Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining Tinexta's Capital Markets Day in Milan. The presentation is about to begin. Let me hand over to Josef Mastragostino, Chief Investor Relations Officer of Tinexta Group.
Good afternoon and good morning to the folks connected from abroad. Thank you for joining Tinexta's 2024 results and 2025 outlook. Here with me today, we have Pier Andrea Chevallard, Chief Executive Officer of Tinexta; Oddone Pozzi, Group Chief Financial Officer; Danilo Cattaneo, InfoCert CEO; Andrea Vingolo, Visura CEO; Andrea Monti, Tinexta Cyber Managing Director; Emilio Gisondi, Defense Technology CEO; and Fiorenzo Bellelli, Warrant Hub CEO. Thank you for being here, and we're very pleased to have you here in our brand new state-of-the-art facility here in Milan. For the purpose of this slide, I will go over the agenda. On page three, you can see what we will be discussing today, starting from an executive summary. Then it will be Pier Andrea, who will go over fiscal year 2024 business highlights. Oddone will give us a deep dive of the financials for 2024.
I will give you the BU outlook of all the three business units, and then all three of us will take a stab at strategy pillars as well as the 2025 outlook, where Oddone will guide us through the guidance for 2025, and we'll have some prepared closing remarks. Let me, given that this is an official presentation, let me go over the disclaimer. The company presentation includes forward-looking data based on internal management assumptions that are subject to material changes, including changes to external factors beyond the group's control. Management data, when presented, are identified as such. Business unit data are divisional and include intra-BU items, which are instead eliminated at a group level. For detailed information on Tinexta's PA, it is recommended to refer to the company's documentation, including the latest interim reports and the company's financial statements.
As you all recall, Tinexta is an industrial group and offers innovative solutions, in particular in the digital transformation world. The group is active in strategic sectors of Digital Trust, cybersecurity, and business innovation. As you all know, we are listed on the STAR segment of Borsa Italiana. You're all very familiar with our milestones in terms of the equity story. Even this year, we registered further growth. Let me deep dive directly on the main numbers for financial data. As of December 31st, 2024, revenues came in at EUR 455 million, growing 15% versus the prior year. EBITDA adjusted reached EUR 111 million, growing 8% versus the prior year. Net profit was, on a reported basis, EUR 25 million, while on an adjusted basis, it was EUR 50 million. Still strong, the free cash flow at EUR 42 million.
NFP, which reflects the most recent acquisition, came in at EUR 322 million, or 2.79 times the NFP over adjusted EBITDA. That includes the pro forma contribution of Defense Technology as of January 1st of 2024. Let's give a nice glance to the different business unit. Digital trust, bottom left, outstanding year. We reached EUR 65 million in terms of adjusted EBITDA. EUR 207 million was the revenue on a fiscal year 2024 basis, growing respectively 19% and 14% versus the prior year. Another historical high in terms of margins, 32%, was the EBITDA margin for 2024. I think the numbers speak for themselves. Cybersecurity, we grew 19% in terms of EBITDA adjusted. This includes also the contribution on a pro quota basis. That means as of August 1st of 2024, in terms of Defense Technology, we reached EUR 18 million, and revenues went over EUR 100 million at EUR 106 million, growing 19%.
Very strong was, obviously, the margin, thanks also to the contribution of Defense Technology. Business innovation, on the right side of the slide, reached EUR 44 million of EBITDA adjusted, with revenues that came in at over EUR 150 million, and the margin was mostly impacted on the different mix. Here, I think every year is important to highlight how the growth continues to be very strong. Revenues in terms of CAGR reached 20% from 2014, not 2014, to 2024. Even more importantly, I think, is the contribution in terms of EBITDA, where the CAGR reached almost 26%. NFP, as you can see here, reflects the recent acquisition, and the leverage ratio came in at 2.79 times, but Oddone will give you much more color in terms of also covenants and what else. On slide 11, what you see here is basically the cadence of the EBITDA.
Even this year, the latter part of the year, in particular the second half, was very strong and was very, I would say the overall weight was around 69%, as you can see. We registered almost more than all the first three quarters put together in terms of EBITDA. In fact, the fourth quarter EBITDA had a relative weight of 50%, coming in close at EUR 55 million. Pier Andrea, we'll go over the business highlights, and I'll leave the word to Pier Andrea.
Thank you, Josef, and thanks to everyone who joined us today, both in person and via conference call. First of all, I wish to stress how important it is for us to meet the financial community during this yearly meeting to discuss the main factors that characterized our financial performance, especially in a year when, and I wish to underline this, for the first time in our group's history, we were not able to deliver our guidance. Before going over all the enologylements which influenced our results, let us turn to slide 13 to illustrate some key events of 2024.
At the beginning of the year, we finalized two important deals related to expansion of our business innovation division, the first being the acquisition of nearly 74% of ABF Group in January with the aim of entering the French market for subsidized finance, and the second one relating to the acquisition of Lenovis. I think it's mandatory to start from ABF and acknowledge that its performance throughout 2024 has not been in line with our expectations. Why? The reasons lie on a variety of external factors which were outside of our control. In particular, the political turmoil in France was completely unforeseeable and unpredictable. The frequent government changes, I remember that last year we had four different governments in France. The frequent government changes led to significant budget cuts and cancellation in the approval of public financing tenders.
I would, and I wish to stress the fact that such phenomenon was unprecedented and never registered in the last decades of France's history. All these things put together in a relatively short period of time made a notable impact on the company's performance and weighed down the overall group result for the year. Notwithstanding that, to diversify our business innovation portfolio, in February 2024, we acquired 60% of Lenovis, an Italian company active in strategic consulting and lean management. We launched our advisory business line, which we expected to become a very important part of our offering, especially in the mid-corporate range, where there are plenty of greenfield opportunities. Our cybersecurity business unit also experienced some important changes with the acquisition. In April, we acquired the remaining stakes of Corvallis, Leciró, and Suozcan, and we integrated them in the following month in Tinexta Cyber.
Furthermore, we decided to exercise the call option on the 40% of Defense Technolgy in June, which triggered a mandatory tender offer that was completed in November. Both these transactions aimed at establishing Tinexta as a comprehensive cybersecurity hub in Italy, required significant reorganization efforts in order to improve our level of efficiency. The focus needed on this adjustment and the changes in leadership that followed impacted on the level of delivery for this division. However, 2024 has also set the basis for some key regulatory tailwinds, which we expect will drive future growth in these divisions. For instance, the launch of Industry Transition 5.0 tax credit plan in Italy, which has been amended and improved at the end of 2024 in order to facilitate its implementation, as well as the introduction of the DOI and its two directives on a national and European Union level.
