It's a pleasure to welcome all of you here, and I know many investors have been looking forward to this event. So, to all of you listening in, we have already received a lot of your questions beforehand, but please feel free to ask or write in your questions live, and we will also make sure to ask them to Mark and Wiktor during the presentation. With that, I will hand over the call to you, Mark and Wiktor, for a short presentation before we go into the Q&A session.
Hi, Kasper, and good morning to everybody. I'm delighted to be here today in front of you and to give my first official presentation to a very good partner of ours, HC Andersen Capital. Again, thank you for the opportunity. My name is Mark Abraham, like I was already introduced by Kasper, and I have the pleasure of being the CEO of Shape Robotics, and running this strategic approach that you see also on the screen in the presentation, called the "2027 Strategy: The Road to One Billion." Together with me in this journey, very good friend and very good collaborator of ours for the last one and a half years, since we have been in the process of acquisition of Skriware, Wiktor Budziosz. He's there right now.
We are organizing, as you can see also from the nice background, we are organizing a lot of, the deliveries and, the planning in, in our Polish operations. And now I can, formally introduce Wiktor, our, CFO.
Thank you, Mark. It is always my pleasure to be here and serve as a Group CFO for Shape Robotics, Shape Robotics. So a little bit from my background, so before I joined Shape Robotics, I worked for Skriware for four years as a board member and CFO, and Skriware has been acquired by Shape Robotics in December 2023. Previously, I gained my experience at EY in transaction advisory services, serving companies and supporting mainly in business valuations and due diligence processes. My educational background is from Krakow University of Economics. I finished there two faculties, finance, accounting and also law. It's my pleasure to be with you here today.
Now I will take over. Thank you, Wiktor. First of all, I have to just introduce a little bit our esteemed investors and partners to what is Shape Robotics and how this company works. I can do that because in the last 3.5 years, I've been an active part of Shape Robotics since the acquisition of our consultancy company called Story Kids. I was part of the growth journey that basically took us to this place. By trade, I'm an engineer. I'm an electronics engineer with an MBA. I have been working most of my life in R&D and business development, ran a couple of companies, and since 2017, been actively involved in the educational sector.
This involvement came very naturally because me and my better half, Elena, that is also a part of our team, she's the Vice President of Education, started together a company that was basically doing what the SmartLab is today, or the STEAM Lab of Shape Robotics. So we started this concept in 2017. This concept was more or less the basis of the program that Romania is running right now. Right now, we are just reaping, let's say, the fruits or low-hanging fruits that we created by sowing the field in 2017. We joined Shape in 2021.
It was a natural acquisition, very organic, because in the end, Shape Robotics was the solution that we preferred in our design of SmartLab and Smart Classrooms. Since 2021, I've been handling the growth and the sales. We have been running everything that is with the same structure that came from our company, Romania. We have been running the education and the sales divisions. And together with the help of our colleagues from Denmark, especially through André and Moises, we have been able to consolidate the company and to get it to this point, of course, with the help of the investors that have joined and which I consider my partners right now.
Very important to understand a little bit is that this company has been always a team. It's not a person, and today it's me that I'm presenting this in front of you. Yesterday it was André, maybe in a couple of years, it will be a different person. We are a group of people that share the same passion and vision and goals, and that's the most important aspect of our company and our business. I want to explain a little bit what education is, and I was trying in the last weeks to find a simple explanation of the educational market, and I think that this is the one. This is a quote from Murray Gell-Mann.
He's a Nobel Prize winner in physics, who said that basically, "Modern education is like being taken to the world's greatest restaurant and being forced to eat the menu." And this is extremely important to understand exactly what he wanted to say with this, because, remember that, in one of our presentations, we have, and I have in the background one of the, my colleagues that used to work at that time for Samsung Electronics. And, I remember that we were struggling in 2020 with the SmartLab, with the concept, and, we had a visit. It became quite known to the market, and we had a visit from Samsung. And I remember that, the first question that they asked: "How many interactive displays will you buy?
Can you send us a forecast?" And this is something very important to understand, that in education, you cannot force-feed a product. You cannot force educators and stakeholders in education to buy solutions just because you have to sell them. Therefore, our approach into education is very similar to what you had in Noma, for instance. It's a Michelin star education. So basically, what we try to do is to find the best solution, even if it's not from our product portfolio, even if it's from our partners or competitors. We want to offer the chance for young learners to access everything that would bring value to their future careers.
