Sidetrade, the global AI-powered Order-to-Cash SaaS platform, has today announced new record bookings with an increase of +132% up from Q1 2022, a +21% increase in its Order-to-Cash SaaS revenue, and a +12% increase in its total revenue.
Olivier Novasque, CEO of Sidetrade commented on this release:
We have just delivered the best quarter in our history in terms of new bookings, including a major contract in the United States, where we were selected over our three direct US competitors. In addition to this unprecedented success, this performance once again demonstrates the technological edge of our Order-to-Cash solution, our real commercial delivery capacity and the strength of our SaaS model. The return of inflation and the multiple hikes in interest rates will only increase appetite among businesses for solutions that secure and accelerate cash flow generation.
This market performance will be further strengthened by the recognition of Sidetrade as a Leader in the first Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Integrated Invoice-to-Cash Applications. This provides tremendous potential for growth in our business in the United States and in our enterprise accounts in Europe. We are now, more than ever, in the best possible position to consolidate our initial success in the United States, accelerate our growth in all regions and take Sidetrade to the next level.
Sidetrade hits quarterly new bookings record, with a surge of +132% in Q1 2022
In Q1 2022, Sidetrade set a new record for Order-to-Cash SaaS bookings, which will generate an additional €2.17 million in annual recurring revenue (“ARR”), compared with €0.94 million in Q1 2021; a 132% increase. The former record for bookings (ARR of €1.67 million) had been set in the previous quarter (Q4 2021). The total value of these new subscription contracts over their initial contract periods (excluding renewals) represents €6.91 million of total contract value (“TCV“).
To these SaaS bookings should be added €1.09 million of services on an annual basis (implementation, configuration, training, recurring services, etc.), compared with €0.81 million in Q1 2021. As a result, the annual contract value (ACV) of these orders in Q1 2022 was €3.27 million, compared with €1.75 million in Q1 2021, an 87% increase.
The initial contract period for new customers (excluding renewals) rose to 40.8 months, compared with 36.2 months in the same quarter of the previous financial year.
81% of bookings were international, with 62% from the United States
In Q1 2022, international orders represented more than 81% of all bookings, driven by unprecedented momentum in sales with world-leading organizations. As a result of inflation and recruitment difficulties, businesses have been driven to invest in Order-to-Cash solutions to accelerate their cash flow generation in an environment of rising interest rates, thereby increasing their productivity.
Less than a year after operations were officially launched in North America, Sidetrade signed the largest contract in its history with a major Information Technology consultancy firm (see the press release issued on February 21, 2022 here). This contract, awarded to Sidetrade in preference over its three direct US competitors, provides it with an additional ARR of €1.36 million in this region, i.e., 62% of all bookings in Q1 2022.
As a reminder, Sidetrade had set itself the goal of achieving more than one-third of its bookings in the United States by the second half of 2022. Buoyed by this initial success and its recognition as a Leader in the first Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Integrated Invoice-to-Cash Applications, Sidetrade intends to ramp up its presence in North America by doubling its sales force in 2022.
In this quarter, New Business includes the record-breaking contract signed in the United States, representing 69% of total bookings. Cross-selling represents 15% of total new bookings, with the remaining 16% of bookings accounting for Upselling of additional modules to existing customers.
Growth in Order-to-Cash SaaS revenue, up +21%
| Sidetrade (€m) |
2022 Q1 | 2021 Q1 | Variation |
| ‘Order-to-Cash’ Activities | 8.1 | 6.8 | +19% |
| of which SaaS Subscriptions | 6.7 | 5.5 | +21% |
| ‘Sales & Marketing’ Activities | 0.3 | 0.7 | -57% |
| Revenue | 8.4 | 7.5 | +12% |
2022 Q1 accounts have been audited and will be certified after the finalization of procedures required for the annual financial report.
‘Order-to-Cash’ Activities grew very sharply to 19% in the first quarter of 2022, driven by 21% growth in SaaS subscriptions. The growth in this recurring revenue is the result of record bookings in the 2021 fiscal year, which will continue to impact revenue growth throughout the 2022 fiscal year.
‘Order-to-Cash’ Activities, a core business within the Company’s strategy since 2019, now represent 96% of total revenue.
In addition, ‘Sales & Marketing’ Activities, which were launched in 2017 and were mainly focused on the French SME market, have become secondary to Sidetrade’s activities and have not been technologically integrated into the Order-to-Cash platform. They now account for only 4% of total revenue and will continue to play a less prominent role commercially, with estimated revenue of €0.9 million at the end of 2022.
Total revenue grew by 12% in Q1 2022, to €8.4 million. In addition to this performance, international revenue continued to grow substantially, reaching 49% of revenue for the very first time, with the United States representing 19% of the total.
A resilient economic model against inflationary pressures
Visibility of recurring revenue from subscriptions in a period of economic uncertainty
Sidetrade’s economic model provides its business with significant resilience, as 90% of its revenue is recurring, representing a significant advantage in the current environment. The robustness of its model is based on signing contracts that span multiple years. These comprise an average initial commitment period of 36.25 months (increasing to 40.8 months for new customers acquired in Q1 2022), followed by successive periods of the same length. With a controlled churn of between 5% and 6% on average for Order-to-Cash solutions, the average time a customer remains with Sidetrade is close to 20 years.
Resilience of the economic model in a period of high inflation
Due to the length of its subscription periods, Sidetrade systematically reindexes all its contracts to changes in consumer price indices (the Syntec for Southern Europe, the UK CPI for Northern Europe, and the US CPI for the United States), and alters the total price of subscriptions each year by reference to changes in these price indices. In addition to the fact that the rising cost of cash and salaries has made Order-to-Cash solutions more attractive to financial departments, the construction of Sidetrade’s economic model demonstrates robust pricing power that protects the Company’s future revenue against inflationary pressures.
Sidetrade recognized as a Leader in the first Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Integrated Invoice-to-Cash Applications, and unveils a global map of B2B payment trends
On April 11, 2022, Sidetrade was recognized as one of three Leaders in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Invoice-to-Cash applications.
Following this recognition, for the first time ever, Sidetrade made the move to reveal global B2B payment trends in an industry-first predictive payment intelligence map. This is extracted from its Data Lake, comprising of 593 million payment experiences, worth a total value of more than $4.6 trillion processed over the last three years from 20.7 million B2B buyers worldwide. This map offers users (businesses, governments, and analysts) unprecedented information on how buyers pay their suppliers, an invaluable resource in a climate of global uncertainty and inflationary pressures.