Good morning from Hamburg, and welcome to Today's Earnings Call of the Shelly Group AD. In today's earnings call, we will delve into the financial numbers of the first half of 2024. Warm welcome to Co-CEO Dimitar Dimitrov and Co-CEO Wolfgang Kirsch, who will start with the presentation shortly. After the presentation, we will move forward with the Q&A session. With this, let's start. Mr. Wolfgang Kirsch, the stage is yours.
Yeah. Thank you very much, and thank you—thanks to all of you for joining our H1 earnings call. On behalf of Dimitar Dimitrov and myself, we are really happy to show you and to lead you through all our numbers and give some more information. As usual, I will start with the highlights. Dimitar will talk about products and product-related stuff. Then we go a bit more into financial details and give an outlook for the rest of the year. We make smart building solutions. We make building smart. We are talking about more smart buildings than smart home, because we are moving as well into new segments. We will cover that as well during the presentation. And as well, a general chart that you have already seen a couple of times.
Since 2018, when we sold the first Shelly device, we have sold now 15.5 million by the end of June of this year. 6.7 million in the last 12 months, which shows that we are accelerating our growth. Shelly devices are used in more than 3.3 million households, and we have round about half of that, a little bit less, using our cloud as well, and that's as well increasing relatively fast. And, our cloud rating increased as well. That is something very important for us, and as well, if we come back later to the premium version of the cloud, you will see some first results there as well. So let me come to the highlights of 2024. We are continuing to deliver.
All our KPIs, revenue, EBIT targets were met in the first half of the year. The revenue growth is above the market in all regions. We think, and all the market researchers say, that the market is growing by 15%-20%. We are outperforming that. We have successfully enlarged, and continue doing it, our distribution channels. We have significant growth of our addressable customer ownership. You have seen this with the application. You will see this later with the premium app development. We have started with an installer finder. We have some positive developments here to make easier for customers that are not self-installing to find the right person helping them. And we have made an acquisition of assets of a company producing smart locks. We will come back to that.
That will enlarge our portfolio and will help us to reach all our ambitious targets. Now to the numbers. In the first half of the year, our revenue grew by 49% to EUR 41.8 million. That is above the market. Once again, the market is expected to grow 15%-20%. That means with 49%, we are outperforming the market clearly. Our EBIT is in line or even a little bit above the expectations. Our own expectations of EBIT are 25%. We have reached an EBIT margin of 25.8%, which is a little bit, again, a little bit above our own ambitions that actually we set for 2026, not already for 2024, but we have reached them in 2023, and we continue being on that level or around that level.
So EBIT growing 54.9% in the first half of the year. Our cash goes mainly in the working capital, so you see that we have a reduction of cash, although we have a +ve EBIT and +ve net profit in the first half of the year. You will later see why this is happening, and this is something that we are not actively managing, because we are 100% revenue-driven, and wanna keep that speed as well, but we come to this point later in the presentation as well. We are growing our distribution landscapes with a lot of partners. In the do-it-yourself area, we are moving more and more into do-it-yourself chains, like Leroy Merlin in more and more countries, like Hornbach in more and more countries.
They all plan to take us in not only one or two, but in all of their regions. On the professional side, we have as well some very good developments. We are working with Rexel in some regions already. We finally signed contracts with them in two very big countries, in Germany and in the U.K., which should help us to grow business in the professional section, as well. Something that is very interesting for us, some very first steps into these markets, that's when I mentioned at the beginning, we are not only smart home, we are smart, smart buildings. We have some cooperations with in different regions and some test projects in different regions. One of them in Italy, together with Amazon Alexa and Zucchetti. Zucchetti is a relatively big Italian software development company.
They have developed a fleet management system. That means a software that can do things that our application is not able to do. For example, steering a whole hotel that is equipped with Alexa and with Shelly devices, room by room and as a total. So we are moving into this business with them in Italy, in the U.K., and in Spain. We have some first projects in smart properties, so working with builders that build houses with a lot of apartments, equip them with Alexa, equip them with Shelly devices. We have some senior living projects in Germany. We will make a roadshow to senior living facilities together with Alexa, in the second half of this year. And we have one project that is very, very promising with a company called Josefs-Gesellschaft.
They operate homes for handicapped people, and they have found out that with the combination of Alexa and Shelly, they can make the life of the people much easier, and at the same time, they can save costs, because if someone has a problem and pushes the emergency button just because the light has to be switched on. It's much better and easier, more reliable to do that with Alexa and Shelly combinations. First concept, very positive. They will roll this out to all their facilities. For us, this is the next step into visibility and will help us to get more business in this area. So now we talk about products, or Dimitar talks about products. I forgot to switch here, by the way. Now it's you on here.
Thank you very much, Wolfgang. Yeah, what I can say about the products is very positive development because we're going very fast and releasing new products and new services. But also in the second quarter, we show something very important to our customers and our partners, that the Shelly is much stable than the bigger company related to the internet and the service outages over the world. On July 19, when there is a global outage, there is no single Shelly customer affected.
