Earnings call transcript: Sinch AB Q4 2024 misses EPS, stock rises 12%

Sinch AB reported its Q4 2024 earnings, revealing a significant earnings per share (EPS) miss with actual EPS at 2.24 USD compared to the forecasted 3.17 USD. Despite this, the company’s stock surged by 12.23% in pre-market trading, reflecting investor confidence in its strategic initiatives and financial health. According to InvestingPro data, the company’s current market capitalization stands at $2.17 billion, with analysts expecting net income growth this year.

Key Takeaways

• Sinch AB missed its EPS forecast by 0.93 USD.
• Revenue exceeded expectations, reaching 7.73 billion USD against a forecast of 7.48 billion USD.
• The stock price increased by 12.23% following the earnings release.
• Strong cash conversion and reduced financial leverage were highlighted.
• New product launches and organizational restructuring were key focus areas.

Company Performance

Sinch AB’s overall performance for Q4 2024 was marked by a mixed financial outcome. While the company reported a miss on EPS, its revenue surpassed expectations, indicating robust sales performance. The company’s strategic shift towards an integrated organization and focus on product innovation appear to have bolstered investor confidence. InvestingPro analysis shows the stock is currently undervalued, with a strong free cash flow yield of 13% and high volatility (Beta: 2.34). For deeper insights into Sinch’s valuation and 10+ additional ProTips, consider exploring InvestingPro’s comprehensive research report.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 7.73 billion USD, exceeding the forecast of 7.48 billion USD.
• EPS: 2.24 USD, missing the forecast of 3.17 USD.
• Gross profit grew by 1% to 2.6 billion DKK.
• Adjusted EBITDA margins remained stable at 13%.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Sinch AB’s actual EPS of 2.24 USD fell short of the forecasted 3.17 USD, representing a significant miss. However, the revenue beat by 250 million USD suggests strong sales performance, which may have mitigated the negative impact of the EPS miss.

Market Reaction

Despite the earnings miss, Sinch AB’s stock price rose by 12.23% in pre-market trading. This positive movement indicates that investors are optimistic about the company’s strategic direction and financial health, focusing on long-term growth potential rather than short-term earnings fluctuations.

Outlook & Guidance

Sinch AB remains committed to its mid-term targets of 7-9% organic net sales and gross profit growth by 2027, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 12-14%. The company is focusing on enterprise expansion, self-serve capabilities, rich messaging, and partner investments to drive future growth. Get exclusive access to Sinch’s detailed financial health metrics and growth potential through InvestingPro’s comprehensive research report, featuring advanced valuation models and expert analysis.

Executive Commentary

CEO Lorinda Pang emphasized the company’s ambition to "pioneer the way the world communicates," highlighting the role of AI in their growth strategy. Pang also noted the company’s focus on executing plans and capitalizing on areas where they have a competitive advantage.

Risks and Challenges

• Continued pricing pressures in key markets like the US and India.
• The impact of a one-time tax provision on full-year EBITDA.
• Potential supply chain disruptions affecting product launches.
• Macroeconomic pressures that could influence consumer spending.
• Competition in the messaging technology space.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the implications of the tax provision and SMS pricing pressures. The company addressed strategies for cash generation and cross-selling opportunities, reinforcing its commitment to operational excellence and market leadership.

Full transcript - Sinch AB (SINCH) Q4 2024:

Conference Operator: Welcome to the Cinch q four report for 2024. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, Lorinda Pang, and CFO, Roshan Saldanha. Please go ahead.

Thomas Heath, Chief Strategy Officer, Cinch: Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone to this Q4 earnings call with Cinch AB. My name is Thomas Heath. I’m Chief Strategy Officer. And with me today, I have our CEO, Lorinda Pang and our CFO, Roshan Saldana. With these opening remarks, I want to hand the word over to Laurinda.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: Thanks very much, Thomas. I’m pleased that Jonas Delberg is also with us today as an observer. Many of you know that Jonas will be joining Cinch as our new CFO, latest on April 1. And I’m pleased he’s able to join us today as part of his transition. So welcome, Jonas.

Thomas Heath, Chief Strategy Officer, Cinch: Thank you.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: So let’s turn to slide two. Our ambition is to pioneer the way the world communicates. And as a global leader in digital customer communications, we are enabling brands to reach, connect and engage with their customers across multiple channels to handle both the intimate conversations and to cut through the massive amounts of information that customers get exposed to every day. And we do this with ease and efficiency. We handle more than 800,000,000,000 unique customer interactions per year for more than 175,000 business customers.

And over the past twelve months, we generated DKK 28,700,000,000.0 in net sales, DKK 9,700,000,000.0 in gross profit and DKK 3,600,000,000.0 in adjusted EBITDA. Slide three, please. First, I’d like to remind you of the guidance we provided at our Capital Markets Day in November. By the end of twenty twenty seven, we will grow net sales and gross profit each by 7% to 9% organically on a year over year basis. We will deliver adjusted EBITDA margins in the range of 12% to 14%.

