Full press release including tables
Crescent_PressRelease_2023.4.28
REGULATED INFORMATION AND INSIDER INFORMATION
Crescent Annual Results 2022
Crescent reports robust growth and progress in profitability.
Leuven, Belgium – April 28, 2023 – 7:30 am – Crescent (EURONEXT: OPTI; OTC: OPNVY)
Highlights
- Increased revenues of + 30% to 21.1mio€; + 9% organic growth; + 21% from Remoticom.
- Increased EBITDA of + 36% to 1 mio € (5%) primarily from base businesses without any net contributions (as yet) from Remoticom.
- Net financial debts (excluding shareholder financing) further decreased by 0.6mio€ to 3.7mio€ despite substantial investments in working capital and growth initiatives
- Van Zele Holding NV provided additional funding of 3 mio€ in 2022 and makes a further 1 mio€ available in 2023 to strengthen the company’s working capital in line with expected growth.
- In 2022 Crescent completed a comprehensive software platform for the leisure market as well as a strategic extension of its CloudGate product line with Lora connectivity in addition to a full line of controllers, drivers and sensors for its smart lighting product line.
Executive comments
Crescent reports robust growth and progress in profitability and produced an operating result of over 5% (one million €) EBITDA in 2022, well on its way to its operating profitability target of over 10%.
VZH as the reference shareholder and certainly the capital markets have already absorbed more than €50 million of historical debt obligations. We continue to work hard to reduce this historical debt to less than 3x EBITDA by 2023, while remaining committed to building a world class IOT integrator on the remnants of the ‘once great and glorious’ foundations of Option NV, Zenitel/Sait and Remoticom BV.
To achieve this goal, we initially targeted a highly focused leadership in smart lighting applications and acquired Remoticom in early 2022 to implement an OEM strategy of integrated solutions (drivers+controllers+sensors). Now a year later, Remoticom has nearly doubled its sales (3.4 million) and continues to grow rapidly, not just in the Benelux. During much of 2022, however, some painful supply chain issues (China) weighted on profitability, but these have since been largely resolved, justifying optimism of a higher contribution in 2023. We plan to further merge and integrate Option and Remoticom into a single company, combining Option’s technology capabilities with Remoticom’s marketing and business development skills.
At Option, we embarked on an ambitious program to renew and rejuvenate our CloudGate platform through the development and sale of “light hotspots” for the Helium network in the US. We succeeded in certifying and releasing a high-end LORA gateway platform (with superior range), but the markets collapsed causing significant delays to the project only to be released for sale in April of 2023. We invested heavily in this platform, which is generic and strategic, but has fallen short in 2022. In addition to the Helium platform, we are further expanding our CloudGate range to include parking sensors, motion and leak detection devices and energy management systems. The emerging IOT space undoubtedly offers numerous other opportunities.
Finally, in recent years we have developed a broad-based software platform for the leisure market (with webshop and classes scheduling; access control, ticketing and digital payment facilities for multiple venues) as part of a strategy to gradually evolve our services division from just “managed services” to “software as a service” capabilities. This leisure platform is a gem of software integration and will fuel our ambitions to deploy such software services in the broader leisure market.
With such growth engines, Crescent is well positioned to continue to grow rapidly and profitably. We are targeting double-digit growth in both revenue and double-digit profitability. We remain confident that we will continue to turn the odds and win over skeptics this year. Yes, financing remains a significant challenge, but most of the work is now behind us and those who were brave enough to believe in our story will eventually reap the rewards of their resilience and patience.
Results of the year
The sales and EBITDA of the three divisions were:
The revenues of the Solutions division increased by EUR 5 132k, of which EUR 3 454k was inorganic due to the addition of Remoticom. Organic revenues increased by EUR 1 678k (+23.5%), of which EUR 1 million came from the increase in Option’s base CloudGate business, and EUR 0.4 million from increased integration revenue at SAIT, EUR 0.2 million from revenue to the Smartville partnership and EUR 0.13 million from increased revenue at Maro from solar panel installations.
The decline in sales in the Services division was mainly due to completion in 2021 of a major ICT migration project in Belgium, resulting in a decrease of project-based IT services by 12% in 2022. Whereas recurring ICT services remained flat as all software integration services (sales of €0.5 million).
Revenues in the Lighting division grew 16% compared to 2021, as realized primarily in the Dutch home market. Thanks to this revenue growth, stable gross margins and reduced operating costs, the division managed to contribute EUR 368k to group EBITDA. The EBITDA margin of 13% is expected to be sustained in the coming years.
Sales growth in the Solutions segment did eventually lead to an improvement of €232k in EBITDA.
The profitability of the Services segment declined slightly due to lower sales; however, at €1 138k, the division still remains the main contributor to Group EBITDA.
Balance sheet
Total equity increased thanks to capital increases.
CONTACT
Edwin Bex
Gaston Geenslaan 14
B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
TEL: +32 (0) 16 31 74 11
E-mail: investor@option.com