Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the 2026 half year financial results webcast of Banqup Group. Thank you for joining us online today. My name is David Geleyn, and I am Head of Investor Relations at Banqup Group. To walk you through the half year results, I am joined by our CEO and CFO, Koen De Brabander, along with key operational leaders driving our business unit structure, Jan Druppel, leading our Documents business unit, and Anouk Arendt, leading our Payments business unit. Before we move on, I would like to draw your attention to the forward-looking statement disclaimer on slide two of the presentation, which is available on our investor relations website. I assume you had the opportunity to read it.
About today's agenda, Koen will open with a number of introductory remarks, followed by brief operational updates by our business unit leads. Next, Koen will walk you through the financials and close the presentation before we open the floor for Q&A. You can submit your questions via the webcast Q&A interface. Today's press release, presentation deck, and replay of this webcast are available on our investor relations website at investors.banqup.com. With that being said, I give the floor to Koen De Brabander.
Thank you, David, for your introduction, and welcome. I am very pleased to have you supporting us on all investor relation matters going forward. Thank you all for joining this webcast and this call where we will try to explain evolution at Banqup Group. A lot has changed since our last webcast. You will already have noticed this through our recent press releases, and of course, it will become even more clear through the presentation we share with you today. A very logical question is, why have we changed vision and approach? What does this mean for Banqup and ultimately for investors and shareholders? I do not want to spend too much time looking backwards or reflecting on what might have been done differently.
With hindsight, it is always easy to identify things that could have been improved, but I believe that is neither constructive nor respectful to many colleagues who have worked hard to build Banqup over the past years. I would therefore first like to recognize and thank all of them for their commitment and contribution. What we are doing now is looking forward. Following a comprehensive 360-degree strategic analysis, the Board has concluded that we need to take the next step in the evolution of the group by organizing the business more clearly around its key business functions, and importantly, by giving each business unit greater autonomy and accountability. This means creating a clearer focus around product development, customer acquisition, and customer support within each business unit.
At the same time, we are adapting our governance model accordingly. Each business unit needs to have the appropriate level of operational autonomy, while an Executive Committee will provide the overall group perspective, ensure alignment across the businesses, and drive decisions where they have an impact across the group. The reason for this approach is quite straightforward. We have learned that the business in which we operate, Documents, Payments, Consult, including business to governments, are fundamentally different in a number of important aspects. They require different technical expertise and know-how. They have different go-to-market models. They have different scaling potential, and they have different capital and financing requirements.
This means for us that a one- size- fits all management approach is no longer the most effective way to develop these businesses. Instead, we need to create the right conditions for each business to grow and perform according to its own characteristics. This evolution towards more autonomous business units has several important consequences. First, the product strategy needs to reflect the specific requirements and capabilities of each business. Second, the operational priorities and management focus can, will be different for each business unit. Third, the go-to-market strategy needs to be tailored to the specific market dynamics and customer propositions of each business unit.
Finally, we need to recognize that European markets are evolving at different speeds. Different countries are implementing different components of our product suite in different formats and at different points in time. As a result, we need to be much more agile in the way we steer and develop the business. This is why we are moving towards clearer business units accountability, supported by agile steering structures that can respond to the specific evolution of each business and each market.
Ultimately, this is about one thing: creating a simpler, more focused, and more accountable organization that can execute faster and allocate its resources more effectively. I believe this is an important step in positioning Banqup for sustainable growth, and importantly, for creating value for our shareholders. Let me now say a few words about the extended executive team. One of the strengths of this team is the depth of experience it brings to the organization. The members of the team have long and proven track records in their respective areas of expertise, combined with in-depth knowledge of the market products for those leading our business activities and strong professional expertise for those responsible for key back office functions.
Just to avoid misunderstanding, when you look at the numbers next to each person on the slide, these numbers are not their ages, fortunately or perhaps unfortunately, depending on how you look at it. They represent the number of years of professional experience they bring to Banqup. You will also notice that three of our four business units are represented within the central management team. However, I would not want to overlook our fourth business, our B2G business and e-invoicing activities in the Balkan, who are managing and developing their business locally. This business is organized through separate legal entities and operates across specific jurisdictions, which requires a somewhat different governance approach.
