Netcompany Group As Adr

Welcome to NIT Company's Q4 and full year 2024 presentation. Today's call is being recorded. All participants will be in a listen-only mode throughout the presentation. Afterwards, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press 5 star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question again, you may do so by pressing 5 star again. I would like to introduce CEO André Orgeshevsky and CFO Thomas Johansen. André, you may begin your presentation.

Good day and welcome to this presentation of NET Company's results for Q4 and full year 2024. My name is Andrej Rogaczewski and I'm the CEO and co-founder of NET Company and I'm joined today by our CFO, Thomas Johansen. Before we get going, there are some important disclosures that I need you to read through. So could we please have slide number two? I will pause here for 30 seconds and let you all have a read through of these important disclosures. And with that, can we please go to slide number three, please? The topic of today's presentation is our performance for Q4 and full year 24, as well as our guidance for 2025. I will walk you through the business highlights for Q4 2024, the full year in general, and our financial guidance for 2025. And once I'm done, Thomas will go through the numbers in greater details before we open up the call for questions. And can we have the next slide, please? 2024 was the first year we started to see a material impact from our go-to-market strategy, which we initiated in the beginning of 2023. Despite a business environment that continued to be uncertain and challenging, we grew revenue for the full year by 7.6% in reported currencies and 7.4% in constant currencies, in line with guidance given at the beginning of the year. Gross profit in 2024 increased by 11.9%, yielding a gross margin of 29.1% compared to 28% last year. The improvement in gross profit was a result of improvement in all regions despite the UK. And Thomas will go more into the details behind the gross profit developments in each specific region. Adjusted EBITDA increased by 21.8% to 1.1 billion in 2024, yielding an adjusted EBITDA margin of 16.8% in reported currencies and 16.9% in constant currencies, also in line with guidance given in the beginning of the year. During the year, the workforce in the group increased by 323, equal to a 4.2% increase. And can we have the next slide, please? During the fourth quarter, we have won several new contracts, of which I'm mentioning a few here. In Germany, we've won a contract with Munich Airport to implement AirHot as the digital backbone of the entire Munich Airport ecosystem and thereby become an important strategic partner for the airport. In the private segment in Denmark, we have signed a significant contract with Forsa to basically rethink pension management. Through implementation of our new industry solution called Amplio Life & Pension, based on our existing platforms Amplio, Easly, Mitdeco and Festina Finance Core Life Pension application, We will enable a better and more efficient management of the pension funds with enforcer to the benefit of their end customers. And in the private segment in the Netherlands, we have been chosen as vendor for the development, implementation and maintenance for the replacement of the primary process system at the Dutch Medicine Agency. And can we go to slide number six, please? In Net Company Intrasoft, we have also signed several new contracts in the fourth quarter of the year, of which we have highlighted a few here. In the European Union, as a part of a consortium, we have signed a five-year framework contract with the European External Action Service. The scope of the project is to provide IT workplace and user support services, among other deliveries for the European Action Service. A market-leading product, Solon Tax, has been selected by the Independent Authority for Public Revenue in Greece and the State Tax Inspectorate of Lithuania to replace the existing taxation systems in both countries. This is the same solution as we sold to the Swedish tax agency back in June. In the private segment in Greece, we have been awarded a contract with Cosmod Payments, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, for the expansion of the digital wallet PaidSea. The digital wallet is already in use with Cosmod customers in Greece and will now be rolled out for the Deutsche Telekom customers in Germany as well. This launch is a part of Deutsche Telekom's broader strategy to expand its digital services and improve customer experience within the vertical financial services, which also fully supports our strategy to grow within the financial services vertical. Can we have the next slide, please? In Q4 2024, we employed an average of 8,249 equivalents, which was an increase of 6.2% compared to the same period last year. Compared to revenue growth, the number of FTEs grew at a slower pace as a result of our increased use of existing platforms throughout the entire group. The attrition rate for the last 12 months was 18.1%, which was an increase of 2.8 percentage points compared to last year. And can we have slide number eight, please? Before I get to the guidance for 2025, I would like to give my remarks to the year we have just finished. Looking back at 2024, our go-to market strategy and increased focus on becoming a strategic partner within specific verticals for business-critical IT solutions started to pay off in a market that continued to be challenging and uncertain. Despite the challenges, we grew revenue in line with our financial guidance for the year at 7.4% in constant currencies. Growth was driven by the ongoing recovery in the Danish part of the group and supported by an egg company Intrasoft, where particularly the EU and public segment delivered significant growth. Also, the Netherlands and Norway delivered growth. In the UK, we were negatively impacted by the slower than anticipated spending in the public segment because of the general election there. For 2025, we expect to keep growing and to keep on improving margins. We look into 2025 with continued high uncertainty, which, when it comes to both macroeconomic measures and geopolitical topics, can have influence. Hence, on balance, we expect to grow revenue by between 5 and 10 percent in 2025. And at the same time, we expect to deliver an adjusted EBITDA margin of between 16 and 19 percent. Looking beyond 2025, the delay in public spending in the UK and the divestment of non-strategical markets in net company Intrasoft has eliminated a sizeable part of our originally expected revenue levels in 2024 and negatively impacted our growth expectations for 2025 and beyond. Consequently, we defer the timing for realizing 8.5 billion revenue target to 2027 However, we reiterate our adjusted EBITDA margin target of at least 20% and the redistribution of at least 2 billion of cash to shareholders by the end of 2026. As Thomas will explain in greater details, we will not initiate a new share buyback program at this particular point in time, despite all time high free cash flow. And with that, I will pass on the word to Thomas. Please go ahead, Thomas.

