, with some help with macro, I think. And regarding the up sales, you know, what is driving growth, we have said that during this business plan period, 50 percent of the growth comes from existing customers and roughly, of course, and 50 percent comes from new customers. That, of course, over time will change. And I think that is what Roger also showed us in his numbers now that growth. the upselling capabilities are driving more growth now than new customers. And I guess over time, of course, it's kind of obvious that that will continue in that direction.

That's very clear. Thank you. And then just a question also on the Fort Knox card, and I appreciate the stats you shared with us. We also noticed that you started including it with most of your packages. What is a reasonable penetration level, do you think, over time for this product? I mean, it's free access and free to use. So should it be very high, you know, mid-teens? What should we think of in terms of potential when it comes to penetration?

I guess a reasonable number would be 100% because it's for free and it's a really good product. So why shouldn't you use it?

Okay, sounds very good. Thank you very much for taking my questions and for all the good answers. Thanks.

Thank you. All right. Then the next question is intangible capitalization was only 35 million in Q3, which is a slowdown from quarter one and two. What are the drivers behind that?

And that's the same as the seasonal effects that I talked about. We have the vacation period in Q3, so a few worked hours. That's the reason behind it.

Yeah. The next question is the opening of the Stockholm office seems to have gone well. How do you see this affecting staff costs going forward?

Nothing. We had two offices in Stockholm before, since we bought Capsito and Offerta. And now we moved to a Fortnox office. So yeah, it's no changes.

All right. The next question then is, can you share some more comments on the development of accounts receivable and deferred income in the quarter? And how should one think about the implications on revenue growth?

So two questions there. We had a decrease in accounts receivable and that's due to that the last day of the quarter did not fall on a weekend as it had done the year earlier quarter. and also the two quarters, quarter one and quarter two. So just depending on what day the last day of the quarter is. So we get the money from the customers and that affected the accounts receivable and made a positive cash flow. I didn't get the second one.

How should one think about the implications of this on revenue growth?

I don't see any implications on revenue growth connected to that. So it was just the effect of that the last day did not fall on the weekend.

And then we have one more question before we will take another caller. And that is what are your what are your USPs compared to competitors when attracting larger customers? Would you say it's mostly price or user experience? Can you talk a little bit about your price compared to others?

Yeah.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, we are. on a ridiculous low price level, but that also connected to what Roger is referring to, that we actually don't have a price model for that segment yet. So I think that will come now that we're going more for that segment as well, because I think actually that segment would like to pay more so that they are sure that they're buying quality, so to say. But regarding features and what we think the platform is good for, the platform is, compared to other platforms, very flexible, very open, very easy to use. So you can cherry pick, you can pick whatever. So, yes, you can use our bookkeeping, but maybe you want a time reporting from another platform, then you can buy that in the App Store. So you can cherry pick and take the best of breeds of everything that you need. And I think that is kind of unique when a really big, you know, Software, when a vendor comes into an enterprise deal, they say that you need to buy everything from us. We're saying that utilize the platform and take whatever you need. Sometimes our products are really good, but you also have a bunch of different other choices in the app market. And it's an open platform, so you can also develop and integrate your own developed system, which many of these bigger companies actually have. So all in all, I think that is a major difference compared to many of the other vendors in that segment.

All right, then we're going to take our caller. We have Simon Gran Nass from ABG on the line. Welcome to the studio and feel free to ask your question.

Thank you so much. Hi Tommy and Roger and thank you for the presentation. Initially a big topic in my view is that customer growth in percentage terms has slowed in recent years while the ARPC growth has accelerated and become more important. Regarding the latter here, we know that there is a tailwind from customers migrating from non-interactive clients into interactive such. Could you talk about the long-term momentum here and how, if so, you made speed up that process? Thank you.

