Nvni Group Limited - Earnings Call - Q4 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Nuvini Group Limited Investor webinar. A slide presentation is accompanying today's webcast, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of today's presentation. Please note that today's webinar is being recorded. As a reminder, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Pierre Schurmann, Founder and CEO. Sir, please go ahead.

Pierre Schurmann (Founder and CEO)

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us in Nuvini Group's first investor seminar. Before we begin, I must remind everyone that the call will include forward-looking statements and that these statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainty that could cause results to differ materially. We undertake the obligation to update these statements, so please refer to our filings with the SEC for more information. Great to have you all here with us today, and we will go through a presentation. Before I start the presentation, I'd like to, since this is our first call and many of you don't know me and they know of our history, I would like to share a little bit of my personal history to give you some context.

I started back in 1996 as an entrepreneur, founded a web search engine in Brazil, which ended up being the second largest search engine in Brazil, and I was lucky in my first startup, sold it to a U.S.-listed company, and from there founded a few other companies. Most recently, prior to founding Nuvini, I founded Bossa Nova Investments, which now is called Bossa Invest, back in 2012, focused on investing in SaaS B2B companies in Brazil. During my tenure there as a managing partner, I made over 900 investments that have resulted in over 100 exits. I have the opportunity, had the opportunity of both being an operator and an investor in Brazil. Bossa Nova is still very active. If you look up Pitchbook, Bossa Nova is still one of the top 20 most active VCs in the world outside of the United States.

That experience gives some context to you, and let's start with our presentation. Basically, here we go. What is Nuvini, right? The thesis that we're following in Nuvini and that we're going after is a thesis that's been actually applied and worked very well in other markets for over 20 years and sometimes in some places more. Companies like Constellation Software, Vitech, and Roper have been serial acquirers, and what we do is basically we acquire multi-sector SaaS businesses that are growing, are profitable, and we do that in a way that we believe adds value to everyone involved. Our focus is initially leading SaaS businesses. I'll give you some examples shortly. We're established business models, so they're not startups. They're far later in their stage, profitable, generating cash flow, and they have still significant growth potential.

We're different because we're accessing companies that are too small for private equity to acquire or to go public, especially in Brazil, and are able to do that on a very interesting market in a very different way. Our investment thesis, having been an investor in Bossa Invest in the past, our investment thesis is very clear. We see that there's a sizable total addressable market and very fragmented in SaaS in Brazil and Latin America. We have positioned Nuvini as an M&A platform in this segment with very interesting and efficient capital allocation capability. Our multi-vertical portfolio already is performing well and allows us to diversify risk. Our management team has been, we have the same core team today basically since we founded Nuvini. We've been able to both acquire and help these companies grow.

The team is very well experienced in running the businesses and business of Nuvini and the things that we do. We have a really, really interesting pipeline for M&A that has been growing, actually. As a matter of fact, when I founded Nuvini back in 2019, the market was far less liquid. There was far less liquidity in the market. Now we're in a position where there's an even better opportunity to look at acquisitions, given the fact that over the past 5 years in Brazil, there hasn't been a single IPO, 4 years in Brazil, there hasn't been a single IPO, but a series of companies have delisted in the local market. The lack of liquidity, we're also at a highest interest rate in Brazil since 2006. It's a really interesting opportunity for us.

Pipeline has been really interesting, and we'll talk about more shortly. Our value proposition for investors is to give them access to a diversified portfolio of SaaS companies, focused on specific verticals, which dilutes risk. Companies that are growing and are profitable, so there's not a startup risk in this. Our way of dealing with these companies and having the governance that we have gives them the consistency to look at what we're doing with a very transparent and high governance rate. Our proposition for our founders and founders of the company that we acquire is basically that we're giving them a path to liquidity, sure, but we're also bringing best practice and different management structures and opportunities for the companies to grow better and grow stronger. As an example, I'll give some examples of that shortly.

