Kortisktiga utmaningar, men långsiktig potential. Så sammanfattar @Antti_Luiro Saasbolaget LeadDesk i korthet på denna video. Bevis på lyckade internationalisering finns sedan tidigare och efterfrågebilden på sikt ser intressant ut.
Kolla in:
Läs även den “långa analysen” :):
Videoinnehåll:
Contents:
00:00 Introduction
00:12 Why read the extended report?
00:55 LeadDesk in a nutshell
02:30 Income streams 03:52 Businessmodel
07:00 International markets and competitors
08:49 Strategy
12:00 Valuation
Got a few questions on LeadDesk over email, sharing my comments here in case its interesting for other as well
Viking Ventures came in as LeadDesk’s major owner recently (release here in Finnish). I’m not expecting major strategy changes to be driven by Viking, but rather support for LeadDesk executing on current one (international growth, continuing expansion to Enterprise customers + tech focused M&A). Viking came in as owners to another SaaS-company I cover (Heeros) and I’ve so far heard good things from their SaaS-company network for knowledge sharing.
Current liability / working capital development has also raised some questions. I wouldn’t say I’m too concerned on that. LeadDesk sends a lot of invoices for of 3-12 month subscriptions in June & December due to contract timings, which shows in their working capital development. Also, 2021 year end current liabilities included a 1,5 MEUR earn-out for Loxysoft deal, which was irregular and paid out during 2022. 2022 year end current liabilities (non interest bearing) relative to revenue were actually quite close to 2020 levels.
But of course working capital development trend is something to keep an eye on going forward. Especially on receivables, as there we can has been an upwards trend relative to revenue (ties up more working capital).
Are there any other significant risks for LeadDesk beyond the challenges mentioned by Inderes below?
Challenges in new sales due to the company not being well known.
Does LeadDesk have particularly larger technology and cybersecurity risks compared to other companies in the industry? This question arose because you mentioned these risks in your report.
The success of integrating acquisitions and opening new markets.
Hey @börsen84 ! Sorry for the wait - just came back from vacation
We’ve tried to highlight our view of the most relevant risks in the extensive report, which happens to be in English for LeadDesk (from 12/2022 so largely relevant still!) - this is the best package we’ve built on LeadDesk so going through it should give a good view of the company & its risks as a whole
On a high level the risks are either company & market related. Market drivers are good in the long term, but some risks & impact from short term cycles is still there:
For the company internally the main factors are product competitiveness & sales execution. Also operational issues (e.g., scaling the organization & management model) are among possible risks and M&A can bring quite a few of these if unsuccessful.
I think for new market openings LeadDesk has actually a solid track record and they seem to have a model of getting around the initial lack of brand awareness in new markets:
M&A risks however are there and some did realise with LoxySoft (bought market share + overlapping tech). Technology driven M&A (complementary tech, not overlapping like with Loxy) LeadDesk has on the other hand done well and they are focusing there now. So I do feel that the risks are now lower (lessons were learned with LoxySoft acquisition ) but you never know how a M&A deal turns out right away.
For LeadDesk this is a more generic risk as for all software businesses I would say. Of course LeadDesk handles consumer info (customer service call/chat transcripts etc.) so problems might turn out painful, but naturally we’re not talking about e.g., personal health records so I guess LeadDesk is at roughly an industry average risk level here.
Another one to add is product competitiveness. LeadDesk does seem to be in a good position here (modern cloud product, good sales traction). Compared to the key consolidators in Europe, LeadDesk (along with Puzzel) are the only ones that seem to integrate on a technology level. Some players just buy similar players and give them a new logo, but then let each one run with their old product == lots of overlapping work if you want to keep evolving your product.
Integrated tech = R&D focus goes to developing one main product = less time wasted on overlapping development. This puts LeadDesk at a good position to keep their product competitive, but of course the largest global players win at the R&D resource game so it is not easy to tell how LeadDesk’s product competitiveness will fare in the long run
Thank you very much, Antti! I didn’t have to wait long.
