Continued volume and revenue growth
In Q3 2020, total revenue grew by 67% year-on-year to € 38.5 million. Core revenue comprising of
the segments CPaaS, Payments, and Platform, grew by 76% to € 36.7 million, implying a 53% YTD
(9-months) growth of core revenue to € 91.2 million (YTD 2019: € 59.6 million). All three core segments contributed to revenue growth with CPaaS and Platform as the main revenue
drivers. Core gross margin (including acquisitions) improved to 25% from 24% in Q3 2019, resulting in a core gross profit of € 9.1 million, up 84% year-on-year. Within CPaaS the number of messages sent continued to increase (41%), while voice minutes growth accelerated (183%) mainly driven by new customers amongst others the Corona test line.
In Q3 2020, we processed € 164 million in Payments, down 3% year-on-year. In Q3 2019 the Dutch
Grand Prix boosted our Payments volume, however as this year's event was moved to 2021 no new tickets have been sold for next year. In the third quarter of this year, we saw good overall underlying growth in Payments with our e-commerce customers benefiting from the accelerated shift to online sales due to Covid-19.
In Q3 2020, online venue ticket sales were at a structural higher level due to the shift to pre-booked online ticket sales with timeslot selection for amongst others museums, galleries and amusement parks. In total we sold 2.8 million tickets in Q3 2020 (Q3 2019: 0.8 million).
The acquisitions of Global Ticket (consolidated as of March 2020) and CX Company (consolidated as of July 2020) contributed € 2.5 million to revenue growth and € 2.2 million to gross profit growth in Q3 2020. This high margin recurring revenue is recognized under Platform. Organically, core revenue grew by 64% to € 34.2 million.
Strategy roll out and global expansion
We continued to make good progress with the opening of new hubs across the globe. In August we opened our office in Turkey and at the beginning of September we opened our new Indian hub. In Turkey, our new Eurasia hub, the focus will be on our Mobile Service Cloud with a WhatsApp and
Chatbot combination. In India, we will be focusing on both the Mobile Marketing Cloud and Mobile
Service Cloud solutions including WhatsApp Business Chat. Indian enterprises increasingly recognize how critical mobile communication tools are in order to connect with customers. In India over 400 million people are using WhatsApp on a daily basis, a number that is rapidly growing2. In addition, we built out our team and expanded our sales force to support the global roll out of our Conversational Commerce platform.
The total number of FTE increased to 430 FTE as at 30 September 2020, including the new colleagues of CX Company (49 FTE).
As at 30 September 2020 As at 30 June 2020
Sales and Marketing 226 171
Research and Development 140 115
General and Administration 64 51
Total 430 337