As for Digital Trust, already Josef said, the numbers speak for themselves. In 2024, the division recorded an impressive performance with an EBITDA adjusted margin of 31%, ending again its historical high, notwithstanding the macroeconomic and geopolitical certainty and the challenges of an ever-changing environment. We are confident that our strong brand positioning, our presence in key markets like France and the U.K., and the opportunity which will arise throughout the regulatory efforts to increase the level of digitalization in the European Union, I mean the European wallet, the invoicing, will allow us to maintain an interesting level of growth, which this division has experienced in the last decade. 2024 results were still very positive, with overall growth revenues reaching almost more than EUR 450 million, or if you want, 11% versus prior year.
EBITDA adjusted, as Josef mentioned before, posted an 8% growth to EUR 111 million with a healthy margin of 24.4%. Let me add to that by saying how important it is to Tinexta to maintain a strong identity as a group and create meaningful synergies across our divisions and business lines, nurturing a strong company culture with over 3,000 employees in 12 countries across the world. To conclude on this slide, I'd like to provide an update on the dividend, which we will propose to this year's general assembly: EUR 0.30 per share for a total value of about EUR 40 million, showing that we will keep our commitments to provide shareholders with satisfying returns. Moving on to slide 14, I would give some more insight on the key items on 2024.
Notwithstanding positive growth in results, we decided to react in a timely manner and we have carried out an in-depth analysis on planning and goal-setting models to set targets for the next years that are first and foremost achievable and that prioritize delivery in the future. Q4 was still a strong quarter on the overall company results, with an EBITDA adjusted of nearly EUR 55 million, boasting a margin of more than 36%. As mentioned before, one of the main actions of 2024 was the important reorganization of the cybersecurity business unit following the incorporation of three subsidiaries under the Tinexta Cyber umbrella. Furthermore, with the successful acquisition of Defense Technology Holding under Tinexta Defense, we will be able to expand the scope of our business, create the basis for meaningful synergies, and enhance our presence within the very promising public administration space and defense segments.
Turning to slide 15, I would like to take the time to analyze what went wrong in 2024 and what are the actions we are already taking in 2025 to resolve these issues. We have already reviewed ABF Group performance, which was mainly attributable to country-specific downturn. Given the unpredictable situation, we took close attention to analyze the company's order book and customer base. At the same time, we closely scrutinized the process application, cost analysis, and resource allocation to identify areas of improvement. Moving on to the single business unit, starting with cybersecurity, the main issue determining a slowdown in performance was the strong focus on the incorporation of Leciró, Suozcan, and Corvallis under Tinexta Cyber, as well as the impact of the different revenue mix, weighed down by an increase of the resale component.
A lower operational efficiency in services led to a lower level of performance despite the opportunities we well know, driven by a growing market. In 2025, our objectives are clear, and they focus on improving the integration of all services within the business unit, eliminating redundancies, optimizing the mix between prioritize and third-party services, and most of all, concentrate on the reorganization of the sales and operations departments with the aim to promote and expand the development and knowledge of key employees. The business innovation division has also been impacted by significant changes in the Italian subsidized finance landscape. Namely, in 2024, the renowned reduction in deductible rates related to Industry 4.0 tax credit, combined with the delay in the implementation of the Transition 5.0 program, were two of the main drivers of the division's drop in performance versus the past, together with an increase in demand of low-margin activities.
The main action we are taking in 2025 regarding this division refers to a shift in the business unit business model toward a comprehensive advisory framework integrating all business lines, combined with a simplification of the organizational structure, focusing on delivery and higher efficiency, also with regards to employee responsibilities. Slide 16. Let me highlight Tinexta's need to strengthen its role as parent company, steering away from the mere concept of being a holding and instead taking on a proactive approach to foster a unified strategy across business unit subsidiaries to promote a one-group identity.
Tinexta's key duty as the head of the group, as depicted in the slide, is to provide subsidiaries with shared services in strategy, M&A, innovation, investor relation, just to name a few, at the group level, as well as coordinate cross-functional departments such as HR, legal, external communication, and administration and finance to foster the development of a single company culture across the different business units. Here are some key elements of the one-group model which we are putting in place and intended to push for the future: innovation, which has always been one of the key pillars of our value proposition. Our main objective is to monitor the market for new opportunities and promote innovation across the different parts of our group, leveraging on capabilities and synergies across business units. Advisory.
As mentioned above, one of our 2025 goals is to establish an advisory-based ecosystem under the Tinexta brand to satisfy the ever-evolving needs of our corporate customers of all sizes, leveraging on the increasing demand driven by an evolving regulatory environment. Reach. This integrated innovative framework will allow us to expand our customer base toward segments with high growth potential, such as the public administration sector. Internationalization. Of course, the expansion includes also new potential markets where we can successfully replicate the Tinexta business model, especially in the European Union. Integration and synergy. One of Tinexta's main strengths as a group is the ability to cross-sell and create synergies across the different business units, such as the concept of cybersecurity by design, which implies the potential of implementation of cybersecurity services in the Digital Trust landscape.
The implementation of a single group strategy creates a fil rouge across the different business units, which can be beneficial for collaboration and synergies to create more value. One group. Ultimately, our objective is to establish Tinexta Identity as a unique group, a leader in ICT markets at a pan-European level with a strong unified strategy across a variety of strategic business lines. The scope of our presence at an international level is, I think, very clear. With acquisition we completed in the past, with acquisition we completed in the past years, we are now present in 12 countries with 38 subsidiaries, reaching an account of about 3,000 employees. Italy remains our primary market, representing around 83% of our revenues, but we have a significant development of reach outside of Italy, as we can see in the graph below.
This growth in international revenues is the result of our effort toward becoming a pan-European player, a growing ICT industry, a growing market full of potential opportunities. To conclude, before leaving you to the numbers and leaving Oddone, I would like to provide some colors on 2025, which will be on setting achievable goals, and for that matter, the guidance will be an outstanding one. Revenues are expected to grow between 12% to 14% versus 2024, 7% to 9% on an organic basis, and EBITDA adjusted to increase by 15% to 17% versus 2024, 10% to 12% on an organic basis. The leverage ratio is expected to land between 2.2 to 2.5, confirming the strong financial solidity of our group and its continuous growth. I will now leave the stage to Oddone Pozzi.