This is basically because with the background of the company, with the deep software understanding and the network infrastructure, we are completely independent from the big services, which also not only is helping us for such a reliability, high availability, but also save significant amount of costs because we don't pay into the third-party services for this, except hosting the machines. As we say, it happens in Belgium, and this is Google facility for that. But except that, everything else is made from ourselves. Next, something which is important already for 2024, we have 11 new products updates from the oldest version to the new generation of the products.
We have 19 new products which we release on the markets, and we have a completely one new product category. This is compared with a year ago, we are going much faster, even that the criteria of the quality and the criteria of the. We need to certify this product not just for Europe, but also for United Kingdom, also for Australia, also United States, under so many regulations. For outlook, in our pipeline is 40-60 new different products, which is coming, and they will be ready to end of the year or very early beginning of the next year.
But what I can say that development is going very well, the development team is growing, and they have more and more power to develop new products and new services. Something which is important for the long time working for the solution for the smart locks. One very good option is the company which really has amazing work by technology, by service. But unfortunately, the company is so small and they doesn't have opportunity to reach the right market for their products. This is the first one. The second one, they make small little mistakes with the manufacturing and the partners, and they going... And then for that, they start to selling their assets.
What we're seeing that just for EUR 50,000, we can buy lots of assets, which is including stock, the intellectual property, a good customer base. And now we're working very closely, first, to continue the production. The second one is to integrate the complete solution with the Shelly solution. We working also to decrease the production cost using our exchanging some components or using our production facility in China. And we expecting the first result for this asset acquisition to be visible at the beginning of 2025.
But this is a completely new, how say, the new target and the new potential, because the LOQED at the moment is something which is not related directly with the home automation, but it's related to the smartphone, which give us one more option and also give us options on our clients to combinate- to, to combine between the- our devices and the LOQED devices, which also should be, should soon they will be also powered by Shelly. In the last quarter, in the beginning and the half of the year, our visibility in Europe is significantly increased. We can say that there is no tech media in the Europe which not make article for our products.
Most of our products actually is rated with the five stars in different categories. A lot of third parties and distributors, especially the ones which are selling the inverters and solar systems, they explicitly recommended the Shelly devices, and some of them recommended only Shelly devices to work together with their own equipment, which give to their customers additional possibility or additional opportunity to save the energy, to monitor, to control the the system. Yeah. Something which is very, very prestigious for us, that the Shelly is nominated for the Golden Computer from Computer BILD Germany. Even that we don't make a computer, the Golden Computer is not only for the PC or laptops, they also evaluating the services related to IT services and IoT services.
We are number one in the DACH region in the DACH region related to the new energy, controlling, monitoring the energy, which for us is very important sign that we going on the right way. Also something which is important, years ago, we have no idea about our installers. We know that some of the installers using Shelly devices, but we know that we are mostly introducing our brands. For that one, we start with our educational programs and our academies. We start to work with the more and more electricians all over Europe. Then the first results is here, because just for the Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, you can see that a lot of electricians already is our database. They receive the information about the new devices.
They receive information about the education with additional educational materials. If somebody which make big buildings or want to automate the homes or something, the building, now we can recommend some installers by the experience to help him, which is important. Yeah. Now, boring case with financial details.
Yeah. So now back to the, to the boring numbers. You have seen that chart, that's why I go directly to the next one. Here we are showing the revenue development quarter-over-quarter. As well, yeah, sorry, a bit boring, but, but quite good for us. So you see that, revenue is continuously growing, and in the second quarter of 2024, it accelerated a little bit. So if we take the 49% for the full first half of the year, in the first quarter, we grew 45.5%, in the second quarter, 52.7%. So the growth is accelerating. And with this, we are a little bit above our own expectations, and on a good way to reach the annual targets.
Important for us as well, I mentioned a couple of times that we want to keep our around 25% EBIT margin level. After six months, 25.8%. In the second quarter as well here, a small acceleration. We grew the EBIT 66.4%, so even above the the revenue speed. We are not expecting to, and we are not targeting to increase the the EBIT margin to 28% or 30%, because we are really doing everything to reach our revenue targets, to overachieve the revenue targets, if possible. We don't wanna sacrifice margin, but we are not planning to grow margin continuously faster than the revenue. That's very important for us. If you look to the regions, the DACH region is staying our our strongest region. It's always around the 50%.
In the first six, six months of this year, DACH was growing, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, was growing 62.8%, so above the average, significantly above the average, which is something that on the one hand side, we, we like. On the other hand side, we would like to see the rest of Europe growing faster, but as well here, rest of Europe, 37.2%. I remind you once again, the market is 15%-20%, which means that as well here we are outperforming this market-- the market, and rest of the world on a very small level, 34.4%. Why is that growing over proportional? We think this is coming mainly from huge visibility. Dimitar showed a couple of charts. Computer BILD nomination is something that proves that we are visible. All the tech magazines are writing about us.
A lot of installers have interest to work with our products. More and more retailers are carrying, or all retailers are basically carrying our products. And that gives, that gives a huge visibility, combined with a good product quality, a lot of recommendations, and that is accelerating. We think that the same will happen after an onboarding phase in, in the rest of Europe as well, and in other regions of the world as well. It always takes two, three years, until we have reached a certain level in the, in the country, and then what I usually call the hockey stick effect comes. So it goes... It starts slow, and then it really goes up and accelerates. And we expect this to happen in more and more countries in Europe, and not only in the DACH region.
