Good afternoon. This is, of course, call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Tinexta Group's consolidated results at the thirtieth of June, 2023 conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and 0 on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jozef Mastragostino, Chief Investor Relations Officer. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and good morning to the folks in the U.S. Thank you for joining Tinexta's first half 2023 results presentation. Here with me today, Oddone Pozzi, Group Chief Financial Officer.
Good afternoon, everybody.
As a reminder, all the relevant documentation of the first half 2023 results can be downloaded from our company website in the Investor Relations section. For the purpose of this call, I will go over the first half of 2023 highlights and updates. Above, instead, will go over the first half 2023 financial results, as well as the business unit's performance, providing us with a deep dive. The last part of the call will be dedicated to Q&A. A recording of this conference call will also be available on our company website. It will be posted upon completion of this call. At this point, I will kick it off by turning to page 4 of the presentation.
As you have already seen the information, revenues in the first half 2023 came in at EUR 182.5 million, growing 9% versus prior year. EBITDA adjusted came in close to EUR 38 million, growing 2%, but more importantly, EBITDA on a reported basis grew 6%, reaching almost EUR 35 million. Net profit came in at EUR 45.4 million, growing over 200%, mostly on the proceedings of REValuta, as you all know, which we communicate to the market in the month of March of 2023. Net financial position came in at EUR 52.6 million, improving around 32% versus prior year. The prior year figure is here on the bottom right, EUR 77.6 million in the fiscal year 2022. Turning to page 5, some of the numbers here have been commented.
I will draw your attention mostly to adjusted free cash flow, which definitely Oddone will deep dive and provide us with more detail. Adjusted free cash flow of continuing operations came in at EUR 29.3 million, growing 27.4% versus prior year. On an LTM base, adjusted free cash flow and continuing operation was EUR 55.7 million, which was another historical high. In the first half of 2023, Digital Trust continued to register solid growth, posting a +12.4% growth in revenue. EBITDA on an adjusted basis was 15.5% in terms of growth. The EBITDA margin was superb, hitting 28.2%. Cybersecurity grew 15.8% in revenues, but obviously did much better in EBITDA on an adjusted basis.
It continued to register a strong rebound, growing more than 59% versus the prior year. The EBITDA margin was 11.3%. Business innovation posted a 1% growth in revenue. In terms of EBITDA, the EBITDA registered in the first half, 2023, was EUR 16 million. EBITDA margin was 29%. We'll discuss about the, I would say, the evolution of EBITDA in just a second. In terms of the most recent events and updates, as you know, we finalized the acquisition of the 65% ownership of Ascertia Limited, so we have now welcomed Ascertia into the group. We also signed a 50/50 joint venture agreement with Digital Magics for investment innovative startups, and we also completed the acquisition of the 40% remaining stake of CertEurope, reaching now 100% ownership of the share capitals.
Turning to page 6, as a reminder, we have commented most of these numbers. It must be said, though, that the comparative data of the first half of 2022 have been restated in relation to the completion in the fourth quarter of 2022, of the identification of the fair values of the assets and liabilities of CertEurope, the eValue Innovation, as well as Cerabit, as of the first of May of 2022. I would like to draw your attention maybe to one of the most important slides that we have on the deck, which is slide 7. On slide 7, we think this is an important slide, and we would like to highlight the cadence and therefore the back-ended weight of our EBITDA.
As you can see, the relative weight of 2023 on a quarterly adjusted EBITDA basis is perfectly in line with that of the last 2 years, which clearly show how the first 2 quarters evolve versus the third, and even more so, the fourth quarter. The assumption relating to the average weights of 2023 considers the midpoints of the guidance on a 2023 EBITDA adjusted basis. As you can see, the first quarter's weight was 14% and the second quarter's weight, EBITDA was 22%, exactly in line with 2022 and 2021. Let me turn it now to Oddone. I don't know if you have any other comments on this slide, Oddone, or?
