Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone, thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to welcome you to the HPS full-year 2024 earnings presentation. Over the next hour, we will take you through our financial performance, key milestones and strategic initiatives that have driven our success in 2024, and how we are positioning ourselves for continued growth in the coming years. Let's begin. Before diving into our 2024 highlights, let me remind you our vision for 2027. Our ambition is to establish HPS as a global leader in payment solutions with a strong focus on SaaS and cloud-based offerings. By 2027, we aim to have a business model that is highly scalable with SaaS contributing the majority of our revenue. Geographical expansion, particularly in North America and Asia, will be a key driver.
While innovation, usage of AI, and no compromise on security will further strengthen our solutions. Our long-term objective is to build a more predictable, more resilient, and high-growth business ensuring sustainable value creation for all stakeholders. HPS strategic plan for 2027, namely AccelR8, is the payment industry is undergoing a deep transformation, and HPS is uniquely positioned to capitalize on this change or momentum. The global volume of non-cash transactions, both global and retail, is exploding, clearly demonstrating the accelerating shift to digital payments. The macroeconomic momentum is driven by three irreversible trends. Digitization, c onsumer and business demand is growing faster and faster. Seamless payment experiences are key to the business. The globalization, the cross-border transactions and emerging market are expanding rapidly, and the SaaS adoption and the move to cloud solution is unlocking the scalability and the innovation.
This is where we become relevant. This is where AccelR8 is coming in. Our plan is designed not to just ride on these waves, but to lead them. On the product innovation, doubling down on AI and our innovation and research and development to stay ahead on the market needs. Geographical expansion, accelerating our North America and Asia momentum with new hubs in Canada, India and Australia. Our customer-centric growth, migrating our customers to SaaS, upselling modules and leveraging on M&A like CR2 to deepen our domain expertise. Talking about CR2. We have completed the successfully the CR2 acquisition since March, or sorry, August 2024, this was a pivotal moment for HPS. In just four months, we integrated a little bit more than EUR 7 million in revenue with a full-year impact of EUR 25 million.
For 2025, we project EUR 30 million in revenue and an EBITDA between 15%-18% from CR2. Strategically, CR2 strengthens our value proposition by combining its digital channel solutions with our PowerCARD, enhancing capabilities like remittance and instant payment. Geographically, CR2 is present in more than 50 countries, strengthening the group global position in new regions such as Southeast Asia. CR2 also bring a high quality portfolio, including three banks on the top 100 banks in the world. Furthermore, HPS will provide CR2 with access to our SaaS delivery model, key to our long-term resilience and to new markets such as the French-speaking Africa, enabling the acceleration and the development of the CR2 activities. 2024 for our group has been a record-breaking in sales.
Our total contract value skyrocketed to more than MAD 1. 1 billion . This is more or less five times more than what we have achieved in 2023. This is driven by a lot of sales activity, but also and mainly because of the PowerCARD V4 penetration into Tier 1 banks. The first transition reached a tipping point, reaching 20, 94% of the total contract value in 2023 and confirmed to be 93% in 2024. This is creating a high margin revenue model for our activities. Among our new customers, we have got three more on the top 100 banks over the world. This is contributing MAD 625 million in total contract value.
This momentum validates our SaaS first strategy and positions us for sustained revenue growth as the contracts will ramp up. This is really important to see that not only the sales have grown, but the model of sales is more resilient because it's more SaaS and this has been observed. It is the sales have happened in different geographies, and the number of new logos has also increased significantly. To support all this, we have continued our effort to bring our capabilities up to date to support this. To support our SaaS scalability, we rely on global redundant data center network. In 2024, we finalized our North America cloud data center, and we currently expanding it to Australia and Southeast Asia.
This infrastructure or these capabilities that we have ensures proximity, compliance, and resilience for our customers with each center designed to meet evolving data residency and security requirements. Our data center networks allows us to scale efficiently with minimal incremental costs. This network is a major asset, enabling us to serve global Tier 1 banks with reliability, flexibility, and a near immediate availability. When we have a look at this map, we see that we are all over the world now, and we do not expect to have massive investments in the near future because we have done this in a very short period, and we need now to, we will capitalize on this to wrap up our business.