When we're looking at our investment thesis and looking at Brazilian and Latin America SaaS market, we have a really sizable opportunity. If you look at total IT spend in Brazil and Latin America, in Brazil it is about $9.2 billion. This is what we're calling basically a digital transformation of small and medium businesses coming online and migrating from a notebook or Excel spreadsheet into a software application or a SaaS application. If you look at what Mercado Libre has been able to do in the e-commerce space, looking at small and medium merchants, that's a little bit of what we believe on our specific verticals we'll be able to do over time potentially. There's a huge opportunity, huge market, huge market and adjustable market. The market is very concentrated in Brazil.

Brazil still represents 44%, but there's opportunity in other markets such as Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina. We do pretend over time to expand into those markets. We're just very focused in Brazil, given the low-hanging fruit that we're seeing right now in the local market. When we look at the SaaS market specifically, it should grow, it's projected to grow between last year and 2030. There is a very strong potential as we look forward. Actually, SaaS in Latin America is growing at twice the pace of the rest of the world. That is the reason why we're focused here and that we're expanding here. Specifically, talking about Nuvini and our track record, we acquired so far 7 companies in different segments, and I'll give you some color to that and some visibility to that. We have 22,000 clients spread out through these 7 companies.

No client represents more than 0.25% of our revenue, so it's really diversified. I'll give some numbers on recurring revenues and KPIs there. As 2 examples, Efective, which was one of our first acquisitions, they are a SaaS platform that allows small, medium, and some enterprise businesses to basically automate the process of selling to Brazilian federal, state, and local governments. Small companies, a small business owner can go into Efective, register, pay a monthly SaaS fee, and can participate in all these different bids throughout the year. There are about 600,000 bids a year. Efective clients last year transacted $13 billion of sales to the Brazilian government in the federal, local, city, and state level. It's a really impressive platform, total market leader, incredible entrepreneurs. That's the type of business that we're looking for, right? Vertical businesses that are established and growing.

Another example is SSOtica. SSOtica is the leading ERP management solution for eyeglass shops in Brazil. They have almost 30% market share, so they're very substantial leaders. The other players combined have a very high fragmentation. Their solution is fully integrated, end-to-end, from the eyeglass doctor to the eyeglass shop, gives both their clients, who are eyeglass shops, and their clients' clients, the consumers that are buying the eyeglass shops, a unique user experience. Those are the types of businesses that we're looking at. Those are the types of businesses that make sense for Nvni to acquire and bring on board. Talking a little bit about financial highlights, we can't talk about the future, but we can talk about the past. We've been able to grow Nvni consistently. If you look at the numbers and look at the filings, the total organic growth has been 18.3%.

More importantly, if you look at our gross profit margin, it has been growing historically. We are in an interesting path. More importantly, when we are talking about EBITDA and margins, we have been able to double the EBITDA margin since we acquired these companies over the past three years. We are working not only focused on top-line growth, but also seeking to improve margins and generate higher EBITDA that converts into cash flow that we can use to acquire more companies. As a summary for 2024, I think that the main numbers here are that we had a top-line increase in revenue of 14.4%, EBITDA growth of 30%, net cash from operating activities of BRL 38.6 million. That has also been increased substantially. We turned our first operating profit since we began the company 5 years ago.

We have consistently been able historically to grow the top line and improve margins and cash flow, which is what this business is based on, right? We use cash flow to acquire more businesses. To be able to perform historically like this gives us a good perspective about where we can go. Across portfolio, we have focused on different strategies for revenue growth and margin expansion. We will probably announce shortly a partnership with Oracle that will allow us to bring AI on a very realistic and not the way that a lot of people talk about AI in a very fluffy way, if you may. We have been able to start implementing strategies, which I believe should bring interesting returns and interesting margins to the business and expanding the margins within these SaaS businesses.

Also putting us in a defensive mode against other companies that could occupy space or could occupy the positions of the companies that we already have in the market, the leaders that we already have in the market. Basically, these are some of our KPIs, if you may, our SaaS metrics. We have 22,000 clients, 90% recurring revenue, average revenue per user at BRL 8,500. That is up also. Churn has been down, so we have very low churn across the platform. More importantly, the LTV, lifetime value of our clients, has grown 50%, 2023 to 2024. We are looking to build more consistent, more long-term, more reliable earnings and revenue based upon all the changes that we are able to make and the value creation that we do within these companies. As a financial, we published those a few weeks ago.

