Welcome, everybody, and thanks for joining our Sesa Virtual Investor Day. First of all, it's a great pleasure to be here in order to present you our group strategy, results, and ambitions. Before starting, I give the floor to Chorus Call conference operator, in order to give you some technical information to follow the presentation. Then, we can start with the Investor Day. Thanks again, and enjoy the presentation.
Thank you. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the 2024 Sesa Virtual Investor Day. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. For operator assistance via web call, please press the headset icon on the bottom left side of your screen. For conference call assistance, please press star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jacopo Laschetti, Investor Relator and Sustainability Manager. Please go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon, and thank you very much for joining 2024 Sesa Virtual Investor Day. We are looking forward to spending next 50 minutes with you and several members of Sesa Group leadership team. We have exciting sessions lined up, in which we can go through group strategy, performance, and ambitions. We are starting off with our CEO, Alessandro Fabbroni, who will take through our transformation program and our points of difference. Then, we will head to Alessandro Di Stefano, our HR Business Partner, who will walk through our group human resources, evolution, and talent management. And to myself, IR and Sustainability Manager, and Elisa Gironi, Corporate Governance and M&A Director. We are focused on the group's M&A and sustainability programs. Then, we will break into three specific sessions focused on AI.
First, we will have, Francesca Moriani, Software and System Integration Managing Director, who will walk through SSI sectors with results and evolution. We will showcase our business services sector with Leonardo Bassilichi, Business Services Managing Director, and then we will provide a deep dive on our value-added solution sector with Duccio Castellacci, VAS Managing Director. In the final part of the session today, you will hear from our Chief Financial Officer, Francesco Billi, with an update of our 2024 Financial Results, Investments, and Cash Flow. We close with our group CEO, Alessandro Fabbroni, for the final conclusions, focused on the guidance and industrial targets for the fiscal year 2025. There will be the opportunity of Q&A session with Alessandro Fabbroni, myself, and our finance team. As usual, you will find the relevant material and documentation on the investor section of our website.
Thanks again, and now I give the floor to Alessandro, that will start the Sesa Virtual Investor Day.
Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our presentation. Today, we are glad to share with the stakeholders our strategic achievements and road to group transformation we carried out over last years to implement and consolidate our great leadership in the European digital industry by creating sustainable value in the long term.
First of all, let me underline, we close once again the last fiscal year with a strong improvement in technological skills, about 5,700 people, up by 21% year-on-year, and financial results, both in terms of revenues, with EUR 3.2 billion, up by 10.4% year-on-year, and profitability, with an EBITDA equal to EUR 240 million, up by 14.4% year-on-year, by achieving a great 7.5% EBITDA margin compared to 7.2 at the previous year, and 5.3% in the full year of 2020.
We extended our long-term track record, thanks to a great organic growth driven by successful market positioning on the cutting-edge technology, from cloud to cybersecurity, digital platforms, and data AI, with cloud and data AI that in growing way are pervasive in our offering and solutions. We continue to improve size and market share in all group sectors by achieving a growth rate, mainly organic, significantly higher than the Italian IT market, with a 10.4% growth year-on-year, compared to the 2.7% increase of Italian market in 2023 year.
We would like to underline, in particular, the strong performance of our value-added solution sector, growing high single digit against reference market, declining mid-single digit in 2023, and a great 35% growth of the business services sectors that improve its development path as reference player in digitalization of Italian financial services industry. In the last five years period, we evolved our organization and improved our size by about two times in terms of revenues and three times in terms of people and operating profit. Thanks to a business model consisting of vertical specialized business units, with core competencies on the emerging technologies, by focusing on consulting, business integration, vertical applications, and digital platform.
The group's organization consists of four sectors, grouping different vertical business units, software and system integration, EUR 823 million revenues, up by 17% year-on-year, 3,850 people, and EBITDA equal to EUR 99 million, up by 17% year-on-year, with an EBITDA margin at 12.1%, stable year-on-year. Business services sector with EUR 114 million revenues, up by 35% year-on-year, 720 people, an EBITDA equal to EUR 18 million, up by 65% year-on-year, with an EBITDA margin at 16% compared to 13% of the previous year.
Value-added solution sector with EUR 2.4 billion revenues, up by 6.8% year-over-year, around 700 people, with EUR 116 million EBITDA, up by 6.6% year-over-year, with an EBITDA margin at 4.9%, stable year-over-year. Corporate services sector with annual revenues from around EUR 46 million, with EUR 5.7 million EBITDA and 370 people, including customer experience business unit, recently added to the corporate sector.
In the last four-year period, we accelerated our investments equal to around EUR 500 million, and growth with 2020-2024 CAGR equal to 16% in revenues, moving from EUR 1.8 billion in 2020 to EUR 3.2 billion in 2024, and equal to 26.2% in EBITDA, moving up to EUR 240 million in 2024, with a deep group transformation towards higher marginality and value-added business, and group EBITDA margin improving from around 5% in full year 2020, up to 7.5% in full year 2024.