This is the first time that we show some numbers about our premium app. We always said it's still on a very low level, but we get constantly questions asked about how is the development? Are we happy? We can say we are happy and satisfied with the development. In the first six months of the year, we have, we had 13,000 paying users, that led to a revenue from premium services of EUR 200,000. We expect with all the calculations and the developments, we see that this will be around about EUR 600,000 by the end of the year. And for the next two years, we expect this to round about double year over year.
We as well, and I told you at the very beginning, we did a lot for the rating of our standard application, that is now rated with 4.7 or 4.8. It was only at three or even below three, so not satisfying. We did a lot in the first six months of this year. At the same time, now we start to actively promote the premium app. We have built a small team of developers making the premium app better, because we see it works, and now we will start to invest more. And the good news here is that more or less revenue equals gross margin, because we have some very small additional costs.
But Dimitar mentioned the quality of our cloud and the way managing the cloud, that leads to a very high profitability in this section. So we expect this to grow. And this in 2026, EUR 2.5 million revenue or more or less, profit is something that is quite amazing for us. The cash flow, that's the only chart that shows a lot of red, which is not alarming for us. We still have enough cash, EUR 10.5 million cash on the bank account by the end of June. And as I said at the very beginning, we are investing as much as possible in growth. We are not actively managing in a good way, and I come to this in a second, our working capital.
If we go through this, this line, we have increased our inventory by EUR 4.2 million. We have EUR 2 million higher prepayments to factories, mainly in China, mainly for chips that we need for the second half of the year. We have higher customer receivables, EUR 2.3 million more, which comes, of course, from a more and more professional distribution, because if you work with, with bigger distributors, they all have to give payment terms to, to wholesalers, to their electricians. So they usually demand 30 or even more days of payment terms, and no one is paying upfront, anymore, or only a very few number of customers. And we have increased our shares in Shelly Tech. That was planned. That already happened beginning of the year. And in Shelly Asia, that's the company that is controlling our Asian factory.
That was a minority shareholding. Now, we have the majority as well, because we start selling as well in Asia. Still on a very low level, but quite promising, and we want to consolidate that, of course, and that's why we increased the number of shares there. We have activated EUR 800,000 of R&D investments. We have paid out a dividend. That happened a year ago in July. In this year, it happened already in June, of EUR 2.3 million. We still have an equity ratio of 88.8%, so all this is, is very promising. And, we have secured, just in case, although we do not expect to have need for that, we have secured a small bank line.
If we need to run over the zero line or below the zero line, we are safe on that way as well. But we expect that the cash stays on this level round about until the end of the year. So now, having said that, we are not actively working our working capital. And one of the questions that is constantly asked by investors is: what about working capital? And as I said, usually the answer is we are a growth case, so we invest whatever we can in growth, and we prefer to have high stocks and high availability and not losing a euro of revenue. And this year, especially, we have a couple of changes on generations. We switch from 2nd-gen to 3rd-gen devices, and soon we will switch to 4th-gen devices.
That makes our life as well a little bit more complicated. We are close to finalizing the implementation of SAP. That will give us a lot of advantages in planning, more detailed information, and then we can start to work on a reduction on our stock. Today, we have four to five months of stock here in Sofia, plus all the prepayments that we have to do to China. We want to reduce that. We will start as well, negotiating payment terms or longer payment terms, more payment terms with Chinese suppliers and U.S. suppliers. We are working with Silicon Labs as well on the chip side. We will have more restrictive customer payment terms as far as this is possible. We always have factoring as an option.
Sorry, our receivables are insured, so we are already in discussion with some companies that at a very interesting interest rate are offering factoring. We don't want to do that if not needed, but that could be as well an option. On the margin side, because that's the second question that you are always asking: is our margin sustainable? We think yes. On the one hand side, in the last one and a half years, we did not increase a single price, although competition is doing that, so we would have the possibility to increase the prices slightly and still keep a very aggressive position in the market. Sorry. And we are not doing that because as well here, we want to push revenue as much as possible.
But we are now building a dedicated procurement department, because we have the right size to do so here in Sofia and in China. That will, on the one hand side, have a better planning. We'll have more negotiations with factories and suppliers to use our economies of scale to reduce the price. A better stock steering leads as well to better margins. If you have the right products available in the right quantity, you can sell them at higher prices, don't have to compromise anything here. And we think that now, of course, it's a bit complicated with the war going around the Suez Canal.
We are not able to ship that much with sea freight, but if we move to sea freight, we can have a lot of economies, and this all comes with a better planning, and can reduce the stock. At the same time, using sea freight, can increase our margin significantly. So we are talking about some % points that are available here. So that's all things that we want to use to secure our margin, to stabilize our margin, not necessarily to increase it above the 25%, but to have some reserve that we can increase, sorry, invest in more growth, or use to stabilize, the EBIT margin and the gross margin. That's the profit and loss. I think we do not go through that. Just one line, maybe. Net income, EUR 9.2 million.