Thank you for that, Andre. And like already mentioned, I'm the CFO in Net Company, and I will now go more in details with the financial performance for Q4 and for the full year 2024. So if we move past the breaking slide number 9 and straight into slide number 10 in one go, please. Andre has already spoken about our performance in general terms, and I will now go more in details with the performance for Q4 and the full year 2024. Revenue increased by 5.7% in Q4 measured in constant currencies. Currencies impacted growth positively by 0.3 percentage points, leaving reported revenue growth at 6% for Q4. The growth was driven by continued recovery in the Danish part of the group that grew revenue by 5.3%, driven by a 9.2% increase in the public segment, while the private segment was on level with the same quarter last year. And once again, the net company Intersoft continued the strong performance and realized 10.6% revenue growth in the fourth quarter. The growth was driven by both the public and the EU segment that grew 9.6% and the private segment that grew 14% compared to the same quarter last year. Also, the Netherlands continued the strong performance from previous quarters and grew revenue by 14.7% in the fourth quarter. In Norway, revenue declined 3.9% due to the decrease in revenue in the private segment. In the UK, revenue declined 7.3% compared to the same period last year, as the stagnation in public spending continued into Q4 and led to lower than anticipated activity levels. Can we move to the next slide, please? Group revenue grew 7.4% in constant currencies full year 2024. Total license revenue accounted for 1% of group revenue in 2024, in line with 2023. As we discussed in connection with our Q3 earnings, the sales opportunities with embedded license revenues, which potentially could have been closed in Q4, were all pushed into 2025, of which some have already been executed in January. None of the sales opportunities discussed in connection with Q3 with embedded license revenues have been lost. Group revenue growth was slightly offset by the performance in the UK, where the public segment was negatively impacted by a slower than anticipated ramp up on a large strategic project following the standstill in public spending after the general election in July 2024. We would naturally like to see these projects being pushed forward again, and we start to see signs that this is actually happening. Revenue in the public segment, including the EU, grew by 9.4% in 2024, driven by growth in Netcom and Intrasoft, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway. Growth in Netcom and Intrasoft was supported by the ongoing cooperation with Taksud and the European Commission and growth in the public segment in Greece spurred by funding under Resilience and Recovery Facility, the RRF. The public segment in Denmark was positively impacted by increased tender activity compared to 2023. In the Netherlands and Norway, growth was driven by new contract wins and farming with existing customers. In the private segment, revenue grew by 3.8% in 2024, mainly driven by growth in Denmark, supported by our go-to-market strategy and continued pipeline conversion. The contract won with Forza will be supportive of the continued growth in the private segment in Denmark in 2025 and onwards. Can we have the next slide, please? The gross profit margin in Q4 was 29.5% and on par with the same quarter last year. The margin was positively impacted by 17.7 million Danish more in license revenue in the quarter compared to the same quarter last year, but offset by a decrease in gross profit in Denmark, UK and Norway. The lower margin in Norway was caused by increased time spent on business development and tender activities, leading to wins such as Munich Airport and Forsa, which André has already mentioned. Margins in net company Intrasoft increased by 5.5 percentage point, driven by better utilization and project execution, and a higher amount of license revenue. Gross profit margin in the UK decreased by 1.4 percentage point in the quarter, and the lower activity level in the UK administration led to lower utilization. In addition, a number of employees were made redundant in the UK in Q4. Margin in Norway decreased by 8.8 percentage point in Q4 compared to the same quarter last year due to increased time spent on business development during the quarter. In the Netherlands, margin increased 7.7 percentage point and reached 37.9% in Q4. The increased margin in the Netherlands was a result of significantly better project execution. Can we have the next slide, please? For the full year, gross profit margin for the group reached 29.6%, an increase of 1.3 percentage point compared to last