These performances were driven, first of all, by our great path in technological skills development, with strong people attraction and integration, and new 3,000 skilled human resources over the period of 2020-2024, with growing focus on the emerging technologies. To enhance our capability to support the digitalization of companies and organization, we reinforce a lot our market positioning, digital platform, vertical applications, and digital skills in all group sectors, with special focus on cloud security, data science, and AI. We are entering in the age of AI as mega trend, reinventing business industries, the way we work and live, and we made pervasive investments in data AI across all group sectors as crucial driver of transformation.
During the presentation of today, we will have specific sessions to discuss our main pillars of group transformation, from people to M&A and sustainability programs, up to the business sector evolution, with a specific focus on AI as an emerging topic. Now, we start with an overview of our talent management programs with Alessandro Di Stefano.
Good afternoon. I'm glad to be here. Human resources are the beating heart of Sesa Group, the pillar on which our success is built. They represents our most important stakeholder in terms of value, creation, and distribution. The skills and specialization of our people are the key to provide innovative, technological, and digital solution, supporting businesses and organization. Thanks to the internal hiring programs and our capability to integrate both on M&As, we boosted the group's ability to attract people with 3,000 new human resources over the last four-year period. As of the end of April 2024, we achieved a total of 5,700 people, up 21% year-on-year. Thanks to our intensive recruiting programs, in the last 12 months, we onboarded over 1,000 people and integrated over 460 coworkers through bolt-on and M&A operation.
Over 52% of the new hires are young, talented people under 30 years old from top university and business schools, introduced in specific long-term career paths and training programs within the organization. On this point, we strongly believe that the key to our success lies in our ability to respond to market needs and changes with competence and professionalism. For this reason, we have further strengthened our investment in training with about 100,000 training hours delivered in the fiscal year. People under 30 years old represents the 24% of the coworker, with strong improvement compared to about 15% of 5 years ago. As evidence of the effectiveness and quality of the personal management and retention processes implemented by the group.
The churn rate for the fiscal year 2024 was about 7%. Thanks to our group strategy focused on long-term employment, over 98% of human resources are employed with permanent agreement, continuous investment in learning and professional development, and a corporate culture oriented to the well-being of human resources. Since 15 years ago, in fact, we have been committed to identifying concrete initiatives aimed at promoting and increasing the well-being of our employee through a comprehensive welfare plan aligned with our group purpose and core values. On this point, we closed the fiscal year with over 15,000 welfare facilities. Now, I give the floor to Elisa and Jacopo for an overview of our group's M&A and sustainability programs.
Good afternoon. Bolt-on M&As and external lines have been one relevant driver for our long-term growth, and contributed by around 30% to our historical track record, accelerating the group growth in skills and competencies. We selected the target companies in the group strategic areas as security, cloud, data AI, digital platforms, that represent the main digital trends of innovation technology. Since 2015, we closed around 75 M&As in all group sectors, with additional 2,800 people and EUR 660 million revenues at acquisition time, becoming, as of today, about EUR 1 billion. In the fiscal year 2023, we closed 16 M&As with EUR 80 million revenues and an accretive EBITDA margin of 90%, with new 390 people.
While in the fiscal year 2024, we closed 13 M&As that generated around EUR 111 million revenues, with 70% EBITDA margin, with 465 skilled human resources. Our typical deal structure is oriented to the long-term commitment of skills and key people of the target companies, with 5x EBITDA entry value and the progressive integration within the group strategic business units up to the final merger. We started the fiscal year 2025 with 2 new M&As, of which one in the financial services industry, ATS, that is one of the leading Italian company in digital platforms for capital markets, with embedded AI technology to serve financial markets and traders to define customized strategies to support investment decisions and executions.
We will continue to attract, on industrial basis, small mid companies with skilled human resources under a sustainable 5x EBITDA multiple evaluation, and with progressive integration in the group, and specific focus on, the two most dynamic group sectors as, software and system integration, and business services. Now, I give the floor to Jacopo to provide an updated overview of our group, sustainability programs.
Good afternoon again, and thank you, Elisa. In recent years, we have progressively improved our ESG performance, consolidating our strong commitment to value generation in a responsible way, in line with our group purpose: to create long-term sustainable value for stakeholders, promoting the digital innovation of companies and organizations, and the well-being of people. Our ESG policies are aligned with international best practice, with a strong focus on governance, environmental respect, human resources, and welfare management, and economic development. In fiscal year 2024, we reported a strong improvement of our environmental performance. First of all, we reduced emissions per capita, down 12% year-on-year, from 1.22 CO2 tons in fiscal year 2023, to 1.07 CO2 tons in the fiscal year 2024. We also increased the share of green electricity purchased from third parties, about 95%, including self-produced green energy.
