I wonder why no announcement was issued about this? One would imagine that it really affects customer retention etc., even if it was only a few days of disruption. Although, even that can be an eternity for a wholesaler or a factory when the pace is fast.
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Customers were informed of the disruption via email on Sunday evening and again on Monday regarding the restoration of services.
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Services have not yet been restored. My own company uses it, and we managed to log in this morning. Printing, reporting, and email are not working. It’s sluggish.
An acquaintance also has Lemonsoft; they can’t even log in yet.
It’ll be a miracle if everything is working normally before the weekend.
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You’re probably right. When I looked more closely, the announcement I received only concerned the time clock.
Everything has been working for us since this morning, but a contact is having major issues; they can’t even log into the system yet.
This is a strange case indeed. Some customers couldn’t access their ERP systems for several days. The company let ransomware into its data center and hasn’t at least informed whether it’s been removed and the holes plugged.
No stock exchange release whatsoever, and the share price hasn’t reacted at all because nobody knows.
A large portion of the customer base might walk away after this.
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Lemon’s problems didn’t show up at our workplace at all, and it seems that only SaaS customers were affected here anyway.
Exceptionally poor communication for a listed company. I’m betting this won’t cause a customer exodus, and if word of this doesn’t reach new customers, then new customer acquisition won’t suffer either. An ERP is so central to operations, however, that you don’t just switch it on a whim, and the cost of switching is such that people don’t easily embark on that undertaking. Quite a few companies struggle with an unsuitable ERP because switching is difficult and expensive, and you can’t be sure of the outcome.
We and our customers use the SaaS, and I can say that the problems have been visible in its usage. At times, the service has been inaccessible, and foreign customers’ access was blocked entirely, which naturally caused a lot of bewilderment among them. Then you’re there trying to explain that that’s just the way it is. Now, the request is to use some VPN software when connecting from abroad, or if you have a static IP, to provide it to lemon. it makes it sound a bit like everything hasn’t been fixed yet. Even today, a message came from a domestic customer saying they can’t log into lemon.
Things certainly worked better back when lemon was running in its own data center. It’s just that lemon’s actions and practically forcing the move led us to switch systems, and those who didn’t want to switch are now suffering for it. I bet the rest, or at least most of our customers, will now be giving up on it. We’ve received that much angry feedback.
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It’s certainly not a feature of SaaS that it performs worse than an on-premise data center.
The practical implementation has been done haphazardly if those kinds of problems exist.
It’s not true SaaS; instead, it runs on dedicated servers located in Lemon’s data center.
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This Lemonsoft blog post discusses the cyberattack that occurred:
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Lemonsoft’s year started softer than we expected, as organic growth in particular (Q1’23: 1.2%) fell short of our already cautious expectations (6.8%). The revenue miss is also directly reflected in the earnings lines due to the company’s high gross margins. The company itself was also not satisfied with the performance at the beginning of the year.
The outlook was kept unchanged, and improving performance is expected for the rest of the year:
Our pre-result forecast expected 14% growth and a 28.7% adjusted EBIT (operating profit) for this year. In light of the soft start to the year, there is some preliminary downward pressure on these.
I will need to ask in more detail about the challenges behind the organic growth shortly when we conduct the Q1 results interview with Jan-Erik.
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Here is the Q1 interview, where the cyber attack at the end of March was also discussed:
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Let’s revive this thread, as there have been several pieces of news from Lemonsoft within the past week.
First, the Finvoicer acquisition, which expands Lemonsoft’s offering in invoice lifecycle management.
Shortly after, news arrived that Deputy CEO Lindfors will become CEO on August 1st, as Lemonsoft’s founder Joki-Hollanti steps down from the role to focus on product development as Chief Development Officer.
Yesterday, there was also news about minor change negotiations, aimed at seeking more efficiency now that the weakening economic outlook is weighing on short-term organic growth.
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Lemonsoft has concluded its change negotiations. Comments from @Roni_Peuranheimo can be found below:
Lemonsoft’s change negotiations, which concluded yesterday, affect a total of 9 employees. The reduction requirement will be implemented through redundancies and role changes. According to Lemonsoft, the objective of the negotiations was to adapt the company’s operations to the challenging economic situation and ensure the conditions for the implementation of the company’s long-term growth strategy.
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Lemonsoft’s Q2 figures were slightly softer than we expected:
Organic growth dipped to -3.9% in Q2, while we expected slightly (~1%) positive growth. However, the miss was largely due to the “consulting and other revenue” item, and SaaS growth, which is more essential for value creation, only narrowly missed expectations.
The weakening economic outlook is weighing on Lemonsoft’s growth this year as expected, but at the end of the quarter, there was a slight pickup in industrial new sales:
The outlook updated in connection with the Finvoicer acquisition remains unchanged as expected:
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Atte Riikola interviewed Lemonsoft CEO Jan-Erik Lindfors. 
Topics:
00:00 Introduction
00:15 Jan-Erik Lindfors as CEO
02:20 Lemonsoft Q2’23
03:32 Organic growth
05:47 Finvoicer
07:10 Expenses vs. product development
08:35 Steps for guidance
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Here is a new company report on Lemonsoft. 
A difficult market environment pushed Lemonsoft’s organic growth slightly negative in Q2, and based on the outlook, no significant relief is expected for the situation. Reflected against this, the stock’s current valuation does not yet encourage risk-taking. In the long term, we still see good potential for Lemonsoft to accelerate its earnings growth through both a pick-up in organic growth and acquisitions.
@Atte_Riikola and @Verneri_Pulkkinen talked about Lemonsoft.
00:00 Sluggish Q2
02:16 Difficult operating environment
05:18 Stock valuation
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We updated our view on Lemonsoft this week, as the share price has continued to slide along with the rest of the market and the valuation has already normalized to very reasonable levels: Vaisua kasvua hinnoiteltu osakkeeseen jo riittävästi - Inderes
The forecasts assume organic growth will recover to a moderate single-digit level in the coming years, so expectations are no longer sky-high. Regarding profitability, no particular hockey stick effect has been projected for the near future—just slight scaling along with growth—and there could also be potential for better performance.
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Lemonsoft reports its Q3 results on Thursday and Atte has written pre-commentary regarding it.
Lemonsoft reports its Q3 results on Thursday. In line with the company’s outlook, we forecast Q3 revenue to have grown at a strong double-digit rate, driven by acquisitions. We expect organic growth to have been slightly negative, similar to the previous quarter. Compared to the comparison period, we expect relative profitability to have weakened due to acquisitions and increased R&D investments. Key areas of interest in the report are particularly the outlook for organic growth in an economic environment that has weakened further in recent months. Reflecting the cautious operating environment, we updated our growth forecasts at the end of September to a more cautious stance. In light of these, Lemonsoft’s current valuation is starting to look moderate.
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