Withsecure Oyj

Very good afternoon from Helsinki, Finland, and welcome to VidSecure. My name is Laura Viita. I am the investor relations director of VidSecure. I'm very happy to wish you all welcome to this third quarter 2024 results release. It has been a very eventful quarter with great news and some news not so great. So we are here to answer all the questions and open up what happened during the quarter. We have today our CEO Antti Koskela talking about the business, customers, market during the quarter, and then our CFO Tom Jansson talking through the numbers of the third quarter. If you're watching us on the webcast, you can log in questions at any time. We will have a Q&A session at the end after the presentations. So with this, I'm handing over to President and CEO of WithSecure, Antti Koskela.

So thank you, Laura. And hey, welcome everybody from my part, everybody here in the room and everybody over there in the line. So this was my first quarter as the appointed CEO of the company. And apart from focusing on the operational management during the quarter, we also did a strategy update for the elements company. And we will talk about that one in our upcoming investor day in November 22nd in Wood City. But with that one, we could move on. So before going deeper here, so you know that on 11th October, we updated our guidance for the business in many parts. And so today we would like to shed some light on the underlying performance in Q3 that is behind that one, and also giving you the trajectory based on the past, how you can then look at our business. So one thing we have been following carefully is this Elements Cloud product and services ARR. That number includes our Elements Cloud software, co-security services, our managed services, counter set, the whole topic. So we grew 11% year on year. year-on-year, and then we grew revenue for the Elements Cloud 9% year-on-year. And maybe contradictorily, I think you know that you have managed services decline here compared to the last year level due to the churn of larger customers, the net revenue retention is going up in the quarter, so 104% now. So what it means that the underlying performance of the Elements Cloud software is growing and the managed services is slightly below previous year level due to the turn of the larger customers. And we see very much larger customers opting for a large company playbook, building their own security operation centers. But the ones which are preferring managed services, of course, are with us. In the DACH region, which is Germany, Switzerland, Austria, The region has been strong year on year, and there were some slowdown during Q3. It was still growing, and it's because of the German economy. So we have a strong value proposition with a European alternative. There's a strong mid-market kind of customer base in Germany, both for our managed services and Elements Cloud. Our revenue growth was 4% year-on-year, and this, of course, includes the on-premise part of the software as well in the elements company and some other revenue streams. And there is a decline in the on-premise, and there is a growth in the cloud side. And what we were happy about, we have done a lot of cost saving measures in the past and we have continued to optimize our performance, whether it's about the cross margin quality or whether it's about our cost position. So we landed in the adjusted EBITDA of two million for the third quarter. And there were some notable general availabilities. This we launched at Sphere, so we have now exposure management at the general availability. We have activated Luminen, our generative AI assistant for all the Elements customers. And what we are really proud in this quarter is that we improved significantly in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. So both in our ability to execute and in the completeness of the vision and The downside comment for us was that we are focusing in Europe. We happily take that. And I think that's where we are. And we have, of course, started marketing activities based on this one. And it's looking quite positive on that. But maybe one thing on the business that you as analysts, you really need to know. You all know what GDPR is. And you need to know similarly what NIST 2 is. So NIST 2 is an updated directive in the European Union that came in force 17th of October. This EU-wide legislation aimed at enhancing cybersecurity across the Union. So for boards and management, there are criminal consequences for noncompliance, and there are similar consequences percentage of revenue penalties imposed in case of non-compliance. So we talk a lot about this minimum effective security for mid-market, so that if it has been an option, it's not an option for most of the companies. So essential and critical organizations, which are over 10 million revenue or 50 employees, need to comply. So most companies need to comply. And even smaller companies, if they are part of the critical supply chains. So what they need? They need information security management system that gives them protection, detection, and response. And they need a systematic, proactive approach to risk. And what we have been building at WithSecure with our Elements Cloud, it's right on the money here. So we have extended detection and response and exposure management together with the services forming the mid-market playbook. So we believe that's a good thing for us. And so we are uniquely positioned to meet these needs of the small to mid-sized companies. And it's quite deliberate that we are focusing on these customers together with our partners. So maybe with this one, we continue now to cloud protection for Salesforce. This was a bright spot. I think we have been guiding you previously on this one is that we see good opportunities, good pipeline. And we also told last time that the underlying net revenue retention is suffering from a few large turn cases in the past. So what this tells me is that the land and expand strategy here is working. So we are not only winning new logos, but we also expanding on the existing logos. And it, in a way, got the business to 20% revenue growth, and that drove it close to the EBITDA break-even point. So I'm happy with this performance here. On consulting, the revenue, this was a disappointment for us. So revenue was below previous year quarter. And we witnessed some financial constraints in key accounts. And there was more thoughtful spending in the cyber with our key accounts. We expect long-term demand to be solid. And despite even this declining revenue, so you can take a comparison from our Q1, so we were able to be a bit of a break even. So we have been doing a lot of performance improvements in the consulting business throughout the year, even beyond what we did last year. When we look at the Q3 and we look at what revenues we were landing, but we also looked quite carefully what's the equity market risk here. So, you know, the risk premium in the OMX HEX and here in Helsinki is quite high already. So, we in a way increased our... increased our discounting factors and we changed the revenue factors and we impaired the goodwill with 15.5 million for the value in use. And we also wanted to signal to the market in the Q3 that we are in active discussions regarding the divestment, but no decisions have been taken so far. I'm sure there will be tons of questions of that, but I will answer with this line, as you can probably understand, due to the nature of these processes. And maybe with this one, over to Tom.