Finally, we decreased the waste per capita, down 21% year-on-year, from 0.03 tons in fiscal year 2023, to 0.02 tons in the fiscal year 2024. In terms of sustainability governance, we extended our main group certifications as Social International Standard, Gender Equality Certification, Environmental Certification, and United Nations Global Compact Membership, confirming, at the same time, all of our ESG ratings as EcoVadis Gold Medal, MSCI Triple B, and the Carbon Disclosure Project with a B score. Finally, we will continue to work intensively to develop our ESG programs by focusing on energy and natural resources efficiency, and energy production for renewable sources, to further improve our scores of main sustainability ratings. Thanks for the attention. Now, I give the floor to Francesca Moriani to introduce software and system integration, business evolution, with a focus on data AI.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to be here to present our business model and last strategic achievements in Software and System Integration, which I've been leading since 2014. Over the past five years, we have accelerated our growth and enhanced our position as a leading system integrator and software solution provider for European enterprises. We assumed the new role of business consultancy and integration, developing new strategic business units in vertical applications, and increasing our focus on cutting-edge technology, including cloud, cybersecurity, digital platform, data science, and AI. We organized the Software and System Integration operations in vertical business units, with the core competencies in digital services and business applications, including cloud technology services, cybersecurity, ERP and vertical solutions, enterprise platform, digital experience, digital workspace, and data science and AI.
We have reinforced our strong market position, serving European enterprises with a customer set of around 10,000 enterprises and mid corporates, of which over 2,000 are abroad. Our international presence is growing across Europe, in particular in West and Central Europe, in Spain, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. We have established a leading position in the cybersecurity consulting field for the enterprise segment, with a specialized team of approximately 300 professionals, Yarix Digital Security, across Italy, Spain, and Germany, with a significant focus on the manufacturing industry. We integrated our offering with hybrid cloud, SaaS, PaaS, and DaaS, and multi-cloud services, integrating public cloud and data center services for infrastructure modernization of our customers.
As a result of this strategy, we achieved a record CAGR from 2020 to 2024, in both revenue, up 20% from EUR 396 million in 2020 to EUR 823 million in 2024. In EBITDA, up by 27.3%, moving from EUR 37.8 million in 2020 to EUR 99.4 million in 2024, with EBITDA margin moving from around 9.5% in 2020 to 12% in 2024. During the same period, though, our human resources reached a total of 3,850 people. In the fiscal year 2025, we expect to extend this double-digit growth path, driven by an outstanding growth in strategic business units and emerging technologies, as data and AI, cloud, and cybersecurity.
Our growth trajectory was significantly enhanced by the strategic leveraging of mergers and acquisition, with approximately 50 acquisitions executed over the past 5 years. These acquisitions have contributed approximately 50% to our expansion in emerging technologies and to most innovative areas of our business, namely data and AI. We have recently increased our investment in data and AI, which is a crucial driver of transformation. In 2020, we established a dedicated business unit for this purpose, following the acquisition of Analytics Network and integration of MediaMente Consulting and Visualitics. We anticipate that this investment will generate revenues of EUR 25-30 million in fiscal year 2025, representing a 30% increase year-over-year. Additionally, we have a team of over 150 professionals, 50% of whom are below 30 years old.
Data and AI is a core competencies of our vertical business units, with approximately EUR 100 million in revenue in fiscal year 2024, and 400 employees with expertise in data and AI technology. Our strategic focus is on predictive, discriminative AI, generative AI, and conversational AI. Among the development project on data and AI, we recently announced the Egida, an AI platform for cybersecurity operations. Egida analyzes user behavior and data to improve precision and response speed to hacker attacks. This improves, the quality of work life of our ethical hackers, and efficiency of our security operation center operations. This represent a great example of how much data and AI technology will contribute to the upgrade of our business to support the digital transformation of our customer. Now, I invite Leonardo Bassilichi to provide an overview of the evolution of the business services sector.
Good afternoon. It's a great pleasure to share with you our business model and the strategic achievement in the business services. We have started, as a group, a new sector in 2020 by leveraging on my experience in the financial services industry with Bassilichi, my previous family company. Thanks to the contribution of several bolt-on acquisitions that we closed in 2021, 2024, we have built up one of the reference players in consulting and business applications. With a growing market share and a unique business model that has been, since the beginning, focused on cloud, digital platform, and vertical application, we modernize ERP and processes of our customers with a tailor-made approach.
In just 4 years of operation, we have developed an organization consisting of 4 business units: digital platforms, security, vertical applications for banking and financial services players from treasury and derivatives to wealth management, and digital services and master servicing for securitization and credit management. Our sector started in 2020 with an active business model focused on data AI, cloud and digital platforms, in order to upgrade and modernize ERP and the processes of financial services industry. The data AI technology is embedded in Base Digitale Group solutions, with about EUR 50 million revenues and 300 skilled people in fiscal year 2024. AI for financial services functional to operational upgrades and reengineering of financial intermediaries, enabling them to enhance their competitiveness through the application of artificial intelligence.