I’m really, really pleased with your response - you answered much more thoroughly than I could have imagined. You told me a lot of new things that were partly unfamiliar to me or that I might not have fully understood before.
The extensive report is truly a comprehensive package and makes perfect sense. It’s really good and useful analysis, thank you for that!
I understand that LeadDesk’s product is excellent, and the management also seems to be competent. The fact that the CEO holds a significant portion of the company’s shares is noteworthy. Moreover, the company’s acquisitions have been successful, and it operates in a growing industry with scalable operations.
However, there have been recent challenges, such as fluctuations in weak currencies, and the company lacks significant visibility. Despite these factors, many aspects of the company appear to be in good shape.
The stock seems undervalued considering the expectations for the company. Perhaps LeadDesk needs to provide further evidence in the market to see its stock price “correct” and reflect its true value.
These are just my own thoughts and I might still need more evidence to buy a share.
n my opinion, LeadDesk’s revenue was weak in H1, likely due to the weak Norwegian and Swedish currencies. On the other hand, there was also nothing to praise in terms of operating profit.
I was expecting some interesting information about the outlook, but in my opinion, the company didn’t provide anything intriguing in that regard.
Overall, this H1 was unremarkable, somewhat poor in my view, but it could have been worse.
We had the same initial reaction with Frans when looking at the high level figures, but after digging into the figures Q2 were actually quite okay in our view:
Overall revenue growth for H1 was 9 % currency adjusted vs. 5 % in euros
Recurring revenue grew ~9 % (June 23 vs. June 22 - note, in Euros despite NOK&SEK negative effects being significant!)
Lower overall revenue mainly due to low project-revenue (mainly driven by the low volume of Enterprise-customer deployment projects linked to slow sales in this segment)
Only one of two customer groups is creating the recurring revenue growth (SME good, Enterprise bad). Enterprise companies have been prioritizing faster effect cost savings moves, but would be surprising if they don’t start software investments again as CCaaS they should be cost-saving in nature (just slower in effect >> second/third wave priority for saving costs).
ARR + 10 % y/y (this is their recurring revenue contract base, closed deals but not fully in billing = indicates growth prospects for next 3-6 months)
Outlook, as we interpreted it, was basically kept the same because small M&A is included in guidance - so 14 % growth is possible if LeadDesk buys a few smaller companies.
Research front page available here (only in Finnish unfortunately):
Quite often, I find myself in a situation where, after initially reading a press release, I think I have a clear understanding of the details. However, in the end, when analysts have examined the situation more closely, things haven’t always been exactly as they seemed at first.
Fortunately, ChatGPT translates Finnish text into English and vice versa quite well.
This is a very familiar experience I would imagine! Before I started working as an analyst this happened to me quite frequently as well.
When you spend more of your waking hours on looking at a particular company (+ have gotten used to how they report over a few years) and get the context & answers to your questions directly from the management, it often opens new layers to the reports. We of course try to close this transparency gap as well as possible with our content to make it easier for everyone to understand the companies not to say that we are always right - we definitely are not - but at least we try to lay out all the facts as well as possible to help investors make educated decisions.
Some companies are able to build their reports so clearly that a quick look already lets you get up to speed, but this is not always easy (and can take quite a bit of work). We frequently give feedback to the companies on what would make their reports easier to understand from investor point of view, but obviously not everything is feasible to be changed right away.
I understand what you mean very well. It is indeed a bit different to be a specialized investment professional, like a stock analyst, compared to an ordinary investor.
Easily, I might scrutinize the numbers in the same way for every company, even though they operate in different industries, which often requires looking at different metrics in different ways.
At times, I wonder about the day’s price reactions, but later I realize what perhaps more experienced investors have been considering.
In my opinion, Finnish companies are quite realistic and honest in their communications. Thanks to them for that!