So welcome. Thank you very much and good afternoon for my part as well. So maybe a short recap still on the numbers and we do it by segment. So first we do the Elements company. As Antti mentioned, Elements Cloud ARR grew 11%. Our software part of that was doing quite well while the managed services then we continued to have some of the enterprise customer churning and this specifically was in the UK and US partially. Then, as also discussed, our DA region is still growing quite nicely, but we could see some weakness in the growth in Q3. But despite that, I want to emphasize that it's still growing and that's what we expect also in the future. The net revenue retention was 104%, so we are doing quite well in terms of selling additional elements module to existing customers. The on-premise revenue declined. That has been as expected. We do expect to transition most of our customers over time to the cloud side. and then we had some other minor revenue streams. The adjusted EBITDA was 2 million for the Elements company, so our previous cost structure actions are being seen now also in our profitability levels throughout the company. Then, as mentioned, cloud protection for Salesforce, we are very happy with the quarter. And we had a large churn last year in September. That, of course, is now over. We have had a few other ones during late last year, but not many, but some a bit bigger. and it has taken a little bit of time to kind of recover from them but the team has been doing an excellent job focusing on growing the business and now we can also see the results and we exceeded the 10 million ARR mark that is kind of a internally at least one milestone for us in terms of of achievement. And of course, as the churn customers drop off of the comparison, we can see that the true NRR is actually quite good and we expect that also to be good in the future as we are progressing the land and expand strategy as also Antti mentioned. And the adjusted EBITDA. Of course, this unit was also affected last year about some of our actions and as the growth comes, then we are now also coming closer to a break-even point for this segment. Then on the consulting side, as mentioned, Q3 was not as we had hoped for or expected. We did see some customer As I said, cautiousness and budget constraints. We do see that the cybersecurity consulting will have a solid demand also in the future. And we are not from that perspective worried, but of course, temporary in Q3. This was a disappointment for us. On the other hand, we have done multiple initiatives in terms of improving our profitability during the year and therefore some of that can also be seen that we managed to get to a break-even point even though our revenue was lower than maybe what we originally had been expecting. And then we did a goodwill impairment that Antti already touched on and the reasons for that. Then the overall profitability, so revenue grew 4% and EBITDA for the quarter was 1.9 million. And you can see that all the actions taken last year has been taking a good turn on our profitability. As you can see here today, last year we were minus 16.3 and now we are 700k profitable. And so it's been a lot of work from the team, but some of the results can be seen in our profitability development at the moment. But this has been coming through throughout the P&L from all lines, so to say. Then if you look at our new outlook that we launched some weeks ago, so our new outlook, we are saying that the ARR will grow 6 to 14% this year. The revenue for elements cloud products and services will grow by 8 to 12%. The total group will grow 2 to 5% from previous years and then we continue to guide that we will have an EBITDA positive year for this year. And then we want to say that, put this in the calendar, everybody who's interested, we will have an investor day on the 22nd of November in the morning at our new headquarters. And that will of course be also live webcasted to everybody interested. With this, I think I would invite Laura back on the stage and then we start going with the Q&A.