2024 was a year of strategic executions, record sales on our total contract values, successful M&A, and SaaS acceleration. While the data was impacted by these transition costs, the underlying growth is robust with an adjusted EBITDA up to 28.5%. Looking ahead, 2024 will be another growth rate year. More than 20%-30% revenue growth and more than 30%-35% EBITDA growth are expected. By 2026, 2027, the SaaS transition will yield its full potential with 2024 contracts contributing to more than MAD 180 million annually. We are reaffirming our 2027 AccelR8 targets, confident that our investment in SaaS, innovation and global reach will drive a long-term stakeholder value. This is to give you a first taste of what Brahim will get into the details of the figures. I'll leave the floor to Brahim.
Thank you, Abdeslam, welcome everyone to our conference for the earnings 2024. Now that we've outlined our strategic vision with Abdeslam, let's take a look at how our financial performance reflects our progress. In summary, 2024 was a year of very strong commercial performance, of transformation, and of resilience. Indeed, despite the challenges, we achieved revenue of nearly MAD 1.3 billion, up by 6.4%, and a solid EBITDA of MAD 220 million, maintaining sustainable growth. Our backlog, which does not include the, in these figures, CR2, remain robust at MAD 885 million, reflecting future growth potential.
The payment activity continued to represent the majority of the activity at MAD 1 billion, with growth generated mainly by the partial integration of CR2 in the last quarter of this year. The switching business is constantly expanding with nearly 15% for this year. Overall, our strategic plan allow us to build a solid base of recurring revenue and evolve sustainability in strong growing markets. Looking at HPS standalone, we delivered also a solid performance in a context where we have an accelerated transition to SaaS, and significant also investment to support this transition. The revenue reached approximately MAD 1.2 billion and the EBITDA, MAD 230 million, representing an EBITDA margin of over 19%.
For the rest of this presentation, we propose to analyze HPS and CR2 separately to ease the understanding of the evolution of the different activities. Let's break down the drivers of our financial performance, starting with revenue growth of our payment activity. 2024 was primarily a year of acceleration and expansion in our SaaS business, as explained by Abdeslam. In North America, we successfully launched our SaaS platform with all onboarded customers now live on the platform, and the local HPS team is today totally deployed in our new office in Canada. In Oceania, we are strongly investing and progressing with the construction of the SaaS platform for Tier 1 Australian bank, with a go live planned by end of 2025. The first phase, which is the pilot that will start by mid-2025.
We also secured in the region another SaaS deal with a major New Zealand bank, reinforcing our footprint in the region. Now today we will run three customers in the region on the SaaS platform that is under construction. For the on-prem business, our expansion in Asia, Pacific and Europe continues with major deals, including Crédit Agricole in France for all its issuing business and Erste Group in Hungary. It's important also to note that three of all our new customers in 2024 are among the top 100 banks worldwide, which is a strong demonstration to our growing reputation globally.
When we take a look at the detailed revenue for the payment activity, we can see that the transition to SaaS is reshaping our revenue streams, with the SaaS revenue growing faster than the project stream revenue. While traditional on-prem projects would have generated an additional MAD 75 million in 2024, SaaS is driving long-term sustainable growth. Thanks to the strong sales achieved in 2024, our secured revenue now exceeds more than MAD 700 million annually with existing customers only. This transition and this acceleration give us a very strong confidence in the future and in the growth of the recurring revenue for the next three to four years.
The upselling revenue remain robust also driven by existing customers consistently enhancing their platforms with new features, but also for some of them, upgrading to the latest versions of PowerCARD or the 3.4 or 3.5, or the V4 of PowerCARD. Maintenance revenues also continue to reinforce, supported by the onboarding of new customers after their warranty period, but also by renegotiation of our maintenance fee that has been conducted during the 2023 and 2024 exercise. Today we have renegotiated the majority of our customer contracts to reflect all the increase on the cost that we have due to the inflation. For the switching activity we achieved again here a major milestone for this year.