I think, you know, yes, that is seen in the numbers. I don't think that you should have that as the single reason for that happening. So I think, as always, it's a little bit of everything in the platform. But you are right. We're becoming better and better at explaining to people. why they should be more active in the platform. And we are also developing more. So we're spending more and more R&D also for that reason. So we talked, we can take any, you know, take the card, for instance. You cannot be... using the card if you're not active in the platform so that's we have the business mailbox you cannot get your you know formal mail into your company as an entrepreneur without being active in the platform you need to onboard yourself so and when you're doing that I think that that is also a reason for you being more active in the platform because you need that first push so to log into the platform and then you see oh can i do this in the platform i get all these insights i can do this digital instead of doing it manually so i think we need to push that first step and then it's happening out of itself so but more and more of the rmv the investments are actually addressing that because it's not just that first arpc uplift it's a tailwind of everything that happens afterwards also

Very good answer. Thanks for that. And then I have a follow up on the corporate card. Have you seen any changes in the market sentiment around the general adoption of expense management products in light of the recent legislation changes that were implemented as of 1st July this year?

no no no uplift in that sense but yes it's growing better and better every month now but it's probably not connected to that it's because it's because more and more of our customers knows about the product i think so it's more connected to that i think very good that's all for me thank you so much

Thanks, Stephen. Thank you.

Thank you. We have a few more questions. We're starting to get to the end of this hour, so we'll see. We should have time for all of them. We'll see if there's another caller coming in. The next question then is organic growth is the trending softer. The organic growth is trending softer. At the same time, you have a strong customer addition. What is driving the softer organic growth?

It's actually a recession, I would say. You know, that's the only single explanation that we can have. We were in a recession last year when we went from like 30, 35 percent growth to 25 percent. And that was mainly connected to recession. And now, yeah, my gut feeling is that the recession, the macro environment is even tougher this year than last year. And then to be able to keep up almost the same organic growth as we did last year, although we are in a tougher macro environment, I think it's quite impressive, to be honest.

Yeah. The next question then is, would you expect that the drive behind price optimization will lead to a larger annual impact on revenue growth from pricing than the 4% you've done historically in the coming years? It's a long question.

Hopefully. So it's not our main driver because it's kind of obvious with our low price point that we can easily just raise prices if we want. It has not been our main driver for growth. But we also know since the platform has grown so much with so many customers, with more products, we also know that we are somewhat a bit pricey on certain things for certain customers. But we are also ridiculously low on price for certain customers and for certain products. So with that said, I think that we can substantially raise prices in the platform without impacting customers at all. They will feel that, yeah, this is obvious that it should cost more or this should cost less. So the sum of that... Yes, I think that will have a bigger impact going forward than what it has had historically. But it's not traditional price raising. It's more about price optimization, working more with the business model in the platform. So that is not something that we have focused on historically. We have developed really good products with easy-to-use products that is, you know, helping customers to improve their business. That has been the driver. So we have not focused that much on that. But I think that it's something that we can do going forward.

All right. Then the next question is, how important will a new CEO be in terms of setting the next five-year targets?

Hard to say, but we believe that we have a company, we have a vision that is stable, that we are 900 employees, and we have a group management team that are close and driving this. So probably not that important, I would say.

And since we are so long-term in our investment, most of the investments that we're doing right now has not the purpose to drive revenue this year or even next year. So many of the investments that the management team have decided on has growth drivers two, three, four years in the future. So we are already in that business plan with the investments that we're doing now.

All right. We've now closed our phone line for those wondering about that. We have another three minutes or so to go. So if you have a last question, you can throw it in the chat and we'll answer as many as we can. The last question as of now is you've added net 140 new employees this year to date. How do you think about hiring going forward? Is a couple hundred hires per year a reasonable assumption?

So what I'm mentioning in those is that we also acquired a company, so it's included in those numbers. But if you look historically, we have had almost the same hiring rate connected to our growth. So I would expect that it will have this similar pattern going forward.

All right. Thank you. That's it for today. We haven't gotten any last minute questions in this last minute or so. So that's all we're going to talk about today. Thank you to our acting CEO, Roger Atelius. Thank you to our former CEO, Tommy Eklund. And of course, thank you to all of you watching. That's it for today. And thank you.