Exactly. Good afternoon, everybody. And thank you for being here.
We went through a preliminary analysis from Pier Andrea and Josef on the figures, but like we said, you know, we had a year where we did not achieve the target that we set at the beginning, but still, as you can see here, we have a company that is overall growing and still growing at a quite interesting pace. Revenue came in excess of EUR 450 million, with the EBITDA peaking EUR 111 million at 24.5%. Net profit is down, driven by, you know, interest that impacted the company after the acquisition, as well as the PPA that we applied in terms of amortization. Let's move now to the P&L. I will try to go a little bit more in depth here. As you can see here, we have a comparison both on an organic basis and on a non-organic basis.
Non-organic basis in terms of revenue was mainly driven by the contribution we had for the full year for ABF, for something less than EUR 20 million and around EUR 50 million from Defense Technology that is consolidated since August 2024. Definitely, the comparison in terms of margins between the two areas is very different, and also, I think we have been impacted by the performance of ABF for the reason that Pier Andrea explained. As you can see, on a comparable basis, basically, the company on personal cost was able to keep the level of the previous year. It has not been easy to do that because on an organic basis, we went slightly down, while the revenue mix and the usage of third party was not aligned with our forecast. This is the main driver of the lack of profitability that we had, but still, we are running at 24.4%.
Again, I remind that, you know, the impact of ABF has been strong. The 24.4% still is a very interesting margin, and then we walked through the different business units to deeply analyze. One-off cost between EBITDA adjusted and EBITDA were pretty big because we invested a lot in terms of M&A costs for running these two big acquisitions. On top of that, we had some actions on the cost cutting through some incentivated layoffs. Depreciation amortization grew mainly as for change of perimeter as we included there the new companies, and we increased the level of amortization from the purchase price allocation of the company. Financial charges went up compared to the previous year. On an operational basis, the balance of interest is up EUR 6 million.
If you consider that we invested more than EUR 70 million in ABF and other EUR 60 million in Defense Technology, we are talking about more than EUR 130 million cash out that brought basically a difference of EUR 6 million more interest. On taxes, we got the benefit from two things. The first thing is the patent box that we got on Digital Trust business, so we got a one-off benefit of EUR 5 million that in terms of cash will come in the future years, as well as, you know, what is called in Italy the affrancamento that we have done on Warrant Hub. This led to more than EUR 8 million benefit on taxes.
As you can see here, the component related to non-recurring items is quite important, like we said, and let's say I mostly addressed them during the presentation of the P&L, so we have the cost of non-recurring costs for personnel costs that we have here, non-recurring service costs for the M&A activity. The amortization of the PPA came up to close to EUR 25 million, so this is basically a decline in our intangible assets through the depreciation. Then we have also the EUR 9.3 million benefit from the tax matters that I already explained to you. I will move on to the next page, and I try to deep dive on the different business units. On Digital T rust, I call here both for InfoCert and Visura, we have to say that the performance is more than outstanding.
You know, here, both the revenue increase on a proforma basis, but I would say even more, the revenue of the growth of the EBITDA that on an organic basis went up 14% is a truly outstanding performance. You know, the two companies are able to deliver a strong revenue growth, but also they are at a level of efficiency and continuous improvement that is definitely making the difference. It is very clear that who is following us since years, especially InfoCert, is now probably 12 quarters that is delivering like this for this result. The company went up in most of the areas of activities at double-digit rate. The only area that has the pace a little bit lower than the past was the online sales, and this was a partial and also partially impacted the cash generation because the online sales are bringing cash upfront.
Nevertheless, you know, the online sales went up 1.7%. That will be talked when we talk about 25%, 25% already some action has been taken. Combined to this was two things: a really strong focus on costs because both InfoCert and both Danilo and Andrea focused a lot on the cost efficiency of the company with some programs that were put in place, and this helped to reach the result. During 2024, InfoCert and both Visura made a strong investment in CapEx. InfoCert went through a continuous improvement of the product usability integration of its platform, and this has been a strong investment. This nevertheless, the company was able to deliver the result. On top of that, Visura worked for the last months of the year in a project that will be launched to the market before the end of the month.
It is a new project for its customers on the, with the help of the, let's say, it's a generative AI-based solution. Let's move to the cybersecurity. Here, let's start from Defense Technology. Defense Technology has been consolidated only for five months, but still, the contribution to the group result has been very positive. The company delivered in the last five months EUR 40 million revenue with EUR 4.8 million EBITDA. Definitely, this is not because the company was listed, so it's very easy for you to understand what is going on. Basically, in the last five months, they delivered almost 50% of the EBITDA of the year. In terms of the, you know, the former cybersecurity part, the result was not what we expected. It's very clear the drop in terms of profitability is not something that we were expecting, and there are a few reasons that drove to this result.
First of all, the revenue mix. As you can see here, the revenue in services, that is the part that is driving the marginality, especially in the cybersecurity, went down. We compensated the revenue with some sales of products or proprietary products that went very well, helped to mitigate the result, but the resale of third-party products obviously negatively impacted the results, and this is the main reason of the drop of the profitability. We have to consider that the company already started to cut some costs, but was not enough to deliver the expected result. On the business innovation, the situation, as Pier Andrea mentioned, the situation was impacted definitely from some regulatory situation in Italy and from the political environment in France.
It's very clear that, you know, the change of four governments in just one year on ABF is working a lot in trying to file a dossier on the France 2030 program that definitely has to go through the Prime Minister's office, and you can imagine when you have a change of four Prime Minister's office, it is basically impossible to achieve the results. As soon as we had some political stability, the company during Q4 delivered slightly better, but at the end of the day, the company delivered very low results that accounted for EUR 19 million revenue with just only EUR 3 million EBITDA. There is a part of business that the managing considered that is flowing into 2025, and we are expecting this business to come up during Q1.