All right, I think we can start in the room. So if you can take the microphone, I see all hands up, so you can pick the lucky one to start.

Hi, Valter Rossi from Danske Bank. First of all, on the NIS2 directive, could you talk what it could mean for you in practice in terms of demand?

We have looked at how many companies there are in the Europe and UK. There are 36.3 million companies in the Europe and there are 400,000 plus companies which are bigger than 50. So it will not be enough for them to just do endpoint protection and have an antivirus, so to speak. They will need to have a proper proactive management for the risk. They need to have a proper proper approach for the extended detection and response so that many other companies are after the same thing, but companies will need to budget and do something according to this one. So I think it's a positive for whole Europe, but of course good for us as well.

All right, fair enough. Looking at the consulting profitability, were there any changes in the cost allocation between segments compared to your historical practices? No. Then on the large accounts that you have lost, I guess only in the managed services. Yes. Can you talk about, you know, maybe the reasons why that is happening? Because I'm assuming that even with the current strategy, you wouldn't like to lose.

Obviously not. I think you said, so we like to keep our sort of enterprise grade customers with us. But we have been talking in the, in many of these events and when in our sphere event is that we see the mid-market playbook diverging from the enterprise. So large enterprises, when you go to large bank, you have a large security operations team, you have software, you buy consultants and you have a big budget. So it's more human centric. And when you go for mid-market, it's more automated and as a service. Some of these large companies, after a phase of doing managed services, are moving this type of playbook. They said they provide software and hire own teams so that it's also a strategic move. Some of the companies have moved like that. Of course, not all of our customers want to work like that, and they go for as a service models. But at the same time, the mid market is a great opportunity, like we just talked about in this too. So we stay focused on that and we solve in an automated fashion the playbook for the ones that are below this minimum effective security and don't have the luxury of doing these kind of things.

OK, then still one question. on the consulting, why do the write down right now on the value in the balance sheet?

So I think I'm talking to a sort of finance expert here is that always when management tests that together with auditors, you test it with the discount factors and market risk that is in the market. And when we look at the revenue things, so you act when is the time and maybe anything Tom you want to add?

We are obliged to look at it on a periodical basis and at events that changes. It represents the value in use.

All right. Thanks. That's it from me for now.

Hi, Akko Turvainen from SEB. On the cloud, Elements Cloud AR growth, which has been now impacted by the large customers, as it was also in 23, if I recall correctly, could you give a bit further indication what has been the gross impact of those leaving customers, just to kind of us to get understanding how you are performing in the new focus market?

Yeah, so we are trying to, so that Elements cloud software, it's faster. And we have lost a few large managed services customers during quarter three, and that's impacting the churn. And we are providing today an aggregate number. We are thinking about what to do for the investor day, but we haven't yet decided how we want to disclose a greater granularity.

Okay, but let's put it this way. Was the revenue of managed services around 10 million or 20 million or 30 million euro when we started in 23?

I don't think we have disclosed that and cannot disclose that at this point of time. But I would say that maybe a little bit building on Antti's comment is that I said that the ones that take a different strategy on how to deal with this problem, they are large customers. So usually a large customer means a lot of ARR. And then we have been successful also in repositioning us to the mid market. But of course, it takes a bit of time to replace a really large customer.

And then a final one on this topic. How large is the revenue of current large customers, which you could consider being still at risk of churning?

I don't think we can at this point can disclose that.

But I think we discussed this in the in the SCB event as well is that there was a strong indication from the analysts that we should break down further these things and we are considering the right approach for our investor day so that unfortunately not disclosing that today so we are not changing our disclosure policy.

