Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the cBrain Investor Briefing 2026 Interim Report Conference Call and Webcast. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone keypad.
You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please use your Q&A box available on the webcast link any time during the live event. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our speaker today, Lars Møller Christiansen, Chief Financial Officer Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you very much. As you mentioned, I am the Chief Financial Officer of cBrain, and we are very happy to present to you today our interim report of 2026. I should convey my regards from Per Tejs who could unfortunately not be here today to do the introduction himself. This is due to that he is attending a meeting as we speak in the foreign ministries with all the Danish ambassadors from the Global South, so that this was a big opportunity.
This is why he is not here today. But we will give the presentation. First of all, before we go to the questions, we will give a short intro to the main findings, the main results of the interim report, and then we will be happy to take questions. If we start with the key messages. The main message is, of course, that we are back in growth.
cBrain has returned to growth, while maintaining high profitability and increasing strategic momentum. As you may imagine, there is a very good spirit, a very good feeling in the company. We are back after having had a relatively weak 2025. We are now back in growth, and we feel a momentum in a variety of areas.
Just to take you through the main findings. The first, of course, being that we have returned to growth. Our revenue in the first half of 2026 is DKK 140 million, representing a 6% increase compared to first half of 2025. One of the main findings here as well is that we think we are seeing now the initial results of our revised growth plan for 2026 to 2028 and our new strategy.
We think the initiatives that we have been working on in 2025 and implementing here in 2026, we are now beginning to see the result of those initiatives, and that is, of course, very good news. Also, we have a good feeling about the second half. We have a specific series of activities that we are following.
We think the momentum will continue into the second half, and this allows us to maintain a full year guidance of 10%-15% revenue growth in 2026 with a strong margin of 2025 EBT. Also some of the things that are taking the agenda here in the company as well as in other companies, is that AI is becoming a defining moment. We see AI and are working on making AI a growth driver in the company.
This is due to that we are enabling the F2 platform with AI across the whole functionality of the platform. We have a pretty strong AI offer, we think. Also, as you probably have noticed, there is some progress in our activities in the U.S. We have been in the U.S. for five years, and in the beginning of this year, we announced that we have two POCs, proof of concepts, going on in the U.S.
As you probably saw on Monday, we could announce now that we have the first formal contract on a real assignment with the state of California. We were in competition with 50 other companies delivering an AI-enabled solution to reduce permitting timelines in several aspects of permitting, and we are very happy to announce that we got the order. That was, of course, a very big day for cBrain.
Also, it is not only in the U.S. that we feel we are going ahead with a strong position in environmental permitting. Environmental permitting is, of course, one of the main segments we are following in our strategy, the other one being paperless ministries. Related to environmental permitting, we, of course, we see the picking up in the U.S., but also in Europe, we see increased interest.
I will just mention here that the European Commission came out earlier this year with a study where they compared permitting solutions in 14 different countries, and we were actually highlighted as the most advanced platform, most mature environmental platform in Europe. That was, of course, also a thing that we took note of. Mm-hmm.
As I start with, that is a very good feeling in the company and looking ahead, we feel the momentum we are experiencing now will pick up and with AI products being delivered and the platform being AI-enabled, we feel very confident in the rest of the year and the coming years. This is quite a nice message for us to convey at the interim report.
Taking a deep dive into the numbers. As you all know, last year we experienced for the first time in the company's history a decline in the revenue growth, where we decreased half year to half year 5% in the first half and 8% in the second half. As you can see from the table here, we are now back in growth with 6% in the first half of 2026, corresponding to the same motion we saw in 2024.
We expect in the second half of 2026, our growth half year to half year of above 15% in the current high scenario of 25%. This corresponds to a full year guidance of 10%-15% revenue growth. We can come back during the questions to where we see potential for growth and also maintaining our EBIT margin of 20%-25% for the full year of 2026.
Compared to 2025, pretty strong numbers and we are very happy that the strategy seems to be working. If we take a closer look at the numbers. As you can see, most of the revenue growth is driven by a national demand, increasing domestic revenue. The Danish revenue grew from DKK 89 million to DKK 111 million corresponding to 24%. There was a strong pickup in the Danish market.
And this is even though we had the longest government formation period in Danish history. It took more than three months from the general election until we had a functioning government. Normally this affects our revenue negatively because the ministries are busy forming the government instead of buying projects for digitization.
But the other side of this, of course, is that the international revenue decreased to DKK 29 million. And this is mainly due to some of the big license sales that we had in Germany are coming to an end. And we haven't yet had new big licenses abroad, but I'm sure we'll get back to that during the questions. If you look at the underlying business also, we have some, as you all know, some solid and robust trades there.