No, no, no, definitely, you know, what, what Jozef said is very important. You know, we, we feel comfortable with our guidance that basically was confirmed. You know, what's happening in the first half is aligned basically with our projections. You know, definitely as we expect to grow specifically in the most important way in the cybersecurity is going to have most of the profitability by the end of the second part of the year, the same exactly what happened last year in business innovation. Definitely we are going to face a very important Q3 and Q4, but we feel comfortable with the achievement of the guidance. Okay, after, you know, Jozef highlights, we go to page 9.
We have the, our income statement for the first half. You know, the revenue went up, like we said, close to 9%. We are very glad about the results of all the business units. Definitely the growth of Digital Trust as well as Cybersecurity were very strong. You know, overall, if you look at our top, let's say 15 products, you know, they increased their weight on the total, on the total revenue. This means that our strongest products are performing well, and honestly, when you have a, a strong product, you should be in a position to deliver strong margins. You know, looking only at the first half, is, is not, like we said, very, so relevant as we are looking for, for the full year.
In terms of costs, we see that the cost of services basically remained the same in terms of as a percentage of revenue at 36%, while you have a slight increase in the cost of personnel and incidents. You know, this, we see this as a timing, as we prepared our infrastructure to address the future's revenue in the second part of the year. The part of our recurring costs slowly is slightly below the previous year as we incur in a lower M&A activity, but this is not a projection for the full year. In terms of depreciation amortization, definitely we have more amortization on intangible assets. We are investing quite significantly in terms of product development, in terms of system improvements.
Therefore, you know, we are incurring EUR 2 million more in amortization. We have to consider that almost 60% of this amortization are related to the PPA. It means that part of the goodwill that we allocated after the acquisitions on specific assets. This is something that is a non-cash item, definitely, and this is going to reduce basically the level of risk for future requirements. We are very happy about the handling of the financial charges. You know, despite an increase of the interest rates, we are reducing our financial charges. This has been, is driven by two main items.
The first item is the fact that on, we, we improve our net financial position compared to previous year. I would say even more important for us is the fact that we basically almost fully covered our exposure in term of rates. Therefore, basically, as of now, we have a cost of debt in the range of 2, slightly above 2%, while we are able to invest all the cash that we have available at a 3% rate. It means that honestly, we are getting a benefit from this. We, we, we believe that by the end of the year, we could be in a position to almost bring this figure to 0.
If we go down to the P&L, we have the income taxes that are higher the previous year, last year, we benefit from the affrancamento that we have done on one of our largest companies, and the tax relief that we reduced that help us to have a better tax impact. As of today, we have no at all significant permanent difference on this. During the first half, we also registered the profit from the sale of REValuta, and so the net profit is up to EUR 45.4 million for the first half.
In term of balance sheet, the net investment capital dropped last year, from, you know, Q2 to Q4. Now this year it's going up again, but this is only driven by the new investment that we have done, especially with the tech stack, as is mentioned here at page 10, and the strong investment with the acquisition of Fujitsu software license. Very positive, and I will deep dive later on, is the working capital management that decrease from the beginning of the year of EUR 11 million that help to deliver a very solid ordinary cash flow. Net financial position dropped by EUR 25 million.
There are several matters that driven to has driven to this, the free cash flow has been very solid, with a significant growth compared to the previous year. We have the, the capital increase of Bregal, as well as the disposal of REValuta. On the other side, we have the dividends that accounted for EUR 33 million dividend distributed, acquisition for EUR 26 million, mainly driven by the FinTech, and and and this is what has has driven basically the net financial position. Shareholder equity basically went up because of the profit of the period and the Bregal capital. If we move to page 11, as you can see, I already commented a bit the net financial position. I will focus now on, on, on the free cash flow.
First of all, all the business unit improved their free cash flow compared to previous year, and this is a very good index, indicators for us. Second, we put extremely strong focus on cash collection. You know, this is the over the last 12 months, you know, the interest rates increase has driven, you know, the our clients to be, you know, a little bit later in paying us, but we reacted very strong, and we were able, during the first half, to significantly improve this.