Therefore, one of the things that has been on the lips of everybody regarding Q1 and why, for instance, maybe we were more excited about the results than the market, is because basically we were not very aligned. That's my role right now, to make sure that our esteemed investors are also aligned to our vision. It makes very simple decisions to invest in a company in education, because the message and the vision in an educational company is easily understood by the stakeholder and the shareholder, who sometimes are the same. Because everybody that has children studying at school understand most of the challenges that are very well explained in this very single motto, a very simple motto.
And, therefore, by us being able to have a quarter in which our core product, that is the Fable, was not the, let's say, tip of the spear, but we managed to diversify our portfolio and come with new sales, it is super important. Of course, that might take a toll in our EBITDA, or it might take a toll in our gross profits, but I have a very rhetorical question that we have to answer, or not, by ourselves: Is it more important to have a 2% EBITDA in a quarter extra, or to have the right solution in the hands of your children?
Therefore, I will always choose the latter, because my important mission here and the role that I have and my vision, is to make sure that I give exactly the best support to the young learners with the best tools available at that point in the market. The education and the Danish education system that we are so proud of today, and that's what we are also evangelizing across our subsidiaries, and especially in Central Eastern Europe, is a system that is extremely democratic. That means that you should have the possibility to choose what you learn and how you learn it, and to address it in your own time and with your own drive, self-drive.
Therefore, our goal is to make sure that every lab, every classroom, every sale that we do is addressed to the needs of, the students. And that's why we are not force-feeding them a menu, because by force-feeding them the menu, we can have a higher EBITDA in one quarter. But if we are giving them the best solution, we will have the best results naturally. Because I, I'm a strong believer that, financial results are just, a sign of good work. It's just a recognition. Money, profit, all of these are very generic terms that just come up, as a result of good work.
So as long as we do a good work, and as long as we listen to the end user, in our case, the young learner, the parents, the teachers, we will be a company that will succeed in this mission. Otherwise, we're just going to reach a point that many other companies were before us, in which some solutions were force-fed, okay? And the result is that even in, let's say, countries like the United States, you go into schools, I've been personally in some schools where I see that you have 3D printers that have not been opened for 10 years since they have been purchased.
This is not something that you want to know, that at the school of your, your daughter or son, you have solutions that have been booked or implemented that are not being used. So our role is to make sure that what we do is meaningful, what we do brings value, and what we do is also changing lives. So it's a quite big challenge, but that keeps our team very united, that keeps our team very ambitious.
One of the things that I promise today is that you just connect to us as you can, LinkedIn, YouTube, whatever you feel comfortable with, because in the next years, we will be very close to you with presentations at least once a month, where we will discuss not only numbers, but we also will discuss other achievements that make us very, very proud. And there are a lot of them. So in conclusion, of a longer or shorter introduction, I just wanted to make sure that everybody understands where we stand and that me or Wiktor or any are just people that are working in this company at a certain point.
But what makes us different is that we all share the same vision and same goal, and that's the reason why we have reached a point where we merged with Skriware, because it not- it was not a business decision in the real sense of a business decision. It was mostly a decision about vision and about aligning to the same values, about education. The same thing that drives us drove also Skriware. And I believe in the near future, and there were some questions regarding our potential, and now that we have the possibility to issue more shares through the AGM, that we received through the AGM, if we are actively looking to raise capital. No, the answer is not that we are actively looking, but we believe that the market is actively looking for us.
Therefore, naturally, for values like ours, so naturally in the foreseeable future, there will be other opportunities like with Skriware. And if we can make a change and we can go into a market and show a different approach and try to be a partner of that market, which is mostly governmental, as you probably are aware, then of course, we will do as much as possible to be present in the best format available. So right now, I just want to, like, go a little bit through a presentation that basically will answer, I think, the preliminary questions that you got, Kasper. There is a list of preliminary questions. And of course, if we all agree, then we can return and better explain those...
To address those questions. Also, I'm more than happy to answer live questions or to get interrupted at any point.
Perfect.
Because this strategy, like expressed, is basically my mandate from the perspective of being the CEO of Shape Robotics. It is the road to DKK 1 billion, okay? And I will just try to explain how we're going to achieve that. Okay? So first of all, from the perspective of business, our current investors are quite familiar with our growth. We have always more or less overachieved, but what is very important to understand is that it was not our focus to achieve those numbers.
