Dear audience, welcome to Trifork's third quarter and nine months results. We're just gonna wait a minute and let people join the call. So, if you don't hear anything for the next few seconds, that's the reason. We can see a lot of interest for the call today, but I'm sure there will be more coming in the next 20 seconds, so if you can just hold on, please. We are still waiting for people to come in. Okay, I think we shall start. Dear everyone, welcome to the presentation of Trifork's third quarter and nine months result 2023. My name is Felix Venholm from Trifork Investor Relations. I'm here today with Kristian Dollerup and Preben Thorø, and we also have our CEO, Jørn Larsen, and CFO, Kristian Wulf- Andersen, today to provide a presentation.
That will take approximately 30 minutes, and it will be followed by a Q&A. Before we start, I have a few practical information. First, I would like to inform you that this presentation is recorded, and it will be made available in its full length on our investor webpage later. Second, I would like to inform you that if you want to download the presentation for today's call, you'll be able to find it on the front page of the investor website or under the tab Events. Third, we invite you to ask questions and engage with management after their presentation, and how that works is that you raise your hand by clicking the Raise Hand button. I will announce your name and unmute you, and then you should be free to ask your questions.
We will, of course, do our best to ensure that everyone gets a chance to ask a question. Before we really get started, we have to present this disclaimer. Okay, I think we shall jump to the presentation. I now hand it over to Group CEO, Jørn Larsen. Jørn, please go ahead.
Welcome, everyone, and thank you for listening in to this call, and I hope you will have some really exciting and good questions for us after the presentation. These are very exciting, difficult, sad times, but also times with a lot of opportunities for a company like Trifork. In the first nine months, we saw a revenue growth of 13%, and we have been guiding. And this is a little bit below guidance range, and so we expect to catch up on our revenue growth in Q4, but more about this later. This is how it is year to date. Let's move on to EBITDA. With a margin of 15.2%, we are in an okay state, but it's slightly below the expectation for the full year.
Also, we expect to catch a little bit up on this margin for the full year when we have completed Q4. Let's dive more into the numbers of the year. We have also recently updated our guidance and made it more precise, and we are maintaining our guidance, and more about that later. Trifork, in short, for those of you who are new to this, Trifork consists of two segments: a Trifork segment, where we do consolidate revenues and EBITDA, and a Trifork Labs segment, which consists of a group of companies that are like startups, product companies, and scale-up companies, but also more mature and established companies. Then in the Trifork segment, we have six business areas, but we will dive into them a little bit later. Let's move on. This is a new page.
It's also a busy page because it's exciting times, but it's also times where we have to harvest our business in new territories. When you go into a new territory, it's important that you map the area that you wanna go into. So as you can see in our report, we see good growth in Switzerland and in the U.S. Those two territories are for Trifork new areas, and when you move into a new area, we map, you can say. We figure out all possible potential customers. We figure out who are the management, who are the CIO, CTO, VP of engineering and technology people, who are the business developers in those companies.
Also we dive in and pay attention to the technology stack that they already are working on, and we have a number of tools and data on this. So just to mention one area where we are establishing ourselves full scale is Chicago in the U.S. So the first job for us, which we have already been doing, is to map, okay, how many potential companies could be our customers in the future? The Chicago area has a population of more than seven million people, so it's a little bit bigger than Denmark, but it's a little bit smaller than Switzerland, so it's an area we are used to deal with. And so here you can see the different kind of agendas, the CFO, the CEO and how that maps to our areas of expertise.
Then we address these points, and we pitch ideas and solutions to our customers. And we also, many times, we suggest the customer that we can come on for a ride in their production or in their logistic chain, or how they perform their administration. And companies are actually quite open to these proposals from our side. Let's just move on. So here we have the cockpit, and where you can see the Q3 financials. So all of this is focused a lot on Q3. So let's start with the middle section, which is pure Q3.