year. The improvement was a result of recovery in the Danish part of the group and improved performances in Netcom and Intrasoft, the Netherlands and Norway. Gross profit margin declined in the UK as a consequence of continued time spent on business development, lower utilization, and around 17 million Danish spent on service cost during the year. Adjusting for the service cost, gross profit margin in the UK would have been 22% compared to the 19.3% shown here. And can we move to the next slide, please? Adjusted EBITDA margin was 17.1% in Q4-24 for the Group. Improvement was driven by significant improvements in Netcom and Intersoft and the Netherlands. EBITDA margin in Denmark was 21.6% compared to 22.4% in Q4 last year. The decrease in margin was a result of the development in gross profit as mentioned. Net Company Intrasoft's margin increased 5.6 percentage points, positively impacted by better gross profits, of which a part was related to higher license income. Adjusted for the increase in license, margins still improved by more than 1.1 percentage points, underlining the continued focus on margin improvement initiatives taken throughout the group. EBITDA margin in the UK was 9.4%. Margin was negatively impacted by the 10 million spent on severance cost in the quarter. Adjusting for this, EBITDA margin would have been 16.6% in Q4. In Norway, margin was negative 2.8% due to a decline in gross profit. In the Netherlands, margin improved significantly by 10.3% to 23.8% in Q4. The improvement was a result of better utilization and the improvement already mentioned in gross profit. Can we have the next slide, please? Adjusted EBITDA margin increased 2.2 percentage points to 17.7% in full 2024 compared to 15.5% in 2023. The increase in adjusted EBITDA margin was driven by improved utilization in Denmark, Netcom and Intrasoft, the Netherlands and Norway, and supported by continued focus on margin expanding activities in the group, which meant that administrative cost did not increase in monetary terms despite a 7.6% growth in revenue. Can we have the next slide, please? We have continued our focus on working capital. and as a percentage of revenue, the combined work-in-progress, pre-built invoices and trade receivables was 27.8% in 2024 compared to 32.3% in 2023. This development was driven by two factors. One factor is a significant increase in pre-billed invoices in Q4 2024, which increased by 260 million. The amount of pre-billing of customers can vary from year to year, depending on the individual contracts. Another factor was the level of trade receivables, that only increased by 20 million, despite corresponding revenues growing by close to half a billion. In particular, towards the end of the year, a number of significant projects met certain milestones criteria for invoicing and subsequently collection of the receivables, supporting the extraordinary strong free cash flow in Q4 and all of 2024. Can we go to the next slide, please? For the year, we have generated our best-ever free cash flow of 821 million Danish, driven by, as mentioned, improved performance and the development in working capital. As a matter of fact, our free cash flow in Q4 2024 alone was of the same magnitude as free cash flow for all of 2023. We ended the year with 251 million of cash at hand and our leverage has come down to 1.2 times, giving us strong balance sheet momentum into 2025. Consequently, our cash conversion ratio increased from 135% in 2023 to 147% in 2024. During the year, we have initiated share buybacks for 800 million, and we plan to cancel 2.5 million shares at the upcoming AGM, reducing our outstanding capital by 5%. We remain committed to our target of distribution of 2 billion of cash to shareholders by the end of 2026, but due to ongoing advanced strategic considerations, we will not initiate a new share buyback program at this particular point in time. Can we have the next slide, please? Revenue visibility for 2025 is 4.9 billion, which is unchanged compared to 2024. This implies a revenue visibility of 69.6% of the guided revenue midpoint for 2025 compared to 74.4% at the same time last year. However, revenue visibility at the beginning of 2024 was impacted by a higher proportion of long-term revenue assigned than normally, and historical revenue visibility at the beginning of the year has fluctuated between 63.4 and 74.4% of the guided revenue midpoint, meaning that revenue visibility into 2025 is at normal levels. It was the visibility looking into 2024 that was of extraordinary high level. And with that, we've concluded the financial analysis and we will now open up the call for questions. So if you move to the Q&A slide, please, and open up the call. Thank you.