Among the main AI applications to financial services, we underline business development, data management and analysis, efficiency and cost reduction, improvement of customer experience. Base Digitale Group have developed advanced technologies, platforms providing value-added functionalities with a new solution for the financial market. Thanks to the last acquisition of ATS, Advanced Technology Solutions, we have improved our portfolio with capital market platforms, integrate artificial intelligence solution. This platform serve markets and players defining customized strategies based on statistical algorithms in order to support investment decision and execution. This offer a good view of how our data AI technology may contribute to upgrade our business, as well as to support the digital transformation of our customers. Thank you very much for attending our presentation. Now I give you the floor to Duccio Castellacci to provide an overview about value-added solution evolution and focus on data AI. Good afternoon, everybody.
I'm glad to share with you our business model and strategic achievements in the value-added solution sector that I led from 2014, after joining Computer Gross since I was 19 years old. We have developed a unique business model focused on consulting, marketing, and training services to enable and orchestrate the emerging technologies across ICT ecosystem, with a great capability to overperform the market trends and gain market share, as we did in Italy over last years, by achieving a great leadership in IT advanced solution. We have a unique portfolio of advanced solution in Italy, with the most relevant worldwide vendors partnership in the field of cloud and data center security, data analytics, and AI.
We evolved the new role of value-added solutions aggregator and ecosystem orchestrator in the cutting-edge technology, with an organization consisting of specialized business unit, with 750 people and more than 160 vendors, with the top five representing less than 30% of the total revenues. With the 48% market share in advanced solutions in Italy, we work with a customer set of about 25,000 business partners, most of them system integrators, managers, and the cloud service providers. Since our beginning in 1994, we developed long-term agreements with the major vendors, among them IBM, with no relevant termination in our history, thanks to our great capability to educate, enable, support, and integrate the offering in the market.
In the last months, we have been working a lot to extend our offering of cloud and data AI solution, with special focus on human resources, skills, and business relationship with the major vendor, in order to lead the mega trend of AI as crucial driver of digital transformation and future growth. In the last years, we accelerate our advanced solution offering, that represent a share of 75% of total revenues in fiscal year 2024, and that grew by 11% year-on-year. In the fiscal year 2025, we expect to extend the growth path, driven by an outstanding growth, about 35%, in strategic business units and emerging technologies as data AI, cloud, and security.
In particular, we boosted our investment in Data AI with the opportunity to create an industry-leading AI solution offering for the business partners, and to enable and lead the growing of AI demand that will characterize the industry in the coming years. We develop industry-specific capabilities to help customer adoption of revolutionary AI solution in partnership with the major IT vendors, that continue to unlock business and industry value with new generation AI solution. In particular, we develop with IBM the first European competence center for IBM watsonx to accelerate AI opportunity for partners, including additional services and enablement and training.
As leading Italian partner of Microsoft, we move, focused on AI Copilot Microsoft solution to support partners' AI business transformation, and to enable companies and organizations to make data-driven decisions. We accelerate the offering of, technologies enabling AI adoption, thanks to our partnership with the main ICT vendors. I hope I gave you a clear picture of our operation. Thank you for attending our presentation.
Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining our investor meeting. In financial year 2024, we report once again a strong improvement in revenues, reaching EUR 3.2 billion, up 10.4% compared to financial year 2023.
Our operating profit grew by 14.4% year-on-year, with an EBITDA margin at 7.5%, compared to 7.2% of the previous year, and an adjusted EBIT at 6.0%, versus 5.8% year-on-year. Group EAT was negatively affected by the growth in interest rate. Around EUR 20 million increase in net financial charges was due for about EUR 15 million to the higher interest rates on Group's account receivable management and floating rate debt. For the receivable, EUR 5 million, to the increase in turnover and figurative IFRS financial charges. I remind you that Group uses no-recourse factoring programs to manage net working capital in an ordinary and recurrent way, and to keep absolutely low the risk on its account receivables portfolio.
Thanks to the strong cash flow generation, our net financial position as of April 30, 2024, was active. That means net liquidity of EUR 211.0 million, compared to EUR 239.5 million of the previous year. Net of investment in corporate acquisitions and technology infrastructure for EUR 142 million, and dividend distribution, and buyback over the last twelve months of about EUR 25 million. We propose to next shareholder meeting, a dividend distribution for EUR 1.0 per share, in line with financial year 2023, in order to continue our industrial bolt-on M&A path and to size market opportunities. In terms of segment financial performances, group revenue achieved EUR 3.2 billion, up by 10.4% year-on-year, with positive contribution from all our business sectors, each gaining market share from competitors.