For the first time, we processed more than one million daily term payment transaction, peaking at 1.2 million in 2024. We also successfully onboarded new players onto our platform with Citibank and with Chari, which is a new Fintech player in Morocco. This is a strong message, a strong expectation that we have to see new players beyond the banks that we have today in Morocco with this fintechs that will help to increase the market and the transaction in Morocco. We've also expanded added value services with the tokenization offering.
Today in 2024, we have allowed Apple Pay and Google Pay to be deployed in Morocco, and we see that this deployment ease and accelerate also the usage of payments in the country. Our wallet switching segment is also growing quickly or rapidly with the migration to a new platform and the introduction of a dispute management system. In the other hand, we continue also to invest on our global switching platform. To enhance first the resilience with the new active-active architecture that we've deployed in 2024 and also to enhance the security with an AI driven fraud detection platform that is under deployment and that will be probably live in mid of 2025.
Switching revenue reached more or less MAD 90 million , achieving a growth of 14.7%. This growth is driven by increased transaction volumes, but also by the addition of new members and by the rise of digital wallets. Our continuous technological upgrades and expansion into new services have been also key contributors of this growth. As digital payment adoption grows, we are well positioned today to capitalize on this momentum and to capture the full potential growth of the Moroccan market in the coming years. Regarding CR2 activity that has been acquired or finalized the acquisition in August 2024. The full-year 2024 pictures shows revenue close to EUR 25 million and an EBITDA of EUR 1.4 million.
2024 performance was temporarily impacted by the acquisition timing as some customers delayed decisions pending the finalization of this, of this acquisition, affecting license and professional services revenue. However, the underlying momentum is still strong. We signed the major EUR 2.5 million deal in Q4. The subscription deals which are regular or recurring revenue are growing with the five-year total contract value of EUR 3.7 million in 2024. The recurring revenue also grow by 3%, showing an excellent customer retention, and the cost remains in line with the plan. Focusing on the four months post-acquisition, from September to December 2024, CR2 contributed EUR 7 million in revenue with an EBITDA loss of EUR 700,000, which was anticipated in our budget.
This loss, in fact, reflects revenue phasing, particularly the upfront recognition of licensed revenue and the fact that 80% of recurring revenue was recognized in the first eight months and only 20% in the period that has been consolidated in HPS figures. Looking ahead, we anticipate significant growth for CR2 in 2025, targeting around 20% revenue growth and an EBITDA margin comprised between 15%-18%. We are also in discussions with the auditors of CR2 and HPS to see to what extent CR2's accounting methods could be modified so that revenues are smoothed over time, like HPS accounting methods today. Let's analyze now our cost structure.
HR costs decreased by 4.5% globally, despite 13.5% increase in headcounts. This is reflecting our strategy to reduce reliance on more expensive external resources, which decreased by 17% in 2024. On the sales and marketing costs, It rose by more or less 40%. This is directly supporting our strong sales growth and the market expansion that we had in 2024. On the same, on the same trend, we have also travel and expenses that increased by 16.5%, driven by project deployments but also by our growing sales efforts.
Other external costs grow by 5.3%, mainly due to 48% rise in SaaS data center hosting costs, which is obviously a strategic investment to support SaaS transition acceleration, like what explained Abdeslam during his presentation. Finally, the increase in tax is mainly due to our growing international presence and increased intercompany also transaction with HPS head office, which are subject to withholding tax regulation in various jurisdictions where today HPS is present. On the cash flow. Our operation cash flow remains positive at MAD 50 million. Demonstrating optimal cash management despite strong growth and cash cycle impact due to our fast acceleration. Investment and the financing activities reflect the CR2 acquisition financed through bank debt.