On the company was affected, as is mentioned here, you know, by acquisition that you have of Studio Fieschi, ABF, Lenovis, and Warrant Funding Project. You know, the environment changed quite a lot, and trying to put together all this company was not easy. Nevertheless, what's happening on the Transition 5.0 was definitely, so basically, profitability and revenues coming from this part of business was zero, and this was one of the fundamental pillars of our 2024 plan. We had some other parts of business that went well. For example, Digital Innovation Business went well at a pretty double-digit rate, but what's happening on the Industry 5.0 combined with the declining rates of the Industry 4.0 led to this result. Results at the end of the year so was at EUR 44 million with a decline compared to the previous year.
In terms of balance sheet, obviously, all the acquisitions we have done during the year have reshaped a little bit our balance sheet. Capital invested went up to not far from EUR 800 million, driven mainly by from the acquisition, as well as we had some slight impact from the working capital, but this was mainly driven by tax and the fair tax asset that are following what I told you before. Net financial position is now at EUR 320 million that is, after all the acquisition, well below three times, still in a very safe environment compared to the capability of the company to deliver cash flow. Shareholder equity obviously went up because of the results of the year, but we remember that last year the company delivered almost EUR 30 million dividends during last year. I will go now to page 28. I think we can skip here.
In terms of EBITDA, obviously, the main driver of the growth is linked to the acquisition that accounted on the net financial position for EUR 222 million. That is the main driver of this growth. In terms of free cash flow, it has been impacted mainly by two things. The first thing is the CapEx. The CapEx called for EUR 39 million compared to the EUR 26 million of the previous year. Especially the two projects in Digital Trust and especially InfoCert and Visura have impacted this result, but this has been a one-peak performance at what we have in the guidance and the budget for the following year. It's much lower and back to the traditional rate of investment of the group. On the networking capital, definitely we enter also into businesses like ABF and the Festech that has a very long cycle in terms of cash collection. Please, Josef.
Let me take a stab to the BUs. We're going to start with Digital Trust and then go on with cybersecurity as well as the business innovation. On this slide, we're giving you a snapshot. We already went over the very noticeable results that were registered by the Business Trust division. Outstanding numbers, great marginality, as we said. I think it's important to highlight now the positioning of InfoCert today at a pan-European level, right? The company grew tremendously in the last five to six years, but now we are very proud also to announce our placing with very noticeable names such as DocuSign and Adobe. On the bottom left, you can see how a relative part of InfoCert revenues comprising of Digital Trust management shows our positioning, and I think this is, you know, kudos to the entire business unit, which has done a tremendous job.
Today, Tinexta through InfoCert is the gold standard. It is a gold standard at a pan-European level. We are the only qualified trust provider that you can see at a pan-European level, ranging from obviously operating in Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and also in the U.K. more recently. We'll talk about Ashersia because it has done also a very good job in the last year or so. As a reminder, the beauty of this business model is the quality of revenue. On one side, you have off-the-shelf revenue, which are by nature recurring, 100% recurring revenue. These are mostly, as you know, mainly subscription-based towards private individuals or SMEs. More interestingly, I think, is the growing percentage also of enterprise solutions, which is growing in terms of recurring revenue as well. Those are more the tailored custom solutions that they are towards the corporations.
Some KPIs on the bottom also to give you the sheer depth and size of InfoCert: 10 million+ users, 60 million+ countries reached, and 5,600 corporate customers. On the right side, very promising market: EUR 4 billion is the value of Digital Trust management transformation management market in the EU, and about EUR 400 million of those are in Italy alone, growing high single to low double-digit in terms of CAGR from 2022 to 2026. Let me move to, I think, some areas of digital transaction management that are very interesting, namely digital identity and e-invoicing. Digital identity is extremely important. Pier Andrea highlighted obviously the big news. There is a lot of fuss about the European Digital Wallet, and it will be implemented by 2027.
Today, InfoCert is at the forefront of innovation, moving as one of the only qualified trust providers that is going in that direction together also with the company that we have in France, as you know, Sertiorob. Attributes will be an important part of the wallet. That means that qualified trust providers will have a pivotal role in actually authenticating the documents and authenticating the data that will go within the actual wallet. Again, going to the forefront of InfoCert, the opportunity to develop a proprietary wallet that InfoCert has already launched, and we are the first movers in the market. We're seeing that also a lot of the competitors are watching with a lot of appreciation what we're doing in the market, and this will be extremely important when it comes down to the interoperability of the upcoming European Digital Wallet.
Another area, which is, I think, extremely interesting, is e-invoicing. E-invoicing, which is mandatory in certain countries. I remind everybody that in Italy, it was introduced back in 2018. It is now becoming mandatory at a pan-European level. We're talking about EUR 1.5 billion worth of the market. Extremely interesting growth trends. You can see them are all, you know, in the double-digit league. EU member states such as France, Spain, Poland, and Germany are moving towards mandatory adoption. Here, we're actually utilizing the experience that we have back home in Italy to cross-border and utilize this experience abroad and therefore use economies of scale also in other European markets. All these, I would say, parts of digital transaction management are very new markets where we are by far, you know, ahead of the curve.
Let me also spend some time talking about, you know, we named this slide from the basics to bespoke. Extremely important because today, InfoCert is the only probably fully integrated international player that we have at a pan-European level, comparing ourselves with big and large U.S. corporates. That means spanning from essentials, certified email, e-signature, digital ID, you name it, all the way to bespoke, right? The walk of services and the breadth and the sheer size of them are all tailored depending on the market, depending on the client. You can see some of the most important blockbusters that we have here, the onboarding platform, Top and GoSign, I think need no presentation. InfoCert is a key player, represents also a consolidator at a European level. Obviously, you can see where the geographies are.
We always said that Italy is, with InfoCert, the number one and largest player that we have out there. There are other operators out there. There are operators in all those geographies that you see: the Nordics, Spain, Germany. There is also another large player in Italy, as everybody knows. You know, InfoCert has a couple of, I think, peculiar aspects that none of them have, such as the depth and size of the product offering, the adaptability, and also the, I would say, the flexibility of the technology and the reliability of the technology. It can count on a very stable shareholding structure that, as you know, is obviously in the hands of Tinexta. Together with Visura, have done a tremendous job. For that matter, Oddone already had pointed it out.
I think it's worthwhile talking about some of the strategic directives that Visura has had, in particular with the introduction and the investment that we're making in generative AI. Together with Andrea from Visura, we discussed what we can say today. This project is very interesting. It's named Lextel AI. It talks about utilizing and leveraging legal databases to help legal firms, legal offices, or legal counsels in the research of, you know, data using artificial intelligence that can be very helpful in terms of efficiency, in terms of also of time. No. Pressure and delivery. The project has three phases: presentation that we're actually doing as we speak. Andrea has been very busy in doing that, presenting to the different National Council of Lawyers. There's a second phase, which is usually early adopters, 150, 200 customers as a pivot plan.