You know that in Bulgaria, we have a lot of tax advantages, low tax rates, so it increased by 58% in the first six months. That's as well a very interesting number. Now, about this year. So I made a comparison here about at the same time of the year, after six months, where have we been in the last two years compared to this year in the achievement of our annual targets? In 2022, after six months, we have reached 38.4% of our annual target. In 2023, at the same time, 37.4%, and this year we are at 39.8%. So with this, we feel safe to confirm our annual target of EUR 105 million.
We have a little bit of a reserve, but you know that we as well have a very important fourth quarter with Black Friday, with a lot of Christmas season effects. And we don't wanna gamble and increase our target now. So the EUR 105, we feel comfortable. We have a small reserve. Everything should be fine reaching that target. Hopefully, a little bit more, but we will see. We will give more details and more information in a planned Capital Markets Day that we want to hold on the fifth of November in Frankfurt. This is the day where we want to go much more in strategic updates, financial deep dives, inform you about our ambition, 2020-2030.
What does this mean for revenue, for households, for a lot of information, to give you a good feeling that we are constantly growing and not just a company that is booming and pushing, but that keeps the promises. We will as well give some information about roadmap and some product demonstrations there. So look forward, save the day already, fifth of eleven. Hopefully, this will be confirmed, but right now everything looks nice. Should not be holiday season and no other big events, so that hopefully a lot of you can attend. We will do this in a combined form, so physically in Frankfurt as well as a video stream, but as more of you are in Frankfurt and can touch the product and can as well have personal contact to us, I think that would be very helpful.
So that leads to the summary already. We have reached our revenue and EBIT target in H1. We are even a little bit above. All regions grow above the markets. That's something we are very proud of. We want to keep that speed. This growth is sustainable. We see that we continue growing in DACH, where we are quite strong already, but as well outside of DACH. And there are not a lot of competitors that can say that. There are a lot of regional players that have problems to leave their home country, and we see that our products work as well in Italy, in Spain, in the Benelux, in Nordics and in other regions of Europe and in the world. We continue to expand regionally. We continue to expand from do-it-yourself to the professional market.
In some regions, we are well ahead of that. Our best region in professional market is well above 30% professional share already. So we see the product works, the products work in that environment as well. We have a wider range of products as we had before, now with the entrance in Smart Home business, sorry, Smart Locks business. Our cloud and our premium app is additional potential that we start to use now, and you see that we have some first results. We confirm the guidance for this year, EUR 105 million revenue and EUR 26 million of EBIT, as well as the 2026 goal of EUR +200 million revenue and EUR +50 million EBIT.
And we start to implement this year, the first measures to optimize working capital, and we will really start this, in 2025, and, we hope to see some first effects on working capital as well. Although we are still in a very comfortable cash situation and do not see any problem that we run out of money. That's all. We are ready for questions. If you want to download the presentation, you can do it here, or you can do it from the Montega platform. And always happy if you subscribe to our newsletter to get more information. And now I'm listening to... We are listening to your questions.
Yeah, thank you so much for the insight and presentation, and we're moving now to the Q&A session. Just as a reminder, we would like to ask you to ask your question via the audio line. To do so, please just use the raise your hand button. If you're dialed in via phone, you can do this with the key combination star nine, followed by star six, or you can also use our chat. And we have a first question from Bastian Brach. Thank you so much, Bastian Brach. You could speak now.
Thank you. Three questions for me in total, but I ask them one by one. The first for Dimitar. We have seen quite a rapid pace of product development, especially this year and also in the second half. Do you plan to continue that in 2025 and the years following that, or yeah-
Yeah.
Are you running out of ideas?
Yeah, definitely. I can tell there is a 2025 will be year of the generation four of the most of the devices, which mean the more capability, more protocols and much useful devices. This is something which is where we're going. And on top of that, we have a plan to also increase the line, maybe to go a little bit more into the retail sector, not only for electricians, for the household devices, which everybody can use. Yeah, but there is a lot to do. And with the team, with increasing capacity, we can do a lot. And we're working on that in 2026. We know that our advantage is our deep knowledge about the IoT controlling and all these things for the...
While most other players don't work so hard on them.
Okay, thank you. The next two are for Wolfgang. So one on the G&A side. You have previously flagged the ramp up in personnel over 2023, especially, and we've seen quite some positive developments in the G&A margin. Do you expect to grow that under proportionally in the future as well? So, that the majority of the personnel ramp up is over for now, with obviously quite some additions in headcount, but further leverage there.
Yeah, we will add, we will add more headcount. We have around about worldwide, around about 250 people now. 120 of them are working in technology, so in R&D, in support functions and quality control and others. And we will have less headcount growth as in the last years, but we will have some people in Western Europe, especially in sales. Local people that are, of course, Western Europe with much higher tax rates that are a bit more expensive, but will not be that much. Although we expect that, so to grow the headcount, we think that salaries will grow under proportional to the revenue development. But we have a lot of investments in marketing, mainly in events that we participate in.
So this year we have, in Germany alone, we have, IFA incoming in September. We have, we had Light + Building already, very successful for us. And in the U.S., we have been at CES, we have been at IoT in Barcelona, and we have four or five more smaller trade shows to come that we will participate. We are planning this for next year, and there will be a lot... Like, a very interesting market for us, just as an example, is Turkey. There is a Light + Building event in Turkey this year, and we will participate there. So that, that costs a lot of money, but it brings as well a lot of visibility for, for new markets.
