Good morning to all. We would like to welcome you to this presentation of our first half results of 2023. Please take notes and let's share any questions at the end of these two sessions that we will have. We'll start by presenting where we are in terms of products, in terms of technology, and where our investment that happened during the past years to come. This is a presentation or a study that was made by an independent company. The French's name was Aite. They have gone through the main actors of this industry. By main actors, by alphabetic order, we are...
They, they have studied ACI, BPC, FIS, et cetera, et cetera. So really the big things of this industry, and we were very happy to be in this list. And I'm more happy to see that from a technology standpoint, we have been the best in class. So this has shown the correctness or the sharpness of the decisions that we have made in terms of technology, and not only on the deep technology in terms of cloud, in terms of processing, in terms of capacity to handle the volume, all this very, very technical aspect.
But the study has shown as well that from a data perspective, and this is really important to mention that, obviously the technology, the cloud-enabled and all these things are really important to us because they would support, and they will be the foundation of any functional aspect that needs to be shared with the users and with the customers. And here, it's important to note that from data value, today, the banks are looking at the payment data value as the most important one. And a study was made by Capgemini, I think, that was saying that more than 90% of the data value is coming from the payment data.
This is a great news, and we knew that this was important, but this is now confirmed. And the HPS being in the heart of this industry, being in the heart of the payment industry, we are able to provide and to use this data in the most efficient way. So this data is used on two aspects today, on the insights by making sure that we are able to provide the most innovative products. And by innovative, meaning that we are creating more value with technology, with ideas. And here, our corporate products that are more and more mature, our retail products that are able to offer very, very sophisticated models.
From the acquiring side, being able to go into the details and making the most effective from an interchange standpoint, the products that we are offering are really very efficient to reduce this. And from a foresight, being able to engage into data analytics, but not only that, but also on prediction on AI. And this is really where our efforts will continue. The first phase was to make sure that from an architecture, from a technology standpoint, we were ready. And now on the top of this, we are adding what we know to do the best, is how to provide value, how our functional offer get more and more sense for our customers.
We still have some efforts to do, on the, client, service or the customer services on the, stability. But these three corners are, I would say, easy to do, are short-term, can be corrected in a very short term. But the product features, the functionality, the strength of the product, this takes time, and this is now behind us, which means that we guess, and we predict that the future that will be coming will be, very bright, for us.
It's important to mention that from a technology, from the players, we are really one of the best and the best in class from product features, and we need now to concentrate on the other aspects, and we will see how this is handled in the next future. Right? This effort, this work that we have done has given interesting results. We have been growing all these years, and we see that our backlog, our revenues are growing. Our new customers are getting more and more customers into the community, is showing also a growth. We are really, really...
Great movement or the great trend of beginning of a strongest growth. This strongest growth is coming from different angles. The first one is the recurring and stable revenue that is growing every year. This is obviously because we are getting more and more customers, so our recurring and stable revenue are growing, and they have moved from 45% to more than 70% in the figures. We are getting more and more exposure to Tier 1 customers, and we are very, very happy and proud to be able to get the confidence of such big names.
On the customer list today, we are proud to announce that we have three of the top 10 banks in the world running on our platform. The reduction of risk goes also by diversification of the business model and our decision, our pushing of the SaaS model, which is the solution to for us obviously on the model and on the figures point of view, but it is also a great tool for our customers to be able to try new products, to be able to grow at their pace, to be able to have a partner like HPS, to be able to have in the market new products that they could not do on the heavy CapEx model.
We know also that we cannot do everything by ourselves, and we have shown it on the previous years by successful external growth or acquisition or merger with other companies. And we have seen it on the past two, three years, four years now on IPRC and ICPS, that have brought to us not only additional customers in regions where we were not, but getting also enriching our offering. From a dividend point of view, 50% of the dividends are today distributed to our shareholders. And this is important to mention that the cash is used fully for reinvesting or for to protect the company, but it is also given to our shareholders. So we are in a balanced position.
The last point on this slide on the performance is the investment that we have done in our technology that has shown results, very interesting results, compared to the most aggressive or the most innovative, from a technology aspect, companies. I'm talking here about people like Marqeta, for example, or others. We are really on the functionality aspect, very... We can get compared to all these guys without any issue at all from a technology aspect. Right? This has also given results in the market. We can see that on the past 10 years, the performance has been very, very respectable. I mean, more than respectable, more than 2,000% growth.