Value-Added Solutions sector revenues increased by 3.8%, driven by Data AI, cloud security, and data center solution revenues. EBITDA was EUR 116.3 million, up by 6.6% year-on-year, with an EBITDA margin of 4.9%, in line with financial year 2023. Software and System Integration sector revenue up by 17.1%, thanks to the development of the main operating business units, including Data AI, cybersecurity, cloud, vertical applications. EBITDA was equal to EUR 99.4 million, up by 17.1% year-on-year, with a 12.1% EBITDA margin, stable year-on-year. Business Services reported an outstanding 35.2% growth year-on-year, driven by the development of applications and digital platforms for insurance companies and financial service operators.
EBITDA, in further acceleration, was EUR 18.1 million, up by 65.1% year-on-year, with an EBITDA margin of 15.9%, compared to 13.0% in financial year 2023. This year, too, the process of improving cash flow generation and net working capital management continues. Thanks to a strong improvement in Q4, net working capital revenues ratio remained negative at 0.4% in Q4, compared to 0.6% in the same quarter of financial year 2023. By year-end, net working capital stood at EUR 20.8 million, recovering most of the increase seen in Q3. The net financial position benefited from the positive trend in Q4 net working capital.
At year-end, net financial position totaled a net liquidity balance of EUR 211.0 million, compared to EUR 239.5 million of financial year 2023, reducing the difference year-on-year, which was wider in Q2 and Q3. The group's financial strength and its ability to sustain investments for growth are confirmed by several key factors: a total investment of EUR 400 million over the last three years, continuous path of improvement in net working capital management, strong cash flow generation, and sustainable dividend and buyback program.
Net financial position path, calculating net of IFRS debts of EUR 208.3 million, relating mainly to the fair payments of corporate acquisitions, and debt for option to purchase equity investment, is mainly driven by significant improvement in Q4 operating cash flow, totaling EUR 242 million at year end, up by 41% compared to financial year 2023. Investment in M&A and CapEx of around EUR 142 million, same amount in financial year 2023, totaling EUR 400 million over the last three years. We continue, in this year, to deliver our typical M&A strategy based on industrial investment and bolt-on operation in strategic areas such as cybersecurity, cloud, data AI, digital platforms.
The strategy led the group to gain market share against competitors in all group sector, and continue in the EBITDA margin improvement path from 4.6% in financial year 2019, targeting about 8% in financial year 2025. Now, I give the floor again to Alessandro for the final conclusion.
Many thanks to Leonardo, Duccio, Elisa, and Francesca, and the contribution. 2020-2024, we boosted investment equal to around EUR 500 million, and growth 2020-2024 CAGR in revenues up by 16%, and in EBITDA equal to 26.2%, with human resources improving at 22.3%. Achieving our main industrial KPIs in terms of customer set, revenues, human resources, and market share, consolidating our competitive advantages and market position as reference system integrator for the business segment. Corporate and enterprises demand of digitalization is confirmed solid, with steady investment in digital transformation, and the Italian IT market now is expected to grow by around 5% in 2024.
Considering our successful business model and strategic achievements, today, we also confirm the positive outlook for the new fiscal year as of April 30, 2025, with a guidance of revenues in the range of EUR 3.35-3.50 billion, up between 5%-10% year-on-year. A target of EBITDA in the range of EUR 252-270 million, up between 5%-12.5% year-on-year. A target of EAT adjusted in the range of EUR 110-115 million, up between 2.5%-7.5% year-on-year, with expected net financial position, that means the net liquidity, in the range of EUR 215-250 million, net of about EUR 100 million of annual investment.
We will also continue to develop our people and competencies with a target of around 6,300 people, up about 10% year-end. We plan a positive contribution from all group sectors. We allow single-digit growth in value-added solution sector, and the double-digit growth, both in software and system integration, with about 10% growth year-on-year, and business services with an outstanding 40% growth year-on-year, with a growth over 30% in the strategic areas of development as data AI, cloud, cybersecurity, and digital platforms. We expect also to achieve our annual growth target, mainly in the second half of the fiscal year, driven by the acceleration of our core market, with a low single-digit growth in the first half and a double-digit growth in the second half.
We would like to close our presentation underlining again the great job we did by evolving our organization towards higher marginality and value-added business, with a business model mainly based on emerging technology, consulting business application, and a group EBITDA margin moving from 4.8% in the full year of 2019, up to 7.5% in the full year of 2024. In this scenario, we also continue to invest in data AI across all group sectors as crucial driver of transformation, with 700 skilled people at about 5% of group revenues in full year 2024, driven by the data AI solution, expected to grow by over 30% year-on-year in the new fiscal year.
As we did in the past, we will move forward by investing in the long-term development of digital skills, human resources, and business application, to reinforce our role of reference player in the digital industry by generating sustainable value for all stakeholders. Thank you. We open the Q&A session. We will stay available, as usual, to answer your question with Jacopo, Elisa, and our Sesa financial team.
This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. To enter the queue for questions, please click on the Q&A icon on the left side of your screen and then press the Raise Your Hand button. Please do not mute your microphone locally, and when announced, make sure you turn on your webcam in the pop-up window. If you're on the phone instead, please press star and one on your keypad. The first question is from Andrea Randone of Intermonte.
