Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Banqup Financial Results Presentation. Thank you for joining us online today. I'm Alex Nicoll, Head of Investor Relations at Banqup . This morning, our CEO, Nicolai, and CFO Koen will present our half-year results and provide further insights into our continued transformation into a pure-play SaaS provider. Following the presentation, we'll open up the floor to a Q&A session. A quick reminder that during the presentation, you can submit questions via the chat for the end of the Q&A session. Before we begin, I would just like to draw your attention to the disclaimer, which is presented in front of you, under which this outlines the legal framework which this presentation should be presented. I'll assume you have had an opportunity to review. I'll now hand you over to our CEO, Nicolai.
Thank you, Alex. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining the call and listening to this replay, if you are listening to this replay. When we last spoke at the end of FY2024, on our results in February, I outlined a clear strategy: focus, product excellence, and execution. I'm pleased to report that at the end of H1, we are exactly where we expected to be. Banqup is today the only listed company combining e-invoicing, e-payments, and e-reporting. Comparisons are not straightforward. As our growth follows a stair-step trajectory rather than a linear progression, it's sometimes very frustrating to look at these numbers. Our focus remains on our three core markets, as I described in February: France, Belgium, and Germany, while transforming Banqup into a true SaaS company. That's very important for us to become, at the end of December, a true SaaS business.
The execution has been visible through H1 and remains the main focus for 2025. In June, we confirmed the divestment of 21 g in Sweden. Shortly after H1, we also completed the sale of our UK print business in the beginning of August. Based on our messaging, our auditor is also recommending removing the Belgium print operation from continued operation. Koen will share more details in a moment. This is important for our analyst friend when you put notes and you refer to achievement of targets or missed targets to really compare apple to apple. Operationally, we reduced OpEx by almost 3.5% year-on-year, which represents EUR 1.1 million of costs. It's an FTE optimization going from 646 to 570.
Our other major milestone, obviously, is our rebranding of Banqup , a new ticket, but it's also aligning the name of the company to the full value proposition of our solution. Our product line continues to be differentiated through its integration between e-invoicing, e-payments, and e-reporting, and the market is noticing. Starting in early September, we will announce major customer wins. I wish I could do it today, but we will wait until the beginning of September. New partnerships, I can tease some of the large Big Four accounting firms. We are very proud of some new government contracts around our eFaktura World product. All this information will be disclosed in early September and continues to showcase how Banqup will achieve and overachieve, I would say, our guidance. Finally, we appointed Christelle Dumont as our new Chief Revenue Officer.
It's important to notice our true impact inside the transformation of our revenue operation. Our pipeline is strong, giving us full confidence, giving me full confidence on delivering our FY25 targets. Referring on the free market, it's important to me to ensure all of you on this call that, as of today, we don't see any delay on the regulatory side. This is a very important component. On the Belgium side, it's important to notice that Belgium is moving as planned, as planned to us, as we have experience to other markets where we see the market usually choosing to go live last minute on this solution. The example of Serbia in January 2023, when they went live, a few weeks before going live, only 20,000 companies were registered into the government e-invoicing solution, and in January, it was 200,000 companies. We see the same case today in Belgium.
Last minute is almost cultural. As we look at the PayPal registration, which is the only data that we can find today on the market, you have 300,000 companies in Belgium registered, over 1.2 million VAT-registered companies, which means in the next four months, we will be very busy. This is quite exciting. That will also increase the revenue very much at the end of the year, which stresses often my dear Koen, my dear CFO. In France, the communication is kind of king in France right now. Everyone talks about PDP, about e-invoicing, but we're still far away from the mandate. The mandate will be live September 1, 2026. For Banqup, we are positioned in the market under another brand called Je Facture.
The Je Facture platform has been selected as one of the 10 providers to do a pilot for the government out of 90 plus other solutions in the market. We are feeling very good about our positioning in France. It's via ECMA, the accountants in France, and we are looking forward to a continued partnership with ECMA. In Germany, we've seen Germany has a different mandate. They started in January the possibility to receive e-invoice. It was mandatory if you had a certain size of company, and the mandate will be live on January 1, 2027. There's still time to go. Because of this January 1, 2025, we saw a growth in volume of almost 50% in the first H1 on our platform. We are feeling significantly good about our positioning in Germany as well.
In terms of highlights, in terms of numbers, it is very, very important to keep in mind that this number needs to be comparable to what we are aiming to be: continued operation and discontinued operation. Koen will go in deep in this notion in a minute. Today, we are excited to report almost 21%, 20.6% growth in organic growth in subscription. This is the right direction and reinforces our guidance that I will give a little bit later. We are still challenged on our gross margin, on digital gross margin. It should be a lot higher. As I explained previously, this has to do with all the different legacy products that we have inside the organization. As we are migrating to one platform, we will see a significant improvement over the few months on the digital gross margin. With that, Koen, I'll let you take it.
Okay.
Thank you.