On the five years, 300, and on the three years, more than 70%. So this is, these are figures that are showing that decisions that are being made are accurate, are good, are right, and we believe that we are in the same direction than the ones we have been before. And we expect to have a very significant growth in the coming years. And we will explain. And I think we have done it in the previous presentation with our Accelerate, and we will just tell you where we are and how this is translating into reality. So the quick photo on this.
We are planning to get an increase of our revenue by more than 2% than 2x and maybe 3x . So we are expecting a growth, and our plans are getting tuned adjusted in an agile way on quarterly basis. So we expect to end up between $220 million and $300 million in 2027 on the growth. Also on the structure of the revenue, where we expect to have our recurring and stable revenue growing up to 85%. We expect also to have a more geographical distribution in Asia and the Americas mainly.
So, a growth around 15% or between 12% and 17% to end up at this value. This growth will be coming from our internal, but also from our external growth. For this, we have been, as shared previously, dedicated team, and we will see that we have gone through the next level by engaging one of the most prestigious bank to help us in this process. We expect also to have that this to translate to an additional growth of $ 40 million-$ 80 million by 2027. We expect also to have a margin between an EBITDA of 25%-30%.
And as I mentioned in the beginning, the geographical diversity will also help us, not only in de-risking, but also in growth. So this is the program that we have designed last year. We have shared it. We have now in the middle of its execution. And this year, we have been growing at the pace that we were expecting, and the acceleration is being prepared to make sure that we will end up where we are supposed to end by 2027. So this Accelerate program. So the first point that is to be noted is that we have been always growing. Except some difficult years in COVID for example. But we have been delivering a two-digit growth through the...
Last years and with an acceleration, where we have a version coming in, and which is the case now. We are in the middle of this period. Our version four, that has shown great capability, that is showing a great attraction from our customers, and we have now to follow the customer wishes to get into this new platform. From a technology standpoint and our solution is there's no more proof to be given to the market. The studies that are being made by independent entities are showing the quality and the bright future of this product. On the confidence of the market, big news all over the world, it's not anymore dedicated or spotting one single region.
So all the regions are responding positively to our technology. We are getting positive feedback, getting customers, getting prospects, getting RFPs from all around the world. So our exposure is really interesting. From a growth perspective, obviously, we have to go where we want to go, but making sure that from a capacity point of view, we are able to deliver. And here, we have lately announced the opening of our operations and office in Montreal. This has been done and we are now executing and moving fast to deliver.
On the other side, in India, we have been, we have decided and we are in the execution phase to be able to have our own office in India, not only to support our other regions, but also to get into the Indian subcontinent. We have customers now in India, we have customers in Bangladesh, we have customers in Sri Lanka, Maldives. All these regions need also to get the proper interest. Again, it's not only a resource hub that we are building on our own, it is also to develop this region. From a visibility point of view, I think it is important to mention that even in the backlog...
The structure of the backlog, the nature of the backlog is really interesting to be seen. It is showing that this backlog is generating more revenue. It is showing in the backlog of HPS, we only see one year, but if we have another vision of, or another study of this backlog, we will see that the depth of the backlog is also extremely. 2022 and 2023 has still been an investment year to be able to finish the work that we have been done.
We believe that today our efforts will be more in the growth in terms of sales, growth in terms of customer service, to be able to deliver faster, better and be closer to our customers. Right. So on the external growth aspect, so this was our internal, the way we are growing on our internal capacities, but on the external one and the, I mean, the M&A. So we have shown that we have been able to integrate positively any of the acquisitions that we have made, or all of them have been working successfully from the switching in Morocco, and I will not go back to the very first one in France with ACP.
But we have shown that the switching has exploded from a volume perspective. ICPS and IPRC, their growth is also very visible. So getting HPS into these companies and bringing these companies to HPS has worked in both ways. So we have been able to push the energy that HPS has into these companies, and we have been able also to get enriched by this diversity, is something that we believe in very, very much from the people, but also from the technology aspect, we have been able to deliver together, you know.
From the financing capacity, today we have, you know, maybe not what we would need, but we have strong financial figures that enable us to address this project of external growth without a lot of stress. We have the capacity today to get into very interesting projects. For that, we have been now, we have engaged since some time, one of the most important or prestigious investment bank in the world, that is, we are working with them, and they are working with us to study the options, what would be the best for our growth, what would be the best fit for our acceleration program.