Our end year cash position remains stable at MAD 205 million or MAD 204 million. Our long-term debt ratio remains reasonable in the context of a very strong investment at 17%. If we look to our backlog. Our backlog grew by more or less 8% to MAD 885 million. The most important is the quality of our backlog that continues to improve with recurring and stable revenue streams that now representing 85% compared to 78% last year. This shift is fueled by very strong growth in sales, feeding our sales backlog, which now constitutes 36% of the total.
It's important to note that the SaaS revenue backlog consists only on the billing minimums and not of the actual expected revenue, which is significantly higher to the figure that we have in this slide. The accelerated deployment of major projects has reduced the project backlog stream. Overall, the trend in backlog evolution is toward more recurring and predictable revenue. I propose now to analyze in more detail the impact of the transition to SaaS on our figures and in particular on our revenue and margin. The objective is to better understand why a year like 2024, when we achieved a very strong sales, does not generate immediate growth in terms of revenue and margin.
The objective of this slide is to compare the financial situation in 2024 and beyond, based on the actual mix between SaaS and on-prem projects, and the situation where all our projects currently in progress would have been on-prem only. On the right, you have the situation with the current mix, and on the left, the situation where all the projects would have been on-prem only. We can see that the actual mix impact near-term recognized revenue compared to the traditional on-prem model with a gap of MAD 75 million in 2024 in terms of revenue, but also in terms of EBITDA. The long-term picture is significantly different.
As you can see, while bill revenue is lower initially, the SaaS revenue streams rapidly overtake on the on-prem model, leading to substantially higher overall revenue and EBITDA in the medium to long term. What we saw in the previous slides will be true every year. In the sense that by design, each SaaS project will be less profitable than a similar on-prem project during the first two to three years, and significantly more profitable for HPS after that period. However, from a more global perspective, we believe that 2024 and 2025 represent the years when the impact of this transition will be maximum. Because the transition to SaaS has been accelerated suddenly in 2023 and 2024, with very little offset by on-prem revenue or by significant revenues from existing SaaS customers.
Thanks to the explosion of SaaS sales in 2023 and 2024, future SaaS development should be offset by the SaaS revenue generated by these new major customers that we sign in 2024. This strategic transition is to move from one-off revenue model to a more recurring, predictable, and scalable SaaS revenue model, reinforcing financial predictability, but also significantly increasing our margin and ultimately generating higher valuation multiples for HPS. Beyond the revenue impact, this transition requires also significant upfront costs. For several years, as explained by Abdeslam, we have been investing heavily in developing our global infrastructure to support scalable offering. Often, even before revenue is recognized during the build phase of the project.
Beyond the infrastructure and hosting costs, we have also some hidden costs to reinforce, for example, the security and to improve the service delivery in order to meet the requirements of our Tier 1 banks. However, the medium and long-term vision shows a significant margin through the gradual ramp-up of our client business onto the platform without a proportional increase or in cost. Furthermore, the cloud costs, unlike proprietary data centers, are elastic and adjust to business activity, which allows a very precise cost management for HPS. Our North American platform exemplifies this investment strategy. While upfront costs are significant, as you can see in 2024 and 2025, we do not have margin, and we have losses on this platform in the first year.
While upfront costs are significant, the long-term recurring revenue drives strong margin. We can see that, only based on the existing customers, the costs evolve really slowly, but the revenue based on the projection of revenue from our existing customers grow very fastly. We will achieve after five years or four years of run on this platform, the EBITDA on this platform that will exceed 50% in 2028. Similarly, on our Australian platform, the investment shows a potentially faster return on investment compared to North America, partially because some business costs will be invoiced upfront to the customers, reducing the initial gap. Earlier billing shortened the payback period, and this platform will provide a strong foundation for the region expansion on the SaaS.
Today, we have three customers that will be managed by this platform, and we probably will have more success when we finalize the platform in the global region. To understand the underlying performance, excluding the SaaS transition timing, we look to an adjusted EBITDA. Reported EBITDA for 2024 was around MAD 230 million, reflecting this transition. However, if the MAD 75 million from SaaS project were recognized as on-prem revenue, as demonstrated earlier, and by adjusting the EBITDA for platform costs, our adjusted EBITDA would be significantly higher at more than MAD 370 million, representing a strong underlying growth of more than 28%. And the adjusted margin would also improve substantially to more than 26%.