If you wish to ask a question, please press five star on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question again, you may do so by pressing five star again. The first question is from George White from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Hi, Morgan. Hi, morning, Andrea and Thomas. I've got a few to start off with if I can. First one, I think you slightly highlighted it, Thomas. If I look at Q4 on the private segment side, lowering, I guess, all of the regions apart from Intrasoft, if we think about the broader IT services sector in Europe, some of the vendors were, I guess, talking about an incremental weakness in Q3, Q4. In terms of your own performance, when you look at the Q4 in private segment, how much is that? I guess it's contract timings versus maybe that broader theme of private sector weakness late last year and maybe into the start of 2025. Secondly, just on the UK, in terms of how you've structured your 2025 guidance, I know you won't speak to a specific country in terms of numbers. But I guess what sort of assumptions are you making there now on the ramp-up of the Dallas contract? Is that second half that you're expecting or maybe even later? And then lastly, just on 2025, you mentioned the one-point headwind growth from the divestment of, I think it's Intrasoft's MIA activities. I'm guessing that's not high-margin work. So, I guess within the margin guidance, is there a small benefit from that divestment?

Thank you.

Yes, thank you, George. Thank you for those questions. When it comes to the private sector, there's a lot of timing into that. As you probably also noticed, we've won considerable private deals as well, also especially in the FSI sector in Denmark. There's no doubt that we are strong in public sector across our country, especially because we're doing tax and customs, and some of the airports are also public services. But when it comes down to whether it's public or private, we are solely concentrated on delivering high complex solutions to regulated areas, whether that goes into public or private containers is not of that big importance. But I know from reporting point of view, you know, you always look at the trends, but basically we're doing the same thing across those two sectors. When it comes to the UK, Well, we are patient in the UK. It's been a tough year in the UK in general. Also, if you look at our direct competitors, however, we have some real strategic customers at hand. We have great dialogues, we have good pipeline, and we also have some framework contracts that we need to materialize on. So we just keep on working on that. And we are confident that that will change. I mean, the development in the UK will change. And when it comes to the divestment of Intersoft activities, I think I will leave that question to you, Thomas, but it's not a huge part and it's not a very high margin contributing either.

When you look at the 1% that we are divesting, which then have a negative impact on our revenue guidance of 5 to 10. So if you add that back, it would be 6 to 11. The impact on margin from Intrasoft is neutral. So if you look at the group, it is lower margin revenue that we are divesting. You are right in that, George.

Great, thank you very much.

The next question is from Paul Jensen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Yes, thank you. I have two questions. First, Danish public sector, could you put a little more color on what's going on? Because you have, throughout the last three quarters, had a fatty sales. growth year-over-year is coming down, despite it was at a very low level Q4 last year. At the same time, you have a much higher order intake in the public sector in Denmark in the second half of 2024. So how should we look at that kind of business into 2025? That's the first question.

Thank you, Paul. And it's a great question, by the way. You're absolutely right. I mean, if you look at 2024, some of the larger deals were postponed several times during 2024. One of them we actually announced recently, the account infrastructure, the payment financial account infrastructure. For Denmark, that's the account Nymkonto that is used to pay out all types of benefits to Danish citizens. So, I mean, that is a very good example of something that just took a much longer time. So for all, you know, everything considered, we're definitely coming into 2025 with a strong setup for the public sector in Denmark because it came in quite late in 2024. So you have a point there. That's a high order intake and we expect that to continue over the next quarter as well. There's a lot of decisions to be made in the public sector.