In general, once again, salaries, I think the percentages or the salaries will grow under proportional because we are not hiring that many people anymore. Of course, we have to pay as well higher salaries to the existing people in the next years. But we are not planning to increase our EBIT margin, so everything that we have on top will go 100% into growth, visibility, marketing measures, hiring people in Western European countries that know the countries much better.
Yes. Thank you. One follow-up on that. On the marketing side, this also includes paid search, like Google advertising and co, right?
Yes, but it's a relatively small proportion. It's much more the trade shows.
Mm-hmm.
More is what we invest in, in paid influencers. Some of the influencer things are unpaid, some are paid. That gives us a much better visibility and payback than just a pure Google Search. But yes, we have some Google Search and Facebook and Instagram as well, where we invest, and we see some very good return on investments there.
Okay, thank you. And then last one from me on the Rest of World segment, which seemed to decelerate a bit in the growth rate in Q2. Can you maybe flag the drivers here and what will you, you leave us to accelerate in H2 and next year?
Yeah, Bastian, let me put it like that: Our core market is Europe. Whatever happens in other countries, of course, we take, and as I mentioned, especially Asia, because we increased our share in Shelly Asia, to be able to consolidate this, because we see some very positive developments there. We have now started, after we have been contacted by Amazon Australia last year, and now we were able to start there because it needs certifications for the products and a couple of other stuff. Now, we have been contacted by Amazon Japan. They want to work with us and sell our products because they see the success in other regions. That's all fine, but we cannot do everything at the same time.
So I think Rest of the World with +30% growth compared to a market that is 15%-20% is very good. And at a certain point, we will, we will maybe after we have covered all the European countries with people and we see the right development there, we will have a clearer focus on other regions. But right now, we get more growth out of Europe. We have, we have areas like the United Kingdom is one of the biggest markets for smart home products in, in Europe, and we are at the very beginning there. We see nice growth rates, but it's the very beginning. So we can get much more there, much closer to where we are than, than from some other regions.
Okay, thank you. Very clear. That's it for me.
Thank you so much, Mr. Brach, and also for answering the questions. We have another question from Mr. Kawai. You should be able to speak now.
Hello, can you hear me now? Now?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. So here's Shinichi Kawai from Howaldt & Co. Congratulations on your amazing quarter again. I just wanna understand the selling average price development. How much of the sales growth coming from the average price? And then, Dimitar, you mentioned that you're gonna have a lot more products coming up in fiscal year 2024 and 2025. And do you expect more price increase because of the new products? Yeah, this price developments will be really interesting for me. Thank you.
Okay. So I have to admit, I did not make that calculation yet. But just some good guesses. We have our most sold... Sorry, not our most sold product, our most revenue product is a quite expensive product. That's an energy meter. That's a category that is driving the market, that increased our average selling price. In numbers, the most sold product are different ones. That's normal relays, that's the plugs, that have a relatively low price. And at the same time, as we have more expensive products, and you mentioned that we have something in the pipeline because we talked a couple of times about the TRV that will be there for the heating season. That's a product that is above average price, that will increase the average price.
We as well have some Bluetooth devices that are below the average price that will reduce this. So we will see, that's what we think, a little increase in the average selling price, but not a huge jump.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for the question, Mr. Kawai. We have another question from Stefan Puwald. You should be able to speak now.
Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Very good. Yeah, I was wondering if you can say something about your enthusiast community development and your trends on the influencer front. That's one of the core strengths of your company, that you have all these fans doing free marketing and advising others on how to use the chips.
Yeah, the fan base-
Another one.
The fan base in our core markets is continuing to grow by around about 10, 15, 20% every quarter. So not proportionately to revenue, because some of them are adding more devices to their solution, and some, after they have solved their issues, asked their questions, got all the answers, they are not active anymore. But we are doing more and more in new territories. So I mentioned United Kingdom. That is the core market for us or starts to be a core market for us with a huge potential. So we will go there in these platforms. We will contact specifically the influencers that we want to work with to build the same as we have in other regions.
It's not easy, because what happened in the DACH region mainly and in some others, it happened. It was not something that we planned like that. You cannot really copy that to other regions. But we see that going... continuing this way with influencers and with YouTubers, the right corporations, with the right newspapers, that leads to a lot of visibility and leads as well to a lot of new videos that people make and that take off. I think Dimitar that was-
Yeah, I can add there. It's growing very well in the two ways. For example, one example, on Sunday, we published something about related to the new device in the community, and for the first time ever, we seen that just for the 48 hours, we reach over 100K engagements to this post and share to almost everywhere in other smart home and enthusiast group in the Facebook, which it never happens before. Also, the main group in Facebook is close to the 100K people. Our forum is increasing, and the general forum is still more than 100K people. Let's say that if you combine all kind of the channels, we reaching at maybe 300,000 people, which are very actively working on the Shelly devices.