Additionally, we maintained our financial leverage policy where our net debt over time will be less than 2.5 times adjusted EBITDA on a rolling twelve month basis. In the fourth quarter, we delivered at the upper end of the near term outlook we provided in Q3. Specifically, year over year and organically, meaning without the effects of foreign exchange, net sales grew 3% and gross profit grew one percent. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 13% for the quarter. EBITDA margins was 4% in the quarter because of the one time historical tax provision of 700,000,000 krona covering multiple previous years.

Without this provision, the underlying EBITDA margin would have also been 13%. Russia will provide more details, so I will just say that this provision is one time in nature. We are proactive in our approach to mitigate future risk, and we are not under any audit or tax assessment in any of the relevant jurisdictions. Most importantly, our reassessed position will not affect our profitability, our competitiveness nor our ability to meet our financial targets. So continuing with the underlying performance, cash conversion remained very strong at 66% for the last twelve months, delivering DKK $9.00 5,000,000 in cash flow from operating activities in the quarter and DKK 2,900,000,000.0 for the full year.

Our leverage ratio continued to improve to 1.5 times net EBITDA or I’m sorry, net debt to adjusted EBITDA. We delivered the final tranche of cost savings we initiated at the start of ’20 ’20 ’4. In total, we achieved DKK $352,000,000 in gross savings on a run rate basis, which was ahead of our original target of DKK $300,000,000 Finally, a quick comment on our transformation agenda. In the quarter, we made steady progress across the pillars of go to market, product integration and operational excellence and will continue to pursue these areas to improve our execution and accelerate growth. Looking ahead to 2025, our focus is on growth and delivering towards our midterm financial targets.

Maintaining cost control allows us to point our resources towards our key growth levers. Those levers are first, expanding an enterprise, meaning nurturing and acquiring relationships with large brands. Second, furthering our capabilities in self serve to meet the needs of both developers and SMBs. Third, winning in rich messaging and the email space with our differentiated position. And fourth, investing in partners and ecosystems to further scale the business.

AI is an integral part of our strategy both on the growth lever and efficiency front. We are leveraging AI to enhance our product capabilities, drive automation and improve internal efficiencies, enabling us to scale smarter and deliver more value to our customers. Let’s move to Slide four, please. It’s now a full year since we transitioned from a business unit structure to a more integrated organization. The three regions form our operating segments with Americas contributing more than 60% of total gross profit.

The product categories including our API platform, applications, and network connectivity with applications slightly increasing its share of our total gross profit at 2322% in 2023. The functional split of adjusted OpEx has remained stable year over year, although we expect to drive towards sales and marketing as we invest for growth and unlock further operational efficiencies with the operational parts of R and D. Let’s look a bit closer at the regions by turning to Slide six. Americas accelerated organic growth and net sales of 5% in the fourth quarter. However, gross profit declined by the same percentage.

This is largely due to higher gross margins in the comparable period last year in both API Platform and Network Connectivity. API Platform gross profit performance was also driven by changing destination mix and pricing pressure for SMS traffic. Network connectivity on the other hand showed significant improvement in the quarter, particularly compared to earlier in the year when we were challenged by significant price increases from U. S. Suppliers and has now been addressed with commercial negotiations.

As we mentioned last quarter, we expected to start seeing the underlying growth in EMEA API platform outpace the negative impact of some fixed price contracts we exited. In the fourth quarter, EMEA delivered 2% organic net sales growth. Gross profit grew by 13% year over year driven by strong API platform performance and aided by a weaker comparable period last year, effectively the opposite effect of Americas. For this quarter, net sales growth percentage is a better representation for the underlying performance of EMEA gross profit. In APAC, we saw a 5% decline in net sales driven by a decline in lower margin SMS revenue in India, while the rest of APAC as well as OTT and email revenue in India grew.

As a result, gross profit grew 8% for the region on an organic basis driven by the positive developments in revenue mix. Russia will provide more details, in the gross margin development between regions in his section, so I will simply remind you that this is last quarter comparing to pro form a restatement. Broadly speaking, we had positive developments in each of the regions in Q4 relative to product launches, partnership momentum and new customer wins. You can see a few listed on this slide. While we can’t disclose the names of all of our customer wins, I am pleased with the momentum we are starting to see in each market.

Slide eight, please. The applications product category held a steady growth at mid single digits year over year, but our expectations are higher. The development was similar across the regions. In API platform, development was mixed between the regions and products. From the product perspective, email contributed strongly, but this was offset by SMS development in India and The US.

The latter affected by changes in destination mix, low margin political traffic and pricing pressure. As mentioned earlier, EMEA performed strongly in API platform also aided by a weaker comparable period last year. Across API, we have initiatives designed to improve performance. Network connectivity significantly improved compared to prior quarters and ended the year flat compared to Q4 of twenty three. If you recall at the start of this year, network connectivity gross profit was negative 18% mostly driven by supplier price increases.

