Hi, everybody. Thanks for attending our first half 2024 revenue presentation. We are going to go through this presentation to introduce WALLIX, talk about the activity and the figures during this first semester before entering the perspectives and letting you ask your question to the management. Thanks for attending, and let's enter the presentation. WALLIX today. WALLIX is a European software editor, specialist of the Privileged Access Management, and Identity and Access Management, cybersecurity solutions. Our mission is to help our customers to recover, to take the control of their digital access, to be able to use their digital applications and digital infrastructures with more serenity. We have achieved this first semester with 3,100 active customers.
They are based in 90 different countries, and we cover the needs of our 3,100 customers through a network, a channel of integrators, resellers, and distributors based in these different countries. They are certified. They are trained to deploy and to maintain the solutions installed in our customers' information systems. We are 240 people, WALLIXians, based in 16 different countries. We have achieved the semester with another important KPI, because we are currently moving, changing our business model with more and more subscriptions, with more and more SaaS solutions. Now 73% of our activity is consumed in recurring mode, which gives more strength to our business model and the company. We are part of the Magic Quadrant of Gartner in our sector of the Privileged Access Management. We are considered as a leader of the market by KuppingerCole, another major analyst of the cybersecurity market.
Let's talk about the first semester of activity. The characteristic of our activity this semester is hypergrowth. We are able to deliver 30.2% of growth for our annual recurring revenues at the end of the semester. It's of course important in this period where at the end of the semester, we had political troubles in France. Despite of that, we are still in a solid hypergrowth trend. In this period, another characteristic is the evolution of our revenue, where now subscriptions are driving this growth. We have made the switch to recurring model. It will of course help us to pursue this strong trend of growth in the coming month and years. I let Amaury enter in the details of these figures. Amaury.
Thank you, Jean-Noël. The growth rates are quite similar between France and the rest of Europe, as you can see. There is a real global dynamism. International, which started earlier with a subscription model, reaches a 77% annual recurring revenue rate when France steps up, which confirms the success of the move towards subscription model since we get eight points more of recurring revenues in the last 12 months. Our consolidated turnover at the end of the first half of the year amounts to EUR 15.1 million, up nearly 9% compared to the first half of 2023. This revenue is more predictable and stronger than ever since the recurring part of our first half revenues represents more than 72%. This ratio increased by 13 points in the last 12 months. Last year, in the first half of 2023, the recurring revenue part in our global revenue was 58.8%.
We increased by 13%, which is a major step. France is doing a great job with a growth of more than 10%, despite the move to subscription first and the June political uncertainties. In the EMEA market, we still have great performance of Middle East and Africa area, which is still the second biggest business area of WALLIX. Good trend of the OT business to mention, especially in the Middle East area. Just to mention as well that we signed a few contracts in the health sector in Germany. Speaking of contracts, we nearly reached 3,100 active contracts at June 30th, 2024, which is a 23% increase over the last 12 months. Renewals of recurring contracts represent more than 100% in value, which means that the price increase was more important than the departure of few clients.
I leave the mic to Jean-Noël to give you the second half outlook.
Okay, so let's talk about the perspectives. First, I remind you that we realized WALLIX Cyber Vision Day in May 2024 with video presentation done by our different executives and directors of the company. It gives a declination of our vision in term of sales and marketing operations, in term of roadmap coming and product delivery, in term of marketing and of digital activities. The way we are attracting talents and making our talent growth, our CSR strategy. It is also a way to have figures in the details and a few words about our different operational efficiency and financial efficiency efforts. All these video are available online, and we recommend you to watch the different testimonies where you will also find partners, strategic partners of WALLIX talking about the company and their relation with us.
Customers talking about WALLIX, investors, shareholders, personalities of the ecosystem, European ecosystem in particular. Okay. I think this video is important because it shows in reality what the value we could bring, the fair value we could bring to our customers. Such a customer like the Groupe SEB. The Groupe SEB is a large organization based in many countries with different activities business, and we are here to support their business daily by giving them agility and giving them security with the right solution. It is a customer of WALLIX for, I would say four years now, four or five years now. We have focused until now on the historical IT perimeter of the company. We are currently doubling this perimeter currently, because they are impacted by heavy regulations, and they have to reinforce the continuity of activity. They look for resilience.
In the same time, we are currently planning the next operations for 2025, where we are going to deploy our WALLIX OT solutions in every factories of the group all over the world. It is a long-term relationship we are building with this company, and our solutions now are completely part of their daily activity and like the cybersecurity cornerstone, I would say. I thank, of course, Stéphane Nappo, who is one of the smartest CISO in France and Europe. He was previously at the Société Générale when we had the first experience together, and he subscribed to WALLIX solution for the Société Générale, the bank, and now we work together in the Groupe SEB.