On another side, with the Shelly Academy, what we've seen in very positive development, that the most enthusiastic customers, they start with, they have. They're on the different knowledge level. And they can help not only with the wiring, but now they can help many customers also with some software development, scripts development inside the devices. Let's say that, I think until now, more than 3,000 people is finished successfully the academy. Which mean they spent almost two months, 4-6 hours per week online, an additional 4-6 hours to prepare their on the side everything for the next exam and for the next lessons.
Which is a very huge development, because now we have more and more educated, deeply educated people about the Shelly ecosystem and Shelly devices.
Okay, thank you. And, you were talking about the focus on the Europe region. I'm just wondering if there's any spillover, in terms of competition from other large international markets where, you know, in the U.S., if you have a big business, obviously that means, economies of scale, and as you say, the products, travel quite well. So what do you see on the competitive fronts, as you're not covering all of these large, international markets that also already have large volumes in the product category?
Yeah, by competitors, we didn't see nothing for the last year, one and a half year. There's some tries, there is some copycats of our devices, which some companies, even Chinese, even European, they try to sell. Unfortunately, the Shelly is not just how the devices looks like. It's a very huge ecosystem with everything which we propose, and this tries is completely unsuccessful. But what we've seen that at the moment is very important. Competitors, they see what we do, and they try to follow. They still far behind us, but as we're moving faster and faster. But yes, we see that at the moment, really, the Shelly is the leading innovator for the smart home and smart buildings worldwide.
And no direct pressure, especially in the European market from somebody, just tries, I can say the unsuccessful copy of the devices. United States, the movement is not so fast. A lot of Chinese companies selling here. Every month, we can see a different kind of the products which is on the market, nothing which is extremely different and innovative. We've seen that in United States, the people start to be much more care about the PV systems. They're looking for the monitoring. They start looking and asking us for the solutions, which has never happened before. Maybe because the energy prices or something, but let's see to what will happens in the next months. But nothing which is, let's say, something which we need to tell or something.
And don't forget, we're a company which cares about everything. We care about everything, and when we see that something someplace happens, we immediately go there, check it in detail, and we don't want to and we prefer to react and to do something upfront than not to wait and to, after that, to see how to compete somebody. Yeah, this is the nature of the company.
Yeah, it is. It's, it's not so easy to copy a success to other countries or regions. One example is a very successful company in Sweden called Plejd. They do around about EUR 50 million revenue in Sweden only, though. So they are super successful, dominating the Swedish market. They have problems to copy their success or to continue their success in the Nordics countries already. We know from Rexel and other partners that they addressed them in Austria and in Germany, and they were rejected because products are expensive, products are more complicated than ours. So we have a couple of advantages to enter markets easier and earlier.
Plejd, and there are a couple of other examples as well, they go very strong in the installer market, which we do as well, but only as a second step. For us, it's always do-it-yourself first, and do-it-yourself first is easier than convincing the installer that is used to install a product for 10 or 20 years already, to change the product. That takes just longer. So do-it-yourself first and then professional is our success formula, and that works. There's one more thing that we can say on the competitor side. One very famous brand, one very famous competitor, FIBARO, Polish company, will vanish completely. They have been bought by Nice Group.
Nice is doing home automation as well, but more on the automation side, like garage door motors or motors for the blind or a couple of other things. They bought FIBARO. FIBARO brand will completely vanish. Will be Nice, Nice products only, but not the same products, because they are not investing in R&D for Nice, sorry, for FIBARO devices anymore. So no idea what they wanna do, why they bought the company in the first place, but they will completely vanish. We see that they are selling out their existing stock, which might create a little bit of pressure on margins, but so far, we expected that the pressure will be higher than it actually is. Because even if they reduce their prices significantly, they are still more expensive than we are.
But that, that will have an end very soon because they stop... The brand will not exist anymore. And there are a lot of small brands that are not doing that well, that suffer. If we talk to them, and we ask them how they see the market, they all say, "Oh, it's very complicated, and the market is not growing." Our information is the market is growing, and we are outperforming the market, so we don't care that much.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much for the question, Stefan Puwald, and also for answering the questions. We have another question from Jean-Philippe Tissot. You could be, you should be able to speak now.
Hello, hello. Sorry, I was in, I was mute. Congrats on this extraordinary quarter once again. I would like to ask a little bit more, if you can give us a lot more color on how you see the progress and how we should think as investors on Shelly X. More about initially to the consumers, or more initially to OEMs with contracts, that you are gonna produce a number of models for them, for the, I don't know, European market, or how we should see that. The reason I'm always excited with Shelly X is because I believe this has extraordinary potential, even could be eclipse the revenues of the existing core product.
So I would like to see if that is aligned with what you see as well, and any color on that would be very beneficial. Thank you.
Yeah. I can say, say if you're asking the same for us and same for me, we've seen a very huge potential and opportunity for Shelly X. We've seen also a very huge interest for the partners, which, when we talked with them about the options to use the Shelly ecosystem through Shelly X modules. What we're doing now, we just decided not to show something which is not ready yet, means there is no results because there's a two-slice switch volume removed from the very last point to say, Dimitar, this is not the first half of the year, this is second half of the year, which this is not the time to show in this earnings call.