CapEx has been slightly above previous year as part of our continuing investment in order to improve our products for our customer, as well as solution for internal management. If I move to page 12, basically is the same. I will jump to page 13 to show you the net financial position LTM bridge. Basically, we adjusted the free cash flow from continued operation over the last 12 months has been close to EUR 56, this is a very good indicator for us. It means that we have a very solid cash flow generation that is supporting our results. Net financial charges are definitely very thin, very thin line.
We were able to distribute the dividends, quite significant, quite significant dividends. Of course, the drop of our net financial position has been driven by the sale of Innolva and REValuta. We continue to purchase treasury shares to serve the stock option program for the management. I would say these are the most important items to which we have to add the Bregal second tranche of the share capital increase that was completed during Q1. Last year in July, we had the completion of Intesa Sanpaolo , share capital increase. Basically, on LTM basis, the ratio between net financial position and the EBITDA is just around 0.5 times.
This is putting Tinexta in front of a, a very strong, you know, the, the, the capability to deliver activities in cash is very strong. Our net financial position is very low, and so our strategy to continue to invest and to continue to pursue M&A development, is in a very, very solid and clear positions. Now, I will try to deep dive into the 3 business units. You know, we have already commented the total group performance, and we have seen that, you know, basically out of the 3 divisions, we have 2 of them that have, have performed really well. You know, Digital Trust, if you go back, over the last 3, 4, 5 presentation, is delivering a very steady and steady and solid growth.
You know, with the every quarter, you know, the, the, the revenue growing more than 10% and the EBITDA growing even more than the revenue. Cybersecurity delivered also a very encouraging and stronger first half. We will deep dive to better analyze what the situation of the business. Let's let's go into page 16, into the Digital Trust details. Like I said, you know, revenue went up 12.4%. InfoCert obviously is driven this law, growing more than 50%. For example, also Visura has been able to deliver a revenue growth in the range of 20%.
Most of the identity of the this segment went up in a very strong and solid way. Same occurred also into, into the EBITDA, with again, the EBITDA margin going up now from 27.4 up to 28.2, and this is very, very encouraging performance. Let's say that, overall, if we look at off the shelves, went up by, let's say, 14%, and the DTM went up by 17%. This means that our strategy is very solid, you know, our sales source and our capability to deliver are recognized by the customer, and, and I would say even more, we have a very strong capability to convert EBITDA into cash.
In fact, this business area is also a negative working capital. It means that we are running very fast in terms of collection. You know, this first half have been like I said, very solid, and we have a very lot of confidence in delivering the second half results and the full year results. Cybersecurity, after 6 months, now we are in a full position to confirm that what we said 1 year ago is definitely happened. Like we said last year, you know, we, during Q1 and Q2 2022, we invested massively in hiring new people, specifically focused on cybersecurity.
You know, I remember most of you were putting a lot of questions on this, but we, we, we are clear our strategy, and we implemented it. You know, the management of cybersecurity was able to handle the, you know, the incorporation of these new people and these new activities, and we started to build up backlog for this. You know, starting from Q1 2023 and confirmed in Q2 2023, you know, our revenues are going up at 16%. That is, you know, a performance well above the market of the cybersecurity as we were very confident to do.
We are pleased to say that all the three companies of the business unit has recorded a very strong EBITDA growth. All three of them were going up, and as a combined segment, we went up close to 60%. We know that we are talking still about small numbers, but, you know, as small numbers were last year, but the numbers are becoming bigger and bigger, and the EBITDA margin went up from 8%-11%, and the best is next to come in the second half of the year. The company has also, the group has also signed an agreement with Google Cloud, that put us also in a position to develop further opportunity together.
Second part of the year, will be, you know, critical for us definitely through the delivery of Defensio that was launched on the market, that represents a part of our revenue and profitability of the second half. The portfolio is encouraging. We were growing among the different business units of the cyber security. We are growing significantly in the segment of pure cyber security compared to other, you know, information technology activities. This is the situation.
Obviously, Q2 H2, H2 will be the most important half of the year, we enter into the second half of the year with a much better position compared to previous year, with a much higher vector and already with customer that has that has a lot of confident confidence. If you look at the business innovation, we have a slightly different situation. We know that Warrant is the most important part of this business, if you look at the revenue, the revenue are up 1%.