I'll quote just that our subscriptions grew with 8% to DKK 88 million corresponding to 63% of total revenue. So our recurring revenues gives us a very strong base for executing all of the elements in our strategy. Also if you look at our EBT and our EBT margins, those are also growing compared to 2025. \
Yes, I'll take you a little bit into some of the visions and some of the central elements in our strategy. The main message here is actually that, as you all know, we've been working on becoming a leader in COTS for government, Commercial Off-The-Shelf solutions for government. So AI also is a defining moment now. And how do these two elements correspond? The main message from us is that we see AI as accelerating the shift towards COTS for government. And in that case, it strengthens the cBrain business case with F2.
So what do we mean by that? Well, one of the things with AI is that the coding becomes faster, basically increasing the strategic value of having a platform in which you can absorb different technologies. So it becomes, so to speak, more important as we are able to have faster new solutions that you also have a framework for holding onto your central systems and that you're not forced into changing systems every time there's a new technology.
So in that way, AI strengthens our core business case. So with the F2 platform what it does is that it actually allows us to absorb new technologies when the language models change. We still have a platform where your data as a company, your data and your processes are still unchanged and in compliance, and you can keep operating on them even though you change the different AI models beneath.
And in that way, F2 becomes a platform for the ongoing technological change that happens around you. And we see that with our Danish customers, and we see that also internationally when we go to California, we are able to apply different technologies within the F2 framework. And in that way, our central ambition remains unchanged.
We want to be the leaders of the COTS for government shift and supplying our customers with integrated AI solutions. Also, we have a new F2 product strategy, and I'll get back to the elements of that in the next slide. So bottom line, we have a new growth plan with the segments you know, and the land expand innovate agenda that we know, and we see that as being supported with the new shift towards AI. So taking a deep dive into our product strategy.
As you all know, we have a blueprint for the F2 platforms. We explained that during our former presentations. It is a roadmap, so to speak, a framework for where we are developing the F2 platform. We have the core in the middle, and we have the whole website solutions portal in the left side, and we have our registries and mass operations around the core.
We have moved from being a document platform to being a full-blown enterprise platform for public organizations. This is the main framework for our product development. But within that framework, we have four focus areas. One being, of course, AI, and I will get back to that in a minute. Basically, we are not seeing AI as an added product to the F2 platform.
We are seeing it as a technology that we are embedding full-blown into the platform in many ways, thus allowing us to make the benefits of AI available to all our customers across the platform. Also, sovereignty is a huge focus area, especially in Europe, where the dependence on big tech giants is becoming increasingly a question that you have to be able to answer.
To go back to the point from before, if we see F2 as an infrastructure, we see it as a framework for technological change. We are actually able to, within the F2 platform, to change different editors. For instance, if you want to change the Microsoft 365 platform with open source platforms such as Collabora and LibreOffice, you are able to do that.
Correspondingly with other technologies and other vendor technologies, we are able to take the functions and integrate them into the platform and shift them if you want to make a shift. What the F2 platform does is that we are not trying to take the big tech giants head on, or we are not in opposition to the big tech giants, but we are trying to provide our customers with the freedom of choice so that they may pick whatever vendors and technology partners they want. In that way, F2 is also a platform for ensuring sovereignty.
You keep your processes and your data in the platform, but you can change the different technologies that you are working with within the platform. The Service Builder, you have heard a lot about that within our previous presentations. It is basically a no-code, low-code tool that allows our customers to build and to configure and to change and keep updated all their internal processes, whether it be administrative processes or whether it be services towards citizens and communities.
Our whole Service Builder concept is on the heavy development. Also, it becomes a framework from where you can control your AI agents, and you have a framework for actually controlling your whole organization, the whole operating model of your organization. The fourth and final strategic focus we have is the enterprise initiative, which is largely about being even better at making registries and all the things that make a whole enterprise platform for public organizations.
In that way, we feel we have a pretty strong product strategy with these four focus areas, allowing us to develop our platform further and ensuring that we are in the front line and able to win the COTS for government market. Going to the next. One of the focus areas we have, as mentioned, was AI enabling the whole F2 platform.
This is actually all about turning AI into a growth driver. We embed AI directly into all the different functions and the different elements of the F2 platform. In that way, you don't have to have several added platforms on the side from where you copy and use AI there. You can actually work with AI within the platform. That has a lot of consequences, including increased sustainability, lower energy costs for the customers, et cetera.
Within the long term AI, this is really what we feel is the right strategy for the platform. It consists of different elements. One of them, of course, being that we embed generative AI into the platform. We are able, within the platform, actually to work with agents within the different workflows. The product which delivers this is the F2 AI Task Specialist. We have announced the different messages. We have announced the product launch earlier this year, and we are working now with several Danish customers on implementing this technology in services towards citizens.