Pronto?
Mr. Randone?
Do you, do you hear me?
Yes. Yes, Andrea.
Good afternoon, everybody. Good afternoon, Alessandro. My first question is on the guidance. You are suggesting an earnings growth in the range of 2.5-7.5. That is lower than the guidance you are indicating for EBITDA. My question about this element is a clarification on financial charges you are in this guidance, because I expect D&A will grow similarly. In fact, you are indicating EBITDA to grow similarly, and so I think financial charges will remain quite high. Again, this is becoming a quite important point, so if you can help us in understanding the main components of this item, it will be very helpful. I don't know if you prefer one question or-
Yes, yes, I prefer to reply immediately.
Okay, please.
So, it's true that we downgrade our expectation in terms of earning after tax is adjusted in the range between 2.5-7.5%. That is due to higher level of interest rates that we experienced in the last two, three months. So that guidance should be considered very conservative guidance because how we experience in recent days positive evolution of the interest rates market. So, we may expect a performance higher than our guidance in the case of stabilization and improving of the market of interest rates.
I believe it will be really crucial to consider, in particular, the second half of our fiscal year, because in the first quarter, for example, our comparison is a comparison quarter-on-quarter with a quarter with higher interest rates. So the interest rates in quarter one of the new fiscal year, more or less, were higher than the first quarter of the previous fiscal year. So the expectation that we have is to be in right condition to recover and to overperform in the second half. So we prefer to stay conservative. We don't plan any depreciation. We don't plan any amortization, extraordinary item between the EBITDA and the net profit. Consider that we continue to work with good cash flow generation.
We continue to plan around EUR 100 million of investment, and so that is also a positive baseline, not only for the full year of 2025, but in particular for the full year of 2026. That should be, in our vision, in our view, a very, very positive financial year, considering our evolution, our direct performance, in particular in the area of emerging technologies.
Thank you, Alessandro. Okay, about the clarification of the main components, I think we can have a better understanding maybe with the annual report. In any case, we already discussed this point. About the Green Digital, just a second question, then I leave the ground to my colleagues. The Green Digital is still 10% in this year, so just ended. And you are indicating a 2-5, the growth for the VAD segment in 2025.
Yes.
I kindly ask you if you can comment what are the assumptions for Green Digital business in your guidance? Thank you.
First of all, we performed really well in the fourth quarter, because we improved our revenues in terms of all sectors by over 10%, despite the decrease, a strong decrease, again, in the Digital Green. So that means in the full year, we reported EUR 230 million revenues compared to EUR 360 million in that business unit. Now we plan to stabilize the revenues and to recover, in particular in the second half of the year. That is an industry impacted by a strong decrease of prices by around 40%, and we plan that we will be able to stabilize and to recover the growing path, in particular in the second half of the year.
Thank you.
The next question is from Federico Belluati of Kepler.
Do you hear me?
Yes. Yes, yes.
Okay, perfect. Yeah, my question is regarding the performance by segment, especially looking at the fourth quarter. Software system integration has shown somehow a slowdown in its growth, so maybe you can give us more color about that and why it should grow more this year?
So, yes, we view by around mid-single in the software system integration. We plan a 10% growth now in the full year of 2025 with a stable trend quarter by quarter. It is true that we face a slowdown in comparison with the great path of growth that we experienced since 2023. Consider that the market has changed, so the market is a market with a growth rate that is low single-digit. We are, in any case, gaining the market share also in the software and system integration. And we are growing double-digit in the Q1, and we are confident to be able to take this path, yeah.
Okay, thank you. The other question was already answered, so it's okay from my side. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
The next question is from Aleksandra Arsova of Equita.
Hi, thank you for taking my questions. Maybe a couple of follow-ups to what you already explained. So the first one, just if you can specify what amount of M&A is included in the guidance, in the fiscal specified guidance?
Aleksandra, there are some noise in the line. Sorry.
Okay, sorry. I will try to repeat. So what amount of M&A is included in the guidance, in the fiscal year 2025 guidance?
Okay, I understood the point. Now, because we included just the M&A already closed as of today, so that means the thirteen M&As we already closed in the full year of 2024, the two M&As we already closed in the full year of 2025. So that means that additional M&As may improve our performance. Consider in any case, that when we start the consolidation of the new companies from the date of acquisition, because we, as usual, don't work with pro forma peers in case of acquisition.
Okay, thank you. And also, the net financial position guidance is without including the EUR 100 million CapEx and M&A, or it's already including the?
Oh, we included, in any case, the investment that we plan to have in the full year. So we are conservative, in that indication. Yes.
Okay, thank you. And just another one. When you said that in an operating level, you expect low single digit growth in the first part of the year and then acceleration thereafter, so what is the ground on which you are convinced that the second half will be stronger? Do you already have some talks with customers or with vendors that make you think that it will improve in the second half of the year? Thank you.