Obviously, there will be the go-to market and all the advertising that we will do. Great job, and we hope that there will be a strong opening of a new market, which is great revenues and great margins. Going forward, let me wrap up Digital Trust with this last slide: taking integrated leadership to the next level, four major pillars, build on new revenue streams, fight Digital Trust commoditization, which is, I think, the pivotal aspect of going to the next level, expanding the market and gaining efficiency. I will just touch upon the most important ones here. We're obviously concentrating on the digital identity wallet. I mean, that is the big game changer, and it is a great opportunity for InfoCert and for all of the Digital Trust business division.
Utilizing generative AI also on existing product offering is another element that can help in building up new revenues and obviously working at a European level to leverage, as we said, our experience that we have back home in other European countries. Fight commodization means also utilizing e-signature in the document lifecycle management cycle, utilizing also certified messaging within international markets, the so-called Go Notice. Very important. That means expanding what is our bread and butter in Italy, also in other jurisdictions. Expand the market, right? It's all about that. It means increased geographical coverage. I think need not say more on that. There's always time and there's always the opportunity to gain efficiency.
As you all recall, we entered into a very important deal with Ashersia, and I think that the use of the so-called software factories offshore back both in Pakistan and in Tunisia will help on reducing costs in terms of program development, but also creating economies of scale. Moving forward, cybersecurity. In terms of cybersecurity, there's a lot of news there. We complemented the offer with the acquisition of Defense Technology, which everybody knows is a strategic asset. It is part of the National Parade on Cybersecurity. It is a handful of companies, so a very exquisite asset. Today, we are able to complement the offer.
That means the traditional Tinexta Cyber offer, which stems on four major pillars: advisory, product implementation services, managed security services, mostly geared towards the commercial and private sectors, while on the other side, we have Defense Technology, which is operating mostly and entirely into the public administration and those areas that you see on the bottom. A lot of fuss is all about defense, space, transport, and finance. Market is still very strong, growing, you know, with the numbers that you see there: high single, low double-digit. I think, as Pier Andrea mentioned today, there is a very important element that we need to highlight, which are regulatory tailwinds, right? The introduction of NIS2 and IS2 is a very great opportunity. On the bottom part of this slide, we're showing you who the top spenders are.
At a corporate level, you have large corporates ranging from finance, financial institutions, Telcos, manufacturing, retail, and the mid-corporate. Aside from that, we were pairing Defense Technology concentration on the public administration sector. Going forward, we said that there is a complete value proposition now more than before. Our potential is that of going and expanding in the mid-corporate and industrial and public administration. I would like to concentrate on the bottom side of the slide. I mean, the market is asking us, what are the synergies, right? What are the synergies between Defense Technology and Tinexta? We highlighted four major areas: corporate product, data intelligence, access to the PA, and synergies with the Digital Trust. You can see who's doing what, what the contributions are coming from. I think that there will be a lot to come our way.
There are a lot of tables to conjunctly put together between Defense Technology and Tinexta. We're working very actively in creating moving forward these synergies. As I said, regulatory tailwinds are an opportunity. I know this is a very busy slide. I'll concentrate only on some key aspects. The key aspects are that as of January of 2025, NIS2 requires companies to adopt and implement cybersecurity strategy. That's the news. The critical areas are the ones that you see at the center of the slide. Cyber attacks are increasing every day. The market is very fragmented. There is low level of awareness, and there are inconsistent levels of resiliency. The areas are on the far left. You can see that they range from energy, transport, space, all over. The critical focus areas that NIS2 will need to cover are the ones on the right.
You're looking at governance, risk management, incident management, business continuity, third parties, vulnerability, and technical measures. All these are covered today by Tinexta Cyber. We are actively reaching out as well as being reactive with our clients that are coming to us to ask what kind of services we can bring them, what we can actually offer them. Some of them are coming to us, and we're actually proactively reaching out to others. There will be definitely a very strong tailwind from regulation. Let me conclude the cybersecurity with the strategic outlook, offering and operations, as well as people in governance. We are very aware that, you know, this year was a transition year, as we said. We are focusing on improvement of the integration of the cyber services.
Now the companies have been entirely integrated, but it's all about optimizing also the costs, both internal and third-party related ones. In terms of people, they continue to be the number one asset of all business units here more than before. We are focusing extremely hard on sales and operations department where we need to improve the efficiency there. We are continuing on talent management as well as training programs, which become essential for growth in terms of people. Last but not least, business innovation. I think we have extensively talked about business innovation. I'll concentrate on the key takeaway. The key takeaway has a name. The name is Industry 5.0. We talked about how the Italian consultancy market is still a very strong market, at least in specific areas, for example, strategy, for example, IT.
The key element, I think, is the switch between Industry 4.0, which has come due, and Industry 5.0. On the bottom right, I think that's the main focus of this slide. You can see how the deductible rates have been going down for Industry 4.0 and are instead very interesting for Industry 5.0, where they are reaching over 45%. There is a great incentive in actually moving towards those incentives. From a strategic standpoint, you know, business innovation has acquired a lot of companies throughout the years. The left side of the slide shows how polarized the services have been, with special subsidized finance and automatic subsidized finance taking the center stage, as you can see with the large bubbles on the left.
We are moving towards an advisory-centric one-stop shop business model where every customer, being at a private or mid-corporate or even a large client, can find the service that they need. Industry 5.0, to go back to it, is the enabler. Industry 5.0 becomes the enabler. I think the market wants to hear some numbers here, and the numbers are very exciting. We talked about the deductible rates, which are an incentive by far, 45% historical high. The second most important is the limit of the smaller investments, which has been raised from EUR 2.5 million now to EUR 10 million. All the investments up to EUR 10 million fall into the deductible rate of 45%. That is a great accomplishment. The extension of the deadline, another important element, given the delay that we witnessed in 2024, is now the deadline is April of 2026.