First of all, the markets, the markets where Warrant and other legal entities are operating are very different from here we are talking about consulting business, and we are not talking about pure tech and digital business. Although, we are definitely investing and being more exposure also in consulting for digital innovation. The revenue went, you know, up 1%, like I said. Compared to our expectations for the first part of the year, definitely what we are slightly missing here is a value that could have been, could have come from, you know.
a potential register of players into this market that has been delayed in term of, you know, low activity. Nevertheless, you know, the company is performing well. The part of the digital business is going up from EUR 3 million-EUR 7 million revenue, helping us. We are, we are the lack in term of revenue on the business of the subsidized finance. That is the business with the highest profitability, and therefore the revenue mix has influenced quite significantly the margin of the first half. Also, the contract for internationalization services, as we expected already, were down.
We do expect, in the second half of the year, you know, the capability to recover this delay compared to the previous year, and to help overall the group to deliver results within the guidance of that we shared with the market in the first, at the beginning of the year, and the board of directors that as we make it today, as confirmed by the CL end. Now, you know, I completed my part. I leave to Jozef for closing remarks, and then obviously we will be fully available for any question.
Right. Thank you, Oddone. At this point, I'm gonna turn to page 20. Page 20 is exactly what you all are accustomed to. We would like to stress the fact that on a 2023 base, the organic growth is intact, and we're, as we're saying, trying to target revenues in the numbers that you see here, Digital Trust plus 10% in revenue, organic Cybersecurity in the thirtiest percent, mostly in the second half, as Oddone just said, and Business Innovation in terms of revenue is expected to grow 15%. The EBITDA trajectory is on the right side. That means that Digital Trust is expected to grow 11% versus the prior year, Cybersecurity anywhere in the fortiest percent growth, and then a 5% for Business Innovation. 2022 and 2025 CAGRs are the same.
Let me start with the highlights of the full year 2023. We had a very strong year, with revenues growing 12% year-over-year to EUR 360.9 million. EBITDA adjusted grew 15% to EUR 120.2 million, with a margin of 33.3%, up 100 basis points year-over-year. Net income adjusted grew 17% to EUR 60.2 million. Net financial position was EUR 290.2 million, with a leverage of 2.4x NFP to EBITDA adjusted. Free cash flow adjusted was EUR 50.2 million
A lot of the analysts have already accounted for that. Some have, some have not, but this is absolutely in line with what has been communicated to the market.
What I would add, Jozef, is that here, you know, the cash flow from the operation is projected exactly as we expected. The difference is only in disbursement for the same stack and less cash in from the near to mature the stock options. What is important is that the operating cash flow is expected to be exactly as the original guidance.
Right. We'd like to stress that obviously in function of also the last 12 months, free cash flow adjusted is exactly growing even more than what we did actually last year.
Yeah.
30% of net profit in terms of dividend, with an inflation assumption around 6%. I would stop here. I would like, at this point, for the operator to give us some, the Q&A, and see if there's any questions, and, I'll leave the floor to the next question.
Okay, excuse me. This is the course call conference operator, operator, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question, may press Star and One on their touchtone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press Star and Two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. The first question comes from Isacco Brambilla of Mediobanca.
Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Three questions from my side. First one is on Cybersecurity. You mentioned several new initiatives, including a partnership with Google Cloud, action from advisory market, launch of Defense io. Could you give us more color on potential impact of such initiatives, in particular, if you have any sort of backlog or contracted orders for the Defenseio ? Second question is on business innovation. Your previous guidance implies an important acceleration in the second semester. This is definitely reassuring to see the target for the division fully confirmed. Implied performance for the second half looks a bit interesting. Could you better explain the drivers to support such a sharp acceleration in which way between CoMark and other digital marketing activities.
Last question is on more on strategy. Is the to be healthy? You recently did the acquisition of, but which are the next priorities in terms of redeployment also, and specifically from for this fiscal year?
Can you hear us, Isacco?
Yeah.
Yeah, sure.