It seems like we are very at the right time in this opportunities. So all what we are doing will be obviously to continue the growth on the revenue, but also going into the margin and the EBITDA, right? So here the EBITDA that we are looking at while executing our Accelerate program is to get an EBITDA between 25% and 30%.
Even if today we are getting more and more SaaS, that could, in some cases, be not as efficient or as big margin as the license model, in the other hand, we are accumulating those customers, especially the very weak ones, and we will be able to see the impact on the margin, not as soon as it is with the license, but it is only a matter of time. When I'm talking about time, the unit is quarter and not years, to be able to see the impact of this accumulation of business, this accumulation of backlog that is going to inject its value on our revenue, a bit slower, but in a much, much bigger way.
That is the first point on the margin side. The other one that will help us or that is starting to help us in getting into a better margins is our rationalization or our what we have called the conversions program. So this conversion program is a program that is helping us concentrating our efforts in less versions to maintain, less versions to run.
Today with ICPS, with IPRC and HPS and all the different data centers that we are, where we have our products running, work is being done, and we have started seeing the results of this program to reduce the cost, to reduce the cost infrastructure, to reduce the cost of the licenses of products that we are using. Here, the idea here, this conversion program will enable us to produce more with fewer resources. We will be able to grow our revenue without growing our costs. The last one is the ability to have more resources at very high quality and technology enablement in India.
That will also help us in growing faster and therefore reducing our costs. Okay? So the highlights of this first half year. So the growth has been confirmed or continued to grow with a two-digit growth, 17%. And if we didn't have the impact of the U.S. dollar, but this is the, some years it's for us, some years it's against us. But in this first half year, and it's not the... It is, I think the indications that we had had in the summer, that the U.S. dollar is going back to its original trend. So we had 35% impact on the because of the U.S. dollar. This is going to change on the second half.
In the growth, again, we have, on the first half, got an important customer, an important reference in North America and Canada especially. We will be very attentive to make sure that this customer is delivered as soon as possible, and also keeping him extremely satisfied to make sure that the growing revenue will continue with this customer. On the margin side, we have been impacted, unfortunately, by the dollar currency that is going down. As I said, I think we have seen a different trend on the beginnings of the second half of this year.
So we also, if we adjusted that and then if we, we kept out the, the one-off short investment and the currency exchange, we would see a growth of the, of the EBITDA. So this is, in fact, to mention from a health perspective, that the company is doing well, and we need now to see how we can be more robust to the external events that are currency or that are one-shot investments. Recurring revenue are growing every quarter, so we are now at more than 70% on the recurring and stable our regular revenue. This manner is really interesting, especially when we see the nature of the customers that we are getting on board every year. We are very confident that this is going to be more and more stable.
The fact of being ranked at this level by the independent, consulting company gives us a lot of satisfaction and of energy to continue what we are doing. I think this will give us another breath to go and get bigger customer, more profitable customer. Last but not least, pursuing our M&A strategy, our M&A actions with the help and with the work of our partners with whom we just signed, this is getting us into another level. We believe that this will be an acceleration of the acceleration, if I can say. I have given you a high-level picture of where we are, what we are doing from a business, from a strategy, from a partnership, and I leave the floor to Brahim to continue. Thank you, Brahim.
Thank you, Abdeslam. So after this introduction about the strategy and the goals that we want to achieve in our Accelerate program, I propose to detail with you the figures of the first half and the analysis of the figures before we open the question session. So we closed the first half with a growth of our revenue by 17%, which is aligned with our Accelerate program, which goal or objective is to have a growth comprised for the organic growth between 12%-17%. And if we exclude the impact of the currency, we see that the growth would be around 22%, which is aligned with our guidance at the beginning of the year.
So we realized again a strong year in terms of performance and revenue. On the EBITDA margin, as explained by Abdeslam, so we had a strong impact by the currency. So we closed the first half with the EBITDA margin at 20%. And an amount more or less the same as the first half of 2022. But again, if we look to these figures without the impact of the currency, we see that the EBITDA growth always by grows by 14% or 15%, and the EBITDA margin is more around 23%.