The allocated amounts are very attractive: EUR 6.3 billion, of which only EUR 300 million have been serviced. There is a huge opportunity. On the bottom, as you can see, the enabling factors are the four major areas: production efficiency, investments in renewable energy, upgrading skills, as well as fiscal investments. Let me close the BUs with the last strategic outlook slide. Three major priorities here in business innovation: unified group strategy, product offer innovation, people in sales. We are working very strongly on the full integration and a unique value proposition. We want to leverage our European cross-border presence to work all around Europe and utilize study centers in specific areas. I will obviously concentrate also on the products that can be concentrated on mid-corporate, but also expanded on the large corps.
Let me leave the word now to Pier Andrea, which we'll go over very shortly on the last strategy pillars.
Yes, just a few words. Thank you, Josef, for your analysis of our business unit. It was, I think, very, very interesting. I would like to take the stage again to discuss some pillars of our strategy going forward at a qualitative level, reiterate what our priorities will be in this phase of our group history. Just really a few words. First of all, I would say that we are moving from a phase of expansion by M&A, which characterized the past few years, especially at an international level, towards a phase of integration.
Our focus in this year, in current year, will be on solidifying a unified value proposition and strategy under the direction of the parent company across all the three business units, consolidating our positioning as a leader both in Italy and in foreign markets with the ambition to become an aggregator in ICT space. Our goal is to address the needs of a wide range of companies and different business sectors in the ever-evolving digital space, shifting toward an advisory-centric business framework, leveraging on synergies across companies, division, and business verticals. Lastly, but not for importance, our strategy will always be motivated by a strong focus on employee welfare and the positive impact on the environment and the communities we operate in. Josef.
Last slide on the updates on ESG 2024 was a busy year.
I think it's nice to say that in all the three different divisions, we completed 100% of the activities. Very strong with Digital Trust, with 24 initiatives completed, cyber with seven, and business innovation with 19. Now I'll wrap it up too and leave the word to Oddone to give us the color on the guidance.
Okay, thank you, Josef. Let's, before entering into details of these figures, definitely we put together this plan with, let's say, a realistic approach in terms of revenue. You know, and I will work through the different business lines in order to let you understand. This plan will be also paired with some action on costs. Definitely trying to achieve the results only on revenue, I think, is going to be very difficult.
We put together in all the divisions in the business unit with different levels of attention, as Pier Andrea and Josef several times recalled, operational efficiency. Operational efficiency is something that is key to achieve the profitability that is into this plan. Let's start business unit by business unit. Digital Trust, we expect the revenue growing in the range of 7%-9%. You have seen that the profitability, the revenue growth of 24% on 23% on organic basis was 8.3%. We are perfectly in line with that. In terms of EBITDA adjusted, we are not going to not continue to grow in terms of profitability or EBITDA margin, but these figures include one of, let's say, the first-year impact of the project that was mentioned before by myself and Josef on the generative AI in Visura.
This is the reason why for the first time, EBITDA is not growing faster than revenue. We do believe that this outlook on this area is very solid, is very strong. The business unit was always able to deliver even better results. Cybersecurity here, if we look at the numbers like they are, is a little bit astonishing. I will work through to let you understand what is going on here. Obviously, these figures are incorporating the fact that Defense Technology has been consolidated in our books only for five months, and next year will be for 12 months. In any case, as is in the bottom line, but you cannot read, I will try to explain. We do expect a very strong growth in terms of revenue from Defense Technology. It is part of the plan. It is part of the plan that was supporting our acquisition.
The revenue in excess of 20% for Defense Technology is also driven by the change of mix. The change of mix that we are expecting that has already happened in the first part of the year, that there is a higher component of products, the lower component of services, is driving higher revenue growth, but still a very enjoyable 15% growth in terms of profitability. This is the first part. The second part is on cybersecurity, the former cybersecurity business. We all know that our business is a combination of more traditional, let's say, IT and system digital solution, let's put it this way, where we put together a plan in terms of revenue to be mainly flat, but trying to recover in terms of profitability and efficiency. This is the first part.
On the pure cybersecurity business, we plan to grow in the range of 10%-12%. This is absolutely coherent with the expectation of the market of the pure cybersecurity. Also here, we have to put together also a little bit of more efficient operations to achieve the results we have here. The company already started before the end of 2024 to put together this efficiency. Just to give you an idea, we are entering the new year with the lower recurring cost base. This definitely will help to achieve the results. Let's move now to the business innovation. The business innovation for us is, you know, we have now, it's the part where we have several businesses here. As I put here together, the difference is going to be made, and the plan is on top of the regular growth of some businesses.
I talk about digital innovation. I talk about other businesses we have here, the internal assetization, the activity we have in Spain. The real key driver of the results is the Industry 5.0. If we are able, and we have been very clear here to the financial community, if we are able to deliver that margin, we will achieve the plan. If we are not able to achieve, this is not. We know exactly how many orders we have to get it. As of today, the backlog is 50% of what we should deliver. On a weekly basis, we are updating this backlog. You know, we are confident to achieve this at the current status. This is the main driver.
For the rest, I think if we do operate aligned with what we have done in other businesses, then the Industry 5.0, we do believe that this plan is going to be achieved. ABF is a key point of our plan where we discuss a lot with Pier Andrea on this subject. It's very clear. We have volatility here. It's a volatility driven by the environment, by the political environment. Definitely now there is a stable government since a few weeks or months or weeks, but still the level of success rate of the dossier filed, and I would add also the timing to get the answer is still not at the state of the art. In our plan, we incorporated a difficult situation till June, July, and a normalization of the situation after the potential election that could occur in France.
The election could not occur one year before the last ones. Expecting that we are going towards a little bit more normal situation, we incorporated in our numbers these results. The result calls for, let's say, quite important recovery in terms of revenue. We do expect to recover EUR 8 million to EUR 9 million revenue compared to the previous year. Two or three of them should come from what we have not able to deliver by the end of the year, and the profitability should come because costs are there. If the dossier comes with the assessed rate, this is the result. It is very clear what we have to do. As Pier Andrea said, you know, the lesson was learned from the previous year. It is very clear to us. We have to be able to combine revenue growth and cost efficiency.
If not, you know, it's going to be difficult to achieve the results. We have the position on the marketing. We have the assets. We have the capabilities. We strongly believe that the guidance we are sharing with you today is going to be delivered under the circumstances that we have shared. To complete the big mix of what I explained before, this is the guidance. It's a guidance that still on revenue is expecting a quite interesting organic growth in the range of 7%-9% with a little bit of acceleration. You know, definitely what we have missed in 2024 on the Industry 5.0 had a huge impact on profitability of the results. What should come is impacting in a favorable way the result. Net financial position on EBITDA is expected to go down to in the range of 2.2%-2.4%.