It was our focus to achieve the results in the schools, and that's something that is not measurable by these numbers necessarily, because I think we overachieve at least 2-3 times at the level of impact that we had in the educational systems that we cooperate with and that we are trying to help right now. That's why somehow overachieving is just, like I said before, a result of good strategy. Of course, our goal is to maximize revenue from a business perspective because we are a business, and therefore, this is a important aspect of how we drive our strategy. But maximizing revenue for us is a little bit simpler right now because we are working with something very unique in the market, which is the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
And just to explain a little bit, now, I think the slide has changed. Yes, what is our addressable market? These numbers are basically unseen before because this Recovery and Resilience Plan, a topic that not everybody is familiar in Denmark with. Because, my knowledge is that the Recovery and Resilience Plan in Denmark was just a very small application of less than EUR 500 million that was used mostly for some environmental policies. But most of the other countries in Western, Central, and of course, Eastern Europe have reapplied for quite a big amount of money for digitalization. Of course, for Denmark, there, and then generally in Scandinavian countries, digitalization is a topic that has been addressed even before the pandemic in a very good and professional way.
In the other countries, not so much. Some of them suffer by size, like France or Italy. Others suffer by lack of investments, like for instance, Romania and even Poland. Therefore, what we're looking right now is at the potential of, let's say, six big countries where we are present, two of them with our local subsidiaries. And you can see in Romania and in Poland that we are talking about EUR 5.4 billion being allocated up to 2027 into digitalization of the educational systems. This just to better explain right now for Romania, how they have been allocating these funds. This basically in classical business theory, will mean the end users, okay? Because it is very important to explain that Shape Robotics is a channel-driven business.
Therefore, by us, it is very important to respect the channel, and the channel is composed mostly in Central and Eastern Europe out of distribution, reseller, and consultants, okay? Because applying to European funding, it is mandatory to be helped by a consultant because the grants are sophisticated, the grants require time to prepare and one of our main strategies in the market is to work with the top consultants to be able to provide them the best solution in the technical solutions to be able to apply simultaneously to multiple grants. As you can see here, the four major stakeholders of the Recovery and Resilience Plan that apply basically to all of the market are first, the municipalities.
And in Romania, for instance, we have 2,550 municipalities with EUR 500 million in digitalization and EUR 1 billion for furniture, smart furniture, you know, ergonomic furniture for classrooms. I'm talking right now only about funds allocated to the digitalization of the Ministry of Education. Okay? 900 high schools, with EUR 80 million being already funded for smart labs. And I got a very good question about this from one of our shareholders: What happened with the budget that was allocated for the smart labs because it was EUR 160 million? I will make a parenthesis and to explain something that links a little bit to the introduction that I had. What you see here is EUR 80 million being allocated, and the rest were not allocated by a simple fact.
The simple fact is that the schools, the high schools, didn't apply in time. They didn't reach to the consultants or had some, administrative issues. And this is the—basically, the percentage of absorption of economic, of, European funds that everybody's talking about. Countries like Romania, Poland, Czech Republic, so, Slovakia, Slovenia, have had a very big problem into, absorbing European funds in general. That problem is, I don't know, I think that I got interrupted. Kasper, are we still, connected?
Yes.
All okay.
Let me, let me ask some questions about Romania afterwards.
Yes, yes, yes. Okay. I thought that my stream, I saw myself, not on the page. Okay, so everything is okay. Please stop me if there are some problems with the stream, okay? So, coming back to that, so the rate of absorption, usually of European funds in Central Eastern European countries is quite low, so sometimes it is under 30%. So by being able to have EUR 80 million, that means a rate of absorption of close to 75%, that's a big success for a country like Romania. What happens usually with the rest of the funds is that they get reallocated to the Ministry of Education.
So the rest of these funds will probably be reallocated at a later stage, end of 2025, to other measures or even to smart labs. So the money is not being lost, will be reallocated, and we have a potential to still be an important player in that. Okay? The third part is the primary and secondary schools, of course, where you see the measures around school dropout and improvement, the quality of the schools, and then a fourth one, which is not typical to all markets in Central Eastern Europe, which are the universities. So please, Kasper, please now ask me the question that you want.