And then the second question is about your comment on strategic considerations. As I recall it all the way back to the IPO, you have been quite firm in saying that, as you also said just before, that your focus is on high complex solutions in regulated markets. And, for instance, you had absolutely no interest in the ERP market, which, as I recall, is seen as a commodity with low margins. But at least locally, there is a lot of speculation about a company that has just been put for sale that you could be in one of the acquirers of that one. But that is ERP, so I would just want to comment on if you're in or out of that kind of transaction.

Let me just underline that our M&A strategy is absolutely unchanged. We do not work with ERP systems. Our potential transaction would focus on a target with significant IP or products. and include a base of large sticky customers with one of the specific verticals that we work and focus on. So, the strategy is absolutely not changed and we do not work on with the ERP systems.

Okay, thank you.

Next up, we have Yiwei Zhou from SEB. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Hi, Andrea and Thomas. Thank you for taking my question. I have three questions. I'll do one at a time. Firstly, you mentioned that the Q4 March in Denmark, all the revenue was impacted by the increased business development and the tender writing activities. Is it possible for you to quantify a bit on the impact And should we expect this to continue to be also a dilutive effect in the coming quarter?

The question, Wei, we cannot give specific insight into how much we have spent on the activities, but we have seen a much higher proportion of business development, which is also sales related activities in Q4. The reason for that is twofold, both in terms of higher level of activities on public tenders, as André has already alluded to, in terms of the significant amount of tenders in the public sector that we are working on right now, which is then supposed to give impact from 2025, And then on the contract that we signed with Forza, which is in the private segment, the sales activities vis-à-vis such a large private customer is a little bit different than writing tenders in the public space. So with this specific sales case, which is Forza, We spent a quite significant amount of sales resources, which means people basically contracting, making sure that all things are good with the customer in Q4. And those two factors had a toll on our revenue in the Danish business in Q4 and hence also on margin in Q4 in Denmark.

Great. Thank you. Very helpful. And my next question is on the interest of the margin development, which looks quite positive here. And I recall that in the 2026 20% EBITDA margin target, you actually quantified that what you expected that the interest of it will contribute. And given the development in 2024 and also the outlook for 2025, do you still see that sort of liver, that driver was too conservative or is it still in line with your expectations?

I will not answer directly, which you probably also had guessed. But what we can say on margin development in Intrasoft is that we are very satisfied with that. And it gives us strong comfort in the reiteration of the 2026 margin target of at least 20%. Okay.

Great. My last question on the Dallas contract. I know we have discussed many times, but I just want to ask the same question again. Could you give an update on the status? If there's any new from the customer, please do a dialogue. I know you are... close eyes on this and I mean it's been postponed for such a long time and you're talking about further delay do you see the risk of cancellation for your contract and do you also see the risk of change in the contract value

Thank you for that. I understand the lack of patience with particular contracts. However, the Dallas is a framework contract and it's actually covering a lot of areas. It can change in nature. It has been. postponed in some areas and we also have other contracts that are important here. So what we are looking at and which I can talk about is overall we have some great framework contracts in the UK including the Dallas contract and we just need to see them materialize. We have no significant news in terms of that happening in specific speeds or specific timing areas.

And further to that way, we see no indications at all that the Dallas framework or the specific contracts within are being cancelled. No indications of that whatsoever.

And how about the, is there any risk of changing the contract value? Because I understand it's a framework agreement, but I also recall that you have got a firm project, a firm contract for one specific system.

And also no indication of any changes to the contract value.

Great. Thanks for clarification. I'll jump back to the Q&A.

The next question is Klaus Elmer from Nordea. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Thank you. Also, a few questions from my side. I'll take them one by one. So the first is about this possible transaction. Could you give some color on the possible timing? And I know, obviously, this is difficult, but is it a Q1? Is it the first half? Or what is the best guess that will be the first one?

Thank you, Claus. Well, we cannot be specific on that, and I guess you all already knew that I would say that, but we are in serious conversations and discussing this in great detail.

I'm just trying, but do you think it will be first half or do we have to wait for this throughout this year?

And again, I can only repeat what I said, we are in serious conversations.