But, yeah, at the moment, we're working with at least five partners, and the first device is on the way. The process a little bit complicated, of course, because first, they send us a product, we see it, we help them to integrate the Shelly X as a part of their own appliances, then we send them back a modules. They make some initial production, they make some tests. They need to change a little bit their own ecosystem to implement the different kind of technology. But what we expect, we expect in the end of the third quarter or beginning of the fourth quarter, because it's not only for us, it's because of them also, the first powered by Shelly devices using Shelly X module to be available on the market.
Definitely, that will be fourth and the end of the year. Even that the supplier, because this is the appliances, not just the small devices, this is the appliances. Some of them is big, some of them need at least 4-6 months to rearrange the production. And that, and what we've seen and what we know, with these very first products, we expect that from 2024-2025, the market will boom. The most of the interest now is still coming from China because even there's European companies, they're using China manufacturers for their own devices.
Also, we know that this is the direct competition of Tuya, which many suppliers, manufacturers, they're not happy with the technology and not happy with the service which they have from Tuya, and they're looking for a successor. And we are here, and there is no successor at the moment. So they know, they know somebody which can go then to offer them similar services.
And when, as we've seen, for example, for the PV, for the energy measurement, when Huawei say, "Okay, the only Shelly devices using only Shelly, we recommend Shelly devices for the PV," when we see that Zendure say, "We're using Shelly devices as a part of our own ecosystem," we are, we are completely flooded from the any, PV manufacturer over the world, even Europe or China, which they ask us, "Can we implement your solution also as a part of our solution?" We expect the same results with, in, in 2025, when the first products, powered by Shelly will be available, for sale on the market.
Yes. Jean-Philippe, this can, as you said, this can be a complete game changer for the company. We are a bit careful and shy to promise or to overpromise. If we would tell you now with which very, very good names we are in contact, you would immediately make your calculation, but this takes all time. So it's, it's for these companies, it's as well, needs a lot of efforts, needs some time, needs as well a decision to go away from Tuya and to change this partner. Once they did this, this is a very sustainable development because it's as complicated for them to move to us, it's to leave us. So that's, again, this can be a huge business for us. We think that this will be huge, but we are really careful because we don't want to overpromise.
Yeah, I'm sure that maybe we can show some numbers, and we will have a much, some guidance for this business, end of 2025 or middle of 2025. But at the moment, before first product reach the market, before we've seen the customer reaction, the other manufacturers' reactions, everything is expectations, which are huge.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much for the question. We have another question from Vihren Kirilov. You should be able to speak now.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes. Hi, Viren.
Mr. Mitko, one question for you. All this information we collect from the devices for so many years, at one point, do you plan this information to be put on a blockchain somehow?
No.
Okay. A couple of questions for Mr. Wolfgang. We bought this new company in the Netherlands. Mr. Wolfgang, do you plan to, the market of, multi-flat management of the Airbnbs, they're huge consumers of lockers and the, the whole thing. Do you plan to reach this market?
Among others? Yes. I mean, the smart lock market is huge. In Europe, there are players like Nuki and others, and LOQED was very successful in the Netherlands, but only in the Netherlands. And they started first. They made first steps to Germany, but they did not have the money to, and not the access to the channels that we already have. So now we will, of course, we will sell to our existing customers. We will sell via our existing channels, and they then will, of course, sell to Airbnb operators and others because that's a huge target group. But it's not only one. That's office buildings, it's private homes, it's the Airbnb users. That's the market of smart locks is big and is supposed to continue growing in the next 8-10 years. That's the numbers that we have.
Dimitar already said it. The LOQED deal was just an asset deal because the company went in bankruptcy. We got the assets like the stock and spare parts and the intellectual property and customer access at a very low price. That is more or less self-financing, more or less, with the sales of the stock. And that's a shortcut because we were anyhow looking around to have our own smart lock. Now we have a very nice design smart lock. We have a good technology. We will integrate it in the Shelly solution and then offer it to the Shelly customers, and that should be a good success.
With Airbnb, of course, that's part of the business, but that's not something where we go now to Airbnb and offer them, because the Airbnb owners, they, they look for such solutions, and that's where we expect as well, part of the revenue from.
The reason I'm asking this question is... exactly for this one. Or for your new, your new environment thing. That's what I'm asking.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
And last thing for Mr. Wolfgang: All these events, we can, we do every three months. Can we share links to all those 300,000 fans so we-
... So they're in the-
No.
Okay.
No. This is an event for investors and shareholders, and not for someone who bought two Shellys. That's a completely different story.
If they, these are going to be investors, 300,000 investors, they will be capital.
Basically, everyone has access.
Yeah.
Just release the Montega platform, and then they go. But we will not ask 300,000 fans, "Please join, join our earnings call." I think this would not be the-
Also, just imagine that they much more care about the next product development. What about this product? I have an issue with that product.
Okay. Okay. Thank you very much, and good luck with the results.
Yeah. Thank you so much for the question, Mr. Kirilov, and also for answering the question. We have another question from Alexandre Destrez . You should be able to speak now.
Yes, thank you. So I have a question regarding your new end markets. You stated at the beginning that you are now a smart building solutions provider, and notably, for the hotel end markets, but you needed to go with Zucchetti for this end market, so your partnership. So do you think it will have an impact on margins? And do you plan at some time to have
I-
to be alone in offering your solutions?