And so first of all, we have had a reasonable revenue in Q3, an increase of 7.7% compared to Q3 last year, which could seem a little bit weak, but you have to bear in mind that if you studied our Q3 in 2022, it was actually an extraordinarily strong Q3. Normally, a Q3 is not a very strong quarter for us. Q4 is always our strongest quarter. So we are okay, happy with this, but I would call it pass, but not excellent or good. And the same thing you can say for our Adjusted EBITDA for the Trifork segment of EUR 7 million realized for the Q3.
It's a little bit below what we would have liked to see, but there will also we will explain why that is, but also how we can you can say, mitigate this going forward. A margin of 14.5% for the quarter, it's a little bit lower than what we would like to see, but not by a lot. And then the same thing can be said about EBIT. We also see for the first time that we now have a leverage of 0.5, and in the last quarter it was -0.1, and that means that we are constantly investing in expanding our business.
But the majority of this new leverage of 0.5 has come from the consolidation of more shares of the minorities from Nine, where we now hold 90% of the shares. But it's also very good news for me, and hopefully for you, that the management and the colleagues of Nine, they actually remain to be shareholders also for the future. If we look at the Q3, we already compared it with the growth, and we also see here specifically how it is for the nine months, but Kristian will talk more about these numbers in detail.
We still track on our impressions on YouTube and Instagram, and you can see that is constantly growing, and hopefully one day we can turn this into something of greater value than what it is today. But here we just keep you updated on how it's tracking, and still fast growth and now almost 60 million views. And my vision is that the day it passes 1 billion, I'm sure that this is going to be a good day for Trifork, but also for Trifork's investors, because then I think we can monetize the traffic. Let's move on.
So Inspire, Build, Run is our go-to-market model, and in 2023, year to date, we have been experimenting a lot with how we should get into conference mode again, and how we should inspire our customers and the community. And we have tried different things throughout the year, and you can see that from the beginning of the year to now, we have actually had a considerable negative result in Inspire. But we now also think we know how we should tackle 2024. Not that things that are unseen now could happen, but we think we have learned a lot about how we can reduce risk and how we can better the result of Inspire in 2024. And we will implement some of these changes over the next few weeks and months.
When we look into Build and Run, there are actually some quite positive things to say. If we just start with Run, then we can see that we have had an organic growth of 21%, with a margin of 23%, which, if that was the case for the whole company consolidated, I think everyone would be quite happy about this report. But as you know, we see our business model, Inspire, Build, Run, as a funnel where we start with inspiration, then we build software, and then our customers end in some kind of Run engagement with us. And if customers are in a Run engagement with Trifork, they save money because they actually share some of that cost that they would have to bear themselves with other customers. So it's a win for Trifork, and it's a win for our customers.
In the Build segment in the middle, we also see that we have had a good margin of 18.5%. So, if everything we did was build, we would have a margin of close to 20%. And actually, and another new thing here that we can say about Build is that traditionally we have seen a very strong performance among current customers, but in the world economy and the situation with the wars and higher interest rates and the problems with the funding of startups, that is disrupting a lot of businesses around the world. So we have seen a weaker, you can say, contribution of business coming from already existing customers, although it's still high.
This we have mitigated by actually winning new customers, and also back to the story where I told you how we map new territories and how we win new business in foreign places is a proof point here where you can see that 31% of the revenue actually comes from customers we never dealt with before. Of course, again, we intend to keep these customers also in the future, so they will become new repeat customers for Trifork. Let's move on. Here are some main events from Q3. First of all, we keep growing, so the number of colleagues and employees are constantly growing. We have had the churn somehow under control. It's at a reasonable level. We would still like it to move down quarter by quarter.
We also see that sick leave, which was a theme during COVID and after COVID, is at a fairly normal level of around 2%. I wish that nobody would ever be sick, but it does happen. And also, you know, when kids are starting and babies are starting in daycare and in kindergarten, they bring home a lot of presents for their parents, and then they have to take a few days off. We already talked about the acquisition of the minority stake in Nine. We also, which is not really reported in specifics, but we moved to a new office building, and if you haven't already received an invitation, then later this month, you can see it on our webpage.