Fair enough. It was worth trying at least, Andrew. My second question goes to the revenue visibility for 2025, which is around flattish year over year. And I know last year that Dallas was probably part of your expectation for 2024. So first of all, how does Dallas reflect in the 2025 revenue visibility? And then the second part of that question is, will the flattish revenue visibility reflect then obviously your order intake really needs to improve to meet the revenue guidance. So where do you see the biggest potentials within your different regions? Thanks.

So on revenue visibility and the impact of Dallas, it's fair to say that the visibility we have on Dallas and the amount we've taken into the visibility is lower than what we had in our visibility in 2024. And that is a reflection of the uncertainty. Dallas is in revenue visibility, but not at a firm amount at this point in time, which we expect it to materialize into during the year. When it comes to order signed and the revenue visibility towards the midpoint, we do have signed a significant amount of orders in January, and those will be supportive of our targets, both in terms of public and in terms of private segments. So those contracts signed in January are in general terms not included in revenue visibility and they are significant and you've seen a number of them already. So taking that into consideration, we are comfortable with the right guidance range that we're given on top line also.

Sure, Thomas, just to be sure. So, Dallas is, to some extent, included in 25 revenue visibility, but then you said something not firm, but you need to put in a specific number, I guess, in the revenue visibility.

We have put in a number in the revenue visibility, and that number I'm not disclosing, but we have put in a number in the revenue visibility. And given the fact that things are delayed and taking longer time compared to what we thought of when we initially signed the data framework, that amount is lower than the same amount in the 2024 revenue visibility.

Fair enough. Then just to... So, you know, it's flattish and... Revenue visibility is the best guess for revenue growth, I assume. So when do you think we will have a revenue visibility growth that is supporting the full year guidance? Would that be Q1 or do we have to wait a bit later to see all orders firming up?

I think without going into specific details as to what we expect of revenue visibility in Q1, Q2, Q3 and the end of the year, we do expect it to firm up. In terms of the best proxy and how we look at revenue, revenue visibility is one aspect of it. Another aspect, which we are not disclosing, but what we are using internally, is of course our pipeline and our ability to convert pipeline cases hear of also larger pipeline cases into contracts. And what we've seen towards the second half of 2024, and what we expect to continue to see into 2025, is that an amount of those very large-scale contracts that we've been working on, no secret, for quite a long time, for instance, the contract with Munich Airport, the contract with Forsa selling the Solon tax case to Greece, They are part of the pipeline, which you normally don't have insight into. And they are materializing. And that is really what is driving also our top line. And in terms of pipeline, we are comfortable looking into 2025 and onwards.

Fair enough. That was all for me. Thank you so much.

The next one in the queue is Harry Reid from Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Hi, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the questions. I just wanted to square some comments made by a competitor in the UK public sector on budget. Obviously, there's a large allocation to UK public sector for IT, given the tech debt that's incurred, especially in the NHS. It was suggested by them that The unlocking of that budget and being allocated might take clearing events such as the spring budget. I'm just interested in your conversations with clients, whether there is a kind of impetus or there needs to be a catalyst event to drive the unlocking of this work and get it done, or if there's something different that's restricting the deployment of those budgets and work. Thank you.

Thank you for that question, Harry. We have, as I said before, we have several contracts in the UK that we are looking on with great interest. One of them is also the work we do with NHS. But we have no particular singular events affecting our overall projections for the year. I think in general, we have a position where we have been patient for a while, but we expect growth to happen in the UK and we also see that across our contracts.

Great, thank you. And the next question is from Elisa Budarabu from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Hey, I'm Ray Thomas. Thanks for taking my question. It's a question for me. Can you comment on the Avanor contract? Any color you can give on the timing of the ramp up there? what is the contribution data in 2024? That's the first question. Second, what is the impact from the inter-soft related divestment of the 2024 revenues? And finally, on free cash flow, I know you had a very significant inflow in Q4. Was some of that maybe a pull forward or or anything from Q1? How should we just think about the free cash revolution during 2025?

Well, thank you for those questions. The first one, when it comes to Aveeno, things are going as expected. We have a great relationship with Aveeno and we're doing a lot of great stuff together. So that contract is moving on and we have great expectations for continuing that relationship and growing the contract even further. But coming into details of how fast we're going to ramp it up, I cannot do that on this call, but Things are moving on as planned.