Before we conclude, let's summarize the key takeaways from today's discussions. In summary, despite the temporary financial effects on the SaaS transition, 2024 showed a solid underlying performance. We achieved record total contract value growth, leading to strong future recurring revenue. Our adjusted EBITDA grow by 28%, and the SaaS deals signed in 2024 alone are expected to add over MAD 180 million in annual revenue within the next three years, and more than MAD 230 million by 2030.
Globally, it was a transformational year with an accelerated SaaS adoption, with a successful CR2 integration, with the growing Tier 1 banks adoption, and with the strong geographic expansion also. Our outlook is positive, supported by PowerCARD V4 strength, the strategic shift towards recurring revenue, and by the foundation built in 2024. In conclusion, our transition to SaaS is well underway. Despite short-term financial impacts, we are building a foundation for sustainable high margin growth. With the global infrastructure today in place, strong commercial momentum and disciplined cost management, we are confident in our long-term value creation. Thank you for your attention, and I invite you to start our Q&A session. The first question is from Hicham Saadani from BMCE. The question is regarding the ratio of valorization for CR2.
What is the rationale behind this acquisition? Is that acquisition may delay the achievement of our objectives for AccelR8? I'm not, I'm not, I do not agree with the first, with the first part of your comments. We believe that the ratio of the pricing that we paid for CR2 is not expensive considering the ratio of HPS. We have, we have a valorization or a pricing that is less compared to the HPS one. The rationale of this acquisition is in contrary to accelerate the achievement of our, our strategic plan.
First, by increasing our revenue, our geographical presence in some region where HPS is still weak compared to other competitors, but also to accelerate our innovation on the product and to address some new layer in the technology part of PowerCARD without developing this by ourselves and gaining the time to market for all the digital layer that we will add on the PowerCARD platform. I don't know, Abdeslam, if you want to add something on this topic.
Maybe to have a little bit more on the strategic intent. The acquisition of CR2 is coming also to give us a bigger footprint on our customer space. As you know, the payment is going more and more digital, and we needed to be able to have a digital channels to distribute the payment products that our customers would have, and also that we would also offer through our SaaS platforms. The decision was made not to build but to buy this digital layer that will enable us to go to the next step. Besides of the actual figures and the business that CR2 is coming, so it is bringing us something that is really relevant to make us more relevant on our customer space. I hope this clarifies the intent and the importance of this acquisition.
Thank you, Abdeslam. Next one from Hicham. What are the conditions of the bank debt that we raised to finance the acquisition of CR2? Shall we maintain CR2 as it is, or shall we incorporate it totally in our company? The debt bank conditions are the market conditions, but negotiated considering the size of the acquisition and the amount. It's debt that has been contracted with two more than banks. That we consider today are negotiated at the right level. Considering the second part of your question about the structure of HPS globally.
We are running today a study with some partners to better understand and reshape the global structure of HPS. CR2, as a business, is today totally incorporated within HPS business. We worked during 2024 on all the synergies to have CR2 as one team with HPS. On the management side, but also on all the other aspects of the business of CR2. On the commercial, on the corporate functions, etc. Today, CR2 is totally integrated in our in our processes and in businesses like other businesses that we've acquired in the past. Do we have other M&A to realize until 2027? Yes. We are studying different opportunities.
We have an objective that remain the same as the one that we've explained in our AccelR8 program. The focus that we have today is really to accelerate our technological enhancements regarding the platform. We are looking at different options on the market to accelerate HPS technology platform in the coming years. Can we give some figures on the three world or top 100 banks that we signed in 2024? Two of them have been disclosed during the presentation. It's Crédit Agricole, which is ranked within the top 20 worldwide, I think. We have also Erste Group, which is in the top 100.
