Good afternoon, and welcome to this annual report 2023 presentation and Q&A with Wirtek. With us today, we have the CEO, Michael Aaen. First, there will be a presentation, and afterwards, a Q&A, where the CEO will answer questions submitted via Stokk.io. There have already been pre-submitted questions on Stokk.io, and the Q&A is still open so that you can submit questions live as well. I will now hand over the mic to Wirtek to start the presentation. Michael, your line is now open.
Thank you, Anders. So, Wirtek just recently published our 2023 annual report, and 2023 was a year of continued profitable growth for Wirtek. Now, it is. We are living in a period now where lots of stuff is happening worldwide, and it has an impact also on our business. So we actually chose almost a year ago to focus our business on energy in this uncertain times there. So we focused all our business development efforts inside of our energy business unit in the clean energy sector, and that actually paid off big time for Wirtek. So we actually saw a growth of 70% in this business unit last year.
Now, we reorganized our business units into five business areas that are driven by domains, and this has actually proven to us to be very flexible and very efficient in changing markets there. We also, last year, introduced new headquarters, both in Bucharest and Cluj, where we have our development and test centers. So we now have new, very modern facilities that supports this new hybrid way of working that also will support our future growth. And in the upper right-hand here, corner here, you can actually see our new headquarters in Cluj. This building is all ours. We also, as a preparation for going to the main market, we also started the professionalization of the board of directors.
Last year, I stepped out of the board, and we also put in two new board members that are considered independent. One at the annual general meeting in April last year, Martin Dommerby Kristiansen, and after summer, we also had Janie Nielsen joining us at an extraordinary general meeting. Now, as a new thing in our annual report, we actually also now have started reporting ESG, and we actually provide an ESG baseline in our 2023 report that is actually very, very interesting for people to go in and have a look at. This is as a preparation for us to be able to report according to the Sustainability Reporting Directive by 2026, as part of our journey towards the Nasdaq Main Market.
If we look at some financial highlights for last year, we generated DKK 70.4 million in revenue, which was an organic growth of 7%. Our EBITDA was DKK 6.3 million , and we had an EBITDA margin of 8.9%. As for key ratios, we had an earnings per share of DKK 0.53 . We had an equity ratio of 61.4%, and we also had a liquidity ratio of almost 162%, which is, was a growth of 13%.
So our financial position is quite strong, which also means that the board of directors actually are recommending pay out of dividends this year, as we've been doing since 2016. So this year, the board is recommending paying out DKK 0.38 per share, which is a payout of a 4.2% in dividend, compared to the closing share price of 2023. The outlook for 2024 is as follows: You know, we expect to generate revenues in the interval of DKK 74 million- DKK 78 million . That is an organic growth of 5%-11%.
Our EBITDA, we expect to be in the interval of DKK 6.5 million-DKK 7.5 million , which is a growth of 3%-19% for the year. We are now past the middle of our Accelerat 25 XL growth strategy. Just to take a status on how things have been going the first three years. So we generated revenue growth in the period 2021 to 2023 of 155%. That is an annual average growth of 36%, which is actually quite impressive. Our EBITDA grew in the same period 110%, which is an average annual growth rate of 28%.
One of the really important operational targets we have in our strategy is the retention rate, keeping people working with Wirtek, and we have a target in 2024 of 85%, and we actually had a retention rate of 87% already in 2023. So we are well above the operational target for this year. So all in all, Wirtek, we will maintain our long-term Accelerate 25 XL goals. A nd based on, first of all, we've had significant investments the last couple of years in transforming our organization, and also digitalizing, digitizing key business processes in order for us to have the foundation for sustaining this profitable growth. In 2024, we will actually also invest in business development in order to boost the organic growth by 2025.
Now, we hope already to be able to do the initial preparations this year here, but we expect the effect to be significant already from next year. We also have a growing pipeline of potential acquisition targets. As you might recall, part of our Accelerate 25 XL strategy is to boost our growth through acquisitions, and we did a big acquisition for us back in 2021 that has been successfully integrated into Wirtek, and we are ready to do more acquisitions. So we expect to do at least one more acquisition before the end of 2025. So all in all, I think we are in a good place. We are moving towards our strategic goals here. So I'm ready for some questions now, Anders.
Perfect. Thank you for that, Michael, and let's take one question at a time here. So the first question is: Can you put some more flavor on your guidance? You're expecting between 3%-19% in EBITDA growth, which, compared to revenue growth, is either a downtick in EBITDA margin or an uptick. So what would it take to reach the uptick compared to the downtick?
Well, our business is, you know, to sell people, billable people and hours to our clients. So for us, it's really important that we utilize our billable personnel as good as possible, but it's always very difficult to have it 100% billable. So we must expect that there are periods of time where people are transferring or transitioning from one project to another project that could lead to somebody not being invoiceable for a minor period of time. And of course, we are constantly working on improving processes in order to reduce non-billable time for our people. But again, this is something that can have an impact on the actual EBITDA in the end.