We invite you to join our grand opening of our new office in Copenhagen, in Nordhavn. We call that building Porten, and it's a beautiful building. It's a fabulous location, but of course, that has also had an impact on you can say, bottom line for the quarter. But we believe it is a very good home and a good investment for Trifork going forward. In Labs, we have actually seen some positive news, so there has been some extra value in our portfolio, but more about this a little bit later. So no write-offs, no disappointments, and no negative stories from Lab, but we will also look into that in a moment. Actually, after the period of Q3, we have done a few exciting things as well.
So we have acquired 100% of a company called Chapter 5 in Copenhagen, and it's a fabulous company that is now a part of the Trifork family. And both sides are very happy and very eager for the future, and I believe this acquisition has a good growth potential being a part of the Trifork Group. And so we are looking forward to track and follow that. Also very happy news is that we were granted access to invest in Bluespace Ventures AG, and that might not tell you a lot, but actually it's our customer in Switzerland, our healthcare customer.
So as you can see later, we have had a good growth in digital health in Switzerland, and our customer is actually Bluespace Ventures AG and the companies around that company. So we have around 15% of that company, and we are in a, our partners are really strong healthcare partners in, in Switzerland, such as insurance companies, the biggest, private, doctor group, and a large, private hospital group. So I feel very honored, but also humbled by being a part of such a, a company. Let's move on. So we have brought a case story, as we always do. We could have brought a number, but also in interest of time, we don't wanna flood you with too many, cases.
You can always see the latest cases on our website, and we have a lot of interesting stuff going on. Well, something that really grows fast for us is our engagement within AI, and particularly anything that has to do with vision AI. And what that means is, if an expert who have been studying for many years walks into the real world and does a job, such as detecting invasive species, then it's something that only highly qualified people can do, who knows about nature and how to walk in nature and how to detect things. But actually, a strong tool for anyone, white collar or experts, is AI, because AI has the force that it doesn't get tired, it can work 24/7, and it doesn't make the kind of mistakes as human being.
It doesn't, it doesn't stop operating. So this case story is about us working with some of the Nordic countries, and the challenge is there to detect the invasive species in nature and things that threatens the balance in and the biodiversity in nature. And Christina here from the Danish Road Agency, and she's one of those experts. And together with our customer, we have developing these AI models and these cameras, and this is also an example where we work with NVIDIA. And we actually have another little case of what we can do with this technology a little bit later.
But that is growing a lot for us, and many customers are very interested in exploring the ideas of Computer Vision AI. Let's move on. So for the vertical business areas, FinTech, digital health, and smart building, we can say that the two out of three are growing quite well, and digital health had not the strongest quarter, but that's also due to that Q3 last year was an extraordinarily busy quarter for digital health. But even on top of that, we have been able to grow, and for the year, we still have a 35% nine months growth, which is quite strong, and we believe that journey can continue.
Fintech are getting back on track, and actually the C4 acquisition or the C5 acquisition we mentioned before is in this space. It is in Fintech, so it's something that can also help us there. And last time I also brought some interesting case stories in Fintech. So we believe that we are a good innovation partner for our customers. Smart building also tracking well, still from a lower point, but as you can see, it's growing, it's growing quite strongly. Let's move into the horizontals. So Smart Enterprise you can say grows a little bit less than what we would like, but okay, I would say. The same is with cloud operation.
So here are two good, and then the big reason for us not impressing with Q3 is really the decline in, in our, you can say, in our growth in, in cyber protection. And this can sound a little bit odd because the mega trends are that this area should be a success and grow. And, so we are looking at what can we do to improve, and what can we do to improve our success in cyber protection? And it's not like the world has become a safer place, quite the opposite, so there is a, there is a big demand out there. We just need to find the right formula on how to, you can say, harvest on that market potential. But I can assure you that we are working very hard to find, the right path forward.