The backlog continued to grow, so thanks to all the sales that we've done during the last 12 months, we see that the backlog growth rose by 7%, even despite all the effort and all the deployment of projects that we've done during this first half. So in terms of different activities, so of course, the payment activity remained the main activity of the group. So we've made again a strong growth compared to last year of 17% and of 23% compared on the same currency exchange rate of last year.
The switching activity continued to grow, also, linked to the growth of usage of cards and mobile payments in Morocco, and the testing activity remains at the same level as last year, due to, I would say, economic conditions in France that are not favorable for the growth of this activity. The point that is important to notice or to raise, regarding all this performance is that we've all during all these years, we have been able to build a really sustainable business model. So thanks to all the diversification that we've made, diversification in terms of geographies, in terms of business models. So today we have been able to reach more or less 70% of recurring and stable revenue.
So based on all, our, existing customers, on the maintenance, on the processing, on the switching, but also on the stable revenue with our, other customers on all the upselling that we are providing to these customers. So on, on all this, on all this, line of business, so we've made a, we've made a growth. So on the maintenance, we have been able this year to increase our maintenance rates, with some of our customers, not all of them. So we will continue this effort to revise our, maintenance rates with all our customers to, to, reflect all the inflation costs on our costs and on the, the pricing that we, we invoice to our customers.
We have also some customers that has been or entered into the maintenance phase, and this is why we have this growth of 21% in 2022. The switching, as I said, continued to grow linked to the growth of usage of payment in Morocco. The processing fee may be or can be seen as weak with the 4.5%. But we have to explain here that we've done reclassification of all the billable professional services fee for all the projects for customers in SaaS, in the non-recurring revenue in the project. And this is why the growth is really fragile.
If we compare at the same base, the growth of the processing compared to last year is around 14%. On the project side and non-recurring, we have a growth that is around 80%, and this is mainly due to the high level of backlog that we have at the end of 2022, where we accelerate the deployment of the main projects during the first half of 2023. The upselling, we see the detail. We have been very active with some customers and we saw that a lot of our customers are investing in their platforms to improve, to add functionalities, and to be on the top of the offer to their customer compared to the markets.
So if we go into the detail of the payment activity, so on all the on-premise model, so not the SaaS, the first half has been focused on deployment of the main project that we have today with big Tier 1 customers. So as we've disclosed, two years ago, we signed in 2021 a contract with one of the biggest banks in Asia. So we continued the deployment of this bank. So in 2021, we deployed the... or in 2022, we deployed the first phase of this project with the switch module.
This year, we finalized the deployment of the second phase, which was the acquisition activity, and we started also in the first half, the last phase of the project, which is the issuing business of the bank, that will be deployed on our platform in all the countries where the bank is present. So this is supposed to be done during 2023 and 2024. And we expect to close quickly this project to be able to have a very visible reference on all our platform in Asia and to continue to support our expansion in the region. We have also done a strong effort to accelerate the deployment of one of the Tier 1 banks worldwide. So we have multiple countries to deploy.
U.K., Hong Kong, Mexico and India. We, we, some of them are already live, some of the others are still under deployment. It's something that will continue over 2023 and 2024. The most important with this reference, which is one of the top five banks worldwide, is that this rollout only happened in a fraction of the banks or the branches of the bank. There is a significant potential of growth of HPS with the deployment of our platform on the global branches of this bank. On the upselling, we continue to have a strong demand from our existing customers. This year, we have been very active with some of the big names that we have.
So for example, Crédit Agricole in France or CA in Italy, and also FNB in South Africa. So these three banks have been very active on implementing new functionality or new regulation on the platform. And this has led a growth of the activity by 18% compared to last year. So we believe that for the second half, we continue to roll out this major project at the same accelerated pace as the first half. And we have also some new logos that are under discussion. Some of them will be probably finalized by end of 2023, but because of the nature of our customers or prospect that is changing and we are addressing more and more Tier 1 bank, we are in more longer decision process.
So we expect to finalize some of them this year and some of them in 2024. But the potential that we have today in terms of discussion and new logos is very important compared to last year. On the SaaS model, HPS has been very active this first half. So as announced some couple of weeks ago, we signed our first SaaS contract in the North America region and the first SaaS agreement in Canada with one of the largest Canadian bank and one of also one of the largest worldwide bank. So this agreement or this platform will be hosted by Amazon in Canada and will be run also by a team based in Canada, so not by our team in Casablanca.