And also, the timing of the expansion into business development efforts will have an impact on the EBITDA this year, because we are actually manning up significantly on our sales resourcing in the company, which also means that we are taking on costs that will have a delay before it's gonna start generating that revenue. So I expect that the investments we are doing this year is gonna give us good impact on the organic growth from 2025, but it is gonna be a cost this year. And the timing there, of course, will have an impact on how much that impact is gonna be on the EBITDA. The timing is really important here. We want to do it as soon as possible, but the sooner we do it, of course, the sooner we also get that added cost.
Yeah. The next question is also around the guidance. With only an expected growth of 5%-11% in 2024, and a 2025 target of DKK 130 million in revenue, the acquisition target you are looking at seems to be rather big. Can you explain what it will take for you to reach this target? Can you make it with only one acquisition?
So first of all, of course, you know, just reaching those goals just by organic growth is not viable. You know, the market conditions right now are quite challenging there. So we are investing in actually improving our organic growth rate, but that's not gonna make it alone. We also do need to do acquisitions, and as we also have indicated in our annual report, we have a growing pipeline of potential acquisition targets, and we actually expect to complete at least one acquisition during the remaining period of this strategic period here, running until end of next year.
So but again, at least one means it could also be two. You know, it may not be just one acquisition, and it could likely also be more than one. So I can't, of course, say more about that, you know , but again, nobody says it's just gonna be one.
Okay, perfect. You're targeting DKK 18 million in EBITDA for 2023 at a revenue of DKK 130 million, corresponding to a margin of around 13.8%. This will be the highest margin so far. What will you do to reach this target point in just under two years, and what kind of internal changes do you have to make?
Well, we actually also achieved the 13.8% EBITDA margin back in 2021, the first year of our strategic period there. So at that time, we targeted that we wanted- you know, we knew we're gonna do significant investments during the strategic period there that would have an impact on the EBITDA margin, but the target was to stay at that level also when we get to 2025. So we've been there, and the intention, of course, is to get back there again. So during the past couple of years, we did invest significantly in the organizational development and in digitalization in order for us to actually have that foundation for to support the growth.
We actually believe that the foundation we have right now is actually gonna be able to bring us from the about 200 people we have now to even 300, 350 people without having to significantly increase the overhead in the company. So we are positioned in order to really improve the operational efficiency by increasing the billable rate without the overhead following. Now, what is also really important here is that we have invested a lot of resources into building this platform that has given us some overhead that the acquisition targets that we're looking at do not have, because these are often companies significantly smaller than Wirtek, but at a point where they're very profitable.
But they, if they wanted to grow at a Wirtek size, they'd have to do significant investments. Now, we already did those, so it actually allows us to do acquisitions of companies that have an EBITDA margin way above ours. But we can take them in without having to increase our overheads, because we already have that platform in place. So acquisitions definitely are gonna help us improve the, EBITDA margin.
Perfect. And then, there's another question around the, the guidance here, but also around the market. With only expectations of 5%-11% in organic growth in 2024, you're not really expecting a better market environment in 2024 compared to 2023? How can that be?
Well, we actually still see nervous markets out there. The geopolitical situation is really tough, right? Both what's happening in Ukraine and what's happening in the Middle East do have an impact. We also still see very high inflation and interest rates, so many companies are holding back on technology investments right now. So we do expect relatively low organic growth this year. Now, inflation rates is coming down, and I do expect that, since it's now approaching a more normalized level in EU, hopefully when we get to the second half of this year, we're gonna see the interest rates starting coming down. And hopefully nothing significant happens on the geopolitical scene that is gonna impact it, so that we actually should start seeing companies investing more into technology again.
That, I expect, will have a positive impact maybe at the end of this year, but it's not gonna be really something that is gonna have a big impact this year, but hopefully then from next year.
Perfect. Looking at your different business units, how do you expect each of them to develop in 2024 and 2025? Where will the main growth be coming from, and where do you put both your organic and acquisition focus?
Well, you know, for sure, clean energy is going to be our main growth driver this year. It was growing by 70% last year, and we actually also expect it to grow by more than 50% this year. So this is really where we are putting a lot of our efforts, because it is an area, a market, where it's more recession-proof than many other areas out there. We also expect growth in our largest business unit, wireless communication automation, as well as in our business unit, trade and e-commerce, but at much lower growth rates. Now, in our workforce and facility management business unit, we actually had a loss on a client last year that had financial problems there.