This has now been offset by successful negotiations and the passing on of remaining price increases combined with a strategy to reduce our dependency on this technology. Next (LON:NXT) slide please. Recently, we held our first Capital Markets Day. And as a leader in digital customer communications, we are part of a market sized at $85,000,000,000 U. S.

Dollars with expected growth of 8% to 9% over the next five years. I spoke about how we are transforming our business to re accelerate growth through three pillars of go to market, product integration and operational excellence. We also discussed how we create value for our shareholders through focusing on sustained growth, EBITDA expansion and continued high cash generation. So those are just reminders. I’d like to share some updates regarding the key levers for growth.

Email continues to do very well. We have further built out self serve capabilities and during this quarter we launched elastic SIP trunking, which is now resident in our Cinch dashboard and improves our voice offering. We launched our Cinch Engage platform in France, Germany and Spain that supports SMS, RCS and WhatsApp, primarily serving SMBs. And we have added integrations to third party ecosystems around digital identity with new connectors to Okta (NASDAQ:OKTA) and Auth0. Next slide, please.

A bit about RCS. RCS messaging is continuing to gain momentum. Through 2024, we have sent 1,100,000,000 messages and it’s growing. In EMEA, RCS traffic has grown by 60% since q three. In the fourth quarter, we signed agreements with several additional mobile operators in Europe and Americans.

And in fact, we can now send RCS business messages through two of the three major mobile operators in The US. There are three progressive messaging categories here. Basic RCS, which is a simple upscaling of SMS that includes verified sender status and logos. Single RCS leverages rich medium and conversational RCS is where the magic of true customer engagement happens. France continues to shine brightly for more advanced use cases.

And here I’m highlighting Clarins, a European luxury skincare brand, and how they leveraged RCS to create personalized, engaging customer experiences through the holiday season. The skincare industry is fiercely competitive and as customers demand more personalized interactive communications grows, Clarence saw an opportunity to differentiate using RCS business messaging. The results are compelling where they increased engagement by two and a half times. The campaign generated 79% read rates, 22% click through rates, and three and a half times more redirections than rich SMS campaigns. Higher engagement and increased revenue are the tangible results that will drive more brands into the open arms of RCS business messaging.

With those remarks, I want to hand the word over to Roshan to take us through the financials.

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Thank you, Lorinda. Very good afternoon to all of you on the call. And let me start by reviewing our financial development for the quarter by moving us to Page 12. Net sales for the third quarter were up organically in constant currencies by 3% year on year. This can be compared to a year on year organic growth in net sales of 2% in the previous quarter.

We see volume picking up in our core products driving up net sales. Looking to the regions, Americas grew 5%, EMEA increased 2%, whereas APAC declined by 5%. In Americas, we have seen a sequential increase in net sales growth. This is driven by volume increases in API platform and the price increases in network connectivity. Organic net sales in EMEA grew as the impact from Us exiting some fixed price contracts reduces sequentially and is completely rounded off in comparable periods from q one of twenty twenty five.

For APAC, the decline in net sales is due to reduced sales in API platform where a reduction of SMS sales in India is only partly offset by increased sales in other parts of Asia. Future growth in India is expected to be driven mainly by RCS, email, and advanced enterprise solutions. Please turn to page 13. Gross profit grew 2% on a reported basis and increased 1% organically in constant currencies to 2,600,000,000.0 kroner. Growth in Americas region was down 5%.

EMEA was up 13%, whereas APAC grew at 8%. In Americas, the negative gross profit trend in constant currencies is due to weaker performance in API platform, specifically SMS, and is exacerbated by a relatively high gross margin in the comparison period. Gross profit in network connectivity was unchanged in the quarter. This is a clear improvement compared to the earlier quarters this year, and it was achieved through successful negotiations with customers and suppliers, which also reduces the risk of future cost increases. In EMEA, gross profit improved in all three product categories compared to the same quarter last year.

As the increase in gross profit is largely driven by the unusually low gross margin in the comparison period, we have concluded that organic growth in net sales better represents the underlying performance in the region during the quarter. In APAC, the gross profit growth is attributable primarily to an improved gross margin. The growth is driven primarily from the growth in our Asian markets. In India, as we said in q three, we are seeing a lower growth rate now than we did a year ago as our largest customers look to optimize volumes. It is a competitive market where we have a strong position and we remain positive to its long term outlook.

Looking at the three product categories, applications grew 4% whereas API platform and network connectivity were flat year on year in constant currencies. Next slide, 14, please. One of our main product categories is network connectivity. It accounts for about 20% of gross profit in the quarter. Specifically, network connectivity in The Americas accounted for 70% of gross profit for the group and consisted largely of products within The US voice business targeting telecom operators.

Cost increases for legacy voice network connections impacted gross profit from q one where we reported a 18% decline in year on year gross profit. We have reduced this decline sequentially through the year due to good progress in our negotiations with those operators and price increases towards customers. Above all, we have reduced the risk for large increases of costs going forward. We’re also reducing reliance on legacy connectivity through service virtualization, and will continue to use pricing as a lever to manage profitability, which is the key focus for this product area. From q four and onwards, there is no year on year growth impact from the eight y y toll free calling reform.