I understand that would be very helpful. Then on the on the NIST 2 directive Do you have any kind of idea at this point how fast this directive could start to impact on your growth and in which kind of products would you see the growth first? Would it have also impact on the consulting side or just on the product side?

I think consulting is also one area where there needs to be readiness in a way. It's one of the things that consultants consult. But in terms of the products, we have been used to in our home use that we have some antivirus software doing something. That's not going to be enough. So endpoint protection is not going to be enough in this one. So you need a proper incident management and you need to have a detection and response capability and you need to have a good way to proactively manage the digital risks. And so we believe the right formula is this XDR plus XM. So we think it drives demand for the full portfolio. And of course, that would be yielding much higher kind of subscription value per subscriber than just endpoint protection alone.

Good. Then ending up with a couple of cash flow related questions. Your working capital effect has been negative for the first nine months. Are you seeing the working capital effect for the full year turning positive like it did last year as well?

Yeah, maybe not restrained from forecasting that, but, you know, we are, I said, we've been, we are going towards a more favorable EBITDA all the time, and we have had some quite large capex expenditures in this beginning of the year, specifically related to our new headquarters and the lead cash project that we are renewing. So those would be, those we see as they're going to go, we will not invest as much.

Going forward, it does. And we are not capitalizing R&D to that large extent. Some companies do that. We do less.

Okay, so the current capex run rate of around €2 million per quarter, that is a bit high going forward.

That is high at the moment, yes. It's actually very high. Yes, specifically in Q3 and Q2.

Okay, and then just to follow up on the working capital side, should we see similar seasonal effects than we saw last year in Q4?

And that is quite difficult to predict. Forward looking statement. And it's looking forward. So I don't want to guess on that at this point.

I understand.

Thank you.

Hi, it's Matti Reikonen, Carnegie. A couple of questions. I'll start with the customer departures. I understood so that when you started to talk about these clients leaving in Q2, it has continued with new customers in Q3. And if we assume that the kind of negative impact on your growth will then last for the next 12 months, that's going to be so. And obviously you are not obviously ruling out that there would be further departures going forward.

I'm not ruling further departures, but what we are doing is that, so we did a strategy update in the company. So we are strengthening quite a lot our customer success, proactive customer success activities, both towards the partners and the customers. That's a key focus area. And we have been driving gradually up the net revenue retention for the Elements Cloud. And then, of course, there are a few specific accounts we have specific programs for, obviously. That's how we would do. But it's really difficult to disclose, in a way, prediction on that one. But I would not put it doom and gloomy.

Right. And were they all customers that were using Countercept?

Yeah, this week they mainly talk about the counter set things. There are within this managed services, we have also a recurring incident response and which is sometimes affected with the same things as consulting. And we have also attack surface management and and our Contoset service, those things. So it's a predominantly Contoset, kind of long lasting Contoset customers dating from the days of the MWR info security when it was acquired.

All right. And was it so that at the CMD you might be providing some more color into how much is actually the revenue base that is now at risk from the large customers?

And so we are considering our approach for that and we take all the feedback. And so it's a balance between what we want to disclose to the market and to our competition. So I think it's so we need to balance it.

We take the feedback seriously.

Yeah, sure. Then just on the cloud protection for Salesforce, which you decided to keep, could you describe a bit what was your thinking process behind that? I thought that you were at least thinking about other alternatives, but why did you decide to keep it?

So we are developing it as an independent business, and then we develop it, we have patience to develop it, and we can consider strategic options when the time is right. So we haven't communicated that we will never do that.

Right. So basically it's possible that you might be disposing of it at the later stage when it perhaps has a bit better performance metrics.

It is option. I think having few quarters of 40% growth wouldn't hurt.