All right, perfect. I'll take the first one, and then Oddone will go on the other two. In terms of, in terms of cybersecurity, I would like to start from, you know, a couple of facts, right? We already said this during the call. Last year, we invested heavily, exactly a year ago, on people, human capital. As you know, that was clear. That was also a function of the performance of last year. These results and those investments are already showing their strength, 59% growth in terms of prior year EBITDA is definitely a good achievement. The growth, as we said, is, you know, growing steadily around all of the businesses. We would like to emphasize that, and that means both in the advisory part as well as digital transformation.
You definitely asked about the Google Cloud. The Google Cloud agreement is an important agreement because it is basically concentrating mostly on, first of all, partnership of, I would say accountability, right? I mean, Google Cloud does not need any presentation. It has chosen Tinexta in order for that to execute the deployment of services, mostly around threat intelligence. We highlighted that in the press release. We're gonna actually underline it here. It's all about utilizing also the potentials that Tinexta has, in particular, in the threat intelligence part. We remember, it is a partnership. The business development is underway, so we can't really discuss any further expectations for the year, but we can definitely say that we're in a much better position than not having the partnership per se.
This is a partnership, A, of strategy. It is a partnership, B, of having also the potential to sell our solutions in the Google Cloud marketplace, which is definitely an important element and gives you some value added on that. On the partnership, we'll see how it evolves. Give us, you know, next couple of quarters to go to kind of give you a bit more of a, a qualitative/quantitative answer. In terms of Defencio, Defencio is definitely, I would say, an important step in the development and deployment of the product. This is a proprietary product. It is called Defencio because it is jointly developed with Yoroi. The idea here is. First of all, let's talk about timing.
We deployed it at the end of May, at the end of June, so we're talking about, you know, very brand-new product, still need to gather a bit more data. The feedback is definitely positive because what it does, just to give you a bit more of a background, it allows small organizations, both public or private, to have medium-sized, that is, to have a, a, you know, a threat intelligence services. This is a plug-and-play service, in other words, entirely deployed remotely, so you don't physically need people to go into these small organizations. Most of these organizations can always, can also be, you know, small city halls. We're talking about the here in Italy, which have, first of all, a budget constraint and have little to no protection from a cybersecurity standpoint.
With this type of product, which is a much more evolved sandbox, we, we would like to say that we're able to get into those systems, check the systems remotely, and give them, you know, a first stop, first shop approach in cybersecurity. The unit price, we're not gonna disclose, but it's obviously a very advantageous one, which gives our commercial colleagues and therefore the sales force, the opportunity to pitch the services and to these organizations, and at the same point, try to get these contracts signed. We will see how the product evolves in the second part of the year. We'll keep you posted on that, but I think this is definitely very good news because of the, the development of the product, which I would like to underline, is proprietary. Oddone, for BI?
Yes, we were talking about the BI. Definitely, you know, like I said before, you know, she won us in for the reason I explained below, the previous year. We are confident, and, you know, our view and the detailed management analysis that has been performed are telling us that, you know, in the second part of the year, we should recover, you know, and we will recover this, and we do expect by the end of the year to land, you know, in line with the previous year or slightly above. You know, overall, the guidance is confirmed.
Honestly, if you look, you look at the results of, start, probably we will be in a position as of today to deliver lightly above in in Digital Trust and potentially, you know, above previous year, but slightly below our initial expectation in in BI. Having said that, you know, we are not worried about the performance of the second half. You know, Jozef started in showing you a chart where organically our last quarter is very strong, is typical of the cycle of the business, of the business innovation. We have to remember that most of the revenues of Warrant are coming from when the investments of our client has been completed and put up and running.
Our clients, you know, definitely they aim to complete their investment, that they put them up and running before year-end in order to benefit in, in, in the tax declaration of the same year that is going to occur in April, May, in May to apply for this potential tax relief and benefits. This is the reason why the revenue is concentrated over there. It is gonna be a tough second half. We have to say that a tough, a tougher second half we already experienced last year, and we deliver as expected.