It's very easy to calculate this if you add that we are going to have more EUR 10 million in the reduction of capex and EUR 10 million or lower tax paid. EUR 20 million are coming from there. The increase of the EBITDA at this level will help us to deliver this target, including the distribution of around EUR 40 million of dividends. That means a 55% payout ratio that is a quite significant increase compared to the previous year.
Great. Closing remarks, very quickly focus on recovery. We said that extensively. Integrating recently acquired companies, COM, Pan-European ICT leader, and nurturing a one-group identity. I'll close it there and leave the floor to Q&A. We also have our business unit heads, as you can see from the pictures, so you know who's speaking, who's who. I'll leave it to you guys for some questions.
Hi, thanks for the presentation. This is Chandra Sriraman from Stifel. Maybe a couple of questions. To start with, your 2025 guidance looks for a significant jump in organic growth. Just wanted to pick your brains in terms of your conservatism there. You mentioned a 50% coverage in terms of backlog already. Maybe how was it last year? How was it a couple of years ago? Giving a sense of that would be helpful. Related to that, on the cybersecurity side of things, there was a significant slowdown in summer, and things have not really picked up. What are we missing here? The macro seems to be okay, at least on the cyber side of things. Maybe some more color on that. What are the key catalysts you're looking for for recovery? That would be very helpful.
The 25 results in terms of revenue of organic growth, like we said, it's really solid on Digital Trust. On the cybersecurity, I explained the nature of the two areas, what is going on on the former activity we had, and then with the addition of Defense Technology that is expected. Now I'm sharing with what I shared today with Emilio that the backlog is in excess of 40% growth at the beginning of the year compared to the previous year. The plan on the area of Defense Technology is very solid. It was already expected at the moment, so it was already predicted at the moment of the acquisition. We entered the new year with 40% more backlog than the past. This is the situation. On the area of business innovation, it's very clear.
You know, if you are able to deliver the margin that was built up by InfoCert management, you know, the revenue is good. Basically, we had the lack of important business in 2024, and we have the business in 2025. This is the driver of the jump that we are doing. Obviously, like I said, there is the expectation of a jump of EUR 10 million revenue on ABF that is the area where we have some volatility there, but not driven by us. This is the expectation of, like I said, an environment where for six months it's going to be tough, and for six months we do expect to improve. Any other questions?
Hi, Alexandra Sova from Equita. Thank you for taking my questions. Three on my end. The first one, maybe a follow-up on the guidance.
Maybe a little bit of color of, so we will already see this acceleration in the first quarter. It's a question also considering the fact that the transition Industry 5.0, of course, was amended with the budget law. Since a lot of incentives were, I mean, foregone incentives coming from last year, if they will already, let's say, have an effect on your first quarter. The second one is maybe more on the midterm on the business innovation division. Since, as you mentioned, the transition Industry 5.0 will end up in April 2026 and is based on European funds, so the recovery fund and the transition Industry 4.0, the other pillar, is declining in terms of total volume. What next? Why do you believe this business unit could grow in Italy and also, of course, outside Italy?
The third one is maybe a curiosity since Defense Technology is also partially exposed to the defense sector. If you already see or do expect some acceleration also from the defense part apart from the pure cybersecurity business. Thank you.
I pick up the first one. Like I said, like you know, what is coming from the Industry 5.0 is related to investments. Investments in the period of the year. As most of the business of business innovation is expected to be, the orders, you know, we already collected 50% of the order we need to. We will continue to collect, but the revenue is expected to come later in the year. This for sure.
Okay. Hello. Hello, Alexander. The defense market grew because the strategy of Defense Technology is combine the market. The market grew because of two wars.
The market grew because the Italian government decided to upgrade our budget in Italy. The response of this budget, the most important program is the GCAP. The GCAP is Italian and U.S. and the U.K. and the Japanese fighter. This legacy market for Defense Technology in the past, do you remember? This market is flat. In the future, this market has a lot of questions. How many budgets in Europe, European countries want to upgrade this year, the next year? In our plan, we would like to increase our plan in 10% of revenues. It's a prudential, yes. I believe that in the future, when the European budgeting is clear, it's possible to upgrade our budget. Today is 10%. Another discussion is the space. The space has a different market. The Italian space economy has the PNRR for the future, and our growth is about 20%.
This increase is only for European growth or European market because the Italian market of the space is only the space economy. It's different. It's not space for government. For space economy, the MIMIT has the governance. Our minister has the governance. I think this is the question. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you for your question. It's a very good question, and we had a lot of, you know, discussion during the preparation of the plan. There is a slide that was showed before that when we were talking about business innovation, talked about acquisitions to the Fieschi war and funding project. What we are doing here is trying to exploit other businesses very close to the traditional finance and grant businesses that may help us to continue to grow, even though this part of business, as of the current regulation, is expected to be.
We invested three years ago in the digital innovation, and this part is going up from EUR 17 million. Next year is going to be EUR 23 million, EUR 24 million, and we expect to grow at a very interesting pace. We have internally a division that is working on, let's say, ESG, sustainability, energy, and education that is expected. We reinforce also with management that is expected to grow also here even at a faster pace. Obviously, we acquire, basically, we put together a new company that is a Warrant funding project that is working on Finanza Valutativa that is going to help a lot to grow also here. On top, we do expect the ABF Group to continue to grow.
It is clear that it's going to be, if the rules are going to stay like this, it's going to be a reshuffle in terms of weight of the different parts of business. Still, we are working sincere to address the point that sooner or later, we expect very late, but sooner or later we can. Also on this, we are already working now in order to recover efficiency as much as possible in order to be able to have a soft landing in case this is going to happen. We got the point. We know we are on the subject, but it's something that when it comes, we will be very ready on this.
I think we have a question from the audience. If you can open up the line for just a second. No, no. Question is coming from, I am talking to the Reggia. Vai, Russell.
Hello, Josef. Can you hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you. Go ahead.
Right, right. Thank you. I have three questions. First of all, it's with respect to ABF. On slide 15, you talk about the 2025 action plan. Just be clear, is that something you are actually in the process of doing or that's actually happened in terms of looking at the order book customer base? I guess my question is, you're guiding to revenue on that business now of about EUR 29 million versus the EUR 30 million in 2023. What is actually happening? Are you effectively looking at the proposals, the applications there, and actually just trimming them down to say some are likely to be more successful and others are not? Is it effectively trying to have a greater success rate of fewer applications?