We will expect a stable trend in particular in the software system integration and the business services. So that means 10% growth and 40% growth respectively. So the driver should be a different trend, different path that we may have in the value-added solution, because we expect a flattish trend in the first half, and again a nice single digit trend in the second half. Consider that that is consistent with the estimation of the market and also of our main international peers in the value-added solutions.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you , Aleksa.
The next question is from Marco Vitale of Mediobanca
Good afternoon, thank you for the presentation. Couple of questions from my side. The first one is about the M&A pipeline. We noted that you're guiding for EUR 100 million investments, that is EUR 40 million lower compared to last year print. I was wondering if you could provide some comment on the M&A pipeline that you see, whether these lower investments are due to lack of potential targets or just a stronger focus that you're putting on the organic growth development. Then the second question is about the profitability outlook.
You're guiding for 10 basis points of EBITDA margin, while we note that the business mix actually is that you are guiding for and that is including the guidances should be supportive from a business mix effect standpoint. So I was wondering if these output for the profitability include a certain degree of conservatism, or is it just... or are there other dynamics that you want to explain? Thank you.
Thanks for the question, Marco. First of all, it is true that we intend to maintain the same path in M&A as the previous year, in terms of number of M&As. It's true that we are now analyzing a set of potential deals characterized by an average size that is lower than the size we had in the previous year. So, our estimation is an estimation of EUR 100 million. Obviously, if we have an opportunity of higher size, we will catch, we will evaluate. So your question about the second question is about the marginality trend.
Our expectation for the full year of 2025, that present today to our stakeholder, is a conservative line, because we have in the initial step of the fiscal year. The market is, in any case, the market that decrease its path of growth compared to two years ago, one year ago, one year ago. We expect to recover, in particular, in the second half, starting from September, October. We have a great opportunity to overperform our previous year, in particular in the Q3. In the Q4, we also in the marginality. Considering the breakdown of revenues evolution, we may expect an EBITDA marginality around 8%, in the best scenario of evolution.
Okay, very clear. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is from Diego Esteban of Stifel.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question, questions. So I had 3, 3 questions, if, if you mind. First of all, the midpoint of the revenue guidance for next year is at 7.5%, if I'm not wrong. And historically, you've grown at circa low double digits, top line growth on an organic pace, if I'm wrong. Can you please give, give us a bit more color on if this, what may be driving this maybe slowdown or if the market is really slowing down? Could you just give us a bit more color, on that?
So, in particular, that is the result of our breakdown revenue trend. So, we plan 40% growth in business services, 10% growth in system integration, and low single-digit growth in value-added solutions. So the combined these assumptions gave us to a nice single-digit growth rate. It's clear that we will try to grow double digits also in the full year 2025. We prefer to start in a conservative way. In our last 13 years period, we grew by over 10% every year. Our effort is to, in any case, be able to again be able to achieve this double-digit trend.
But, the combination of our different business sector path led us to this assumption, and this forecast of growth.
Okay, thank you for your answer. And if you don't mind building on that, what's then driving the growth in the value-added distribution segment? Is it mainly green technology, green digital, sorry, or is it something else? And, then my final question would be on the Microsoft Copilot, what would be your expected, maybe role in this? Will it be training? Will you be selling Copilot or the solution? If you give us maybe a bit of color, on that.
Thank you again for the question. So first of all, our trend in the value-added solutions, so we today decided to adopt a new identification of this business sector due to the great focus on the advanced solution. So the advanced solution represent 75% of revenues, while the endpoint solution, including green technology, represent 25. Last fiscal year, we grew by over 10% in the advanced solution, and we decrease around 4% in the endpoint solution, including the digital green solution. So now we plan to continue more or less with this trend in particular in the first half. And so that means a low single-digit trend. We may able to perform under certain conditions in the second half. So the final question,
Microsoft Copilot.
Yes. So, we represent one of the main partner, the leading partner of Microsoft in Italy. We was involved in several project to develop the adoption of Microsoft Copilot, and now we target to into triple-digit, by achieving several million EUR revenue, in the full year 2025. So that means that is a great driver of growth, triple-digit growth, together with the great performance we are achieving in the area of cloud and the hyperscaler technology.
Okay, thank you. That will be all from my side. Thank you.
The next question is from, Lorenzo Cappellotto of Praude Asset Management.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. Good afternoon. We noticed that financial charges increased a bit out of line compared to the same period in the previous year. We understand that interest rates are higher, of course, but we wanted to ask if you can give a bit more color on that and maybe other factors that brought this result in financial charges. Thank you.
Yes, thank you. Thank you for your question. As I said before, financial year 2024, we was negatively affected by interest rate, as you said. We had EUR 20 million, about EUR 20 million increase in financial charges. And the main reason was obviously the higher interest rates for about EUR 15 million of EUR 20 million, so the major part of this increase, because we have financial charges, and the debt linked to the interest rates. And also, we use the non-recourse factoring programs in an ordinary and recurrent way. So, in addition to the financial to the debt that is interest rate-linked, we have this amount of financial charges.