Yes, I think you covered some of it, but, there's a question here about after 2026. So will, will there be some continuation in terms of investments in Romania, or is, is this project-- will this project end after 2026?
It's a very good question, and I believe that the answer is not if this pro or it's not really related to this program. This program is a unique program that created a certain kind of market, let's say, for us, a very fixed market. But this doesn't really impact what is happening after 27 or 29 or whatever, because we have in European funding what are called Horizons. Okay? Till now, there were tons of projects for digitalizing education, but because education, like I explained before, is not nearly really the most interesting market or the most important, let's say, investment that a public ministry would do. It's a simple explanation here. Education doesn't really bring you votes.
Therefore, for campaigns, public campaigns and, public investments in education before COVID, we didn't really see, this kind of concentrated efforts. There was a lot of business, of course, but not at this level of being concentrated and being focused. Because right now, after the pandemics, where we saw that there is a real problem in the educational system, especially as, like explained before, we have to, operate with old methods, preparing children for jobs that have not been invented. We are preparing them to go in a factory right now, which will be replaced by robots, when actually we should be preparing them how to program robots. And I'm not biased now, it's very important to understand.
After 2027, this will continue because 2027, this program, up to 2027, is just 20%, 25% of the total schools. So for instance, we are talking about, just to give you an idea, and I'm just focusing right now on Romania, but we can go also to Poland and others to discuss.
Mm.
900 high schools and 1,430 labs is basically 15% of the necessity of what Romania has right now in this field. So as long as this program is being implemented as we see it being implemented today, this will only make room for even greater investments in the future. And this has the context around us, post-pandemic, during the conflict in Ukraine, everything that is happening around us brings basically education to the right point. Because if you look at what happened before pandemic, investing in education at the European Union was something like position 20-25 out of 40 topics, okay? Now it's second or third always, okay?
So the answer is a very big yes, but this yes is going to be even bigger than the one right now-
Yeah
... because this is just a testing phase-
Okay
- in my opinion.
And Mark, you have painted a, you can say, a long-term view here also on, on the investments in Romania, but investors are also sometimes caring in the short term, in terms of your 2024 guidance and so on. So if we look at that one, I think you have it here, yeah. Maybe you can also give us some perspectives on the Network One contribution agreement. You know, give us some flavor on how much is actually delivered on, and how much is expected to be delivered in 2024 and so on. Can you, can you give us some flavor on that part?
Yeah. So, as you can see, I will explain a little bit what is the local business model. Very important to understand from the beginning is that what we do right now is a recipe that can be easily replicated to every place where we have a subsidiary, okay? Or we have a local presence. Because basically, like I explained, channel-driven business works like this. What is different in education is that we are also a market maker or a policy maker from... Because we are helping actively the end users, the ministries, to select the best approach, in their investment plans. Because right now, what you see very specifically in the field of acquisition and public acquisition, is the fact that, schools and principals directly apply to the grants.
So it's not a thing that happens, centralized like it used to be. So we have a decentralized process of acquisition. Therefore, for us in Romania, it was much simpler to work with a company that has countrywide coverage, because Romania is quite a big country. Ninety million people as a population, 260,000 square kilometers in size, so that with not the best infrastructure, that means that shipping and logistics is also a cost that you have to take in consideration when running such a such an endeavor like ours.
Basically, with NOD, we have agreed by contract that you also saw also in the last orders that we have announced on the markets, is that they are going to do the fulfillment for us in the terms of the SmartLab deliveries. So right now, as presented in the first quarter, deliveries into the SmartLabs were not so big, because of course, this is the cycle of how business is being run by the governmental authorities. Why is that? Is because basically, European funds are getting paid every quarter or every two quarters disbursed, okay? Because imagine the European institution will not just pay EUR 140,000 invoice to a SmartLab, they're going to pay EUR 3 billion or EUR 4 billion to the government, then the government redistributes.
So you see these cycles, and right now this cycle is somehow accelerated towards September, where we have public elections and European elections that are happening in the next month.
Okay.
Therefore, during these election cycles, they tend to push money faster into the market to create more impact and more awareness, and this is something typical that you see in all the markets across the world. So what we're doing right now at Crossing, and it's very easy to understand that, based on the POs that we have launched, officially a couple of weeks ago in the market, that it's highly unlikely that our guidance is not met, because basically those POs cover our guidance.