We have very good products, and our customers are very happy with our deliveries. We just need to figure out how we can land more new customers faster. Let's move on. So here you see the overview of our lab companies, and actually, after the period, we added two new lab companies, and one of them, Bluespace Ventures, will end up in the top ten from our next reporting, and that is this collaboration with the Swiss health players. And that you can consider as a strategic collaboration, and the other one that looks a lot like this is Addmoney in FinTech. So I think there will be some questions here later, so I'll just skip on to the next page. So ESG update, very exciting news, lot of work.
The governments and the regulators, they love to put a lot of load and extra cost down on the top of companies around Europe, and we just have to deliver and report on these numbers. But besides reporting on where we are, we also like to actually do things that will improve the world. It is in our mission statement, and if you look at the picture to the right, I could ask you, but you don't, you're not able to answer, but we can discuss it in the Q&A. There are two piles of plastic pellets on our up-cycled table that actually is located in Copenhagen, and one pile is collected from...
It's plastic pellets collected from a beach in northern Jutland, and the other pile of plastic pellets is collected from a beach in Portugal, and they look exactly the same, and that's actually horrific news. So we are a group of creatures that love to replace sand with plastic on the beaches, and we do it quite well because these plastic pellets, they are all over the world, and it's not because we have a great interest in having them in nature.
Actually, they do a lot of harm, but they are a result of loss of material from production of plastic pellets to when the manufacturers, such as companies that produce plastic products, that in the way and in the process and in the cleaning of these buildings, these plastic, this raw material for producing plastic products, are emitted into nature, and that's, of course, quite sad. And although there are regulators that will, you can say, double down on the responsibility and the cleanup process for these plastic pellets, they are already in the oceans, they are already on the beaches, and somebody needs to clean them up.
And we have a collaboration with an NGO in Denmark, and we have a task force to develop a robot, and I can assure you that it's already running in our offices, and we are going to combine it with what you saw before with invasive species. We believe that these plastic pellets are like an invasive species and we will fine-tune our AI computer vision, and then we will pick up these pellets one by one. And if you wanna see how big a job that is, you should go to one of your beaches near you, and then you can do your manual work, and then you will also have a respect of how big a challenge this actually is. Let's move on. Christian, the word to you.
Yes. So, so now we deep dive a little more into the detailed financials. So Jørn already talked about the overall growth, and as you see here, including the inorganic growth, we had 13.2% overall for the nine month, and 10.6% isolated in Q3. Jørn also mentioned briefly that U.S. and Switzerland was leading in growth rates, and this is also our expectations for the next quarter to come. In our largest market, Denmark, we saw 11.9% organic revenue growth, so this is also quite high in Q3.
And just to state there is that, until now in 2023, we've not seen any of the big tenders, so the distribution with growth was primarily from the private sector, but also us delivering on existing won tenders in the public sector. In relation to the Adjusted EBITDA that we also guide on, then there were no adjustments for special items. But our investments in the sales activities cost to some extent a lower margin, the 14.5% you see here. So that's based on minus of EUR 900,000 in the Inspire business, plus the additional investments that we did in the Build business in relation to winning new customer engagements.
So overall, the rest of the business actually matched at least the same in Q3 2022. Looking onto the Trifork Group performance on EBIT, then the results or the effect on EBITDA then turns all the way down to EBIT, so it's the same explanations you see here causing then isolated for the quarter a decline to 6.6% EBIT margin. And overall for the nine-month 8% EBIT margin with EUR 12.3 million. When we then diving into the different sub-segments, then here is the overall picture in numbers in million EUR.
To the right-hand side here, you see the actual margins in the Build and Run, which, as Jørn mentioned before, it seems to be quite solid, and we will deep dive even more into that. Other sub-segment is at the same level as in 2022. Diving into Inspire performance, as you see here, we did have growth, but not enough growth to account for or to mitigate the additional cost that we had until now. Jørn already talked into the activities or the... We have activities now to change this. What we see here is nine months, we have a total loss of EUR 2.4 million. We expect the Q4 to be breakeven, maybe even a small plus.