The other part of increase was due to the increase in turnover and some IFRS financial charges. So these are the main reason.
Okay, thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press Q&A on the left bar and raise your hand or press star and one on your telephone. The next question is a follow-up from Andrea Randone of Intermonte.
Thank you again for taking my questions. Just a clarification on a point you already discussed about the EBITDA guidance. Together with the third quarter results, you were indicating 10%-15% range. Now, it is slightly changed. I mean, it's not a big difference, but since there was a question of an investor, I prefer to hear from you the direct answer. I say this probably because you're a bit more cautious on M&A, but this was my assumption. Can you comment on that?
And the second question is, I read on the press release that there is an extraordinary shareholder meeting discussing a loyalty share vote, if you can comment on this point. Thank you.
Thank you again, Andrea. So it is true that we prefer to stay conservative on our guidance in EBITDA, also considering the market condition. In particular, we have several opportunities in the line of the M&As that we try to close, and we be more, let me say, aggressive in the guidance of EBITDA.
In the case we are able to close this deal in the coming months, in particular before the closing of the first half. In terms of extraordinary shareholders meeting that we convene in August, we will plan to improve by 1 time the loyalty vote, and in particular, to improve by 2 times, from 2 times to 3 times, in order to extend our strategic opportunity. There is no idea, absolutely, to disinvest from our main shareholders that in last months, I remember that, acquired some shares, when the shares went down several months ago. But it is just a decision to improve our strategic options in coming years.
Thank you. Thank you again.
Thank you.
The next question is from Guido Crivellaro, Horizon Capital.
So good afternoon. I'm sorry, but I need to go back to what concerned the financial charges, liquidity, and debt, because I've not understood exactly what happened. You presented in the press release the reclassified consolidated balance sheet, and I see that there is liquidity and current financial receivable for EUR 585 million, and then financing, EUR 374 million, increasing from last year. So the point is, if interest rates are high, this should also benefiting sideways from the positive sides of the liquidity. But assuming that liquidity has brought zero, you pay 10% in financial charges on the average debt. So how it's possible, first, that all these EUR 580 million will not provide, have not provided any kind of benefit to the P&L?
And second, if the problem is to pay a high cost of debt, there's no way to decrease debt and decrease liquidity?
I think that first of all, we have an issue of, let me say, efficiency in cash flow management. Because in the liquidity, we don't have the interest rate that we pay in the financing. So that is the way we work until now, we are evaluating several action of efficiency, so that means to also reduce the liquidity, and on the other side, the finance. That is the first point. The other point that Francesco highlighted is that we also have a cost for accounts receivable management, because we work the ordinary way of working, the same we have in the past, with around EUR 250 million-EUR 300 million of securitization program.
So these are additional costs. In the current financial statement, we decrease the provision for credit risk. We prefer to continue to work with a low risk in credit management, and so to maintain the same way of working. Same way of working, that means also to continue to make use of Pro Soluto factoring and securitization program. That program that improves a lot its cost in the last months. So that is the combination of this effect. In any case, last year, we improved by 10% the accounts receivable. We improved also several costs in terms of cost of IFRS debt that accounted for more or less EUR 3 million-EUR 4 million.
The combination led us to this amount of interest rates. We consider obviously these financial charges a cap. We will continue to have high interest rate in the first half. We expect to start increasing in the second half in a significant way.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question is a follow-up from Aleksandra Arsova of Equita.
Hi again. I hope you can hear me better. So the first one is just curiosity, actually. I saw that you added or incorporated the Adiacent company now in the corporate, let's say, division. So should we think now that maybe you would like to create a new division, or why this change? Just curiosity. The second one is maybe on M&A strategy outside Italy. I know that in the past, you started to move outside of Italy, specifically in Germany and Spain. So what is the evolution you want to have here, and if you are looking at any targets outside Italy? Thank you.
Thank you for the question. Yes, we added Adiacent to our corporate sector, because Adiacent will put their skills and human resources available for the other business sector of the group. So Adiacent will represent, like we say, a center of competencies and excellence for the other business sector, because the digital marketing and the digital skills will represent a common shared platform for our [inaudible]. In terms of M&A, it's true that we have around 10 new targets: 3 in Germany, 1 in Switzerland, and 3-4 in Spain that we are evaluating. Again, we will consider small, mid targets that we will consolidate.
We will support and enhance our penetration on our international markets, in particular in the DACH region, in Switzerland, and in Spain.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you.
For any further questions, please press Q&A on the left bar and raise your hand or press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time. I will turn it over to you.
So we thank you very much for attending our presentation. We'll stay available also in the following days for supporting you and all our stakeholders, providing financial information. Thank you very much again. Nice evening.
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