My second question then is just generally in the outlook, you talked about limited M&A and obviously the balance sheet is a bit higher than it was. Just your general feelings on that and evaluations in the market. Is it a bad year to be able to do much M&A given there seems to be lots of growth opportunities out there? My third question on Digital Trust is, if you go back to this time last year, I think you were forecasting 10% to 12% growth for the next three years. You've done 8% in 2024 and now you're guiding to 7% to 9% for 2026. It looks as though there's just a bit more caution there. I'd be interested in your views on that, please. Thank you. I start from the ABF question.
The company in 2024, in 2023, had a success rate of in excess of 70%. Driven by the situation, the success rate was 44%. We put together a plan where, like I said, expecting a better political situation in the second part of the year that is the most important. Overall, we are expecting a success rate to grow, but not to exceed 50%. Basically, we expect, based on some actions that the management had put in place to enlarge the coverage of the market and the client and to increase the number of dossiers to be filed. Also, we are expecting to grow in some other parts of business that are, let's say, as of today, less relevant and talking to some other businesses that are within ABF. This is part of the drivers of the growth.
Like I said before, there are at least a couple of million in the range of EUR 2 million-EUR 3 million every day that shifted from 2024 to 2025. On a comparable basis, the growth is a little bit lower. Definitely here, we try to have a much more prudent approach. The plan of the management has been, I would say, even more aggressive than the plan that we are sharing today with you. We are following me on a daily basis, calling, what is the revenue today, yesterday, tomorrow, and something like that. This is the situation. Like I said, the basics of the achievement of the plan are there. The volatility is higher than the other businesses. In terms of Digital Trust, I would say we have not been too much cautious.
Danilo can explain much better than me that to continue to deliver 10% growth is difficult, but we have this one-off cost that is coming from the launch of generative AI. I leave to Danilo to explain a little bit on the growth of the business.
Good afternoon and thanks for the questions. We are in a likely segment of the market. To be honest, we are, if you want, taking advantage of some investment we made five or even eight years ago. In this moment, just to mention one number, we are serving over 200 banks in Europe and growing. We have more than 20 international patents and growing. As we have seen in the slides presented by Josef, size matters. In this moment, fingers crossed, we are really shortlisted for some significant tender all over Europe.
Our brand to date is, let's say, quite well associated with the digital transformation. Definitely for 2025, but I'm really optimistic even for the future. This double-digit growth that we have seen has been more or less always been achieved is at our reach.
Thank you, Danilo. I think there was another question from Russell regarding M&A. As Pier Andrea was mentioning, this year was mostly about integration. We are concentrating on that. We have done a lot of deals. We did the Defense Technology deal, we did the ABF deal during 2024. I think it's Lenovis as well. We did a lot. This would be a year where we're going to concentrate on making the money work at this point. Obviously, if there's any opportunities out there, we're constantly looking at the market and we'll decide on a basis by cases basis.
Any questions further from, yes, from the audience? Chandra?
Sorry, maybe just a follow-up on margins. You're trying to reversion your BI's business away from subsidized financing towards advisory. Should we assume that the margins of the last few years is very much behind us and there's a new reset of margin expectations going forward? On a related note, Digital Trust, I understand that you're investing on GenAI this year. What are the medium-term margin expectations for Digital Trust?
Margin expectations for Digital Trust in 2025 are expected to be aligned with the historical peak. I'm trying to say what Josef is saying. We are going to keep the historical peak, but I know that Danilo is working very hard on the subject.
To be honest with you, I think that trying to keep that level of margin, also because it's combined with a very high level of cash conversion, is very important to us. If we are talking about the margin on business innovation, for sure, what's happened in terms of margin in the past, driven by the mix, is difficult to keep in terms of EBITDA margin. In terms of absolute value, we are enlarging our offer, adding some other businesses. We do expect in absolute term, at least for 2026, not to be impacted. In 2027, we do expect that the continued growth of other businesses will help us to continue to grow. Again, driven by the volatility of this market and what is going on, this is the strategy. It's very clear. We enlarge our offer.
We continue to enlarge the offer. The feedback from the market are definitely positive.
Do you have any other questions? Yes, Andrea. Pierre-André has stepped away because he had another meeting. We will see Pierre-André later. Thank you, Pierre-André.
Very quickly, overall on the group, in particular on business innovation, we know that you are now very backhanded in terms of profitability in the last quarter. Will this year be more or less the same or even be less, a little bit more? As far as business innovation is concerned, the comparison basis in this year, first quarter, second quarter, will be very favorable. Should we see some sign of recovery, although these are not important quarters?
What do you see? Last year, it has been a weak Q1. This is the reason.
You got advantage of having an easy comparable basis.
You already anticipated first half is not going to be exciting, but we will see anyway some improvement compared to last year.
In Italy, the Industry 5.0 is not changing the picture in Q1. That is for sure. In ABF, should be better. Should be better. Like Josef showed to you, is a business where we have a solid foundation for achieving the plan, but still, the most part of the profit is coming from the second half of the year. Again, Andrea, as we are talking about small numbers, if I am going to deliver EUR 4 million or EUR 5 million, I can tell you I am growing 25%. At the end of the day, still EUR 1 million EBITDA out of EUR 60 million that I have to deliver. Obviously, it is very important to start well.
They know how frequently we are speaking every week on the result of the company. Again, we have our plan. We have our action. I'm more focused on the action. If we are delivering the action on costs that we are going to do, the revenue that we put in the plan, excluding ABF, should be very solid. That's the point. As since many years, definitely the growth rate here, despite the additional Defense Technology that is boosting significantly, is definitely the most prudent you have seen since ever. I feel that not most prudent, most realistic, I would say.
Maybe to add one comment on Industry 5.0, since you asked Andrea, Indusrty 5.0 is a great opportunity, but it takes time to put around to actually carry forward the activities.
We are very busy already in proactively reaching out to clients and clients reaching out to us, identifying the need, and then bringing the filing on board. It will take time. It is not something that will be on off, but it is more spread out during the year. Any other questions from the audience? If there are no more, thank you very much. There are refreshments, so you can use the refreshment part and thank you for coming.
Thank you. Bye.