Our EBITDA has been improving year to year. Most importantly, again, we are being able to generate more and more cash flow as we move forward. Our business is based not only on the organic, but primarily our business model, primarily on acquisitions. When we look at our comps, Constellation, Vitech, and Roper, they are growing at rates of 1-3% organically. We are growing at 13-15% organically. Inorganic growth is a very important part of our strategy. I would say it is the mainstay of our strategy. That is why pipeline is important to us. We have a really clear, defined acquisition criteria. That allows us to move through over 2,500 companies since we founded Nuvini. We spoke to over 2,500 founders since we founded Nuvini and filter those in ways that allow us to be very assertive on the transactions we actually close.

A little bit of that is reflected on our past performance. Our M&A process is pretty standard. We try to be as fast as possible in declining the proposals or the opportunities to ensure that founders are not waiting too long, waiting or expecting a long pre-process here. We have a very thorough due diligence process based on people and based specifically on how predictable is the cash flow of the business that we're bringing. As you've seen historically, that's one of the main drivers that we have here. When we acquire companies, different than a consolidator that will try to integrate back end and invest money and try to consolidate different stacks of technology, the way that we work is primarily—sorry, bear with me—primarily through giving founders the opportunity that they have prior to coming to Nuvini.

There are good companies with good founders that understand the market, understand strategy. Where we add growth, where we add value, is in people through talent acquisition and bringing other processes that allow the companies to reduce their churn. Nuvini companies, on average, reduce churn, employee churn 60% after they're here a couple of years. We have seen that in practice. In finance, we are audited since day one by a top 4 auditing firm. Today it is Grant Thornton. We run Oracle on the back end to guarantee that we have governance level at the operational side. We ensure that we are able to implement these practices throughout the company to ensure that everyone's on the same page there. We have had growth. We have been able to do different things such as acquire company underneath the companies that we already have.

In Enclix's case, we increased revenue by 6% inorganically by them acquiring a company. Other strategies that we have here allow these companies to keep performing and keep growing their, expanding their margins. Bear with me. Basically, that's a little bit about Nvni. As I mentioned in the beginning of the call, our comps have been around for many, many, many years. That was 1995, 1985. We're just at the very start of the journey here. 7 transactions, 7 companies in the portfolio, growing, expanding the EBITDA margin. As you see, if you look at what organic growth is on our comps, if you may, it's much lower than ours. We're also able to implement strategies to keep growing the top line while we're working in the portfolio to grow inorganically.

To do that, we have, at the holding company, we have 750 employees in all the companies in Nuvini. At the holding company level, we're 13 people. Apart from myself, my co-founder, Toto, Luis Bosello, you know this Toto, has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and a founder and investor. Prior to coming to Nuvini, he founded Veek, which is one of Brazil's top MVNOs, and has that extensive operational experience. We also have a board that has diverse and complementary experience. I'll just point out 2 of our board members, Marcelo Gonçalves, who's the founder of Domo Invest, his managing partner. Domo was the number 2 VC firm in Brazil. Marcelo had the opportunity to invest in three companies that ended up being unicorns at their seed stage. He has a vast experience in SaaS and software.

João Leite, who was the CTO for Itaú, Itaú is the largest private bank in Latin America. He was a CTO for many, many years, over 20 years. This is just 2 of all 4 board members who are very complementary and give us a lot of experience. We do have specific board members bringing specific knowledge to us and allowing us to execute as we move forward. That's pretty much it for our presentation. I believe now we're going to open to Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now answer the following submitted questions from the audience. Our first question here is, in terms of how we should be tracking your success, can you point to immediate KPIs or what we should be on the lookout for next?

Pierre Schurmann (Founder and CEO)

Sure. I believe that I've shared some of the KPIs in the presentation.