We deployed a team that will manage all the SaaS activity in the region and will also help HPS to develop our activities in North America. We find also an agreement and first SaaS agreement in Oman. What is interesting with this new reference is, it's a FinTech that will use our platform for all the issuing business. It's also the first time where we started to sell the services of Visa, based on the Visa sponsoring agreement that we announced or we signed last year. Thanks to this agreement that we have with Visa, we will share with Visa the fee that Visa will make on all transactions, based on our solution on this platform.
In terms of potential for the coming weeks and months, we find different discovery agreements during the first half. One in Jamaica with Sagicor Group Jamaica, which is one big financial group in North America, in the U.S., and in the Caribbean. It's the second reference that we have with this group. We signed two years ago with Sagicor Group Jamaica in the Caribbean, and now we are discussing with Sagicor Group Jamaica in Jamaica on a SaaS agreement, and we believe that this will be finalized by end of 2023. We have also started a discovery with one of the largest U.K. banks, and obviously one of the largest worldwide banks, for a SaaS agreement.
So we started this discovery, and we are discussing now the main contract for SaaS agreement. So we believe that it will be finalized before the end of 2023, and the project will start in October or November. But we know that it's always with the big bank, long process, so we expect end of 2023 or Q1 2024. Last one, we have been also able to sell our services and SaaS platform in Australia and first reference there. So the contract will be signed in the coming days. So it's already finalized, and we will build a platform on Amazon in Australia.
It will be our first reference, but thanks to this reference, we started some discussion also with one of the largest banks in Australia for another contract. This one will not be finalized this year, but we believe that we have here an opportunity to extend our presence there, thanks to this, to the 2019-2024. We enjoy a really strong momentum on the SaaS, which continues to grow. If we look to the growth over the last five years, we have annual growth that is around 20% every year, or more or less.
We believe also that the new sales that we will concretize in the second half will significantly reinforce our backlog on the SaaS. So in terms of revenue by geography, the main point here to notice is that all our efforts since three or four years in Asia start to give results. We see that Asia now are representing more or less 20% of our activity on the payments with the growth of 200%. So of course, at this stage, Asia remains in HPS business, mainly driven by on-premise model and not SaaS model.
Even if we sign contract, they are not yet today totally represented in our figures. So this volumes can vary from year to another one. But we see that all the effort that we've made to develop this region starts to give results. And the objective is thanks to our next or future presence in India, to continue to support this growth and do the same in Americas, thanks to our first presence in Canada this year, and to support the growth for the next years. So on the switching activity, we continue to have a growth on the different means of payments in Morocco.
We saw the first half that the payments ups by 45% with MAD 75 million of transaction. The e-commerce also continued to grow very fastly, with more than 30% of growth compared to last year, and even the withdrawals continue to grow. We are in a very dynamic, dynamic business in Morocco, and we believe that this potential remain very, very important due to the low use of cash today and the limited network of merchants in the region. Even if you have this strong growth since five years, we believe that the growth is still in front of us and not behind us.
One of the main achievements that we've made on this activity is all the enhancement that remain on the platform, and one of the most important is probably the finalization of the Active/Active architecture that we've decided to invest and to put on the platform. Which means that today, on all the switching business, we don't have an active data center and one inactive for in case of disaster. But we have two different data centers that are running in parallel to manage all the transactions. So it means that if today, one of the data center crashes, the other will continue the business without any impact of on the customers.
And the other enhancement that we've made this first half is to start to implement some new Visa services. So thanks to the partnership that we have with Visa, and we started to sell Visa optimization services for some bank. So some banks will start to use these services provided by HPS. So now if we analyze this, the growth of revenue, so as reported, we have a growth that is around 17%, so in line with our Accelerate program. But we have a strong currency impact that is evaluated at more than MAD 20 million . So without this impact, at the same or at constant exchange rate, the growth would be more than 20%.
So 22%, which is what we were, or what our guidance in the beginning of the year. So this currency impact is due to the revaluation of all the work in progress that we have in our accounts, in the assets. At the exchange rate at the end of June 2023, compared to the last valuation at the end of 2022. So, and the difference will directly be in the revenue, in minus or in plus, depending on the variation of the currency. On the expenses and operating expenses, so we continue to invest to support our activity.