Let’s turn to page 13. This slide shows the gross margin development for the business. Gross margin was stable and decreased slightly by 10 basis points over the same period last year. The reason for the slowing growth in gross margins is due to the decreasing margins within network connectivity as explained previously in this presentation. We still see strong gross margins in both the applications and API platform product categories.

On the right side of this page, you’ll see the gross margin per region. The twenty twenty three financials per region were performed were prepared on a pro form a basis. Gross margin in all regions in the comparison period was impacted by business and traffic mix within API platform. Gross margin has been more stable in 2024. The unusual mix in the compatible period boosts gross profit growth in EMEA and reduces it in Americas this quarter.

However, again, looking at a gross margin at group level, it continues to be stable. Let’s turn to the next page. EBITDA margin for q four at at 4% is down year on year from 11% due to the 700,000,000 kronor onetime provision for prior period tax exposures. I will be coming back to the one time provision shortly. Excluding this one time provision, underlying EBITDA margin improved to 13% on the back of continued cost control.

While we have reached the initial cost savings that were envisaged due to our change in operating model, we expect these savings to be invested in growth initiatives. EBITDA adjustments are primarily related to integration costs, share based incentive programs, and operational foreign exchange gains or losses. Looking specifically at integration and restructuring costs together, they ended up at 301,000,000 kronor for the full year against the 300,000,000,000 that we had guided towards. Adjusted OpEx defined as the difference between gross profit and adjusted EBITDA increased by 3% to 1,579,000,000, which is compared to the same period in 2023. This increase is partly due to the planned growth initiatives described earlier year.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter came in at 1,030,000,000.00 kronor compared to $996,000,000 kronor for the same period in 2023. And the margin for adjusted EBITDA margin remains stable year on year at 13%. Let’s now turn to page 15. Yesterday, we announced that the company will record a 700,000,000,000 kronor 1 time provision for historical non income based taxes. Our businesses have for many years charged taxes and fees to our customers in many jurisdictions and for many products and then filed those with relevant authorities.

Cinch operates multiple legal entities that offer similar or relate related services to customers within the same jurisdiction. Based on inconsistent inconsistencies observed by our teams, we proactively initiated a review of the company’s current position and previous practices going back several years and in some cases, all the way back to periods prior to acquisitions. We operate in a complex global environment where authorities are continually clarifying tax legislation and how it applies to services like the ones offered by SIPH. We have therefore decide now to mitigate future risk by changing how we treat these non income based taxes in certain jurisdictions. This change means that we have a liability for multiple previous years, and hence, we have made a provision for this exposure.

I want to reiterate that Cinch is not currently subject to tax assessment or audit in any of the jurisdictions relating to this provision. We have the contractual right to recharge customers these kinds of taxes and fees. We are recording this one time provision since we do not intend to re retroactively charge all these taxes going back multiple prior years. However, going forward, we will do so. To provide an understanding of the customer impact for the relevant jurisdictions and scope of our business, the annualized going forward charge is expected to be in the low single digits compared to net sales.

Hence, we do not expect that this change will affect the company’s competitiveness or ability to meet its financial targets. Since these taxes and fees are non income based, they do not affect the company’s effective income tax rate. Also, if we had applied these charges as per this change position in prior years, it would not have had any impact on our cash flow since we would have simply passed on these to our customers. With that, let’s move on to page 16 where we show the continued strong free cash flow after investments generating $734,000,000 kronor in the quarter and 2,400,000,000.0 for the full year of 2024. Net working capital causes variation between quarters and cash flow before changes in working capital is stable.

Our cash conversion in the quarter is helped by positive working capital impacts of 292,000,000 kronor and 614,000,000 kroner during the full year. Cinch has previously announced the decision to cancel certain fixed price contracts with telecom operators, which has had a positive impact on working capital throughout the year. In the graph to the right, we show cash conversion from adjusted EBITDA on a rolling 12 basis, which was at 66% at the end of Q4. While we still believe that our target range is 40% to 50%, we are delivering above that range due to optimization of working capital. Our business continues to operate in a very asset light fashion with negative networking capital at year end.

Let’s move to page 17. Here, we see the development of the financial leverage ratio for Cinch, which is net debt over adjusted EBITDA. We are glad to report a continued deleveraging as expected with leverage now down to 1.5 turns compared to two turns a year ago and 1.6 turns at the end of the previous quarter. This KPI is measured using excluding the impact of IFRS 16 related lease debt on both net debt and adjustability. We have paid down debt by 2,100,000,000.0 kronor during the last twelve months and 4,300,000,000.0 kronor over the last twenty four months.

At the same time, we have been deleveraging. We have also actively managed and diversified our debt portfolio. Together, this has meant that we reduced net interest paid to 103,000,000 kronor compared to 156,000,000 kronor a year ago in the same quarter. As we stated at the CMD, cash generated from the business will be used to reduce debt, finance acquisitions, and also return cash to shareholders. I want to reiterate here that the one time provision we recorded today is about a third of our annual cash generation and does not have any significant impact on our financial model or balance sheet strength.