This is also based on Q4 being traditionally and seasonality a much higher activity level in Q4 than in Q3. So already now, we have had one conference in Copenhagen, and we will have larger conferences in Australia end of year. And the track for the sales, the sales on revenue, it seems to be moving on well, and this is why we trust that we will be in this area of break even in Q4. The Build performance here, as you see overall, a little lower growth in Q3 compared to the overall growth nine month. But also Jørn here explained the reasons for this. We also see that we always traditionally have a strong Q4, and this is also our expectation for this year.
So, we expect both the margins and the growth to be higher in Q4. The Run-based sub-segment here. So Run-based, meaning that most of the revenue here is recurring revenue. We'll deep dive a little more into the distribution of the type of revenue streams in the Run-based. Overall, I could say that the revenue coming from hardware and third-party licenses was less this year compared to the same period last year. And this is also what you see here when looking into what is growth ratios without or with included. This, there you see, not including the hardware and third-party software, we have higher growth rates. But overall, we are satisfied with the development in Run-based. Our, especially the cloud-based operations, contributed to the highest growth rates.
Here you see the Run revenue split, and if you compare to Q3 2022, you see that, as I said before, Q3 2022 was higher on hardware and third-party licenses. So but where we find the most important revenue is the hosting and security and license and support on our own products, and this has increased compared to Q3 2022. So we see this as a very good development. Last performance. As you saw in the last quarter, we had a minus of EUR 4.5 million. This is the same now, meaning that the cost we had to run the operation of approximately EUR 0.5 million, we actually earned in both realized and unrealized gains on financial items. So EBT was break even in Q4.
All, you see the balance sheet, end of Q3, with the EUR 70.5 million in realized gains. You see the EUR 19.4 million in unrealized gains and the EUR 37.1 million as the investment in our activities. The write-offs in the last quarter was then also lowering the initial investment and the realized gains. Overall here, in relation to our financial position, Jan already talked into the leverage of 0.5x in relation to net interest-bearing debt compared to adjusted EBITDA. That said, we also in the period bought back treasury shares.
So now we have a pool of treasury shares worth EUR 3.7 million, which is not included in this way of calculating net interest-bearing debt. So this is an asset we have on top, and this is primarily to be used in new acquisitions. So this is also why we today have announced that we wanna make a share buyback program in order for us to have shares to use in our share-based remunerations, and potentially at some point to cancel shares. This was it from my side in relation to the details, so now we are ready for questions.
Thank you, Christian. I will just briefly explain how it works. To ask a question, please click the Raise Hand button in Zoom. I will then announce your name, and if you make sure that you are unmuted, then you will be free to ask your questions. The first question will come from Simon Jonsson from Berenberg. Simon, please go ahead.
Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, Simon here from Berenberg. Yeah, a few questions from my side. First, just on Chapter five, will the revenues be accounted as build revenues? And also, can you say something about the profitability of Chapter five? Is it correct to assume profitability in line with the group?
Yes, I can answer that. So, short answer is that Chapter five, to the primary extent, would be in build. That's correct. And the margins will improve margins in the build-based segment.
Okay, excellent. And then I'm wondering if you could add some more context to what you're seeing in the market. After the Q2 report, I got the sense that you were more positive than at the beginning of the year, but now it seems like the demand situation has somewhat worsened again. Is that a correct assumption?
I'd like to take that. I mean, a company like Trifork, we use a method going to the market, what is called Challenger Sales. And so for Trifork, we are in a blue ocean space for various reasons. We have practically no market share in the world of what we do, and so the market is up to us to go out and harvest, and there is no limit for us. And this, we indicated by saying that, you know, 31% of the Q3 are actually coming from the revenue, is actually coming from new customers. And there are still millions of customers we can go and just visit. They just probably wait for us, and they don't even know we are coming, but we are coming.