So we have, of course, a strong investment in human resources. So compared to last year, end of June, we have a strong increase of our headcounts, so by more than 20%. And we have, and this is what explain part of the growth in terms of HR costs. If you remember, we have decided last year to increase salaries, to align our remuneration or salaries with the new organization. And this has a direct impact on the first half 2023, compared to the first half 2022, where this... So we remind you that we decided to not make any salary adjustment in 2023.
This impact is behind us, but it was necessary to align, and to be competitive compared to the market, and to not suffer by the turnover of resources in all the region where HPS is active. We have also a strong increase of subcontracting, because we continue to have a strong investment on the version 4 and on the products, but also on some projects. For example, Capgemini still remains one of the main partners of HPS on the deployment of the main or the major project that we have.
So, we continue to invest on this partnerships that we have and the different subcontractors that we have to support our activity and the growth that we have since a couple of years. On the external expenses, we have also a growth that is mainly due to the reinforcements or to the acceleration of our commercial effort and sales efforts. So linked to all the travel that we do in the context of selling our products, but also in terms of travel that we do in the context of our projects.
We have also some one-off fees that are in these external expenses, or as an example, all the cost of ESOP or the stock option plan, and mainly the legal fees that we had to pay in 2022. We have, of course, this currency impact that is also on the cost at a lower level compared to the revenue, and in the other way. So we have been able to reduce the cost by MAD 8 million-MAD 9 million, so 2% compared to last year based on the currency exchange rate variation.
As you probably noticed, you saw in our figures published this morning that we don't have all the growth in our revenue, in our EBITDA, and our net profit. We suffered this year from different topics. On the EBITDA, of course, we suffered from the impact of the U.S. dollar that has impacted our EBITDA by 2% less margin. We have also the ESOP plan that has impacted 1% lower our EBITDA margin. This cost, of course, is just one-off, so it's not something that will be reproduced in the second half and beyond 2022.
We have also this exceptional salary adjustment last year. Of course, it is now the new base of our salaries. Just to explain why the EBITDA has fallen compared to last year, we have an impact that is more or less 1.8%. We have globally 5% lower EBITDA margin compared to last year based on these different items. We have also a very strong impact on our net margin. The value of the dollars has dropped by 5%, and this has direct impact on our financial profits that were last year +MAD 15 million, and this year is -MAD 21 million.
The good news is that the main or the significant part of this deficit or this impact will be recovered in the second half of 2023, thanks to a dollar that becomes again strong compared to the first half. Our expectation is that it will remain at the same level as today, and we believe that it will help HPS to absorb a significant part of this deficit that we had in the first half.
So if we analyze all these impacts on the growth of the EBITDA, so if we exclude all the one-off fee, so the ESOP cost and all the currency impacts, we see that the adjusted EBITDA rose by 15% to achieve a margin that is around 24%. So more or less the same as we had last year on the first half. So this is something that is in line with our guidance at the beginning of the year, where we said that the EBITDA will not be or will be slightly impacted compared to last year and due to all the investment that we have to do.
But unfortunately, we have all these currency impact that has impacted the EBITDA, and we have reported an EBITDA at 20.6% for the first half of 2022. In terms of cash flow, so we continue to have a strong position in terms of cash. So this first half, the cash has been used on all the, I will say, regulatory or regular business. So in terms of investment, in terms of financing, with the repayments of our loans to reduce our debt ratio from 23%- 20%, this first half. But we have also an impact on our operational cash flow. So if we go in the details, our client receivables remain stable compared to 2022.
We don't have any issue on the payment of our invoices. We noticed that we have a strong increase of our work in progress in the context of large scale projects. All these big projects that we are running today with Tier 1 Bank, it has an impact on the duration of the project, of course, but also on our billing terms that are longer than what we had in the past. Of course, all this work in progress will be converted into or translated into cash when the projects are delivered. Today, we support all this impact on our cash, but fortunately, our position today remains strong.
We have also the impact of the users meeting that we organized in April or May of this year that has an impact of MAD 15 million on our cash. We have also a growth of all government receivables that rose by MAD 8 million compared to last year. As mentioned in the beginning, our backlog continued to grow. Over the last five years, this backlog growth by more or less 15%. Today, this backlog represents more than 80% of the annual revenue base. But the most important is that all this backlog, so 70% of this backlog is re-recurring or stable revenue.