To confirm that, is part of the business. If, you know, our strong revenue of Q4 has been collected in, in, first half 2020, it means that, you know, that strong revenue has been collected, in, in, in the following, quarter. We are not worried about this, about this. Obviously, we are very concentrated, because, you know, we have a few small room for changes, but we know what to do, and the management is fully, fully focused on that. The last point in term of M&A. Well, we completed the acquisition of the first part of Defence during the, in, you know, this year.
You know, as you know, we have a call for the majority, for the majority of Defence Tech next year. You know, we are working with them, and we are focused working with them in order to define a combined plan that is going to support the exercise of the call. So far, we are very happy, and we are working very closely. As far as concern Ascertia acquisition, we completed the acquisition, the first 65%. We are glad about, you know, the start of the business between the signing and the closing. So now we are working at the integration of Ascertia into the group.
The performance are aligned with the expectation from the acquisition. Obviously, Tinexta also, if you look at the net financial position, is closely looking at potential deals in Italy, but also outside Italy. Priority for this year are continue to be Digital Trust and business innovation. Like we said in the past, we do believe that potential opportunity in France for business innovation will be very important, as well as we are looking at potential opportunity around Europe for Digital Trust. For sure, we will focus only on relevant targets, target with a very solid position with the significant expectations of growth.
Okay. Many thanks, Bob.
The next question is from Carlo Maritano of Intermonte.
Good afternoon, everyone. I just have a couple of questions. The first one is on Ascertia that you mentioned before. I was wondering if you could provide us some data, given that the latest data we have are updated to the end of March of 2022. At least how much this company grew last year. The second question is related to the cash flow over the quarter. I've seen that you have a positive contribution from production. I was wondering if you could provide some follow on this, what companies are impacted by these adjustments. Thank you.
Carlo, can you repeat the second one? Was it on cash flow?
The second one on cash flow is related to the adjustment of production that contributed positively to the quarter. I was wondering, what is the reason, which are the core subsidiaries involved in the adjustment? Thank you.
I go for the second question. In order to have well understood what you say, you're talking about the impact on cash flow, the stock option, you mean?
No, the pre-option.
Okay. To get into the presentation, if we move to page, yes, to page, page 12, or page 13. You're maybe on the LTM basis or first half? First half?
First half. The EUR 5.6 million was the first half.
Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. This is, you know, basically, we, we, we, what has changed here are two things. You know, the, the put option, the final exercise of the put option for Sixtel has been lower than what has been projected at the end of the year. Basically, we negotiated part of this after having the review, the performance, and therefore we got, let's say, like, a discount. Second, on, on, we applied a new weighted average cost of capital that reduced a little bit also the put option. This is what basically happened. The, a small amount that help us to reduce the net financial position. This, this is basically what happened.
I, I don't know if it make this clear to you?
Clearly.
Okay. You know, for Ascertia, let's say, as of now, we are not, you know, releasing the specific figures. You know, we are going to consolidate the company, since July 1st. You know, when we are going to report Ascertia, in September results, together with the, the other, the, the, the, the 9 months results, we will provide more insight and more, and more details on this.
Maybe just to give a bit of a, of a quality answer on this, Carlo, just to try to guide you a bit more on the press release, we definitely had given some pro forma figures, right? We saw that the growth was double digits, and we can definitely confirm that that's.
Absolutely.
-that's the trend, right? we're not, we're not seeing any potential, downsides on this, the double trend is there.
Well, from, from the information we have, we have, we are very glad of, of what's happening. You know, I honestly, I don't want to comment on results that would be not consolidated in our books. You know, Carlo, I will be more than happy to share with you and with all you guys, all the case, since we are going to consolidate the company.
Okay, thank you.
We kindly ask participants to please pick up the receiver when asking questions. The next question comes from Russell Poynton of Edison.
Good afternoon, Berne and Jozef, thanks for the presentation. I've got a couple of questions, please. First one, in the Digital Trust, there was a nice pickup in growth from Q1 to Q2, and in the, the presentation you refer to, in the incremental revenues coming through from the partnership with CRIF. Could you, could you just give a bit of background on that and perhaps scale it? My second question is on business innovation. I, you know, we, we fully understand the, the, the seasonality of the business, but could you give some idea of sort of there are lots of positives and negatives within there, so could you give some indication of how big, how big are the positives and how negative are negatives?