Yeah.
So, uh-
But just for-
It's very simple. If you, if you just add the 1 and 2 together, you will see the results.
Yeah.
So that's basically where we are right now in 2024, we have a rolling out PO of DKK 30 million as we speak.
Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Maybe we should jump to, to Poland.
It's far away. I will put the slide here, and I will let Wiktor explain a little bit about Poland, because his home territory, and I will intervene if needed.
Yes
... afterwards.
Yes, yes-
Don't be so, number driven, Wiktor. I know that-
Yes
... you're the numbers guy.
Yes, true.
Please be driven now.
Yeah. Polish market is really close to me because today I'm sitting in Warsaw, so I'm directly from the warehouse in Warsaw. And yes, this is true because also it was a question during the Q&A session, we received a question about AI and STEM labs. So it's confirmed that in Poland, we can expect in the near future 16,000 AI and STEM labs. Probably, it will be divided into two separate categories. So we will have 12,000 AI labs and 4,000 STEM labs. The whole budget for the project is approximately based on the information what we can find officially on the government site, is approximately EUR 560 million for both projects. And, based on the current timeline, which has been presented already-...
For now, ministries, two ministries, Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Digitalization in Poland, are working for preparation of the specification and catalog of product, which will be possible to be bought by by schools in Poland. Probably that process will be finished until the end of that year. We can assume that big purchases from the schools will be started in Q1 2025. Speaking optimistically, there is a chance that some of them will be also in Q4 2024. The perspective in Poland is to spend all the funds related to the project until the end of Q2 2026. Starting from the next year, we will have one and a half years to deliver all the equipment to schools.
Okay.
And, yeah.
Just a short question, question here in terms of, of this project. Of course, you said it will start in Q1, 2025, probably, but do you still expect any other larger orders from Poland in other projects? Like, one investor asked here if, do you expect to get some very large orders, orders of more than, let's say, EUR 5 million in Poland?
It's our guidance. I know that our investors would like to receive only good news and to receive only good news that could... But I will tell you something very honestly, this is happening. These projects have happened in Romania, are starting to happen in Moldova, are starting to happen in Poland. We're doing the same good thing as we did in Romania, so you just need to guess.
Mm.
If I was an investor, I was going to ask a different question on this one, and meaning I think that the question would be something like this: should you be already delivering to a distributor in Q4 so that they are ready to deliver in Q1? Do you have a distributor in Poland? The answer is yes. Okay, let's continue.
Yeah.
I think it's more than I could officially disclose right now.
That's fine. Thank you very much. Witek, do you have something else about Poland?
Yes. So this is it was about this big project in Poland coming soon. Of course, we have small projects now that are not fully related to the resilience and recovery funds, but we can see small orders also in Poland, a part of that big project. And for that reason, we presented that small project in Poland. This is only in one voivodeship, like a region, 1 of the 16 regions in Poland, and this is small project that will take place probably that year. And that, that's all from me.
And let me be a little bit more specific right now, because, of course, this presentation can be easily downloaded by the viewers, and they can go through it. In the GTM, the go-to-market strategy, just to use some very fancy acronyms, you would see here that we have a distribution network, and here in Poland, we have an Aktin, which is the distribution there. So basically, what I'm just trying to say right now is, if you follow these things clearly, you understand that our strategic alliances and the third-party edutech partners are being built specifically for a purpose, and that purpose is to be able to come with consolidated solutions toward new upcoming projects. Therefore, the basis. I'm just trying to say what we...
Because I want to make sure that from today, and starting from today, we get closer to what we think is important, and, this is how we make our targets and goals. The recipes of our, à la carte cuisine are being well understood by the investors. Because this is the most important aspect of Shape, the partnerships. Because imagine if a company like Samsung or i3 or Lenovo would not believe that we are the right partner, they would never sign an agreement with us. Because being a strategic distribution partner with, Lenovo takes 9 to 8, 10 months, if you know how to start, and if they believe that you could work with them. So just what you see here is a very, very important slide that shows the recognition that we have in the market.
Mm.
Okay?
Mark, CampuStore is mentioned here on the slide.
Yeah.
We also have a question about Italy. You know, investors always like to see the optionalities in the future, new markets, and so on. And you also, on the third of February, announced a new partnership with them. So, it was a small initial order of EUR 100,000, but can you tell us more about this partnership, and also in terms of the potential, for Shape in Italy?