Mathias Baert and I are therefore closely following the evolution of this business and will remain directly involved in key strategic decisions and priorities going forward. Let me now briefly bring the key priorities and the short-term goals of the newly installed executive team. We have a clear focus, and we are translating that focus into action across four areas: market, company, liquidity, and transformation. First, on the market side, France is our immediate strategic launchpad. We have built a strong position ahead of the upcoming e-invoicing mandate with around already 150,000 enterprises onboarded, ready for accepting e-invoices from 8,000 potential e-invoice customers. Jan will tell you more about this.
This gives us a strong basis to demonstrate that our new operating model works at scale before expanding further into other key European markets, such as Germany. At the same time, we continue to benefit from the Belgian mandate, which is already supporting digital adoption. Second, we are simplifying the company itself. We are moving towards a much flatter organization with clear ownership and accountability. We are putting the customer much more explicitly at the center of everything we do, while at the same time increasing product discipline and focusing on development efforts on the core Banqup platform.
Third, liquidity remains a key management priority. We continue to manage cash very tightly with continuous cash flow monitoring and strong focus on working capital and portfolio optimization. The divestments we have completed, together with the continued support of our senior lenders, have helped controlling our liquidity position and extend our runway. Finally, transformation. We are moving towards a more decentralized operating model with clearly defined business units and dedicated leadership. Each division will have a clear P&L responsibility and the ability to execute according its own market dynamics.
This creates much greater accountability while allowing us to distinguish clearly between our core digital platform activities and our professional Consulting Services. Taken together, these four priorities are about one thing: creating a simpler, more focused, more disciplined organization that can execute faster and convert the significant market opportunity ahead of us into sustainable digital growth. Now I give the floor to Jan Druppel, who will explain more about business developments within our Document business. Jan, the floor is yours.
Thank you, Koen. First of all, the scope of what we are doing in the Documents division. Today, what we are doing is, in a way, enabling automation of purchase to pay, order to cash, and cross-border e-invoicing through an API-first platform. That is basically our core business in the Documents division. What we are trying to do is, and what we are bringing to the table is, turning key administrative friction into connected automated workflows. That is basically the core of our Documents platform. With a clear strategic focus. We want to position Banqup as a solution for upcoming mandatory European regulation on B2B e-invoicing and e-reporting mandates. This includes tax validation. Today, what we are seeing is that everybody is talking about formats of electronic invoices, and really the question of tomorrow and the problem of tomorrow is going to be everything to do with data.
We are focusing today on multicultural country scalability and effortless integration with all the systems we can connect to, such as ERP, accounting networks, etc . Now, giving you some insights into the key commercial milestones and strategic wins. First of all, of course, there is the French market. We had the launch of the mandate for electronic invoicing end of 2025, beginning of 2026, and now we are preparing for the French mandate, which will kick off in a couple of days. Today, we are at the situation where we onboarded 150,000 businesses through 4,700 accounting firms who are our natural partners on the jefacture.com platform and 100, a little over 100 technology partners. They are all ready to accept, because this is step one in the French mandate. They are all ready to accept electronic invoices in September 2026.
Second important win, and it is really an important one, is the tax automation partnerships and the tax validation partnerships. In the past months, we signed two partnerships for rolling out the tax validation engine. The tax validation engine has, today, capabilities in more than 40 countries. Important one, it includes France, and it also includes the DOM-TOM areas, French DOM-TOM areas, who have slightly different tax regulation in place. A third important win is the partnership we have signed with Austrian Post. Basically what we are going to do in Austria is give SMEs and corporate structures the possibility to send out electronic invoices to other countries. Why is it an important one?
As you all know, we are also preparing for the German mandate of electronic invoicing, which is quite a liberal mandate in a way, because you are able to receive your electronic invoices via email. There has not yet been a German platform that has been identified. Why is the Austrian Post partnership really important? Because it will give the SMEs and corporate structures the possibility to deliver their invoices to their German customers in the correct format that is expected by the German mandate. So we are talking about ZUGFeRD and we are talking about E-Rechnung. Okay? So Austrian Post is, for us, an important partnership that has been signed during the first semester.