In terms of that, progression to meeting the full year guidance, are there any businesses where you have more limited visibility? I would, I would imagine advertising, for example, has very limited visibility and obviously, some businesses probably a bit more cyclical than others. Thank you very much.
I start with the first question about, you know, Digital Trust. The impact of the CRIF business is very, very limited. We're talking less than EUR 500,000, but, you know, with very high marginality. This is going around our expectation. You know, that we are consolidating this since basically 1 quarter, 1 last quarter, this is not a big deal. What is very important is the capability of the Digital Trust business to be very steady and addressing a very steady growth, and having an operating leverage that is becoming quarter after quarter more, more important.
We were able to lift up the profitability from let's say 27% to 28%, and this is definitely very, very important. On, on this area, definitely we feel very, very strong and very happy on how we are handling this performance. If we are talking, if we move to the second question on the business innovation and decision IT, I hope to, and maybe I ask help of Jozef, he I asked to explain why the business is, you know, delivering in the second half, where, you know, the investment has been completed and putting up and running.
When the investment are up and running, then they can get the relief in the when they are reporting the tax declaration for that year. There is a rush of every client to try to complete this by the end of the year. If not, the cash relief from the tax authority will come, you know, 16-18 months later. This is the primary, you know, driver of this.
If we look at the report and the results by business unit, like I said, you know, in the business innovation business, we had a slight delay that partially was expected in finance subsidized finance, basically, because we had EUR 2 million, if not EUR 2.5 million less in term of, revenue that is driving a very high loss of marginalities here. We have the Warrant was able to develop other business lines.
I mentioned that for example, for the digital innovation, we went up from EUR 2 million-EUR 7 million, the profitability we have on the other business lines, that, that is still very strong, above 25% is not the profitability of the financial automation, and that is in the range of 50%. This is the revenue mix, as we wrote in the presentation, is the main driver. We have the capability to develop other businesses that are, you know, our support to our clients in energy is improving quite significantly, as well as in the education business, as well as in European funding. Some of them are going up, some of them are going up.
the business, because every year, the budget law is addressing the different distribution of funds. So, if you have several business lines, you are able to compensate and get some more opportunities. If you are focused on a few business lines, you have the risk not to balance exactly the revenue. Like we said to Jacco and Carlo, you know, the second half is going to be very busy, but we have done this last year. You know, the management is focused. They are running to achieve this. The portfolio backlog is supporting us, and this is what we do expect.
Like, like I said, last year, you know, we should definitely. Our business is not a consumer business. Is a, you know, a clients driven business. If you have 1 big deal in 1 quarter and instead of the following quarter, this can change the picture of the quarter. The important that, you know, we are having across the full year, all the businesses that we put in our guidance in our business. You know, we knew since the early beginning that our second half, also in our internal budget, our second half was expecting a stronger growth com-com compared to the first half.
just, just get back onto things like the advertising. I would imagine visibility on that is relatively limited. Is that, is that safe to say?
Yeah. No, advertising is not an important part of our business.
No, I got that.
Digital is 0. Cybersecurity is 0, Warrant Hub is 0. The only part is the digital marketing for Queryo. There we, we are facing, you know, some issues compared to our projection. Still the results are growing compared to previous year in term of revenue and in term of profitab- profitability, we are almost there. Again, we are talking about, you know, like less than 1% of our revenue term, advertise.
Okay. Yeah. Sorry for the use of the word advertising. I, I meant the digital marketing.
No, no, no worry. You know, you know, Queryo is providing performance-driven capabilities to our clients. Since last year, we, we, we handle for them, the, the, the, the acquisition of advertising in order to deliver the, the performance. For us, it's basically a pass-through, you know?
Yeah. Okay, thank you very much.
You're welcome, Russell.
Question is from Aleksandra Arsova at Mediobanca.