And then for the next couple of questions on the divestment of the non-strategic businesses of interest of Middle East Africa, I hear a question as to what was that amount in 2024 revenue? Well, the impact for 2025 is around 1 percentage point or so for the group, which means that the revenue in 2025 was in the area of 60, 70 million. We were during the year in process of divesting these areas, which also meant that there's been potential new sales in those regions that we have not pursued. And I cannot quantify the amount of that, but there have been cases that we have not pursued because we knew that we would divest the areas anyway. As for cash flow, cash flow is strong in Q4, absolutely. There are also various impacts in Q1 that will support a continued strong cash flow. but I'm not going to comment on cash flow on a quarterly basis at this particular point in time.

Thanks so much. And maybe just a quick follow-up on the strategic considerations. I know you're not going to talk about the timing, etc. But can you just remind us again the sort of financial criteria you would look at and also, I guess, how you think about leverage in that scenario because you're also still committing to the $2 billion of cash returns. So could you just comment on the criteria and the leverage in that context?

Well, as you know, our criteria and our strategy for M&A has changed three years ago. We brought up companies with a lot of people in them or smaller companies with people that we had to change to become a company culture. That has changed, especially with the Intrasoft acquisition. We're now buying us buying and acquiring companies that have a significant IP or products or platforms within a vertical where we can come in. So what we are acquiring is customers, ongoing relationships and business going on with customers in a very business critical specific area. And that is exactly what we are continuously looking on to do also in the future years. And when it comes down to the leverage of it, Thomas.

Leverage, we've said, and we maintain that, that medium-longer term, a leverage target of around one, maybe a little bit below, is where we want to be. We have various... opportunities within our existing financing agreement to go above the current level of 1.2 and also above 2 if we seek and if we think that is necessary. So a transaction per se would potentially impact leverage short term. which would not be a hindrance to our target of redistributing the 2 billion in cash.

Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, André.

You're welcome.

The next question is from Daniel Jugglerberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Thank you, Professor. And yeah, good day. A question, a small market, but still Norway, a negative 2.9% adjusted EBITDA in a normally decent Q4, I guess. So can you comment a bit more? You mentioned it was improved utilization for the full year, but obviously something happened in Q4. Perhaps you have touched upon it already, but can you just remind me of what it was and also If it was related to Avenor and also if we look in Germany and also Lithuania, if you can work your way around a little bit of this, what can you call it, ramping impact, that it will not happen again, similar to what we've seen with Avenor and Dallas. So several questions there. Sorry for that.

No worries. When it comes to Norway, you're absolutely right. It's a framework agreement. So basically, when it comes to executing upon an agreement such like that over time can vary. And it depends very much on the specific resources needed by the customer at specific times. There's no secret that the ramp up has been going on slower than we anticipated in 24. However, we are picking up and We expect 2025 to reach the levels that we expected in 2024 and continuing from there. So it will materialize and we will see the positive effect of that. And when it comes to comparing that with Germany and Lithuania, these are very different wins. Germany and Lithuania are systems that need to be delivered in a specific amount of time. and they also include license fees and services. So they're not framework agreements in the same way and will be materializing with much more certainty.

Specifically on Norway in Q4, there were a higher proportion of business development activities than at the same quarter last year. So that's why you see the drop mainly on margin. For the full year, utilization has improved. But Q4 against Q4, it was slightly negatively impacted by a higher amount of forward-looking activities, namely business development.

Okay, that's good. I may also ask you on, you touched upon before here on the possible strategic move delaying buybacks and not ERP companies it seems to be. But can you say anything if it's correlated to your recent market interest? I guess you would be needed to be quite larger in Munich area, for example, or if it's that this took a lot of the question.

I'm sorry, Daniel, but we cannot really comment on where it is and the nature of it at this particular point of time.

That's fair enough. I was only curious. And the last question, if I may, would be on the UK workforce dedicated to the Dallas framework. Given lower visibility and some kind of right-sizing, I guess we saw in Q4, is that fully behind or should we expect, you know, further more cautiousness and right-sizing in that frame agreement.