The last one is the Australian Bank. The two first ones are the on-prem projects, so they will deliver their revenue within 2024 partially, and 2025, and 2026. The Australian one is a SaaS project, and will contribute to the figures that we disclose. We expect that the total 2024 SaaS contract that we signed, delivered by 2030, more or less, MAD 250 million annual revenue. This Tier 1 bank will be a big part of this, of this revenue. Next one. How do we explain the strong growth in the external expenses and the taxes? I think that we explained this during the presentation.
If it was not clear, the external costs growth, due to the growth of our hosting for our SaaS platforms. We shifted from a situation where we had perhaps three or four platforms. Today we have extended this to the North American region, to the Australian region. We have also extended some capabilities in other regions. This is the main reason that explain the growth of our external expenses. For taxes, as explained, it's due to our international exposition that is growing, and all the intercompany flows in terms of revenue between the HPS head office and the affiliates.
As you can imagine, every time that we sign a contract from an affiliate, so in Australia, in Canada, et cetera, the head office, because we own the IP, we have to invoice the cost of the license to this affiliate. All these flows are subject to withholding tax in the different jurisdictions where we are present. Can we explain the losses of 2024 for CR2? I think again that we explained it during the presentation. 2024 full-year, we do not have losses, but we have an EBITDA margin around 6%. For the four months, we have losses that are explained by the phasing of recognition for the revenue of CR2 that is not smoothed over the year.
We have the 80% of the revenue that has been recognized in the first eight months, when only 20% on the last period. This created this gap and the losses on 2024. Revenue SaaS for 2024, I think that we gave the detail in the presentation. 2024, we have MAD 270 million of SaaS revenue. With the potential growth of MAD 230 million additional coming from the new customer that we signed in 2024. Guidance for 2025. I think that it has been clearly explained by Mr. Alaoui in the first part of the presentation. Next one is from Abdelaziz.
What are the biggest risks to achieving our objective going forward? I think that today, the achievements that we've that we have completed in 2024 make us in a very strong position to achieve our objectives by 2027. What can happen is that this SaaS acceleration, we can imagine that it will be reinforced in the coming years. In our plan for 2027, in the beginning, we were not expecting such acceleration in SaaS.
The acceleration in SaaS is something that is definitely in the benefit of HPS. Every time that one on-prem project is converted into SaaS project is in the benefit of HPS because we will deliver more margin and more recurring revenue in the future. It will impact HPS in the near term revenue recognition. The main risk that we can face in the coming years is to have this SaaS transformation to be accelerated compared to our first hypothesis in the 2027 AccelR8 program that we shared with you two years ago. In the coming years, in our initial plan, we still have some on-prem projects that are supposed to contribute to the revenue for the coming years. If we are more successful on SaaS, which is a good news for HPS, it can impact the revenue for the short term.
I'll just add another point on what Brahim just mentioned about the risks. We have seen a lot of fears, a lot of questions on the AI adoption and how this would impact the businesses. We see this as an opportunity for HPS. This would help us and it's already the case where we are using AI to accelerate the delivery. This doesn't impact us in a negative way. We believe being a technology company always in innovation, this is a real opportunity that we are already embracing and we start seeing the impact of this. Besides the geopolitical and the wars and the viruses, et cetera, that even though have not hit us badly when it happened, we do not see big risks in executing our plan.
Next one, from Abdelillah from CDG. In light of the recent decline in the dollar and the very short look expected by analysts, what impact do you anticipate this will have on our, on your financial performance? Additionally, what proportion of your revenue is generated in USD? In terms of mix, I think I don't have the exact figures, but I think that 60% of our revenue today is generated in dollars and the rest in euros. Aziz is online, so if I'm wrong, please correct.
In terms of risk, we it's always a risk to have movements on the currencies, since our costs are mainly in maintenance and our revenue are mainly in currency. We try to manage this risk. In the major contract that we have with our customers, we always have some clauses where we can adjust the revenue if there is a big movement on the currencies. It's always something that needs to be taken into consideration when we have a movement on the currency.