Please turn to page 18 where we give details on our debt portfolio and maturity schedule as at the end of twenty twenty four. We had an unutilized credit facilities of 5,500,000,000.0 kronor maturing in 2027 and unutilized short term overdraft facilities of $886,000,000 kronor. During the quarter, a corporate bond of $673,000,000 kronor was redeemed early. Also, after the end of the quarter, we replaced debt expiring in February 2025 and secured a new two year hundred million US dollar loan. In addition to the debt portfolio shown on this page, we had cash and cash equivalents of 1,100,000,000.0 kroner at quarter end.

As you see, our available cash and committed credit facilities at quarter end more than exceed maturities during ’25 and 2026 of 2,700,000,000.0 kronor even before considering any further cash flow generation from the business. So with those words, I would like to hand back to Lorenga to take us through the financial targets and summarize the presentation.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: Terrific. Thanks, Rashaan. So before we take questions, let me summarize the quarter. Cinch is a stable and performing business. We have stable margins, strong cash generation and a strong balance sheet.

Net sales in the quarter grew 3% and gross profit grew 1% year over year. We continue to manage costs delivering 13% adjusted EBITDA margins. We delivered ahead of the near term outlook we provided last quarter. We had some good customer wins in the quarter pointing to good momentum in the business. We also continued with strong cash flow throughout the year, delivering full year operating cash flow of DKK 2,900,000,000.0.

And we continue to reduce leverage from two to 1.5 times throughout the year. While the historical tax provision negatively impacted the quarter and full year EBITDA, this will not impact profitability going forward, our ability to compete nor our mid range targets for 2027 and our financial framework remains intact. We are focused now on executing our plans and winning in the areas we have a right to win. Enterprise expansion, self-service, RCS and email, as well as partners and ecosystems. So before ending, I want to recognize this is the last call with Roshan and Thomas participating.

I want to thank them both for their many contributions to Cinch and especially for their partnership that I’ve enjoyed over the past two years. But I am also excited to welcome Jonas to the team, and both he and I look forward to speaking with you again in the coming quarters.

Thomas Heath, Chief Strategy Officer, Cinch: Thank you, Lorinda. We will now open up the call for questions. We ask that you limit yourself to one or two questions each so that we ensure that we have time for everyone.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: If you

Conference Operator: wish to ask a question, please dial 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Akhil Dhatani from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Akhil Dhatani, Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. I’ve got two, please. The first one, Laurinda.

Laurinda, you mentioned the Q4 performance that you’ve had exceeded the short term targets you’d set. I guess I’d love to understand what’s driven that and how we think about what that means going forward. As you said, Q3, you’d indicated that you’d expected Q4 gross profit to be flat to negative, you’ve grown. If you’re talking about incremental contract wins, does that also mean prior come to your grade on 2025 is also now too prudent? You’d previously said you’re expecting a slow start to the year.

So is that also sort of maybe too prudent? So if you could just sort of give us color on what’s happened and then I guess what that really means in the next couple of quarters? And then the other question was for Roshan around the tax provision. I just wanted to understand some of the comments you made. Oisin, you said that going forward you’re able to pass this on to your customers.

And you made some comment around a low single digit change. I just didn’t know what that low single digit was. Maybe you can clarify what that is. But I guess what I’m trying to understand is, does that implicitly mean you’re raising prices for customers? Do you know if this tax impact will suffice to your competitors?

And I guess, what gives you the confidence if you’re raising prices that will stick? Thanks a lot.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: Thanks, Nikhil. I appreciate the questions. And so I’ll certainly take the first one. So Q4 performance, yes, we’re I’m quite pleased. And to your point, when we provided an outlook in the third quarter, we did say flat to slightly down.

We came in at 1%. I wouldn’t say that is a big, you know, it’s not a big jump from flat. Having said that, I’m very pleased. I wouldn’t say anything dramatic changed in the business per se. I think what it came down to was execution.

And, you know, we drove really hard to be able to deliver that 1% growth. I am pleased with the, you know, the 3% net sales growth, and I do see some momentum coming out of the quarter. As you know, with our enterprise wins, they do take a bit of time to onboard and for them to actually translate into GP. So the momentum that I point to in the fourth quarter, you know, continue to kind of follow the the spectrum of leading indicators. Right?

Earlier in the year, I talked about pipeline. We talked about, you know, some deals won. And now I’m talking about some very specific enterprise wins that are, you know, that are positive. And so then those will eventually translate into gross profit for us. In terms of Q1, I think you used the words, is it too prudent?

You know, I’m I’m not saying anything other than, you know, we had some good momentum out of Q4. We continue to strive towards our midterm targets of 7% to nine percent by the end of twenty twenty seven. And as we said, we have to show a trajectory towards that, right? It doesn’t happen overnight. So, you know, I feel good about Q4 and and, I don’t expect anything to change go forward.