So we are the one who control how much we should grow. But of course, if we grow faster, then analysts like yourself and investors say, "Oh, not so fast, because then you, your margins will, be, you know, lower." So we find a balance in not going too hard because then it will cost us before we get the income and the, and the profit from it. But there is no. I don't see that, there is a limitation of our revenue growth the next decades. I don't really see that. And the other reason why there isn't, is because there are constantly new technologies coming out, and we believe we have a strong set of partners that has some not only we innovate, but our partners are also market leading in what they do.
As you know, our partners are, you know, NVIDIA and Apple and other great companies, and they constantly innovate, and they are market leaders at what they do, and so that's the other reason. There are always new stuff that we can come and bring to customers, existing or new. So yes, what I will acknowledge is that among current customers, they are a little bit more hesitant to jump onto new innovations. Some of them, not all, but some. And we just have the position that, "That's cool, we will be here still. We still collaborate, and when you're ready, we are also ready." In the meantime, we will take our growth from other customers, and I hope that answers your question.
Yes, to some extent, at least, so answers this mid- to long-term perspective. But when I'm looking here for the rest of the year, at least according to my calculations, the 2023 guidance range implies organic growth in the fourth quarter of between -1% and 9%. And this is despite increased investments you're doing in business development, and to me, that paints a rather negative picture near term.
Okay.
Am I missing something here? Or do you actually expect organic growth to decelerate further in Q4, and also looking into 2024? I mean, it's only two more months left now. How should we think about that?
Christian, maybe you can comment on the specific numbers.
Yeah, I mean, in relation to, to overall, I would say, say yes, we are, we are doing more, also in organic growth in Q4. Our expectations are based on what we see, and how we see it. And you could say, yes, we started the investments in the business development, in Q2, and then we follow up in, in Q3. So, so yes, we did see the impact in relation to cost level, and, but we are now starting to see, as Jørn also mentioned, that in, in Q3 alone, we had 31% of, of all revenue coming in from new customers, which then is showing that it is increasing faster now. And-
But Christian, I think the question is: Do we see a decline in organic growth in Q4, yes or no?
No, we see an increased.
Okay, but that, I think, is the question.
Okay, I understood. Last one from my side, looking at EBITDA, and again, the 2023 guidance, and according to my calculations, it implies a substantial margin recovery in Q4 compared to Q2 and Q3, even at the lower end. This is despite the increased investments, as you know, done. Could you just help us understand a bit why the EBITDA margin will improve that much in Q4?
I mean, part of it, of course, is that we do not expect to lose EUR 1 million in Inspiring Q4. We expect that to be break even, potentially, a small profit. So of course, that does part of the deal, but also that Q4 traditionally is a strong quarter. And so we both expect growth, as we talked about before, organic growth. We have a new Chapter five included also in the consolidation, with the expected good margins. And we do expect a margin improvement as well in building Q4.
Well, I mean, the short answer is that we maintain our guidance. It's up to you to believe it or not. When we report the full year, not long from now, we will see it.
Sounds good. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Simon. The next question will come from Mads Quistgaard from Carnegie. Mads, please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yes, thank you for taking my questions. First, I have one on the U.S. Could you talk a bit about the potential investment you're planning for the fourth quarter, and whether or not that investment is included in your current guidance? That will be my first question.
Yeah. So we never include investments in our guidance. So there is no, So you shouldn't expect us to do two-three M&As in the U.S., and they are already included in our guidance. They are not. Any future M&A will be an adjustment to the guidance, as you also saw from C5. It was where we made our guidance more precise and took a good look at the remaining of the year, and so we will do every time we do an M&A.
So when you're saying investments, you're talking about potential M&A, not business development activities.
Yeah. So what do you mean when you talk investments?
No, but that was my question. So, you write in the report that you're saying you might do potential investments in the U.S. in the fourth quarter.