Yes, thank you, Nicolas, for your business update and for maintaining a strong focus on transforming Banqup Group into a pure digital SaaS company. In addition to driving focused business development, we continue to prioritize the divestment of non-core activities. In H1, we qualified, conformed IFRS criteria to print business in the UK and Belgium as discontinued operations, as Nicolai already said. I will not explain all the technical details of that, but there is an appendix to this presentation providing you with the information over the seven divestments that we have completed or that are ongoing at this moment over the past 18 months, where it is explained how these seven divestments impact the presentation of our figures. I think the presentation will be published on our investor relations. Please consult that appendix to get more insights and more details on that one.
I recognize that this matter makes the reading less straightforward of our figures. In the attached figures, results from Belgium and UK print businesses are excluded from the line items and are presented separately at the bottom as discontinued operation. Just for information, annual revenue of these discontinued operations amounts to EUR 16.5 million. Of course, historical figures were restated as well. As Nicolai already said, for analysts in this call, be careful in comparing your models with the presented figures. Digital service revenue grew 3.4% overall and 6.7% organically. Within this segment, subscription revenue increased by 20.6% year-on-year organically, reflecting our strategic focus. We expect a strong H2 supported by the mandatory rollout of e-invoicing in Belgium. Transaction revenue growth is primarily driven by our client money portfolio, which began ramping up in H2 2024.
Gross margin in digital services, as Nicolai already said, but on top, I mention the following statement, is temporarily under pressure as we scale our platform infrastructure to accommodate expected volume growth in H2 2025. On top of that, we have the legacy migration software that we are executing at this moment and will continue in H2. Traditional communication service revenue continues to decline in line with expectation, but this trend weighs on overall gross margin. The loss you can see at the bottom from our discontinued operations, approximately EUR 7 million, is largely non-cash. I would like to stress that one, driven by goodwill impairment of $3.7 million and historical currency exchange variances on the 21 g , so the Swedish krona, of approximately $4 million, alongside less significant items.
As Nicolas already said, we further reduced for the second year our year-over-year operating expense structure, despite a challenging inflationary macroeconomic environment. The reduction was primarily driven by a decrease in full-time equivalents from 636- 570. As depreciation was stable compared to H1 2024, actual cash outflow decreased at the same level as the operating expense, namely 3.4%. An additional cost-saving plan has been installed to reduce expenses in the second half of the year with a structural saving amount of $1.2 million, which will yield, of course, further benefits in 2026. Overall, CAPEX remains stable compared to last year. However, we observe a strategic shift. We noticed increasing investment in payments and a decrease in our e-invoicing document business. The CAPEX in documents investment focused on finalizing requirements for the Belgium and French markets, as well as enhancing features to improve the accountant user experience.
In the context of payments, investments are primarily addressing new regulatory requirements under the EU QTSP and DORA frameworks. On this slide, I will highlight three key financial parameters: cash flow statement, equity evolution, and net financial debt position. We reported a negative cash flow from operations of $5.5 million, mainly driven by cash flow from operations of $3.5 million and the variance coming from our working capital management of $1.8 million. Investing cash flow was positively impacted by $23.7 million in proceeds from our divestments, partially offset by $8.8 million CAPEX in the continued business. See previous slide. The financing cash flow resulted in a cash outflow of $5.4 million, primarily reflected $4.9 million in debt and lease repayments and $0.8 million in interest payments. The last bar in this graph represents cash held by companies classified as assets held for sale or cash movements due to divestments.
Our equity position decreased from $148.3 million to $125.6 million, mainly due to the current year's net loss of $26.2 million, inclusive the discontinued activities, and partially offset by $3.7 million positive impact from currency exchange on the 21 g transaction, as earlier announced. Our net financial debt position improved, decreasing from EUR 29.5 million at year-end to EUR 24.7 million, or decreased by EUR 4.8 million over the first half year, largely thanks to the divestment proceeds. Management continues to actively work on the refinancing of the . Summarizing this insight and our financials, I do hope you remember the following key points: digital subscription grew organically with 20.6%. The gross margin in our digital business is temporarily under pressure due to the scaling of our platforms in advance of expected volumes boost in the second half year.
Simultaneously, the end-to-end cost structure, as well as the cash spend, are declining with 3.4%. Cash proceeds from divestments are supporting the further decrease in the net financial debt position. Nicolai, I hand over back to you.
Thank you. Thank you, Koen. It was very clear. I know it's a complex organization as we are transforming this business, and I thank you all to stick with us and with this complexity. We will look forward to be a lot more simple when it comes to H1 next year. I look forward to this call in a year, to be honest with you. In terms of targets, we are maintaining our guidance. We're feeling extremely comfortable in the position we are today and the guidance that we have. We have one guidance on growth, subscription growth at 25%, and we have also another guidance on free cash flow that we will be free cash flow positive by the end of 2025. I want to thank you all for the time you took of your day to listen to us.
There will be a publication with more details on our investor relations website to ensure all the legal documentation is published, and we look forward to seeing you. I think the next time we see each other will be in the result of FY25, and we have a Q&A. Alex?
Thank you, Nicolai, and thank you, Koen. We don't appear to have any questions today, so that concludes our H1 2025 presentation. As always, please feel free to reach out and contact me, and enjoy the rest of your week. Thank you very much.
Thank you.