Primarily, I think recurring business is very focused on utilizing cash flow for the businesses. Top-line growth is important, but EBITDA and cash flow generation are primarily very important KPIs for us. The consistency of revenue and the diversification of revenue are very important KPIs. Those are all public in our filings. Second question, what is your plan to stay compliant with NASDAQ? Is this a concern? Sure. Of course, it is a concern. We have 2 notifications from NASDAQ. One of them was based upon the current market cap, or the market cap at the time we got the notification that was below $35 million. I believe that we have been for about, we have been for a few days above that market cap. Obviously, we cannot tell the future from the market, but we are working.

The second notification we have was about the stock being below $1. Although we cannot predict future, obviously, and would not be able to predict future price on the stock, we are working to deliver consistently and hope and understand that the market will then understand the market will define if Nvni's stock and market cap are adjusted over time. Specifically, on the $1 NASDAQ notification, prior to receiving it, we pre-approved a reverse split on Nvni's stock by the board and through a proxy. Our intention is to exert the time we have until October 13 to be compliant to get the stock 10 days above $1. We will focus on operational execution before we have to focus on actually or eventually do a reverse stock split, which again, is October 15 is the timeline that we are looking at.

It is nothing that we would have to do today or over the next few weeks.

Operator (participant)

Okay. Next question. It appears your pipeline continues to grow as more M&A candidates come your way. Does this impact your acquisition criteria? Do you tighten your short list of qualifications?

Pierre Schurmann (Founder and CEO)

I believe one of the things that really differentiates us, in part because of my past experience as an investor, is the quality and the optionality that we have in our pipeline. We are looking, as the pipeline grows, we're looking more and more at the predictability of the revenue. The criteria does not change. We are just prioritizing more the quality of the revenue over time and the diversification of the revenue. We really are very firm in our criteria. We just rank the companies differently based upon that criteria.

Operator (participant)

Next question.

Does management have a view on the current share price?

Pierre Schurmann (Founder and CEO)

As I mentioned yesterday, earlier, sorry, it is not our place to talk about the stock price because it is obviously the market that will define that. What I can say is that we have been executing and we will keep executing. We expect the market to look at that and decide where the stock should be.

Operator (participant)

Next question. Can you rehash your capital allocation priorities? What flexibility do you have here?

Pierre Schurmann (Founder and CEO)

Sure. Our capital allocation priorities are pretty clear. Nvni companies, every single Nvni company generates cash flow. They are profitable, not only operationally, but they are cash flow positive. They do not need all the cash they generate to grow. The excess cash that is generated is being used 100% for acquisitions and to basically deal with and to service acquisition-related expenses.

Operator (participant)

Next question. I understand the acquisition financing.

What are your current capital needs outside of your acquisition pipeline/criteria?

Pierre Schurmann (Founder and CEO)

Our needs are operational to run day-to-day of Nuvini, which, as I mentioned, is a very small team. To service that, we have a debenture that we started when we raised it, it was at $12 million. Now, I believe it is at about $4 million. That is basically it. We do not have other operational necessities apart from M&A.

Operator (participant)

What role does AI play for Nuvini's portfolio of companies and how will you use it to drive efficiencies?

Pierre Schurmann (Founder and CEO)

I have been dedicating a lot of time, I would say about 10-15% of my personal time. I have learned working with different platforms such as Windsurf, Lovable, and others. I was a programmer back in, I was a coder back in 1996, and I never stopped that.

I started seeing this movement over a year and a half ago when OpenAI started, which had to be key. Now you have different platforms. For us, it is really front and center that we need to implement different solutions of AI for customer service, for sales, for coding. We actually have a program that I announced or shared in my letter a few weeks ago or earlier this week where we are having internal hackathons. As I also mentioned earlier in the call, we will announce a major partnership with Oracle to bring AI into Nvni, to expand margins, to be able to do cross-sales, and to do many things that 3 or 4 years ago were not possible.

Operator (participant)

Thank you very much, sir. This concludes the question and answer section. At this time, I would like to turn the floor back to Mr.

Pierre Schurmann (Founder and CEO)

Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for being with us in this call. I hope that this was I was able to give you some visibility into Nuvini, what we're doing, our history, and where we want to go. I look forward to having you in our next calls. That is pretty much it. Let's go to work. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes today's presentation. You may disconnect now and have a nice day.