Yes. I saw the question, and I think it's a very good question. Our sales strategy is being divided in a multiple small chapters, let's say. And the strategy in Italy basically is to have a partner that runs the distribution and the reseller network together. Okay? And CampuStore is the largest Italian company that it is very similar to Shape Robotics in Romania as a presence, okay? They have the same mandate, same visions. So it is difficult for us to go into a market like Italy to open a subsidiary, that's why-
Mm
... we run a partnership with them. CampuStore is the largest Lego distributor, and basically, right now they have cut Lego to work with us. And this is only robotics and only core business in robotics. So, the initial stocking order is for them to prepare for the newest back-to-school cycles, and we expect some very nice forecast from their side. It takes a while, of course, to replace a solution like Lego, and it takes a while to enter a market that is mature. Because one thing that you have to understand very well is that we are very good at new strategic approaches into education. Because if you have already an environment that has made investments and has...
To give you an example, in Italy, there is very clear curricula about robotics, but in the Central Eastern European region, 26 countries in total, we don't have curricula for robotics. So of course, when you see that the western part of Europe has been spending some good billions of EUR in the last 10 years into digitalization, it is very hard to come up and change that, because education is also a market where inertia is very big. You cannot change overnight strategies because if you have to change curricula, you have to change planning. So baby steps, but good baby steps in Italy.
Good. And, also-
Most baby steps. I don't know how the cartoon is with the-
Yeah, but maybe I can ask in another way, is that a part of your 27, team plan?
To go higher in,
27 plan, sorry. You know, the strategy towards DKK 1 billion. Is Italy a part of this in terms of the revenue?
It's not only Italy part of this. All the world is part of this.
Yeah
... because this is the addressable market.
Yeah. And India here is also mentioned. That's also a question we have from outside.
Mm-hmm.
What are the commercial perspectives here? You have already also launched an order here, but can you tell us more about your readiness here at this market?
India, of course, India is a very peculiar market. Also China for us right now. We have very good perspectives also in China, which sounds a little bit weird. It is very important to understand there's something that to make some steps backwards. Our products are liked by markets in India or China, where you would think that they are very advanced in production or robotics or digital skills, because most of the competitors come from that area.
Mm.
It's actually the system that we, we have that makes it more appealing. Because our product being modular and easily assembled and easily reconfigured is something that is very unique, of course, in the market. But the way you assemble and use it, and the educational material that comes with that, makes it very unique. And I will start doing that talk about tech education also, because I believe that it was part of also a question, and maybe I will answer two in one. What happens in India, for instance, and also in China, the publishing houses are the ones that are driving the business. So it's not a channel-driven business, it's a cartel, if you want-
Mm
... in a format or another, because you see that the publishing houses are the ones that print out manuals. And I will say something that was, maybe, not understood by everybody till now, but I will give you an example with our esteemed colleague in the board, Kasper, who had a company called MatematikFessor, and I believe that that's a very known product in the educational sector in-
Yeah.
Now it's being owned by Egmont, Egmont. And very similar to that approach, in India, you have publishing houses like PMP, our partner, that basically own a certain area of of India when it comes to curricula and to distribution of these educational materials and curricula. So our robotics are being sold in India completely against the standard business model. They are given for free in a subscription in the manual. So it's a tryout that we do with that market because that company already has a market, it has already subscription-based models there, and we are offering as a service, the robotic solution. And on top of that, the goal is, I will go directly to the tech education part. We'll get to... One second, one second. See if I didn't jump the slide.
We'll get exactly to that point, because the pretext to send that is to obtain this international tech education certificate. Because basically, education in general, in markets like India, markets like even Middle East, teachers get extra bonuses or money, or financial privileges if they have a certain certification level. So it's about this continuous cycle of education, this continuous training cycle. And what we're trying to do through this approach, by having manuals, by having the robotics tools, by having the curricula and the product to generate, which is our new AI assistant that will be officially launched in September-...
which is a subscription-based platform together with education, we would be able to leverage the hardware potential to a subscription-based model, potentially including lesson plans, more as a service approach. Okay? So robotics as a service, complete with a certification, complete with lesson generation, complete with exactly what the teachers would need to have a continuous, learning experience together with us.
And Mark, this is very exciting. So just one question here from an investor. When you reach your DKK 1 billion turnover latest in 2027, how large percent will the subscription-based turnover consist of?