We see this as a very strong product that allows the organization to, over time, to fully automate different processes and services. As I already mentioned also, the Service Builder is a very important product related to AI because it provides the framework from where you can prompt your different task specialists, and it gives you a controlled environment from where you can actually deploy your different AI task-based into your different services and processes.
As we announced two weeks ago with the California process, we actually have developed a new product. This allows us to summarize and to structure all the different huge amounts of information that you are actually relying on when you, as a public organization, are trying to make decisions.
Being able to vectorize and to summarize and to prepare these huge amounts of data, we are able to use AI much more efficiently within the platform. To speak, we use AI on the relevant data, thus increasing the computing powers, et cetera, and improving the results significantly of using an AI. The more focused data and foundation you have, the better results from AI.
This is a new product where, to speak, we take AI to the government data instead of taking the government data to the big AI solutions. This relates to the next point, mainly that we want to use AI in a sovereign, secure, and sustainable manner. This, of course, means that we can provide our AI services on-prem. You don't need to put your confidential data into the cloud environments. You can do it on-prem.
We also are able to provide cloud services if that's relevant, but we can do it on-prem. In Denmark, for the Danish ministries, that's a very important point due to GDPR regulations, et cetera. Also, that has some implications of reducing the cost of moving data and being able to perform and use AI in a more sustainable manner.
We think that's an added benefit of actually convening sovereignty and AI issues. In that way, as we mentioned before, AI strengthens the COTS business case. It gives us the ability to integrate AI across our current platform. That's what we're seeing also from our customers. That will be the deep dive into some of the strategy elements. I won't go through the financial highlights. I'm sure they'll pop up when we have the questions. I think that will be the introduction to the half year report from my side. We're happy to take questions.
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Mm-hmm. Yep.
Now we are going to take our first question on the audio line.
Sure
It comes from the line of Mikkel Kousgaard Rasmussen from ABG Sundal Collier. The line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes. Thank you for taking my question. My question is related to the full year guidance, which you are reiterating. You are guiding for H2 growth above 50%, and I appreciate that the comp is easy. I think it is -8% from last year. But how much of that acceleration in the guidance or embedded in the guidance is already visible in the backlog today, versus dependent on how much, or let us say, new deals that you need to sign during the remainder of this quarter and Q4?
We learned some lessons last year when we were not able to see the decrease in revenue in the second half of the year until late in the process. We are quite conservative and have put in a conservative mode in this year's guidance. It relates to your questions both on the international side and the domestic side.
We have a solid backlog of activities that we are following, and we are quite confident that we will reach our guidance this year. This goes both for the Danish market, where as you can see in the first half, in spite of the long government formation period, we picked up a solid momentum. We can see that both with potential new customers and also with existing customers that have a pipeline of specific tasks.
Some of them we haven't signed the order on yet, but we can see that the pipeline is quite visible. To your question, we have high visibility, especially in the Danish market, but we also have it internationally, both in the U.S. We have a contract now with California.
There are other activities that we are following in the U.S. market. Also, in the European market, we have different promising activities. If all that goes through, we will look into a positive adjustment of the guidance later this autumn. But keeping in mind the 2025 experience, we are more cautious this year. But we are very confident we will reach the guidance we have.
All right. Thank you, Lars. My second question also goes to guidance somewhat at least, but that's on the margin side. You're guiding 20%-25% EBT margin. That implies a H2 margin, at least if we take the midpoint of the sales guidance, then that will obviously be materially below the 26% you delivered in H1. But historically, looking at my model here, costs have been lower in H2 than in H1, at least in the last couple of years. Why would that change this year? Could you talk about some of the swing factors?
Yeah, sure. We're very well that we expect an EBT in the second half in the low 20s, so we're still within our EBT interval. This is due to some of the investments that we're currently making is implementing our, executing our new growth plan. For instance, in customers, we are expanding. We are also expanding in our solutions department and different parts of the organization.
So we are picking up, and therefore we will see a different pattern. Of course, when we have revenue growth, our whole model is that our revenue actually grows faster than the cost. But with the implementations of new strategy and the measures we are putting in place, we are currently recruiting new workers. But we have a close eye on how the EBT develops in the second half. But currently, we are within our present guidance.
All right. Thank you so much, Lars. Great answers and congratulations on a good report.
Thank you. I hope we were able to convey that there is a very good feeling in the company right now. Optimism is the main character.
Dear speakers, there are no further audio questions at this moment. Please, kindly proceed with any written questions.
Yes, we will take them. The first one is, how much of the City of Aarhus contract, the 5,000 users, is expected to be billed this year, and how much next year? When is the City of Aarhus expected to decide if they want to use their option to increase the number above 5,000? You can take the first one, Jonas, Finance Director.
