Neogrid has reached its investment peak and is ready to expand margins, says CEO

When businessman Miguel Abuhab was at the revealed disagreements with a certain CEO of Neogrid (), one of the two companies he founded and took to the stock exchange. The speech was printed, published together with the podcast of InfoMoneyin September this year. But one reader in particular was not very comfortable with the headline: in times of speed reading, the company’s current president feared that “a CEO” was confused with “o CEO”.

“Miguel is a great guy. An ITA engineer, curious, passionate, who at 80 years old calls me on a Friday night to talk about blockchain”, says Jean Carlo Klaumann, executive at the helm of Neogrid since February 2022, in his own interview with InfoMoney.

“It’s an opportunity to be able to live with a personality with this restlessness. I don’t know any other Brazilian who has founded two listed companies from scratch”, he adds, making it clear that the relationship with the founder is going very well, thank you.

Klaumann arrived to replace an executive who spent a short time as president of Neogrid. Eduardo Ragasol had taken charge of the company in 2020 – the year in which the technological solutions company was listed on the Stock Exchange – in place of Miguel Abuhab, but ended up resigning from the position a year later.

Similar paths

The trajectories of founder and CEO have similarities. Like Abuhab, Klaumann got his start in the technology business early. At the age of 15, he was already giving computer training. At 18, he opened his own school. “The operation began franchising and a B2B division [de atendimento a empresas]for corporate training”, he says.

Klaumann had not left his entrepreneurial spirit aside when he accepted to work at IFS, a Swedish software and management multinational that was beginning an aggressive operation in Brazil, at the end of the 1990s. Since then, he has not let go of his executive hat.

Without ever leaving technology, Klaumann moved through the “multiverse” of this sector. He worked at Datasul, Neogrid’s parent company, and became part of the Totvs team () when Laércio Cosentino’s company acquired Miguel Abuhab’s first business. He then joined , where he remained for more than ten years, until the company was purchased by Stone – Klaumann also spent a few months in the company of André Street and Eduardo Pontes, after this acquisition.

“I was acquired about three times and, as an acquirer, about forty”, jokes Klaumann, about his career in companies hungry for M&A. Neogrid had its own history of acquiring startupsbut the new CEO’s mandate was now different: to reduce scope and expand efforts in operations that generate more revenue.

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The art of giving up

Under Klaumann’s management, the company learned to make “resignations”, says the executive. Neogrid took a break from operations abroad to focus fully on its activities in Brazil. It also underwent a profound internal restructuring, with the creation of business units (commercial intelligence, integration, supply chain and retail execution), and moved the boards. Hiring has accelerated.

“We hired almost 150 data science and engineering professionals. It was our majority investment and we completed the hiring cycle a few months ago”, says the CEO. Neogrid’s operation currently has 1,200 people. The trend, according to the executive, is to automate some manual work with technology. Klaumman states that Neogrid has now reached its investment ceiling. Now is the time to return to profitability.

The company’s main focus today is offering services to companies in the consumer packaged goods (CPG, or consumer packaged goodsin English). And, recently, the company’s portfolio was reinforced by NIA, the first Brazilian artificial intelligence to support retail and industry.

“The trend now is to capitalize on new products. With revenue growth, we will expand margins again, naturally”, he states.

Check out excerpts from the executive’s interview with InfoMoney below.

InfoMoney: At what point did Neogrid understand that it needed to focus its efforts on Brazil?

Jean Carlo Klaumann: A first diagnosis showed that Neogrid had too many initiatives. A small company, but it operates in Asia, Europe and the United States. Serving distributor, retail, industry. Small, medium and large, in different consumption chains. Our go to market it was practically the world. We factually built clarity about what was distracting us […] and we gave up few things, we piled up new choices. So, first, we gave up on the international market temporarily. It may be that in the future this will be an avenue [de crescimento]but today, in the short and medium term it will not be, because we have a lot to grow in Brazil.

IM: The company seems increasingly focused on the consumer packaged goods segment…

Jean Carlo Klaumann: When we look at the different consumer chains that we are in, the CPG market [consumer packaged goods] It is a R$1 trillion segment in Brazil. There’s a lot of opportunity. And Neogrid’s revenue, more than 60% of it, was already in CPG in Brazil. There is a vocation. So instead of distraction in my salesperson, in my roadmap of product and brand building in different product chains, we will focus all our energy on CPG. I think the first important exercise that I helped build was simplicity of focus and pragmatism, to put more investment and attention into the market that will sustain our growth. It is an agenda that has begun to bring convergence of thought, strategic alignment of investment and culture.

IM: How were Neogrid’s operations abroad after these changes?

JCK: We have a responsibility with the revenue that already exists. We will not drive customers away from profitable products. As long as the product we have today is competitive, it’s great. Now, if an outside customer asks for a large roadmap exclusive or something like that, we don’t do it. We also accelerated the discontinuation of loss-making products and reduced investments in research and development that supported non-strategic operations.

IM: Is there room for growth via acquisitions?

JCK: When we look at 2024, we did have a reduction in our net cash, but we are still a company with more than R$100 million in cash. It made much less sense to buy a company than to make an investment to make our business core healthy. Naturally, by resuming organic growth, we are once again looking at M&A in the future, with the cash to do so. This is a time of great execution discipline to capture growth from the investments made and regain profitability. Then, look for optionalities according to our cash flow.

IM: Neogrid was a stock market darling, but ended up losing a lot of value, like the companies that listed during the pandemic. What does it take for the paper to react again?
JCK: We live in a situational moment in which small caps e micro caps They are suffering a lot due to the issue of interest rates and the high dollar. We still have an additional topic, which is liquidity. So there’s no point in just resolving the business issue itself. But, if the entire stock market is under pressure, isn’t it better to do your homework well? 95% of our revenue is recurring, we are a company with impeccable governance and are not under pressure for cash. Neogrid is a spectacular asset. By delivering two or three quarters consistent with the thesis we developed, we will undoubtedly unlock value.