Okay. Then regarding the relationship between top line and your costs. Now that the top line seems a bit more pressed compared to maybe the beginning of the year and the outlook regarding that has been declining. Do you plan to speed up your cost savings in order to kind of get to the same pace of improvement in profitability as you as you targeted earlier so is there still room to make cost savings in order to make that happen or you or are you kind of satisfied with the current setup and just ready to accept that it might take a bit longer in order to get to let's say positive EBIT maybe answer in the way that how I'm thinking about looking at the whole I think

You sort of need to be exploring new business opportunities and then you need to be exploiting the existing. So in my mind, optimizing the current is an endless game. So if I find ways to optimize it, I will definitely do it. But at the same time, if we find a way to modernize business models, go after new growth opportunities in a selective way, we should do that as well. So it's not a status quo, but I think as a person, I believe on a continuous improvement on the existing and then experimentation and exploration for the new. So if you give it color, I don't see it static.

Right. Then finally, the assumptions related to your goodwill at the moment. So what needs to happen for you to kind of write more down of your goodwill? So what kind of triggers in terms of growth and profitability do you have there? So is it very close or do you have some moving space?

Well, I think like Antti, I think a little bit alluded to in the beginning, we looked at our new revenue outlook. We did a slight modification of what we previously looked and then we had to update the risk levels. So that kind of drove us to this situation. We will continue in the future to look at that. And if we have to, of course, we then relook at it. But this is something we do almost on a quarterly basis at the moment.

All right. Fair enough. Thank you.

Hi, Felix Henriksen from Nordea. A few questions from my side as well. Starting off from the DAH region weakness that seemed to be a new thing that turned for the worse during the quarter. Can you elaborate at what point of the quarter you started seeing this? Was it already early on in July or later on in August, September?

I think it's more closer towards the end. A lot of our deals tend to come at the end of the quarter. So there we started to see it. But I still want to say that it's a super good region for us. I think it's so that we have a consistent growth there so that if you sort of double If I were to give you a sort of, so Germany is a strong region for us, and at the Q3, there's still sizable Q3 growth, but it's lower than the previous quarter. So that's why we wanted to include it here. And our value prop is strong in the market, and it speaks, this European alternative speaks exceptionally well in Germany. But in the German economy, there's a slowdown in decision making with the current situation.

Thanks. And then regarding the Elements Cloud ARR full year guidance, to get to the lower end, you do need quarter on quarter growth in Q4. So what's your level of confidence relating this, especially since Q4 might be the first full quarter weakness in the duck region now?

So I think we guided our sort of downside upside with the guidance, I think six to 14%. And if I look at our historical performance, you can see what we have done Q4 23. We have done Q4 22. That gives you some color on the seasonality. But I think, of course, with the sales teams, I gave them the challenge that you need to beat the plan and you need to prove me I'm wrong with the guidance. I think there's a fighting spirit in the company, which I really like. But seasonality-wise, Q4 is always strong, as you know.

So it's more based on historical seasonality rather than actual pipeline that's, you know, about to be closed. Is that the right interpretation?

Of course, we base it on... So the seasonality means that we have pipeline always for Q4, which is stronger. And I think we do it very regularly. So we have full visibility on the pipeline and the deals in motion. And we are personally involved in closing some of the deals. So I think... But that's the level of... I would like to guide much narrower predictability because in a way thinking about when running a kind of a SaaS company so that I think what we have been talking about it, that making it boring and predictable is good for this audience. So I think we are not there, but we are doing progress.

Fair enough. Another short-sighted question. Sorry, maybe we'll focus on the long-term topics in the invest today, but in terms of EBTA sequential development for Q4, can you remind us about the puts and takes when it comes to seasonality? Because on the other hand, in Q3, you tend to have a bit lower OPEX than in Q4, but then on the other hand, consulting sales tend to be quite strong often in Q4. So how should EBTA develop quarter on quarter when we head to the last quarter of the year.

You're absolutely right that in Q3 normally it's a vacation period so activity levels and there's some positives on the cost side from that perspective so but you know we expect Q4 to be strong as always.

So is that a commitment to positive EBITDA in the final quarter of the year? We said that the full year is positive. Fair enough. Okay. And the final housekeeping question for me, net financials, they were roughly 600 million negative in the quarter. Was there any, you know, reason for the change from the prior quarters on this line item? Sorry, which one? Net financial cost. I need to come back on that. Okay, fair enough. Thank you.