So we are working here with Zucchetti in Italy. We are working very close with Alexa, Amazon, because that's a strategic direction for Alexa. They want... And Alexa and Amazon are separated in that case. So that's funny enough. Some of the projects we did direct with the installer or with the institution, not via Amazon online platform. So that's. Alexa team is pushing that. They go to hotels, and when they go to hotels, their main target was to put an Alexa in every hotel room. And then they found out that the first thing that customers are doing is not ordering an hamburger from the restaurant. The first thing they do is they say, "Alexa, switch the light on." And then they found out that it's not working.
They need a device. Now, Alexa sees in the Alexa cloud and in our cloud how reliable our devices are, how often they are used together with Alexa, how good the integration is, and that's why they are recommending Shelly devices. And that, that led to a closer partnership. Now, if you go to a hotel, that's where Zucchetti comes in the, in the game. They want the hotel wants to have a solution where the concierge or the reception can see all 100 hotel rooms, and wanna be able to reduce the temperature and the light in each of these rooms. And that is a bit complicated with the normal Shelly App. So maybe the Zucchetti partnership leads to a fleet management solution that we can use for other occasions as well, but has no impact on our margin.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, thank you so much for the question. We have two or three other questions from our chat. One from Asaf Nathan. He would like to know if you could elaborate on this. Do you think in the DACH region, you grow faster because you target electrician schools? And do you plan to target electrician schools in other regions?
So that's one part. So in the Nordics, we did a lot. It was kind of our pilot region for the installer market. We trained a lot of installers, a couple thousand already. And we have in some of the countries, Finland and Denmark especially, we have a lot of these schools. That is something that I would say is. The schools especially is not visible now. That is something that will be visible in 1 or 2 years. We started a year ago. If the new electricians are going to these schools for 2 or 3 years, depending on the country. When they come back, this will pay back. So that's a midterm investment.
The training of the installer is a short-term investment, and we see that this works in Nordic regions. We already have, I think, 37, 35 or 37% professional share, which is huge. In other regions, we are on 20. We go in the direction of 25, but we see a huge potential in that, and that is something that will help us to continue growing in the next years. That's all not very short term. That's midterm or long term.
Thank you so much. Then we have another question from Leon Sanders. If you could elaborate on this, please. How has the new chip business started so far?
No, let's say that's, there is no new chip business. The new chip is mainly used in our devices, and now we will use it for the modules which we make for the appliance manufacturers, and building that's powered by Shelly. We doesn't sell the chip itself. We make it just for our usage at the moment, which means nobody can buy just a chip. Nobody can use except us or except buying the whole service, which means the operational system, cloud technology, connectivity, and everything else.
Thank you so much. This is also a reminder for you. If you would like to ask a question, you can do this with the button, raise your hand via the audio line, or you can use this with the key combination star nine, followed by star six, or you can also use the chat. And so far, no further questions have come in. There's another question from Jonathan Salmon. He would like to know how the transition to Amazon Pro in the last countries is going. And if you could please tell us what about the Smart Control Premium?
Sorry, the Smart?
The Smart Control Premium.
... Okay. The smart control we mentioned in the call, so we said that we have made 200,000, if this is the question, that's then right. So the premium app is contributing with EUR 200,000 to the revenue, which is more or less full profit, and we expect EUR 600,000 by, by the end of this year, and then doubling each year-over-year in the next years. For the Amazon business, Amazon Professional is-
Welcome back. I think there was a problem with the internet connection. We lost you for a moment. You're now on mute again. If you could-
Now we're on mute. Yeah.
Welcome back.
It was with the connection or maybe because the call is set for one hour, so I'm here on here. Okay.
If you could, just say the last sentences for everyone, I think that would be great. We were talking about the Smart Control Premium.
I said, the Amazon... I don't know what you understood. The Amazon B2B business is, is developing proportionally with the B2B, so with the installer business in the different countries. We do not expect to grow this over proportionally, because at a certain point, the installers make pressure to the wholesalers, why they have to buy this product on Amazon and cannot buy it from Rexel or Sonepar or others. That's what we heard from the wholesalers, which is the reason why some of them are signing a contract with us, because they want to have the business. And at the end, I said, we are not disclosing details on the Amazon business because that would cause too much trouble on, on our distribution side, with Amazon or with others. So that's why we are a bit careful with disclosing too, too much details about the business.
Yeah. Thank you so much for the answer. Thank you everyone, for your attention. We're coming now to the end of today's earnings call. A heartfelt thank you to the leadership team, to both of you, Mr. Dimitrov and Mr. Kirsch. Should any questions arise in the future, please do not hesitate, the investor relations management team or the leadership team. I wish you a beautiful day from Hamburg now. Thank you so much, and I'm giving the last words and final remarks to both of you, Mr. Dimitrov and Mr. Kirsch.
Yeah. Okay. Please go. Okay, yeah.
So thank you very much for attending. Thanks as well for the, for the interesting questions. And thanks for your constant support. Some of you, I think, I might see next week at the HIT in Hamburg, so hopefully a lot of you, and then we can have some intensive course. If not, just reach out, always open to have a special call and to answer your questions as well directly. Thank you very much.
Thank you.