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Yeah. And and, hi, Akhil. I’ll take your second question and try to give it a shot. I I think, you know, when what what I said is that, you know, firstly, yes, we will be passing on, you know, on a go forward basis, taxes and fees to to customers, on our products and services. I think it’s important to understand that we already do, in many jurisdictions around the world, and on many of our products, charge taxes and fees on those products.

That depends a little bit on how we classify and and, you know, how we define that product in light of the applicable legislation in that jurisdiction. Right? So, what what what might happen in in in many cases to customers is that this implies a change in in the amount or percentage of fees that they’re paying, but but it might not always be a completely new item. Secondly, you know, I think it’s important to to note that we contractually have the right, you know, in in all all of our customer, contracts to to be able to charge access and fees and and as as they’re applied at different points in time. And what I try to then give is to to give you a a relative sense of the sizing because I think, you know, when we look at the amount of provision that we’ve taken, that covers, you know, multiple prior years.

And and therefore, you know, try to say that when when we look at the relevant part of our business and and we equate this to, you know, to the revenues that we generate from our customers in the relevant parts of our business, you know, this is these amounts would equate on an annualized basis to something in the low single digits of that revenue. I think, finally, we are just to close off here. Right? I mean, prices are often negotiated excluding tax, and then, you know, taxes and fees are added on top. So so I think, again, how competitors may or may not deal with this is something that I we don’t have full insight into.

It’s always, you know, kind of complicated structure depending on how competitors define their business, etcetera. So so we don’t know. But I think what’s important for us is that we do the right thing, you know, here. We we’ve, we’ve arrived at this position because we have, you know, multiple approaches coming from various acquisitions, which may have been right at different points in time, you know, in in the in the historical periods. And we’ve noticed these inconsistencies, and we want to kind of, you know, have have a have a common approach to this in each jurisdiction.

And that’s what we are addressing on a go forward basis.

Akhil Dhatani, Analyst, JPMorgan: Great. Hrushan, can I just clarify one point to that? Just from what you’re saying, does that mean that contractually you can immediately apply the change? Or do you need to wait until the contracts up for renewal and you renegotiate? I didn’t quite understand that point.

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: No. Our contracts allow that, so we don’t have to wait for any renegotiations.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Ramiel Correa from Danske Bank (CSE:DANSKE). Please go ahead.

Ramiel Correa, Analyst, Danske Bank: Thank you guys and thank you for taking my questions. Perhaps I’ll do them one by one. Just if you could elaborate a little bit on the topic of SMS weakness in The U. S. And in India, it would be quite interesting to hear a little bit on that.

Because if you just calculate backwards in 2023, it seems like the API messaging business did 18% gross margins. And if there is price competition and price conscious customers, I’d like to understand a little bit more where these customers are now going, Who is offering prices below your 18% gross margin?

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Yes. Hi, Ramiel. Roshen here. I can guide you at least start us off on these, on these two topics. I think firstly, it’s important to understand, you know, I think that in The Americas, and I think the market by market, you asked about The Americas and India.

So if we start with The Americas, you know, I think we did mention, that we in q three already that we were seeing some pricing pressure in the API platform and specifically the API platform in the SMS business. Again, it’s important to note that this is not all customers. You know, we’re seeing that in specific cases, but in general, you know, kind of there is price and pressure. This is also why, you know, partly we are excited about the the the renaissance of messaging as Lorinda calls it with RCS and and the additional value that we can deliver to customers and and, you know, how we how we go on that journey, right, going forward together with customers. In in in India, you know, I think we’ve had a great journey for several years.

You know, obviously, we’re we’re at a point in time where I I can say that the SMS volumes in India, overall as a market still continue to grow. You know, we we have a concentration in India, with a focus in certain segments. And and there, we are seeing definitely customers becoming a bit more cost conscious. You know, at the same time, we’re seeing from relatively low volumes quite good growth in, in newer messaging technologies like WhatsApp and RCS in India, as well as, you know, kind of where we’re using the opportunity to to bring more of our applications and partnerships into India as well. So so there is potential in the market overall, but at the moment there is some weakness from your growth perspective.

Ramiel Correa, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. And that’s clear, Ocean. And just a brief follow ups on that. And this the change of tax based income that you will recognize moving forward, could you say anything about the incrementals in terms of the invoices that haven’t been affected historically? Is that is it more SMS where I would assume price elasticity with customers a bit higher or is it more broad based than that?

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Yeah. I think we’re refraining from giving any comments on kind of jurisdictions or products. I I think, you know, we’re we’re still, you know, the way this works, of course, we we have to kind of treat this from a accounting perspective and disclose this year. And then we have a number of processes ongoing, which we would like to complete before going into more details. So with respect to those processes, I would like to refrain from going to more details.

Ramiel Correa, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. Okay. And then just finally on the topic of cash generation and working capital movements. I mean, clearly, you’ve been in a very, very positive trend there. And as you alluded to, working capital sales is now negative.