That is done and if you look at the client-facing FTEs in the UK, that has dropped from 629 in Q4 23 to 554 in Q4, which also have this negative impact on the margin due to severance cost.

Perfect. Thank you so much and good luck here in Q1, Q2.

Let me just remind you that if you have a question for the speakers, please press five star on your telephone keypad. We have a follow-up from Yiwei Zhou from ACB Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

It's Wei again. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two follow-up questions here. First, I just want to ask about the M&A consideration. I understand you focus on the same vertical shift, but could you remind us the main criteria in your due diligence for M&A transaction? I just want to know if you would be looking to integrate it and also if you can comment a bit on the potential margin impact that happens.

Great questions, Wei, and relevant questions. And the answer to that, I'm sorry, is going to be an echo of what André has already said a couple of times, and that is that we cannot go into detailed comments on that. What we can say is that Our M&A strategy is clear. We are focusing on acquisitions that will add significant IP or products with customer base that are based on large sticky customers in verticals that we find strategically important and where we see substantial growth. So that's really all we can say at this point in time. But I do understand your question.

All right, fair enough. And then Norway, I just want to follow up on the business development activities. Could you maybe add a bit more color on if you're talking about public or private sector? Or is it one contract or several contracts?

No, that's broad-based without being more specific, but that's broad-based, so both public and private.

Okay, cool. Thanks. I'll jump back to the Q&A.

And the next question is from Matt Crisco from Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead. Your line will now be unmuted.

Yeah, thank you for taking my questions. I have three, and I will take them one by one. So first, coming back to revenue visibility, obviously in line with previous years. But can you just remind me, at least in my time covering that company, I don't recall as strong a month as this month where you signed a large amount of flagship contracts. So it's fair to assume that, yeah, the revenue visibility is stable compared to previous years, but you have signed a number of contracts, framework contracts also in this month, which will obviously have a significant impact coming into Q1.

Correct? Correct. Absolutely correct.

All right. Thank you. Then my second question is on Intrasoft, because if I look at a backlog cover, not only for this year, But also, what is it, the next six to seven years, I see that the backlog cover is flat this year over year. So I know you gave the growth guidance back by the end of 2020, where you say 5% to 10% annual growth in InfoSoft. But why is it that InfoSoft shouldn't be able to grow in line with last year, given that the backlog cover is somewhat unchanged year over year?

New growth in one year and Intrasoft's backlog, which is multi-year, six, seven years, are two different creatures, Mads. And you will also recall that the significant increase in backlog that has happened in Intrasoft over the last couple of years have been supported by a number of wins that has been under this so-called RRF, so the EU money, if you so will. That has always been, and we've planned for that, has been a time-boxed, if you so will, initiative. And based on that, we grew revenue in 2023 in the public sector by more than 50%, and we also saw significant growth in 2024. Now, we cannot continue to grow 50% on a RRF, which is basically an absolute amount of money. So that's why the backlog is not seeing the same increase. But that is not necessarily the same to say that there's a one-to-one correlation between what revenue growth will then be in Intersoft in 2025 and 2026. It's more the outer years that we're talking about here.

Makes sense. We agree that there will be a new financial package to replace RF, right? Is it in one or two years' time that Greece will also be allocated a new fair amount of money from the European institution? Is that correct?

That's at least the expectations, but we'll take that when it comes, Mads. But that's the expectation at this point in time, yes.

Then my final question is on licensed cells. So obviously you're not guiding on licensed cells for this year. But you have a pretty good insight into the pipeline, as you mentioned before, Thomas. So what should we expect for license sales for this year, given the current pipeline?

We have no comment on the expectation to licenses. What we can see in 2024 is that the expectation from the market was license revenue of around 100 to 120 million. And we did 60 to 65, which is the single one explanation of the lower than consensus revenue and margin, because there's a one-to-one dribble down from license to EBITDA for 2024 and also 2025. So no specific guidance on license revenue in 2025. Clearly off to a strong start with, for instance, the signature on the Greek contract with Solon and also some other contracts in other jurisdictions. So we're off to a good start.

All right. Thank you. You're welcome.

As no one else has lined up for questions at this moment, I will hand it back to André for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for joining in at the call and have a great day.