Overall, I mean, if you look beyond short term, on the mid and long term, the impact is more positive than negative. Next one from Lamia. What is the backlog level of the end of March 2025? Not very different compared to the ones that we presented. As you have probably noticed today, the majority of our backlog or big part of the backlog is coming now from the SaaS revenue and the recurring revenue. The backlog today represent is only the minimum billing for our SaaS customers. It will increase strongly when these customers will go into production and when all their volumes will be onboarded on our platform.
We will see this backlog increase by the level of revenue that we will invoice annually to the customer. Today, the level of the backlog does not reflect the full potential of the revenue that we signed in 2024. But it's showing the potential of growth of our revenue in the coming years. How much should the investment envelope be for 2025 amounts? If we exclude any M&A operations, it should remain at a low level, and it's mainly for all our IT tools and IT infrastructures. It should be at the same level compared to 2023 or 2022. Question from Dan.
What is the nature of MAD 12.5 million one-off recorded in FY 2024? MAD 12.5 million . Dan, excuse me, but I'm not sure to catch your point. We come back to this. If you can just repost your question adding more detail to be able to answer to the question. Next one from Dan. Tax and levies included in the OpEx increased by 244%. What drove that? I think that we explained this, Dan. It's mainly the growth of the withholding tax that we are facing due to our growing international exposure and the growing presence of HPS affiliates worldwide. And all the financial flows between HPS head office and the affiliates.
Next one from Lamia Benyoussef. What are your perspectives for the year 2025? I think that we have fairly explained this. We expect globally growth for revenue compliance between 20%-30%. For the EBITDA between 30%-35% growth. Next one from Dan. Should we expect the effective tax rate next year to be in line with the 2024 or higher? Aziz, if you can jump or take this one.
For sure. For, for Dan, the effective tax rate should be the same as 2024. Also the structure of the revenues should also impact this rate because if you take the example of dividends that we have received in from our subsidiaries and affiliates, which is not taxable. This structure of the taxable income should also impact the effective tax rate that we can have. I don't know if you answer questions. If there is any additional remark or information, you, if you could please chat the question.
Thank you, Aziz. Can you communicate the amount paid for CR2? No, we didn't disclose the exact amount, but if you have a look to the cash flow statement that we shared in the presentation, you can guess what is the more or less the value that we paid. Next one from Medy Serge. Can we have guidance on the evolution of PowerCARD projects revenue in the wake of the ramp-up of the SaaS segment? It's probably less easy compared to the SaaS. This is why we say that SaaS is predictable and recurring. The PowerCARD project is composed mainly or totally by one-off revenue, non-recurring revenue coming from the build of all our projects.
It depends on the sales of the year, on the mix between SaaS and on-prem. There are various parameters that can influence the growth of PowerCARD projects. It's very hard to give the same visibility on PowerCARD projects compared to SaaS revenue. If you want to give some guidance on this globally. We had this year a very successful sales year. We believe that this year is, or the success that we had this year is driven by the PowerCARD V4, and the success that we have with this technology on the major markets.
We believe that we will continue to have strong sales activity in the coming years. The PowerCARD projects will be fueled by this successes. Not on the same level if we have a mix that is mainly composed by a SaaS project. We expect to have this PowerCARD project that will grow and that will reflect this sales effort and sales success on PowerCARD V4. Next one from Zenel Hoti. Any more upcoming acquisition? No. We have explained, we still have in our objective to achieve some acquisition in the future. We are looking at some specific targets.
Not sure to achieve something this year, 2025, but the objective is to continue in line with what we've shared in our AccelR8 program and beyond 2027. We believe that today one of the main objective also for HPS is to have this critical size to be able to address our Tier 1 market bank market more easily by giving confidence to our to our customers compared to other big players that do not have today the same technology of HPS but that can give some confidence considering the size that they have and financial solidity that they can show compared to HPS.
Just to summarize what Brahim said. In the very near future, there is no acquisition planned, but we are looking at, as Brahim said a couple of questions ago, we are looking at different targets that would always fit with our strategy, technology, enrich our technology, the geographical penetration, and also the segment penetration.