Do you think that the current levels sort of in relation to sales are sustainable or should that fluctuate moving forward?

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Yes. Okay.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: It’s definitely your space.

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Okay. Thanks.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: We’re pointing at each other.

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Yeah. So, no, I I I do think I mean, you know, obviously, it’s it’s difficult. You know, there’s a lot of movements in a large business like this. Right? And and we’ll like, I think a couple of quarters ago, we called out, you know, kind of one of our large customers making some payments earlier, you know, which landed on the right side of the quarter, right, for us in the q in the second quarter and then actually had a, you know, kind of a negative impact in in the third quarter.

But we still delivered, you know, really good working capital improvement in the third quarter, I would say, despite that. Right? So, there will always be a little bit of noise. You know, we have large enterprise customers with large invoices and we have, you know, kind of large suppliers. And depending on how, you know, kind of the cash impacts fall out, there can be a bit of noise from quarter to quarter.

But I’m I’m still very comfortable that we have a number of drivers, you know, long term to continue to deliver good cash flow. First of all, the underlying cash flow is is being strong and stable before changes in working capital. In addition to that, we’ve seen interest cost reduced. I called out, you know, interest cost going from 150,000,000 to 100,000,000. You know, we’re seeing that some of our fastest growing areas of the business like self serve, you know, there’s a tendency to have shorter payment cycles within within self serve, which enables, you know, kind of a a a lighter working capital business as well.

So so I’m confident that, you know, there’s there’s a number of levers that we can, as a business, continue to work with and continue to deliver good cash flow then again with reservation for kind of short term noise, right, from one quarter to another.

Ramiel Correa, Analyst, Danske Bank: It’s very clear. Thank you guys. And Roshan and Thomas, it’s been our pleasure. Best of luck.

Thomas Heath, Chief Strategy Officer, Cinch: Thank you, Ramon. Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from

Stefan Gautam, Analyst, DNB: Stefan Gautam with DNB.

Conference Operator: Please go ahead.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: Hi, Stefan.

Laura Matteo, Analyst, Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS): Yes. Hello. I have a question regarding the API platform in EMEA, if you can help us understand the development given the fairly new segment reporting. So first, last year sales was basically flat quarter on quarter and this year it’s up 13% quarter on quarter. So this could be due to seasonality given Black Friday, Christmas campaigns, etcetera.

Secondly, in Q1, this segment was impacted by you voluntarily exiting low margin business and that resulted in negative sales growth for this business. And now this has turned to meaningful growth year over year. So could you help us understand what is seasonality and what is sort of underlying improvement in growth?

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: Sure. Thanks, Stefan. I’ll start and ask Rustom to fill in if we need to. First of all, I think there’s a couple of things. First of GP is up 13%.

Sales is actually up 2%, year over year. And what we’re saying is sales, the sales growth of 2% year on year is probably more representative of how GP should have moved. Sorry, there’s background noise. So so that’s the first aspect. The second piece is to your point, we did exit some fixed price contracts earlier in the year.

And we did say that as those started to taper down, the underlying growth in API platform within EMEA would start to, you know, we’d be able to start to demonstrate the growth. It would outpace the declines in those fixed price contracts. So that’s kind of the, the shift in the, the customer mix has has translated into ultimately 2% net sales growth. On the gross profit growth of 13% in the fourth quarter, it is, some of that certainly is from overall, API growth, but it also is because of the pro form a or the comparable period in q four of last year. Russian showed a slide to break it out by region to try and demonstrate the fact that, you know, our, you know, the pro form a statements or restatement of the business, really did, you know, there was a distribution mix in there last year.

There was a number of things that, you know, place a pro form a where it was. And so you saw the opposite effect happen in North America. So while EMEA benefited, America’s, went through other way. And again, it does come down to the pro form a. But, Roshan, do you wanna say anything about

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Yeah. I think I think I can just add very briefly. I mean, you know, thanks for calling that out, Stefan. I think I think the I think, you know, just to add, as we said, do you still hear us? Yeah.

I think he’s now in the background. Okay. Yeah. So so I think as as we said, right, I think the net sales development, you know, that we see in EMEA is more representative of our of our of our underlying business development. And I think the other thing I would like to add is that, yes, we have seen a positive trend during the year in EMEA, partly related to the fact we were rounding off the comparables on the low margin contacts, but also partly related to the to the healthy underlying development of the business.

And, so we are positive, you know, to that trend continuing during 2025 as well.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: But the trend should be based off of the 2%. Okay.

Stefan Gautam, Analyst, DNB: Thank you.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: Not 13%.

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Correct. That’s correct.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Laura Matteo from Morgan Stanley.

Stefan Gautam, Analyst, DNB: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Two, please. First one is on margin. So you’re at 13% adjusted EBITDA margin today.

So that’s I think it’s half like midpoint of your midterm guidance. Any color you can give us to help us understand the trajectory of margins? I think I remember that you said a few quarters ago or even last quarter that you expect to increase investment in OpEx in 2025. Is that still the case? Or how should we think about it?