Operational focus. I think we need to have a clear and very strict operational focus that is really driven by the regulatory tailwinds. We know in Belgium the mandate has kicked off. Today, more than 90% of all businesses in Belgium are using electronic invoicing in their B2B transactions. What will come next? First of all, there is now a legislation in place for the Peppol access point who need an ISO certification. We have upcoming eIDAS 2.0 regulation that is going to be implemented in Europe and something new called the Business Wallet, and this will have huge impact on the current more than 400 active vendors in the Belgian space. Just in Belgium.
So these are really the elements. ISO certification for Peppol access points will be mandatory as from July 1st, 2027, and the Belgian government has released, or is planning to have e-reporting implemented by January 1st, 2028. Now, legislation is still following its process. Technical specs have not been released, but clearly, this is something that will impact the Belgian market in the years to come. France. We said we have the mandate kicking off in a couple of days, so really t oday, there is only about 8,000 companies in France. The really big corporate structures that have the obligation to send out their invoices to their B2B customers in an electronic way.
The big bang, in a way, if you want, is going to come in September 2027 where at that time, all businesses, even the small ones, will have to send out their B2B invoices in an electronic format. It is going to be a year, more or less, that France is going to go through this process. We are also preparing for Spain. We have the very factual e-reporting obligation that is going to become effective in January 2027. Then you will have the mandatory e-invoicing for all companies in October 2027, described by the Ley Crea y Crece.
This is an upcoming regulation change in Spain. Then finally, Germany. Also very important market for our company. In Germany, today, you have the obligation to be able, as a company, to be able to receive your electronic invoices in a structured format, in an electronic way. [Non-English content]. This is ongoing. Again, it is a very liberal market. Communications has been done recently by the German government, where they are specific on one thing, and it is the e-reporting part. They have clearly identified that they are going to use the data from the e-reporting in combination with AI to do everything they can to avoid and to detect fraud on invoicing levels, VAT fraud, etc . These are really, for the Documents division, the main drivers for the months to come. Anouk, I will let you take the floor for Payments.
Thank you, Jan. Good morning, everyone. I want to give you a summary on the structure and the strategy we will follow with the payment. We are now independent, and that means that we will be able to support Jan and all the country where Jan is developing the document part to add payment as a part of the business to make sure that SMEs are able to pay their invoices in euro and non-euro with our Visa partnership. On the second part of the business, now that we are independent, we are leverage the fact that we have a license. We are able to be an acquirer for Bancontact, Visa, MasterCard, and want to approach new business like POS business, eCom business, and be able to support SME everywhere, every time and give them a clear view on the financial situation.
We want to be a partner of SME, but also the fact that our company decided in the past to have everything that we offer to our customer API-based, we are able to find partner that needs also to have embedded payment solution for their customer. Thus, we will have the dual strategy. My focus today is really to refocus back to the basic and sell what we have with a very clear approach on the market. Then on the other part, in the Payment business unit, we have trust and identity. Still not sure about the name, but I call it today like that. It is the business, like Jan was telling, it is becoming very important on the EU regulation.
Since, I think three or four week, we have as per the certificate for QTSP. That will give the possibility also to the colleagues of Documents to seal e-invoicing in the future. That is in a nutshell what we will do with the Payment team, very focusing on growing on the market. Thank you, and I give the word back to David.
Yes. Thank you, Koen, for the insights into the business unit structure, and thank you, Anouk and Jan, for the introduction and operational overview of the Payments and Documents business unit. Koen, can you, as CFO, give us an overview of the financials?
Thank you, David, again. Now I will debrief as usually I did in the past in my role as CFO of this group. Let me briefly walk over the key financials. I think the nine tiles here on the screen, they are self-explanatory. I am sure you overlook them even faster than I can comment them. Total revenue amounts to EUR 26.5 million for the first half, representing EUR 21.1 million that came from recurring digital revenue or digital services. The strongest growth was in subscription revenue, which increased by 42.3% year on year to EUR 10.4 million. This continued growth is also reflected in our recurring revenue base, with ARR already reaching EUR 48.2 million at the end of June, representing a growth of 12.1% compared to June 2025.