Ah, so there is one other type, but you could consider if it's an investment or just an extra cost. But I guess the definition of investment is if you expect a return of it. And so, yes, we are looking at also doubling down on our business development capability in the U.S. So, basically, hire business developers for the American market, and specifically for the Chicago and mid area of U.S. So, that is something we mean by that.
Okay, fair enough. Then maybe, one question on, guidance, also coming back to guidance. So, on page 13, you write that you expect the personnel cost to sales ratio over a nine-month period to remain, to remain, steady around the 54.1%, I think it was, over nine months. So the margin effect in the fourth quarter, so the improvement, will it be from, you know, other operating expenses? Will it be from lower use of subcontractors, or how do you see it in the quarter?
Christian, would you take that?
Yes. No, we'll see it in. You could say when we're investing in new business relations, then it's also always a question whether how much pre-sale you do and when you turn it into engagements, et cetera. So, we do expect that to change a little bit in Q4, so that more efforts will be then turned into actual business, say, revenue-generating activities. So we do expect to see margin increase from that. Say the other cost, et cetera, we expect to be at the same level as last year, as also we saw in certain—in this quarter. And then, of course, margin improvements is also coming from what I talked about before in relation to Inspire Business, where we expect that to be break even or small plus.
Okay, fair enough. Then, a question on the inorganic growth for the year, because in the report you also mentioned in the note that it will be an impact of 2%-2.5% for the year.
Yeah.
We will both generate effect from IBE and also Chapter five in quarter four?
Yes, that-
According to my calculations, it should be above 2.5%, so...
Based on the forecast we have in all other business units, and where you see Q4 as traditional strong quarter, and our expectations to the new organizations joining in Trifork, this is the best estimate we have right now, that it will be roughly 2%-2.5%.
Okay.
Of your profit or-
The nine-month impact is EUR 4 million, right?
Yes.
From acquisitions, and then there will be an impact on that from IBE and also Chapter four in quarter four. So it will, I guess it will be closer, maybe above EUR 5 million, then we will be above the 2.5%.
No, not on the year, if you see the full year.
Okay, maybe we can-
If you see the range, Mads, so we are, you know, around, let's say EUR 210 or EUR 212 for what we end up with. And then if you say EUR 5 divided by that, you get to 2.something%.
Okay. Maybe we can check off the sheet afterwards.
Yeah.
Then my final question is on the public sector. I guess this is also important for Nine. So what is your expectations for the 2024 in the public sector, given the low tender activity in this year?
I mean, we do see what we read in the news, et cetera, is that there is an expectation to an increase in 2024, also in tenders in the public sector. I would say we have already won an amount of tenders that we're already delivering on, or not. Some of them not even started yet, but where we will see new activities coming in. So we trust to have an, you could say, a nice, maybe not super strong, but a nice development in the public sector as well for the next period.
All right. Thank you for taking my questions.
You're welcome. Thank you.
Thank you, Mads. The next questions will come from Poul Ernst, from Danske. Poul, please go ahead. You need to unmute yourself first. Poul, are you with us?
Can you hear me?
Yes, now we can hear you. Please go ahead.
Okay. I don't know why it didn't unmute. Yeah, a few questions. If we start by the growth in Denmark of 11%, then if we assume that that's about 70% of your business, and you continue reporting strong growth in U.S. and Switzerland, then you must, just doing some math, have close to negative or double-digit negative growth in all other markets combined. Can you put, Is that wrong, or can you put some comments on what's going on outside these three markets?
I mean, we do see, and we also saw that in Q2, that especially in the Netherlands, it's an area where the business development is hard, and it's hard to grow as it is right now. So we have seen decline in the Dutch market. I would say that's, you know, the primary reason for that. The growth, when we're talking about in numbers and overall, et cetera, then of course the level of revenue, total revenue in the U.S. has not been that sizable. So even if we have higher growth rates there, it doesn't mean the same overall as in countries like Denmark, where you then have a higher starting point.