Hi, it's Atte Riikola from Inderes. First about the cloud protection for Salesforce product. Have you ever mentioned what is like the total addressable market for the product or so is there still room for double or triple or quadruple the revenues? Have you ever said anything about that?

We haven't said, but I think it's also a good input for the investor today. But just giving you color is that Salesforce, like many cloud platforms, they have a shared responsibility model. So that if you are a user of Salesforce from interest and you are doing harm to another Salesforce user, it's not my responsibility as Salesforce and I hold you accountable for it. And so that's the model in all the shared responsibility means is me shift the responsibility to you for many things. So what cloud protection for Salesforce is solving, especially with the Salesforce service and community cloud, when you have B2B customers, when you have multiple different companies collaborating, so that Salesforce in itself is very large. And when they use service cloud, community cloud, the demand for cloud protection for Salesforce is quite clear. And if they want to buy protection against the shared responsibility model terms and condition, that is the market. It's a very narrow, very specific, but I think that's what it builds on. So please.

No, I think just to, I mean, we are focusing on Salesforce. Salesforce as a platform is the biggest in the world and our penetration is very minimal at this point.

Yeah, so there's an ample opportunity to grow in all the service cloud and community cloud users, especially.

Yeah. And did I understand correctly that before you have said that you were looking for like strategic partner for the business to finance some parts of the growth investments, but are you now like going solo or are you still looking for the partner like I said earlier?

So we haven't changed the earlier thinking so that what we are saying now that we are developing as an independent business so that And we have a patient and we come back to this when the time is right. And we have quite a lot of work to do in our hands with the process, for instance, with consulting, I think, to be fair.

And then about the exposure management. Now the product was launched in May and you have been doing sales for some months. So what's like the initial feedback and how's the sales going? And maybe if you can say something about what's the upsell potential for the elements portfolio for that.

So we have started, we have accumulated the first partners after the in a way the limited availability. So we have a limited availability since FEAR and we have got first partners in that go to market with the value proposition. So we have once quite a number of customers already through them and now that we are in the GA, which was September, so we are kind of further scaling of course our efforts right now. So every company that needs to look at proactively the digital risk and do something about them, they need an exposure management. And maybe what people don't often remember, that if you look at, for instance, Gartner strategic technology trends for 24, exposure management is number two after AI. So number two after AI. And we are solving the mid-market problem. So it is a big part of our mid-market playbook that builds on XDR and exposure management. And it's in a way this joining up and integration. So I think quite positive on that one.

All right. And the last question. Your growth rate has been slowing down. So is it mostly because of the market situation in Europe and Germany or have you seen any changes in the competitive landscape or some competitor taking market share from you or anything like that?

So we have quite many type of businesses in the company. And when we look at Elements Cloud software, that is clearly growing. And within the Elements Cloud segments, we have had some customer churn with the managed services. So that's, of course, one impacting. Other impacting part is that it's the planned decline of the on-premise software. So I think those, in a way, from Elements company point of view, how they look, there are more rapidly growing items and then some some areas which are declining. And then of course on a company level consulting impacts the overall company number. So we are looking through the lens of the ARR driving businesses like Elements Cloud and Cloud Protection for Salesforce. Those are in a way for us the core platforms through which in a way the future growth of the company is built. So I think just a little bit how we are looking at the business. But I know we are making it very difficult today for you to follow this one.

but especially in the elements cloud segment, is there any changes in the competitive landscape?

Not major ones, but I think it's that our assertion is that the mid-market playbook and the large company playbook is differentiating. I think there's even more evidence on that one. And there have been some M&A happening in the quarter as well, I think, in the market with a competitive landscape, but nothing unusual. All right, thank you.

All right. I'll pick up some questions now from the chat. So first of all, there's Kimmo Stenvall, our analyst. And this is something we perhaps answered already, but this is important thing for today. So I'll ask it again. How many of the large managed services deals you still have ongoing? And if you lose also those, what kind of pressure this has on your top line?