So that actually means that we do foresee that business unit to have a slight negative growth this year, because we're not gonna have the revenue for that, from that particular client. Now, our digitalization business unit is the most severely hit business unit due to these market uncertainties, and we do expect actually a significant negative growth for that business unit this year. So this is kind of where we see the- how we see the picture for the business units there. Now, as for the acquisition focus, yeah, acquisitions definitely is a focus area for us right now. It allows us to achieve some significant goals there, you know, by getting companies in through an acquisition that actually have things in place that might be important to us.
If you look, for instance, at the operational goals we have, one of them is getting sourcing facilities, a sourcing location outside of Romania. One way to do that, of course, is to acquire another company that actually have sourcing facilities outside of Romania, so we also reduce this geographical risk for Wirtek as well.
Okay, and maybe I can elaborate a little bit on that question. Do you, in your acquisitions, do you focus in any of your specific business units at the moment, or are you also looking to make potential acquisitions outside of the current business units?
Well, some of the acquisition targets we're seeing out there fits very well within our existing business units there. But I would say that, you know, if we find a very interesting acquisition target that have a significant client base inside a new domain that we are not currently covering, let's say healthcare or finance or something, well, we can create another, you know, the structure, organization structure we have right now is very scalable, so we could easily create a new business unit inside of Wirtek in the existing structure, where we, you know, then have another growth, leg of growth in the future.
There are a few IT outsourcing companies in Denmark, such as Netcompany or Trifork. What is your unique selling point?
Well, okay, yeah, I know we have other companies in Denmark, and I actually don't see Netcompany and Trifork really as our main competitors at this point. We are very small compared to these companies there. But where they are, their focus is a lot on projects. You know, they have to go out and reinvent their revenue as at least a significant part of their revenue every year or every project, once a project is done. Our base for our revenue is more on long-term relations with our clients there. We are focusing a lot on building close partnerships with our clients and building these relations that last for years.
So we are actually essentially helping our clients that make great software products as if these products were our own, but it is our clients, we're helping them succeed in their markets there. So we actually become kind of a natural extension of our client's own development and testing departments. So in this sense there, we may differentiate ourselves, you know, significantly from at least the companies you mentioned up there. In order for us to even add more value to our clients, we actually, you know, redid the restructuring of our business into these domain-driven business units that we just, you know, had in the last question there when I went through those, where we actually can come in and be help our clients in a much easier way because we already understand their business, the way they work.
Just to take an example of this, we actually got a new big client in the energy domain last year, or actually the year before. We got that client in 2022. And the reason we got this client was because we already have previous experience of working with Energinet in Denmark, you know, the Danish energy transmission provider there. And the fact that we had this knowledge was really really important for this client. So domain knowledge really does matter when you want to go out and compete with other companies like us.
Perfect. Then the same investor has another question.
Yes.
As AI being widely adopted in the software development, how do you imagine Wirtek in 3 years-5 years' time? Will pricing still be a competitive advantage?
So first of all, you know, AI is important. You know, we are both, you know, looking into utilizing AI inside of Wirtek as a whole in order to optimize our own processes, key business processes there. I'm personally using it as well, you know. It is actually, you know, quite impressive what you're able to do with these technologies there. But already now our developers are also using it. You have tools in the development environments that actually support this. But we're also looking into trying to have projects with our clients to help them build AI into their products.
You know, an example, one of our clients, you know, work in the flower industry, you know, a nd going in there, making AI that can help, you know, with coloring schemes and stuff like this is some of the stuff that we're working with them right now in order to be able to do things a lot smarter for our clients as well. So definitely, it's here to be, you know, right? Y ou know, there's a lot of talk out there, is AI gonna make programmers go away? No way. But what is gonna be important is that programmers that use AI is gonna out-compete programmers that do not use it, you know? So it's really important for us to go in there and take this new technology on board there, so we can actually help our clients being more productive on their behalf.
That's gonna be important for us in order for us to compete. And then for the last one, will pricing still a competitive advantage? We're actually not trying to really compete on price anymore. You know, as we are sourcing, we have our sourcing facilities are inside of EU, so you know, we cannot compete with companies that deliver services from India or Pakistan or Vietnam, you know. But we don't want to either. We're trying to focus on other things here, you know, for our clients, adding value that is where cost, essentially, cost is just one of the pictures here for the clients there, you know? Because when you look at the total return on investment for the client, the price is just one factor, and it's maybe not even the biggest factor for them in the end.
Yeah, makes sense. What is the percentage as of revenues of the top one client in your portfolio? I reminded that was around 15% in the past. Now, is it the same percentage?
Oh, let me just have a quick look here. I believe it's less than 15%, for sure. Yeah, it's around 15%. The biggest client is about 15% of our revenue.
Okay, perfect. And then there, there's another question around the client distribution. How is your client distribution at the moment? How much does top three clients hold of your total revenue in 2023? And if we look only in energy, how much of it was from the SCADA deal?
So if we look at our top three clients, I believe that the revenue of top three clients is less than 40%.