This is mainly driven by the mandate in the Belgian market and is not yet considering the growth of our French opportunity, as Jan explained, which will launch from September onwards. On profitability, our adjusted EBITDA amounted to EUR -6.1 million. We incurred EUR 1.4 million of non-recurring costs during the first half, related to the actions we are taking to reshape and simplify the organization and the management change. At the end of June, the net financial debt position stood at EUR 46.1 million, while we still have a CapEx level of EUR 8.1 million for the first half, reflecting continued investment in our digital platform and the regulatory requirements that are installed by different governments.
As previously announced, we expect a decreasing number of CapEx for the coming future as the e-invoice product reaches a mature position. CapEx and Payments will still be maintained at current level. Finally, our total workforce stood at 632 FTEs at the end of June. In summary, the key financials messages for H1 are strong subscription growth, continued growth in our recurring digital revenue base, and continued focus on profitability, liquidity and disciplined investment. As already said, the non-recurring costs amount to EUR 1.4 million related to divestments and transformation exercise. The OpEx exclusive these non-recurring costs increased by 4.8%, I think I can go here, year- on- year, that is EUR 1.4 million, mainly driven by higher depreciations of own development costs due to the release of the Billtobox platform in Q4 2025.
Billtobox platform is the Banqup platform we are using in the Belgian market and also for jefacture.com in the French market. The cash spent increased with less than 2%, which is a positive evolution, but which needs to show further decrease in the second half of this year. In-depth cost management is installed and discussed during weekly ExCo meeting to assure the further decrease. A clear internal ambition and target is defined for Q4 2026. In H1, the group employed an average of 527 indirect FTEs.
I just spoke about 632 FTEs in total. Nearly 90% are dealing with our direct operating activities, or classified under the line gross margin or cost of service. 522 are dealing with our indirect staff, which is for a big portion R&D staff and general and administrative staff and sales and marketing. Within CapEx, we maintain a document focus on Belgian and French market requirements for accountants and the user experience for our accountants. Within Payment, we did quite a lot of investment in the trust component, as Anouk already explained, for which we are certified since June 2026 as the first one in Europe.
Looking at cash flow positions, equity and net financial debt, which is also an important graphs we are following closely. Our operating cash flow amounts to EUR -6.4 million, compensated by working capital elements of EUR +0.4 million. Some small amount in income tax due and one-off non-recurring restructuring costs of EUR 1.4 million. The operating cash flow, EUR -6.4 million. Cash flow from investments is EUR +3.3 million. It reflects the divestment we have done and realized in March 2026 regarding the Baltic business. It reflects also the cash in from an escrow account that was linked to the transaction with 21 g w e have realized also in 2025, and an escrow account needed to be released. Those two components were supportive for EUR 11.4 million in our cash flows, and we spent, as said already, EUR 1.8 million in our current CapEx level, mainly the intangible asset.
Finally, cash flow from financing activities is a EUR -0.7 million related to repayment of loans and leasings for EUR 10.8 million. We also collected, on the other hand, EUR 10.7 million, mainly shareholders loans for EUR 8 million and funding from BNP Bank of EUR 2 million. We paid, of course, our net interest or our interest to our funding partners. The available cash position end of Q2 is EUR 5 million, compared to EUR 8.6 million end of December 2025. Equity position is evolving, considering the loss of the period, including the continued and discontinued business.
The net financial debt position is presented as the level of EUR 46.1 million, which is mainly coming from the senior facility from Francisco Partners for an amount of EUR 32.7 million, different bank borrowings of EUR 3.8 million, and the newly shareholder loan of EUR 8 million, inclusive accrued interest EUR 8.3 million.
Thank you, Koen, for the financial overview. Koen, as a CEO, can you look ahead and tell us what we need to remember of this presentation?
It is always good in such a presentation to focus on the takeaways. What should you take away from this presentation? Looking forward, today, we can say that management beliefs, based on the impact of the transformation we are working on the one hand, the French market expectations as a second component, that we can still maintain our guidance as announced at start of year. I think this is a message of confidence we are sharing with the market. My three takeaways, I think it is very important to keep them in mind is Banqup is evolving. The first one for me is we are just in front of launching the French market. Jan clearly explained this. We were dealing with that French market now for many years and announced it for many years, but it is now tomorrow.