I think we discussed this, so giving further granularity on this one is probably a topic we consider for the investor day, but I think we are in a way guiding our numbers through the Elements Cloud ARR, which of course includes this managed service, so not opening up today.

All right, then I'll move to Erik Karlsson. You have cut a lot of cost, but to start earning meaningful profits, you will probably need some growth. How should we think about growth in the elements business over the next couple of years? What are the main drivers? Is it new modules to existing clients or expansion of the channel? How can you explain how the elements business can start making satisfactory profits?

So a couple of things, and we'll talk about this more in the investor dates, is that one thing is that we are focusing our efforts in every region with the partners we work with, is that we work with high growth partners with the full portfolio. I think that's one area. And we are we are improving the ways we do the customer success. So meaning is that the net revenue retention and the cross-sell upsell. So we are looking at the one focus area because a lot of the things we can get from the existing clients, but we also need to bring new partners, new type of customers that are growing faster. So I think those are the two main things. Third thing we are thinking And we also, by the way, have now our offering available in the AWS marketplace. And so we are looking at more ditch. We are experimenting with more digital channels that we get more scale effects and doubling down on the digital service experience also, especially for the smaller customers. So there are many avenues we are doing how to optimize the existing business and to make it grow faster. And of course, these new things like exposure, and cloud protection then add to the mix. But there's a lot of room for growth also with the existing XDR business. Anything Tom you want to add?

No, I think that is our strategic main drivers in the future.

All right. So Erik continues on consulting. It is shown that it wasn't at least an easy disposal to make. Do you still think it's realistic to sell consulting in a 12 month window? Or should we realistically think that you will still own it in 12 months time? Also, cybersecurity demand is booming, but you have not been able to earn money in this business. What in your assessment is wrong in the business model?

So I think on the first part, so we are in active discussions with regards to the divestment of consulting and we haven't made decisions yet. And that's what we are in a way disclosing on that one. And Tom, I think you have been looking at the consulting together with Scott quite closely. I think any thoughts on what are we doing wrong, what we could do better?

Well, I do think that there is solid demand also in the future, but maybe we have seen a bit of a slowdown over the last 12 months. We also noted that we are not alone with that, but we clearly also see that there is a solid demand in the future. But of course, we could have done better. Some of our large customers have been having budget constraints and so on. But we have also quite a few new customers that gives us quite good potential also for the future.

And like with every... There was a question about this. how do you optimize? So we have looked at many avenues inside consulting, how we improve the business so that we have not only improved profitability, we have improved the sales approach and things like that. And these kind of small improvements, they happen gradually and then they will have a bigger impact as we go. But I think as you see from the profitability, the trend with the consulting, at least that we have improved, but the top line, not yet, but I think it's, but we are working on it.

All right. Then Erik continues. Sorry to ask a personal question, but given that the stock market's confidence is quite low, would you consider buying stock privately to show confidence in the business midterm?

I absolutely buy shares in the company and I take into account all the stock market regulations in doing so.

Alright, are there more questions in the room? I think our chat is done for the time being.

Hi, Walter Rossi from Danske. Still one question regarding the consulting divestment. If you are able to divest it, do you think that you can scale down the operating expenses with the same extent after divestment? Because it's a lot of allocated costs, right?

Not anymore. We have announced with a new strategy change that we have moved a lot of the people and they will be in the business, both businesses, CPSF and consulting 1st of November. So we have moved the headcount from the central functions.

Okay. What about, there must be some shared functions still between these?

Can I answer this one? As the lucky head of controlling of this company, I can assure you that we are extremely careful of not dumping allocations on the businesses. So of course we have to allocate, but we know quite closely what we're allocating and why. So that's pretty much under control.

And we have also considered these things when we have done previous actions. Absolutely. All right. Thanks. Thanks, Laura.

All right.

I think we're done.

I think we're done. So thank you very much for everybody who attended. Thanks for the good questions. Our chat has gone silent and the people in the room are nodding. So I think we are ready to wrap up.

So, hey, thank you so much. And we meet next time after Q4. All right. Thank you, everybody on the line. And thank you in the room.