DecideAct prepares for continued growth in 2023

PART 1: DECISIONS AT THE EGM TODAY

Today's extraordinary general meeting (EGM) is triggered by two significant events under the same heading: increased backing. Both financially from key people and equally important, a clear strengthening of the board:

Strengthening the capital and backing by key people

Today we ask the general meeting to approve an increase of capital of the company through the injection of DKK 3 million via a directed issue. The participants are all key people in the company and cornerstone investors and the capital increase puts us in a stronger position in relation to reaching our goal in 2023.

The directed issue is comprised by the issuance of 525.407 new shares to certain shareholders without pre-emption rights for existing shareholders at a price per share of DKK 5.70 per share of nominally DKK 0.10. The price per share of DKK 5.70 is 13% above the market price at the date of the notice to convene the extraordinary general meeting calculated as the volume weighted average share price covering 10 trading days prior to the date of the notice (20 October 2022 to 2 November 2022). 

Strengthened board of directors

We are also proposing to strengthen the Board with a highly experienced profile, 46-year-old Henrik Jensen, Vice President and Head of Group Accounting, Governance, Risk & Controls at A.P. Moller - Maersk. Henrik is a role model for us as he represents the kind of large-scale corporate companies that DecideAct is increasingly servicing and hence he will be a valuable support in setting the commercial direction for the coming years.

Today's proposed strengthening of the board comes in addition to the fact that we have already strengthened the leadership of our business by implementing a generational change with two talented leaders, Lilja Graetz and Parisa Louie, joining our official Global Leadership Committee at the end of December 2022. Hence, we are in a strong position to execute towards our goals in the years ahead.

 PART 2: UPDATE ON THE BUSINESS

Turbulence for all

2022 has turned out to be a challenging year at all levels. For us all as Consumers - challenged by inflation, as Citizens - challenged by the fear and uncertainty caused by war close to home, as Companies – challenged by turbulent markets, both commercial markets and capital markets, and as Investors – challenged by losses, general depression and recession on the horizon.

For DecideAct, the current crisis is a coin with two sides: on the one hand, our sales process is affected by companies being stressed. On the other, the prospect of operating in a more uncertain business environment is generating increased interest in our product from companies that need more than ever to be able to adjust quickly and ensure that the strategic priorities are implemented.

Clear progress

Nevertheless, we have seen remarkable progress during the year and a clear rise in the average client and project size. This is a clear and positive sign of our business, brand, and credibility growing and opens to faster and cheaper scaling of the use of our platform by focusing upon ‘sell-more-to-existing-clients’ rather than ‘always-starting-from-scratch-with-new-prospects’. It is however also a challenge due to the increased uncertainty about the timing and closing conditions in larger client environments.

Announcement of three areas of focus

DecideAct is constantly monitoring patterns and learnings that can improve our scalability and growth – and accelerate our path to profitability. We have identified three areas in which we have seen particular traction and that we intend to focus our execution upon going forward:

• Canada as a geographic sweet spot: We focus on English-speaking markets, as a strong position here will provide the best basis for scaling. Initially, we will focus on the Canadian market, which we have identified as a sweet spot for sales of DecideAct’s products based on several contract wins, a promising pipeline, and a well-functioning partner model.
• The public sector as a potential game-changer: The challenges in the public sector are growing and DecideAct’s platform is a perfect match to help public sector organizations deliver on policy agendas such as ESG and get more out of increasingly tight budgets. We have good case studies in both Denmark and Iceland, and we are in good dialogue with major public sector companies and organizations.
• Strategic partnering for growth in other markets: we have already won several contracts through partners, and we have had a positive experience working with new clients. In addition, we have identified the types of partnerships that work and those that do not, as well as the key requirements for successful partnerships. Based on this experience, we will enter more strategic partnerships, and we expect good results from this focus area.

Guidance

We have had a 32% increase in the number of customers this year to date, the size of each customer is on the rise and the loyalty among our customers remains high, as reflected in a customer retention rate of 92%. Given the current large pipeline, a promising dialogue with potential customers, and many contract negotiations, we are positive about the future and the likelihood of achieving our goal of becoming a clear leader in our space. In late 2021, when the world was still in fairly steady waters, we announced an ambitious guidance for growth in ARR in 2022 of a minimum of 80% over the DKK 8.74 million that was the end-of-year ARR in 2021.

We are still working towards this target with confidence, however, for various technical reasons and with the dynamics already explained, it is difficult to predict with 100% certainty whether the target for the year will be hit at year-end or a little later as a sales process in our area usually takes between three weeks and nine months, depending on the size of the customer. Furthermore, the combination of recession and generally larger contracts to negotiate means less precision in timing and forecasting of closure, which leads to a wider guidance range.

CEO of DecideAct, Flemming Videriksen comments: “We can now embark on the next part of DecideAct's growth journey with the comfort of a strengthened capital base, a strengthened leadership, a strengthened product, a more coherent marketing/sales process, a larger pipeline of higher quality leads, better partnership models, and a greater focus on the geographies and verticals where we get the most out of our efforts, a tighter cost structure and have the greatest opportunity to create breakthroughs despite the ongoing turbulence in the world”.

Company website: https://www.decideact.net