Okay.
As for SCADA, what I can say is that SCADA is an important client for us, and you can also see we profiled a case study with SCADA in the annual report. What I can say is, I won't go into details here, but I can say that it's significantly below 50% of the revenue in that business unit.
Okay, perfect. In the future, how do you see yourself in the energy sector? What kind of projects are you looking to engage in? Can you explain some of the characteristics here?
Well, you know, we are very, you know, energy sector is a big sector, right? You know, and if you talk about it, you also have the black energy, oil, and things like this. Yeah, we're really focused right now very much on the clean energy sector here. So if we look at, you know, some of the things we're doing there, like for instance, trading platforms for energy. Because as you know, as renewable energy becomes more and more common out there, it the platforms that where you need to handle these different energy sources that are so difficult to predict, becomes more and more complicated. But we need to be able to make it so that it's very easy for companies to utilize the clean energy sources optimally out there.
We also have clients where we work with the automotive industry, for instance, in Germany, where we actually help them make testing equipment for battery technologies towards the electric vehicles industry. So we are kind of, you know, in different areas in the energy segment.
Okay. And then the last question that has been submitted here, I think you have already addressed it a little bit, but you have the chance now to put some more wording around it, if you have any. Is any of your current revenue on a recurring basis, like a contract with clients to maintain systems or long-term contracts of R&D and development?
Well, actually, most of our revenue actually is recurring, because the way we work with our clients, it is really on a continuing basis, because we are kind of an extension of our clients' own development and testing departments. So we have people sitting, you know, as a fixed part of our client setups there, so it just continues as if it was their own people, year- after- year. So we have, you know, I think the average is about six years, clients have been with us, like six years, you know, so that revenue just continues every year.
So I kind of have a saying, a saying, when we start a new annual, a new fiscal year, we've got a lot, around 70% of our- sorry 80% of our revenue in place, because everything that we had at the end of the last year continues into the new year. So yes, the majority of our revenue is recurring revenue.
Okay. And, actually, we just received a live question here as well, so, I will read the full question to you here. How much of the financial goals of 2025 is expected to achieve organic and inorganic? Taking into account 2024 guidance, it seems like the inorganic revenue will contribute a lot. How could you explain that Wirtek won't be over-leveraged or very diluted in order to achieve these targets?
Well, as you probably- i f you've looked a little bit at the history there, you could also see that Wirtek took some significant steps in growth back in 2021 and 2022 because of our acquisition of CoreBuild back then. So yes, when we do acquisitions, that give us a big boost in revenue in the short term there, that is gonna give, you know, a growth for that particular year, significantly above what we normally see in organic growth there. So it gives. It's kind of like a ladder, you know, where you get these big boosts in revenue very fast. And those are also gonna be important for us as we approach our Accelerate25XL strategy end.
And yes, part of what we do when we do acquisitions is that we split up the pricing towards, you know, the sellers as part, as part of it in cash, and part of it in Wirtek shares. Now, we're trying to find a balance of this so that we don't see a big dilution of the existing shareholders. We always wanna make sure that when we do acquisitions, one of the things we're actually measuring is, if we do this acquisition, is the earnings per share gonna go up? Because if it's gonna go up, then it's gonna be a good deal for our investors.
So that's a pretty important trigger for us when we also find out how we are structuring the deals with our clients, as with our sellers of the companies we will acquire. And, well, so far, last year, we actually paid the last earn-out of the CoreBuild, and part of that was also in Wirtek shares, but we did not go out and dilute existing investors. We actually went out and did a share buyback program, and actually acquired the shares in the market so that we could actually give those shares without giving any dilution to existing investors.
So we are always trying to balance how we are, you know, handling our acquisitions in shares, cash, and of course, cash from bank loans or whatever is needed, you know, finding that good balance. But Wirtek doesn't have a big debt or anything like that, you know, so we're very much focused on some key measures, you know, in order to make sure that we, we're in a good condition there. If you look at it, our equity ratio, 61.4%, in last year, and that was- let me just have a quick look here. Just a second here. Yeah, it went down to 35.3% in 2021 after our acquisition.
So just, you know, in a couple of years, it went from 35% up to 61%. So we are really, really good at creating, you know, cash in the company. We're very good at focusing on building a strong position in the company there. So we do focus on our key numbers there. We don't wanna get into a problem with the key performance indicators.
Perfect. And that was so far all the questions, Michael. So, before we end the webcast for now, I will just hand over the word for you, if you have any kind of final remarks.
Yes. So thank you very much, Anders, for having me on here, and I'm very excited to be able to present Wirtek for everyone here for the first time. And I'm looking forward to coming back again after we publish our half-year report sometime in August. And hope to see you in the future. And if you're not investors in Wirtek, I hope you consider investing in Wirtek. We'll be happy to have you on board.