This is a very important moment, and the company and the teams are really focused, and I have to thank them for their focus and commitment and dedication. We are, as management team, together with the staff, we are focused on launching the French market. That is a very important element. Second point I would like to stress is, you have understood, we are working on an operational transformation of this company. We are clearly setting up the different business units with autonomy. Autonomy in its functions, and I mean functions such as sales, customer support, product development. Of course, these business unit should also operate autonomous in its financial working.
The third point, this is clear, the company worked on it since long time, but we should be disciplined and even more disciplined in our financial management, in our cost structure, cost efficiency, and in our capital management. That is where the Executive Committee is committed to work on it and to realize positive evolution by year-end. Thank you for listening, and I give the floor back to David, who will coordinate now the Q&A.
Thank you, Koen.
Thank you, David.
Let's see which questions we have. We have a couple of questions. First question, can you deep dive in the French market and indicate what this would mean for Banqup Group?
I think, Jan, you can tackle that one.
Okay. Briefly, what we have today, like I said, we have the mandate that makes more or less 8,000 companies will have to send out their invoices in a B2B market in an electronic way. That is stage one. In January, what we know and what we have seen also in Belgium is that today, and we have more or less 3 million companies that have registered with one of the more than 100 PAs that have a temporary recognition as a platform AKA in France. So this is stage one. Companies have to be able to receive these invoices. Do not forget, the invoice format. The format in France is Factur-X. It is kind of a PDF document with the metadata attached to the document permitting automatic processing. So this is stage one.
Now, stage two, which will happen in January 2027, will also bring this obligation to what we call the ETI in France. So it is the intermediate companies. They will also have to send out their invoices in B2B transactions electronically. Then finally, in September 2027, so next year, you will have the mandate and the obligation for all companies to send out their invoices, B2B transactions, in an electronic way. What we have seen in the past, and we have seen this in other countries, we have seen this in Belgium, we have seen it in other European countries where you have a mandate for e-invoicing, is that the majority and a large part of the market is going to make a choice of a platform at the very last moment.
In France, in the month of August, traditionally is the holiday month. In August, things have slowed down a little bit b ut we expect a further pull of the market going to happen in September 2026, so in the coming month a nd we really hope to go a lot further still on the number of subscriptions that we have. We expect to grow. The next part is, of course, the e-reporting. So today we are talking about formats of e-invoicing. Tomorrow we will talk about data quality, data consistency, and as we know, the French market is going to be crucial.
They have a very extended regulation that is put in place, and one of the things now is going to be how about the content of the invoices? How about the data quality? How about the taxes that have been calculated? We are really going to undergo a major change in the French market again. In total, we have about 6.2 million, 6.3 million companies that are going to be impacted, and we are only a little bit over half at this stage. A big chunk of the market is still to come.
Thank you, Jan. Next question. We see a continued level of investments in your Payment business. Will that be maintained at the same level?
I will take this one, maybe.
Yes.
Yes. At the moment, we are looking into all this investment that we are doing. We know from the past that the investment was big, but we have to invest also in QTSP and in trust and identity. That level of big investment will be on a run rate as from now because we have the certificated. On the payment, the level of investment is there, but we will compensate by growing the level of transaction to make sure that we will reimburse the investment. Thank you, David.
Okay. Next question. Exploring the German market would be next. What are the steps to take?
Okay, Jan?
Jan, that's for you.
In Germany, you already have part of the mandate. Companies are obligated to be able to receive electronic invoices in a couple of formats. ZUGFeRD, XRechnung. You have this mandate. There is one major difference with what we are seeing in France and what we are seeing in Belgium. The difference is that there is no official governmental platform today. The government has communicated about it. There will be a platform. Peppol is growing in Germany, but it is still only a small part of the market. Of course, in Germany, you also have a lot of EDI invoicing with the automotive sector. That is very big in Germany. The government has now discussed and has now communicated on the e-reporting part. What we are seeing, and this is quite interesting, is that they have already communicated that all the data will need to be hosted on German territory.