But I would say some more or less the same, and then especially in the Netherlands decline, and then Switzerland and U.S., the most highest ratios, and Denmark in a more or less medium.
Okay. And if you look on current demand out there, are you seeing that it's continuing downwards so that you need more from new clients than you had earlier, or let's say in the third quarter? Are you seeing some stabilization?
So Paul, that is a good question. You know, I think we set ourselves up to not expecting too much from existing customers. You know, maybe level or a little less, which is okay, as I said. When they are ready to pick up again, we are still there, and we remain engaged. So, so yes, the safest strategy from our side would be to double down on getting onboarded new customers, and we do that with as much force as we think we can afford to invest, maintaining a reasonable margin, at the same time.
But actually, I was quite surprised that you are up at 31% of revenue coming from new clients. I think many other IT solutions or service companies are having new clients generating less than 10% to revenue, and then the majority is coming from existing clients. Are you seeing yourself as more vulnerable on the way of the business structure you have?
Well, I don't think we can say a lot of negatives about existing customers, but we do respect that different types of customers are very challenged in different industries, and you know the reasons for that. There are many of them. So I don't think it's our performance towards existing customers. So I don't know if we are very vulnerable there. But I would say that we see we are able to win new business, so it's quite intentional from our side to go and double down on winning new customers. That's how I would answer it, Paul.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe after Q4, we can give you more insight. We, y ou know, Christian, we can look more detailed into how it looks with existing customers and where we see stable revenue and where we see if there is decline, where we see that.
Okay. Then, I'm not familiar with Switzerland. Can you put a little more on the Bluespace or from Compassana?
Yes.
Is it having any revenue is the reason why you're investing, because that they should do a new funding round to finance? Or what's the potential, and what's the story?
Okay. So the story is that five large companies in Switzerland, being this private hospital group, a big, yeah, a big hospital, private hospital group, and private doctors group. There's two parties, and then three insurance companies, and those are some of the three largest and strongest. They have decided to really increase the digitalization of healthcare in Switzerland, where Switzerland has seen a dramatic increase in healthcare cost, and also, that is something you immediately pass on to the customers. So we, as customers, have seen a dramatic increase in insurance fees, and of course, that is not nice. So they do see digitalization as a means to have the whole system more effective, and there are a lot of optimization points in the Swiss healthcare system.
There's a high, high quality of healthcare in Switzerland, but it's also quite expensive. So, that is, that's the rationale, and we see the beginning of a journey that took in Denmark 25 years. We see that journey being quite accelerated in Switzerland, but also using, you can say, more advanced technologies, because the journey starts now, and then we have seen in the other markets or what we can see competitors also do in other markets. So, us being a part of this joint venture, which is really what it is, is quite important for us, because then we have skin in the game in also influencing the roadmap of what needs to be developed.
Was it a funding round where they needed additional funding because it's a startup or, or what was the story about?
I mean, they, I mean, those five companies, of course, have plenty of resources. I mean, they, I mean, we are like a little ant compared to these companies.
Mm-hmm.
So, the funding of this should not just come from capital increases, because then we would soon be at 0.1% owner share. It should come from actually that the different parties who are shareholders should pay for the services from this company, and that's also in the strategy.
Okay. And then the final one is just on the nine, where you increased your holding. The remaining 10% minority, are there any put calls, or is that a lasting holding that they have now, the management team?
Christian?
Yeah, there are still put call options on the last remaining part, so the last 10%. And as Jo said, it's split between Jacob, the founder, and some of the other founding team members, but the total of the 10% Nine ownership. But there is a new, and this is also recorded for in the liabilities, the put option liabilities that we have, and we report on continuously.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, everyone. It seems like there are no further questions, so unless anyone would like to ask a last question. That does not seem to be the case. Then I will conclude this session, and thanks for your interest in Trifork. We hope to see you again soon on the upcoming roadshows or conferences. We put out this program on our IR website under Events. Of course, don't hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions or requests. Thank you, and have a great day.
Thank you so much.