It's a very, I think, we are joking in the company because my name is Abraham, and the founder is Moises, and we are called the prophets. I will try to be very prophetic here. Not to promise anything, but I will try to be very prophetic, and I would say that in 2020 up to 2027, even today, we have a large subscription-based model that is not seen.
Okay.
Why? Because first of all, the acquisitions and the way that the acquisitions are being run right now do not allow spending in the area of OpEx, because the European Union is buying mostly CapEx right now. So we are talking about CapEx investments, and therefore, our subscription licenses that are being sold right now in these services, and this is something that also in Poland is happening in the same way. Our subscription licenses are being prepaid three years upfront.
Mm.
Okay? Therefore, in our accounting, you can see this as a CapEx. But what happens after they expire, these licenses expire, you will see a massive upsell. So our goal is that with this installed base, so to have a biggest possible installed base of hardware and solutions-
Mm.
The moment we finish this acquisition cycle, should it remain in this format till then, we will have a huge upsell potential. I will give you an example from Poland, for instance. I think, Wiktor, how many? There were 15,000 licenses that were, are in process of upselling right now after the finishing of the first, investment, cycle in Poland. Correct, Wiktor?
Yes, yes, we can, we can, we can tell that in Poland, we have approximately
15,000
schools. So for that reason, for example, where all the companies in Poland delivered equipment to the schools, it was mandatory to deliver also, let's say, a little bit software. And, for that, for that reason, for example, Skriware, with the products, are in approximately 2,500 schools, and with demo version in approximately, 6,000 schools. So there is a potential to upsell, products, our software in the schools in the future. Yeah. So this is the addressable market for that in Poland.
Yeah.
Just to be clear-
Technically, it's upselling, Kasper.
Yeah.
It's upselling.
Yeah.
Basically, if a teacher is using that solution, he will for sure... Like I said, the cycles in education are at least four years.
Mm.
Why? Because if you're a primary teacher for at least four year with that classroom, you would want to use the same format. It is very difficult for you as a teacher to change during cycles. Therefore, if you have a license from us that is valid two years, and even if it's prepaid or something, you would want to continue having that. So in the next months, we will have a very clear. So the indicator that you should start looking at in the future reports that we're selling is the conversion rates of existing, installed base towards the subscription model. Because right now what you see is mostly CapEx, but that CapEx has a deep OpEx-
Yeah
... recurrent revenue, core.
Okay.
Which is basically lesson planning, education, not something that you use our service because the market in education doesn't really care about infinite number of lessons. They care about useful lessons, you know? So you just don't create 1,000 new lessons. Nobody will use them.
Mm.
They just want to have something very aligned to a certain curricula that is being used, easily replicated.
After 2027, do you expect to report on this or before, maybe? So you can say the investors like to build the visibility after 2027 also in terms of if much of it is recurring, right? So do you maybe start before to report on how much of the total revenue is recurring or is-
I plan to live, live a long life, Kasper. So in 2152, I will be coming in front of you and telling that we did a very good result.
That's perfect.
No, the investors should be very relaxed because from my point of view, as long as they understand what we are doing, I think they can easily replicate and do their own modeling. Because an investor also has to be able to understand the deep value and continue on that, you know? Because,
Mm
... if you don't understand the deep value and the value of the company, then this kind of investment becomes a little bit more speculative, and I don't believe that we are in that game.
Yeah.
Okay. So if... What is very good in Shape, what is very easy for the investors, and every time that I speak with our investors, which all of them are super nice, people, is I explain to them that the business and the numbers that drive our, our results or, okay, the financing, is very publicly available.
Mm.
You see the lines. You see, for instance, Horizon, after Horizon 27, the new Horizon is already published. So if you go onto the European Union website, you would see what the strategy says, and you will see that robotics and extended reality are the first two main topics.
... Yeah. So-
Only if we decide to become lazy. I don't think that this will happen.
It doesn't sound like that, at least, so that's good to hear.
No, from my point of view, no. Yeah.
Okay, so I think we have kept most of the questions quite high level here, but of course, we also have some questions about the Q1. So, since you-
Yeah
... reported this last week, I hope that you have time to just shortly answer these questions. And first of all, there's a question here: Can you give some ballpark number on how much integration cost of Skriware affected the EBITDA in Q1? So just very shortly about this one, is that affecting the-
I think Wiktor should take this one because he was the one that basically
Yeah, yes
made the pivot table.