Next one from Amina from CDG. One of the key risks affecting HPS revenue is the exchange rates. How do you anticipate this risk in the coming years? We discussed this earlier with another question. First we have a mix between U.S. dollar and euro that help HPS to balance the FX because we noticed that when we have dollar that increase, we have the euro that decrease and the contrary, the other way around. On the other hand, we have also some clauses in with the big players or with the big customers on main contracts to try to limit the risk on HPS with big exposure rates.
It's a risk that is linked to our activity and to our international exposure we try to manage. We know that we had the discussions in the past with you, to try to consider the mechanism offered by the Moroccan market, by the banks, by insurance to try to cover this risk. Today we didn't find the right mechanism, considering the nature of the business of HPS. It's something that we live with and we try to manage by balancing the exposure between different currencies and also by protecting ourselves with our agreements with customers. Next one from Mehdi from CDG. What is the backlog including CR2? We don't have these figures.
CR2 is not used to have this concept of backlog. It's something that we are working with them to have the same methodologies as HPS. It's something that we will share with you for the first half, making the same methodology to have something that will be easy to understand from the market. Okay. Then for one-offs, your press release has the following P&L line item charge and products. It's for the non, as is for the non.
I can take this one, Dan. The most important part of this line is, in fact, a tax that the Moroccan tax authority has put in place as a social solidarity contribution. According to accounting policy in Morocco, we should recognize this part of tax in this line. It's something that we have also the last year, and it's the most important part of this line, which is a tax, even if it's under exceptional elements.
Thank you, Aziz. Next one from Ali. Can you break down the 2025 revenue and EBITDA guidance between HPS only versus HPS consolidated including CR2? I think that it has been presented.
We gave guidance for CR2 that is an expected revenue of EUR 30 million for 2025 compared to EUR 7 million in 2024 for the part consolidated. With an expected EBITDA margin comprised between 15%-18%. The rest will come from HPS standalone to reach the revenue growth comprised between 20%-30% and an EBITDA growth comprised between 30%-35%. Let me know if it's not clear, Ali, please. Next one and the last one in the chat. For the SaaS implementation, retaining customers on the long term is very important. Was it a challenge and is it still a challenge?
It is, it is always a challenge to keep a customer. It is important to keep a customer, but it is much less a challenge when it is SaaS. Our SaaS contracts are for usually five years minimum to start and a renewal period of three years. This is how we work. The challenge is covered by the fact of delivering a good service. If it is a good service, this is something that the bank would not like to change. It is important to us just to keep the level of service that we have and make sure that our customers are satisfied, and therefore the stickiness to the technology is there.
Thank you, Abdeslam. It was the last, and final question on the, on the chat. I would like to thank you all, for your presence and for your, questions. We, of course, remain, available for one-to-one, discussions if needed. Also we have last one, from Hicham. How do you see, the build of BNP Paribas on the PCRE district?
I think it is a dynamic that we always welcome. Any change is creating opportunities. We have been following this very, very carefully. We think that could generate opportunities for us directly, indirectly. When there is new dynamic in the market, it's always good for a company like HPS because we are always able to surprise with our approaches, with our technology.
We have another one from Mehdi. What is the geographic distribution for the new contract signed in 2024 and for the backlog in general? I don't have the exact figures, Mehdi, but the main or the majority of the new contracts are coming from Southeast Asia and Europe for 2024. For 2023, we had some contracts in North America. We have reinforced in 2024 our presence in the Caribbean with three or four new customers in the region. If needed, we can separately give you exact splits for the contract and for the backlog in a separate chat. Okay.
I think it's the last one. I would like perhaps just to complete the guidance that we gave. When we were mentioning the growth, it was to be understood as at least for the guidance, meaning that this is what we expect as a minimum. If we are successful like this year, probably the growth will be high. Okay. Now it was the last one. Thank you all for your presence and fidelity also. We remain at your disposal for one-to-one calls or meetings. If we don't meet before this, let's, we connect in six months for the, for the first half of 2025.
Thank you.