Hi, good, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. Three questions on my end. The first one is more technical. To get better, the net financial position, well, sorry, net debt and EBITDA target for 2023 does not include the disbursement for Ascertia, correct or not? The second one is again on business innovation. Recently read on the newspaper that the Court of Audit in Italy is, let's say, pushing the government to stop the automatic procedures for with respect to the finance, the Transition 4.0, and all the finance projects.
Meaning that first company personally, must be approved the investment and then, be entitled to, to get the, the grant by the government or by the EU. Do you think that, that if this happens, or if, if approved, can, let's say, hold or hurt in a way, the, the business innovation, revenue generation? The very last one, maybe if you can give us some more color on the joint venture, the partnership with Digital Magics you mentioned at the very beginning. What kind of partnership you expect to have, and what kind of investments, and the amount you expect to invest in, in these activities? Thank you.
Well, don't hear. Yes, you are right. Like we put in the, in the press release, you know, it's not, is gonna be complicated. You know, everything that's already was booked in in first half has been, you know, projected to the end of the year. Ascertia came after, therefore, is not part of this projection. We have not either in the projection, revenue and EBITDA. This is the first answer. If what happened instead on certain drop, we already had the debt for the put. What is changing, is gonna change is just a swap between less cash and less debt for put, but the net financial position is not changing. Ascertia is out in revenue, EBITDA, and debt.
For the second one, Aleksandra, could you repeat or were you referring to the registro? Can you just explain it a bit better, what were you asking about the-
Okay. From my understanding, the Court of Audit, Corte dei Conti, is asking the Italian government to change the rules, the Transition 4.0, the Transition 4.0 grants are awarded to companies. Now, basically, the company can invest in a project, and then the old application can get the amount of the the the credit, sorry, the the credit incentive, but they can do, start the work whenever they want at the end.
Now, from my understanding, the Court of Audit is asking the government, in order to allow the companies to get these grants, first to ask for permission, let's say, for an approval, that the project is, the investment is, let's say, can be supported by this grant in order to start the. Otherwise, if you start the investment and then ask for the grant, for the incentive, you cannot get it if you're not approved.
Let me, let me stop you there, Aleksandra. Let, let, let us do some bit more work, given that, you know, we want to do a follow-up, and then if, if there's any news, we'll let you know. The answer is, we'll check with the business unit to see if there is anything to, to really mention. Of what we know, I mean, for the time being, everything is as is. I mean, we don't see any major disruptions, but we'll see, and, I'll get back to you on that. The third question was on Digital Magics. I mean, here, you probably know Digital Magics is a, is a listed entity.
The strategy is very simple in the sense that Digital Magics does this, this, this is their typical job, which is investing into startups or even grown-ups. Doesn't really need to be a startup. We are basically putting together the strategy of us being a company that looks into digitalization. The angle here is that of identifying either, you know, startups or grown-ups that have that digital transformation angle, Digital Trust angle, and see if that can be of interest also with Digital Magics. This means that on our side, we will invest up to EUR 5 million. We, we said that already and announced that on the press release. It is for us, an opportunity. It is for Digital Magics, an opportunity.
The workflow will be that of Digital Magics actually giving us a potential funnel of businesses that can be at this point, evaluated jointly. That means both from our side and Digital Magics' side, we will then have an investment committee that will look at the business plans, see how they are akin with the business of Tinexta, and particularly on the digital, on the digital angle, and then we'll decide if to invest or not.
This is part of, you know, a strategy that Tinexta put together of open innovation, which is basically given that we are a reference company, and specifically in Italy and also at a European level, in the digital transformation side, it is good that we can invest in potential ideas that can become, you know, grown-ups or even larger companies that could eventually become larger and larger.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Are there any other questions, Operator?
Sure. For any further questions, please press star 1 on your telephone. At this time, there are no questions registered, sir.
I would like to thank you all for connecting to Tinexta's first half. Stay tuned for our next quarter results, which will be obviously in the month of November, and we would like to wish you all a happy summer.
Yes, absolutely. Thank you again, everybody, for attending today, and happy summer.
Bye.
Talk to you soon. Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.