Yeah. Thank you, Lars. The City of Aarhus contract is ongoing at the moment. We are delivering and developing on the contract. Next year, they will go live with their new F2 platform for the whole City of Aarhus. How much we bill and how much is within, it is some accounting practical. We do not go too much into that, but we can talk about the contract amount is already announced earlier, so you can go back and read that. When the City of Aarhus will decide to take the next step-
Yes.
Lars is much more.
Currently, as just mentioned, we are delivering the project, and they are about to go live in the beginning of next year, and the payments follow close to that. Related to your question is when are they to decide if they are to expand the contract? Actually, we have some ongoing dialogues now with City of Aarhus about the use of different functionalities that they did not get with the tender they put out one and a half years ago.
So we have a good dialogue. If and when they decide to expand the contract and buy new things, we are not there yet, but we are quite confident that they will be happy with the solutions that we deliver and put into operation in the start of 2026. In that way, we are also quite confident that we see a business opportunity in expanding our relations with City of Aarhus.
I might mention in that connection that one of the departments, one of the magistrates of City of Aarhus, they use F2 in a more extended way than was in the tender. So already one of their departments is using it, the full F2 platform. Of course, we hope that more of the departments will decide to go the same way.
Would it be the next question if we follow the written questions? Would it be reasonable to expect revenue growth of at least 10% in 2027? We have not issued any guidance on 2027. I do not think we will in any short term. But I think I will answer the question with that we feel a very strong momentum now, and we are confident that that will continue into the second half of 2026. I could not see why this momentum should not continue into 2027, and for that reason, into 2028.
Also with the whole point being that we are seeing now, we think, the initial results of our revised strategy and growth plan for 2026 to 2028. So we are quite confident that we, and hopefully we will see growth rates of at least 10% in 2027, but we have not issued any guidance on that yet. The EBT margin of 2026 for first half 2026 is higher than 2022 and for 2025.
What is the main reason? Well, I think it is quite simple. It is the pickup in the Danish market that actually surprised us. Even with the government formation period, we were able to pick up orders, and those orders were on standard F2 products such as RAM systems. So that they do not drive cost as fast as revenue or not at all actually. So we were able to deliver them within the existing cost structure.
Then we have, which projects are main expected drivers for the growth in the second half of 2026? I will not go into details about which projects, but we can say as much as that the Danish market, we expect still further growth. In the Danish markets, we have a specific pipeline of projects, known projects, that are coming up.
That will put the foundation in the growth for second half of 2026. Also, there might be new customers, as I mentioned, both in Denmark and internationally. We are quite confident about the second half. What is your outlook for sales to Germany? As we write in the report, we are currently focusing on rolling out the existing licenses sold to some of our main German customers.
But also we are putting in place new measures to get new customers in Germany, and we have a few of those with a little bit different strategies, but they are all aligned to address the segment of [Begel's] ministry. This related also some of the legislations and some of the political schemes that are going on in Germany now, where they actually introduced last year, I think, a new legislation with a time framework for all the public organizations to be compliant with the digitization.
It is called DE-Activ. So in that way, there is a lot of opportunities, we think, in many of the German policies. The final written question to us also from Jesper is the company Amplio Software a direct competitor for F2? If so, how do they compare?
Without going into detail about the company Amplio, I think they launched it as standard software, AI-enabled standard software. That could probably be a debate whether something is standard or not. I can relate to our own platform, which is completely standard software and also AI-enabled. So, within the Danish market where the competition will probably take place, we are not worried about the company Amplio platform.
That being said, of course, we are absolutely focused on being even better on integrating AI into our own platform. So I think that will be my answer. We are investing heavily, continued and heavily into AI in our own platform. So from Max millian Simon, what do you expect on the POC in Washington? Could you say something to the timeline and the possible similarities to California?
I would rather not go into detail about the POC, but as we have stated publicly, we think both POCs have been concluded successfully. So, we hope to see a positive development there, too, but there is still some work to be done there and some things to be clear. So, I hope that was the answer now.
Then maybe we should also mention that Washington and California are not the only activities we have in the U.S. There are many different leads and opportunities that we are pursuing across different states. Yes, I think that was the last of the written questions. I am not sure if there are any more audio questions.
Yes, speakers, there are no further audio questions. Please continue with any closing remarks.
Closing remarks. Do you want to say anything? Maybe just a closing remark from here. As mentioned, we are very optimistic. We feel we have a strong momentum, and we are quite confident that it is due to some of the new strategy elements that we are executing, and we feel quite optimistic of the coming years. I think that will be my concluding remark. Thanks for us from the cBrain company. Thanks a lot. Log in.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.