And then second question on cross selling, any color you can give us here on what you’ve achieved, any data that you could share would be really helpful. Thank you very much.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: Sure. Thanks, Laura. And first of all, in terms of margin at 13%, obviously, we’re very pleased to be able to deliver that and that’s really a function of controlling costs. And we’ve also said that we’re committed to growing this business profitably, which is why we put the range out of 12% to 14%. We do see the need to invest in the growth areas and we’ve started to do that.

But it’s really a bit about reallocation of resources and focusing resources in the growth areas. And then we’ll, of course, you know, we will maintain at those margin levels, which does require an increase in OpEx quite frankly because as the business grows, you know, we’ll we’ll, you know, continue to invest, but we will maintain those margins. And I don’t know if you want to say anything more than that. Okay. As far as cross sell, Laura, you know, some of the customer wins that we saw in fourth quarter that is given, you know, that’s demonstrating some momentum was exactly that.

It was cross sell. So these are existing relationships that are purchasing a second or third product from us, you know, at a meaningful level. And, but they take a long time to they take a long time to develop. So we’re pleased that they did close and then, you know, it will take a little bit of time for them to actually ramp up and translate into a financial result of of delivering gross profit itself. The other, the other aspect I would say as well as, you know, as meeting with customers out in the markets, it becomes increasingly clear to me that the the desire, for enterprises to have, all of the channels of communication to, you know, put and and use within their customer experience strategy is, it it’s becoming more and more the norm.

And so the the great thing is is that Cinch has all of those channels. And so the narrative that we have with our customers now is about use cases, not about products. And so across those use cases does come multiple products. And so and and that turns into an actual solution for those enterprises. So I’m I’m pleased with, with the movements here.

Stefan Gautam, Analyst, DNB: Thank you.

Conference Operator: The next question comes from Victor Cheng from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Victor Cheng, Analyst, Bank of America: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe two, fair numbers have been asked already. So I guess first of all, on Cengage, I guess it’s still early days, but you have launched it already. Can you talk a bit about early momentum and where and when should we expect kind of maybe some more meaningful contribution from it?

And then secondly, related to this, you also obviously talked about some of the green shoots during CMD and I think you talked about a bit of a slow start expected in 2025. Any changes on that front? What are you seeing? I guess, I mean, you have alluded to it already, but if you can provide some more color on that.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: Sure. I’ll take the Grain Chutes question first, and then I’ll ask Thomas to give a bit more color on Cinch Engage. Again, throughout last year or throughout 2024, the the business itself was going through a tremendous amount of change. You know, we call it transformation, but it just comes down to plain old change, for the team and and, you know, broadly across the organization. And so that did create slowness, in our business because, you know, people were in new positions, people had new responsibilities, new managers, etcetera.

So that does take time to settle in. But in terms of momentum, you know, the green shoots that the regional, presidents provided to you all during CMD, you know, they talked about pipeline creation, funnel creation. They talked about, you know, some of the customer use cases that were compelling. All I can say is is that that’s continued. You know, I don’t have the updated stats across those specific green shoots that they called out, but the, you know, the momentum that we saw in the quarter included some customer wins, but it also included green shoots, around product launches very specifically around the partnerships that we are developing both in terms of, you know, relationships with mobile operators for RCS, but then also in terms of integrations, to be able to leverage other software providers to go to market, and really scale this business.

So I would say that, you know, we continue obviously, we need to continue to execute, but, you know, we saw some good points of positivity in the fourth quarter. As far as Centia Gage is concerned, we did announce in the fourth quarter the release in Europe, which is, you know, across the three countries of Cinch Engage in Spain, Germany, and France. But Cynch Engage exists. So this is really an expansion of that capability into new markets. And, it is, you know so it’s a proven it’s a proven product for us.

We’ve had great traction from it. You know, how fast we’ll see it in each of those particular markets, I can’t say. But I would say that, you know, there’s market fit that that we’re looking for. And, you know, again, the product works and the product is quite successful in all of the other markets that we do business with already today. Thomas, anything you want to add?

Thomas Heath, Chief Strategy Officer, Cinch: No. That’s correct, of course. I think we had a few quarters back where we beat a little bit of the integration journey that we’ve been on. So since you engage, you know, ultimately, it’s a it’s a multichannel communication software, turnkey software, which spans all the different channels, and and it builds on many of the assets, that are proven as Lorenda said, including message media, simple texting, mail jet and so forth. Really the centerpiece of our application strategy, very fun and positive to roll it out across, across more markets, not least now as we see RCS emerging.

And this of course helps enterprises utilize the more advanced features of RCS.

Ramiel Correa, Analyst, Danske Bank: There

Conference Operator: are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Lorinda Pang, CEO, Cinch: Okay. Thank you everyone for joining us today. We appreciate all of the questions and interest in Cinch, and we will look forward to seeing you or speaking with you again in quarter. Have a great day.

Roshan Saldanha, CFO, Cinch: Thank you. Thank you.

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