After only about two months on the job, the new CEO Patrik Heider took his first significant measures to pave the way for achieving his ambitious goals as the company presented a new management team.

Mr. Heider will henceforth act as sole member of the management board, as the company parts ways with CTO Jan-Peter Koopmann. The technology resort will be managed on an interim basis by Deniz Beskök, who has been an integral part of the technology team since 2019. Furthermore, the sales department will now be headed by the new CCO Gernot Hofstetter, who acted as MD for Austria and CEE before his appointment. Heinke Bock, who was appointed as Chief People & Culture Officer, representing the HR department, and Markus Krammer (Chief Product Officer) complete the new management team. Former CFO Petra Boss will be no longer part of the management team, as Mr. Heider will also perform the duties of the CFO in his role as CEO going forward.

Especially the appointments of Mr. Hofstetter and Mr. Krammer should a crucial role in Heider's strategic objectives, in our view. Mind you, these are the key points he presented at the AGM two weeks ago: (1) By putting the main focus back on product development and innovation, NFON aims to set the pace in the fast-moving cloud communication sector. Here, the focus will be on the further development of the promising Contact Center solutions, industry specific solutions like Nhospitality as well as value-added services like Nmonitoring Queues. (2) Sales growth is seen to be supported by an improved partner management and a focus on the most important partners. Hence, a clear structure and prioritization of the product and sales department appears logical.

After the company has struggled to break-even in recent years and seemingly lost its status as a technology leader, we appreciate the imposed measures to already begin bearing fruit in 2024e, where we expect an acceleration in growth as well as positive FCF.

Valuation continues to look undemanding, especially after the recent share price weakness, as the stock is trading at 1.4x EV/Sales 2023e, a notable discount to the 2y forward-looking historic average of 2.0x.

We reiterate BUY with an unchanged PT of € 10.50 based on DCF.