It is kind of a, when I make the comparison with France, what you are seeing, France has SecNumCloud. One of the components is that the data has to be stored on French territory. You are seeing the same thing in Germany now. This is clearly becoming a trend. We will have to prepare for this. You will have separate instances for the German market, but that is okay because we built this experience in France, so it is not really a problem. I think for me, Germany is really going to focus on everything that has to do with fraud detection, fraud prevention. They are going to use the data of the e-reporting from the invoices.
They are going to use it, they are going to apply AI, they have communicated on this, and they will actually have strong controls on everything to do with tax validation. Is the tax correct? Really, we are seeing in all of these countries that they are creating, in a way, the digital highway. Tomorrow the question will be, is everybody that is driving on this digital highway, are they really content-wise, are they correct? Is the data that they are sending to each other, is it correct? Is the reporting correct? How is the comparison going to be with the traditional VAT returns? We have already seen in Belgium that with the introduction of e-invoicing, the annual VAT listing will disappear.
We are moving towards diminishing the administrative burden, and we are going to automated controls thanks to the e-reporting and the e-invoicing mandate. Germany clearly is very high on our radar. We have a mandate coming up now on January 1st. Still a very liberal market. Delivery of invoices through email and clearly, the direction of the control of e-reporting that is going to happen in the years to go.
Okay. Thank you, Jan. Next question is for you, Koen. Looking at the cash burn in the first half year and available cash at hand, do you feel you have sufficient liquidity to implement your business model and growth targets?
Thank you, David. I could have expected this question. Yes, we are confident. We have received the support of our senior lender, Francisco Partners. We have a clear transformation plan. As said, we are really focused on realizing that plan. That plan brings the company into a situation where we already discussed previously. I know that, but we will bring the company in a cash break-even situation. The support of Francisco Partners, and the relationship is very constructive. The support of Francisco Partners gives us that runway to realize that process and that project. This goes hand- in- hand with the plans we have. Of course, we shared these plans with our senior lender.
Okay. Thank you, Koen. Another one for you, Koen. How is the proposed restructure going to be different from the previous structure?
Well, how will it be different? You refer to previous restructuring. Are we talking about restructuring? In my belief, we are structuring the company in its different components, as explained at start, and I clearly said why we are doing that. I really believe that Payment business, Document business, Consult business, they have different business drivers. That is potentially the difference. I give now autonomy to the people left and right from my side. They steer Document business, Payment business, respectively. They know the business from their long history and from their long experience they have. They know the markets. So we are clearly listening to these and using the experience we have. I think from management committee, we are really believing that this is the right way to go.
We should listen to our customers, adapt the products to what customers are expecting from us, and that will bring revenue. It is all about revenue. Revenue is cash. Cash is helping the company forward. So is it different? In some way, yes. In another way, I think we are on the right track. The products are there, the assets are there. We should make them valuable. That is the focus we have. Potentially a bit different, but we are really focused. Jan is focused on his Document business. Anouk is focused on Payment business and w e have not mentioned, but Kristoff is focused. Kristoff Suy, part of the management team, is focused on driving a Consult business. Consult business in itself is again different from a product, Document, and Payments. It is people business.
People business, that does mean that Kristoff is focused on selling number of mandates and selling them at a correct rate and make sure that the team who is available for these kind of jobs are productive, billable, sufficiently billable to show up a correct income statement. I said each of these people are responsible for their own P&L. So that makes them accountable. Potentially, this is different than what we did in the past. I leave it to all of you to take decision, but that is where we are focused on, and I really believing in that focus.
Right. Thank you, Koen. One last question, also for you, Koen. Could you give more information on the strategic review that has been announced, supported by Lazard?
You refer to the press release we have shared with the external market in, I think, beginning of June. This process is ongoing. I think I cannot share much more at this moment about it. I said it is ongoing. As soon as news can be after the board has taken correct decisions in the process. As soon as the board has taken decisions, we have a clear picture, or we envision new points that can be shared with the market. Of course, I will take immediate action to inform the market about it. Today, I can't say more. We are a listed company. This is forward-looking. I know that the process is ongoing at this moment. I let the process going as it works.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you, Koen. That concludes the Banqup Group half-year Financial Results webcast. As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if any of your questions were not answered during this Q&A. Thank you, Anouk. Thank you, Jan. Thank you, Koen. Thank you for joining us online, and enjoy the rest of your week.