Topic: NFON released preliminary FY24 figures, showing a stronger than expected top- and bottom-line as well as an extraordinarily strong FCF. In detail:
FY24 sales increased 6.1% yoy to € 87.3m (eNuW: € 86.1m; eCons: € 86.5m) driven by moderate seat growth (+1.4% to 665k) as well as premium solutions. Notably, non-recurring sales were up 95% yoy in Q4, indicating a strong effect from botarios project business and also a strong growth in Q4 as well as FY24 by the newly acquired subsidiary (consolidated since 09/24). According to CEO Heider, the company exceeded expectations and thus made a strong contribution to the FY result. Importantly, recurring revenues grew 5.1% yoy to € 81.1m (in line with eNuW), implying a recurring revenue ratio of 92.9%.
FY24 adj. EBITDA improved disproportionately by 48% yoy to € 12.3m (eNuW: € 12.0m; eCons: € 11.3m), implying a margin of 14.1% (+3.9pp yoy). The improved profitability was mainly driven by an improved product mix (i.e. premium solutions), the imposed efficiency measures as well as the margin-accretive acquisition of botario (c. 30% EBITDA margin). Reported EBITDA was in line with our estimates at € 10.8m.
The clear highlight of the release however was the FCF, which improved strongly from € 1.0m in FY23 to € 6.5m in FY24 and was substantially ahead of our estimate (eNuW: € 3.8m). The strong increase was mainly driven by the improved profitabilty as well as lower CapEx (eNuW).
New guidance. For FY25e, management targets sales to grow by 8-10% (eNuW new: +10.4%) and an adj. EBITDA of € 13.5-15.5m (eNuW new: € 15.8m). In our view, both should be well achievable even at the upper end of the range. This should be driven by (1) the continuous efficiency gains, (2) a further improvin product mix as well as (3) the introduction of new solutions like NFON Intelligent Assistent or voice mail transcription.
Despite the recent share price jump (+45% YTD), this is still not adequately reflected in the share price, in our view, given a valuation of 7.3x EV/EBITDA FY25e (5.5x FY26e).
We hence reiterate BUY with an increased€ 12.30 PT (old: € 11.70) based on DCF. The stock remains part of our NuWays Alpha List.
ISIN: DE000A0N4N52