Sure. First of all, I want to tell that Skriware was successfully implemented into Shape Robotics Group, and this is the end of the implementation. So now we are working really closely with the group, and all the tools are implemented, so we are good with that. And I can tell that it was approximately between 100K and 200K EUR spent for that goal in the Q1, and it was included in our EBITDA.
Yeah. Okay, and then we also have a question about the gross margin. Does your order backlog point to increasing sales of Fable robots for the rest of 2024, concerning your lower gross margin in Q1? And I guess you also report that in your report, but can you maybe give some flavor on that part also?
Let me give the flavor on that part. My opinion is that you should not focus mostly on the impact of the Fable. You should focus mostly on the impact of the SmartLabs.
Mm.
Because the SmartLabs have a very, or let's say a very predictable, gross margin. Okay? And, you saw through our announcement what we're doing there. So therefore, I think that you should not limit only on that. You should know exactly that we are going to basically deliver everything that is SmartLab up to Q2 2025. So that's the, that's the rollout plan. And again, I'm not saying something that is inside information or anything. It's just super public information.
Mm.
Just go on the Ministry of Education in Romania. It's an English version, and you see the calendar, and you see that they want to finish in 2025. And right now, what is important for you to understand, that our current market share on SmartLabs is 97%.
Yeah. Perfect. Okay, I think I went through all the questions, so do you have any final remarks, Mark, or do we... What do you think?
Well, I think this is the one that I should be able to conclude with.
Mm-hmm.
Why you should look at Shape Robotics as your partner and as a long-term partner, is because we have, first of all, a very well-defined vision. Okay? So you saw also... And I think that there is something to add on the Q1 that is extremely important for us internally, and I don't know if necessarily that impacts at the same level the investors, but I would really like them to listen to this part with a lot of attention and enthusiasm. Because, first of all, you saw that we went through a process of rebranding. As one of the most important aspects for us, is to start to align exactly what we discussed today, to align it in a very proper strategic branding guideline, so people understand exactly what we do and how we do it.
So it's much easier to see our vision and mission also in the way we communicating, we communicate market-wise. This was a very tough effort for us. Of course, we had to do it before the Bett Show, that was in January, and had took a toll on, on our financial, numbers, and it's something that will not necessarily repeat at this, in the next quarters. And I think Wiktor has made a very good explanation on that also in the, clip that we did together to present the Q1 report. But it helped us a lot, as we are a multinational company with a lot of, foreign, colleagues, to understand, all of them to understand and to align exactly to what we're doing, our corporate culture, our style, style of communicating, and so on and so forth.
Mm.
Of course, what is important is that our product offering is very relevant. Technically-wise, we are extremely. We think we are two or three years ahead of the market at the moment, okay? And our great team, led by R&D team, led by our founder, Moises, is every day and together now with our colleagues from Poland, that also are brilliant in in R&D. Founder of Skriware, Stefan, working together for new solutions on the market. We will become probably even more relevant, right? If that word exists in English. And also important, we are ready to act. So the team right now, that is one of the reasons why the change came naturally in the company.
Because doing this kind of tailor-made approach for education, this à la carte approach, requires a team that is able to do fast responses, okay? To be like a SWAT team, if you want, for this purpose. And that's key for us, to keep this kind of level of engagement and this drive and this passion. And of course, if it means that we're working 60 hours a week, which is quite the average right now, we are doing it with a lot of enthusiasm, so we don't feel that it's overburdening us. Okay?
Mm.
But, that's what... Okay, there are more, three points more, but we discussed them already.
Mm.
But, this is what I want to conclude with, is that, first of all, we are mega dedicated. So that's what we're doing, and I don't use this word lightly. We are really, really dedicated. So, trust that what we do is bringing naturally results, because the market is, it's here. It's a, it's a unique opportunity to just enjoy this, this ride. Okay?
Perfect. We look forward to the next presentation, and, as always, this presentation will also be recorded and shared on our channels later today. But, for that, thank you very, very much, Mark and Wiktor, for this presentation and also for answering all the questions. Have a nice day.
Thank you, Kasper. Thank you, Wiktor. Bye bye.
Thank you.
Bye.
Have a nice day.