Which means that we have a very strong visibility on the, on the second half, but also on 2024. We believe also that all the achievements that we will concretize or finalize on the second half will allow HPS to continue to reinforce this backlog and to continue to reinforce our visibility for the coming years. To conclude, before we open the question session, we believe that today, the backlog gives us a very strong visibility, not only for the second half, but also beyond 2023. We have a very ambitious program for Accelerate, and we believe that this backlog gives us a strong confidence to be able to achieve this program.
So this program, we believe that it's ambitious, but we believe also that it's a realistic program. So if, as explained by Abdeslam, in the introduction, so we believe that this program is something that can be managed by HPS over the next five years. So in terms of organic growth, so we demonstrated that it's something that is already has been achieved by HPS in the past, and we believe that we will continue to, to provide the same growth thanks to the Version four, thanks to all the potential of growth that we have, in U.S. and in Asia. So this, this, this program is really realistic for, for HPS.
The M&A, we have hired one of the largest banks to help HPS in this program, and we have also demonstrated that our margin will mechanically grow, thanks to the mix of the processing and on-premise, but also thanks to all the investment that we are doing since 2022 on different items that will help HPS to optimize the margin in the future. Our guidance for the end of the year, we believe that the revenue will be aligned with the Accelerate program, so will be comprised between this 12%-17% that we announced in the Accelerate program. The profitability will be preserved compared to last year.
We expect to have an EBITDA comprised between 20%-21%. To conclude, just information. Our upcoming meeting for this year will be in October. We will participate in the CFG Bank One to One Equity Conference. I hope to see you there. In November, we will have the publication of the first quarter indicators. Of course, we have, and you have, permanent access to the team to organize a call if needed. The latest information, as announced a couple of weeks ago, we had our external general assembly last week, and the assembly voted for the share split. It has been approved, and this should be effective in the beginning of next week.
So that's all for me. Thank you. And I propose to start the Q&A session. First question from James Kelly. "So in the March call, you guided for EBITDA of MAD 250 million, with similar margin as 2022, but in first half, margin are significantly lower compared to first half 2022. And EBITDA is tracking behind budget. Can you still achieve this guidance?" So I think that we answered the question during the presentation. So yes, the EBITDA at the first half is lower compared to last year. So we had different items that explain this.
So despite this achievement that is not completely aligned with our guidance, we believe that the second half will be aligned with our guidance. We will have an EBITDA that will be more or less the same as 2022. I remind you that in 2022, the EBITDA margin were around 21%. It was exactly, I think, 20.6%. We believe that 2023 will be at the same level. Next one from Dounia Demsous: "How do you explain the net results that falls when the EBIT grew by 9.5%? This is totally linked to the...
The impact of currency on our financial profit. I remember you that HPS has a lot of assets in U.S. dollars. Just to give you some examples, we have all our bank accounts in the different regions or countries where HPS is based—Dubai, Singapore, France, et cetera—that are in currency, in U.S. dollars mainly. At the end of the period, we have to reevaluate at the market around this value of our assets, and this creates automatically or mechanically a provision on the exchange rates that are logged in this financial profit. This is the only item that explains why this financial profit is so low compared to last year.
Thanks to the recovery of the U.S. dollars during this second half, we believe that this will be absorbed during the before the end of the year. So we have Virginie with two questions. So, excuse me. So we have the first question from Virgin. So an update on progress in V4 sales pipeline and any client wins for V4, V4. And on M&A, are you looking to acquire new tech capabilities or into new markets? Would be helpful to hear about the M&A criteria more broadly. Abdeslam, do you want to take the first part on the sales pipeline?
Yeah, I think the - I have mentioned that the first question was answered, and we will go just on the second one. So on the second one, the objectives or the work that we are doing with the partner that we selected is to work on three lines or three streams. The first one is the technology, and we have been looking at various options to accelerate our growth. And in technology, it's a bit wider than the code itself. By technology, it is also the way that we deploy, the way that we run our software. The second one is pure market increase, so in regions where we are.
And the third one is where we are not. So there are three different options. Where we are, it has to have an approach of mutualization on all what we have, and where we are not, we may be able to have a different approach from an integration point of view. So these are the three streams that we are working on with the partner we have selected. Right?
Okay. Next question is from James regarding the currency. So the question is, can you explain how the currency has impacted the results in more detail? In first half 2022, the MAD average was 9.7 to the USD, and then the first half 2022, the average is higher, 10.2. So as explained, the impact is on the end periods exchange rate, and is only based on the revaluation of our assets, work in progress end of 2022 compared to June 2023. So at the end of 2022, the U.S. dollar was MAD 10.44 , and end of June, it's MAD 9.87.
So we have the dollar that falls compared to last year. And to try to explain to you what is the mechanism of this impact on revenue. So we have in our revenue, all when a project is not yet finalized, so we have all the work in progress in the asset and in the revenue. And when we make a progress from end of 2022 to June of 2023, this progress is recorded in the revenue. So if we imagine that we have a customer with zero progress, so we have a value of the work in progress in our asset at $100, and at end of June, the dollar falls by 5%.
All this $100 has to be reevaluated by -5%, which is we will lose $5 million, and this -5 will be directly impacted in our revenue by -5 without any action from HPS. This drop of the U.S. dollar had a direct impact on our revenue, and this has been evaluated project by project based on the exchange rate at the end of 2022 and June 2023. This calculation provides this $23 million of impact on the revenue. James, please, if it's not yet clear, please resend the question in the chat. I will be happy to answer. Next one from Raja.
So given the negative FX impact and one-off elements in first half, which EBITDA margin do you think you can achieve? What is your guidance in terms of net income? Thank you. Okay, so I think that we answered to the guidance for EBITDA margin. For the net income, I don't. But I think that we will be more or less the same as last year. So I don't have the exact figures, but we should be at the same level in terms of taxes on profit and in terms of financial results. So we should be more or less at the same level of net margin compared to last year. Okay, next one, always from Raja.
You mentioned that you managed to increase the maintenance fee for some selected customers. By how much have the fees increased? It used to be 18% of license fee, I believe. Also, will this increase apply to all customers, ultimately? Okay. Abdeslam, you want to take this one? Abdeslam?
Actually, Brahim.
Excuse me?
Sorry, I have a little issue with my phone.
Okay. I will take it. It's not selected customers. We have done the work for all our customers. Some of them had different agreement terms. Some of them, we were able to increase the fee in 2023. Some of them, it was not possible in 2023 because we have some period of time to follow based on the different contracts. Ultimately, yes, the objective is to reach all customers. Our approach is not, I would say, aggressive approach with our customers. We still try to remain the right partners for them.
We are not in a position, or we don't want to be in a position where we will impose something to customers. It's always discussion and negotiation with them. With the customers that we've been able to increase, I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that the rate has been raised to 20%. The objective—
20%, 22%.
Yeah. Okay. So some of them 20%, for the others, 22%. The objective is to continue this work with all our customers. So to be able to convince them that if they want quality of service, so they have to follow our guidance also.
So Raja, just to mention a little bit on that. So this increase is coming from multiple sources. So the first one is the inflation and the indexes that are changing, and these are mechanically applied to our contract when applicable. But what we are also doing on this maintenance and the services, so we are offering more and more services around this maintenance contract. I explained before, the number of layers that we were using in software were very few. But now with the new technologies that we are offering, they are bigger and bigger or thicker and thicker. So the maintenance that we can offer is more sophisticated.
So what we do to not to justify, but to be able to be more partners, is that we are offering more services and therefore getting more billing on this maintenance. And this is really important because it creates, besides the revenue itself, a larger stickiness to our technology and making sure that the partnership is standing strong.
Last question, still with Raja. So any chance to acquire the remaining shares in GPS similar to ICPS? You want to answer to this one, Abdeslam?
Yes, I can. So there are various options that we are looking with various customers. Obviously, we will not be able to answer to this question in particular. But yes, this is the models that we are looking at with GPS and with others where we do not have the shares in it. But this is a typical interesting target for HPS because it's using the same technology as ICPS, as HPS. So the integration will be smooth, easy. So yes, this is a perfect, not a perfect, but a great target. And there are many others like this that we may want to consider.
Next one from Anas Serghini. Should we expect similar level of net income or net margin? Okay. We were talking about net margin in terms of comparison to last year, it's net margin and not the value. I think it was the last question. I would like to thank you all for your presence, and as said, we remain at your disposal. If you want to have a one-to-one discussion about the result or about any other topics of HPS, please let us know. See you on the next session.
Thank you all, and please do not hesitate to get back to us for any clarification, questions, or anything. Okay?
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.