To talk about the perspective of the second semester, we are going to talk about the development of our OT and SMB segment, the way we are going to continue to strengthen our SaaS revenues through WALLIX One, the impact of the NIS2 Directive, and the performance of our operating efficiency to come back to profitability in the second half of 2024. About this first point, about the OT development and the OT and the SMB segment. First, we have signed an agreement with Cisco to combine our solutions with their Cisco Cyber Vision solutions. Their Cisco Cyber Vision solutions are the solutions they propose to their customers to give a view on their OT assets in their industrial environments. We have made the integration efforts on product side to integrate in our software a direct interoperability with the Cisco solutions.
It is, of course, an opportunity for the Cisco customers to be able to combine the WALLIX One with Cisco Cyber Vision to protect the industrial environments. It is, of course, interesting for customers all over the world. It is important for WALLIX to continue to interoperate with the big players of the market, of the IT and OT market. Second important, I talked about small and medium business segment. We have signed in France an agreement with Docaposte to enter their portfolio dedicated to territorial public organizations and hospitals. We have also signed new distribution agreements for small and medium business and medium-sized organization with Cris Réseaux in France. Cris Réseaux manage a network of 1,500 local integrators and resellers. It is a way for us to widely cover the French market and increase our leadership on the French market.
To accompany the medium-sized company who are the subcontractors and who are part of the supply chain of the biggest organization impacted by the NIS2 Directive in the coming years. In the same time, we have signed for Germany and the U.K. a distribution agreement with Prianto, who is another important distributor for these countries. We are preparing that way to cover such markets impacted by the NIS2 Directive and the supply chain of the big organizations in Germany, in Austria, Switzerland, and in the U.K. I talked about the SaaS revenue. We have launched in the first half of the year our new WALLIX One platform, which is available for our customers in SaaS and in a full subscription model. We have launched it in an early adopter program before switching in the release final version.
This platform is a way for our customers to use WALLIX PAM solutions in a SaaS model, but also to add components to govern their identities, to drive their conformity process, to authenticate more users and their ecosystem through one central point, the WALLIX One Console and the WALLIX One gateway. It is a way for us either to deliver in real time our services without any installation, any impact in the environment of our customers. It is a way also to increase the value we sell to the customers because, of course, the service is integrated into the SaaS mode. It gives more evolution and more real-time relation with our customers. It is an important evolution for WALLIX. It will impact our top line in the second semester with first significant SaaS contracts we are currently signing.
We see the pipe growing in term of sales in SaaS mode in a short-term perspective. I talked briefly about the NIS2 Directive. Of course, the NIS2 Directive is a deep and long-term trend in the digital industry. It will give new obligations to important and essential operators, 16,000 in France, 26,000 in Germany, 150,000 companies, large, medium-size, and small companies all over Europe. We are, of course, ready and mobilized to assist our customer in this transformation and this compliance process. PAM and Identity and Access Management are fundamental bricks, fundamental cornerstones for the zero trust architecture, which will transform a lot of digital architecture information systems and industrial environments in the organizations of our customers.
As a SaaS player or a best-of-breed software player, we will be able to help our customers to transform with the right combination adapted to their environments and to help them to go through this process and to accompany them in the coming years. It is an important step. It is the core business of WALLIX to work with such companies. For us, of course, it will give a lot of impact to our top line in the future. Probably more in 2025. Probably more in 2025, 2026, 2027, where I would say the activation of NIS2 Directive is planned in October 2024. You know that, but it will have more impact in the coming years as it is, I would say, a kind of global standard, which will serve like a booster for all users and our customers. Important step and important accelerator for WALLIX and cybersecurity companies.
Other point, other important aspect and a critical point for WALLIX. During the first semester, we are committed in a move to optimize, to improve our operational and financial efficiency, to come back to profitability this semester, this second semester of 2024. We have worked on optimizing the pricing policy, which is where we have first seen effects on our figures, with more than 100% of growth on the renewals and 17% of increase in the maintenance, for example. We see the first effects of the pricing optimization policy. We have worked on the customer base. We have entered in a period where upsells will have more impacts on the top line in the future with a better margin because we need less efforts to sell in terms of cost of sales on the customer base, on upgrading the customer base.
We have created enterprise customer success team to help our big customers to implement our solutions. It also created a particular pipeline with a pool of big contracts we are seeing in the pipe, which could impact the top line with bigger revenue in the second semester 2025, particularly in the OT security domain in the Middle East and Germany. It is very promising. As you know, it is one of the major strategic objectives of the company. We are currently leveraging through WALLIX One to expand the usage of our solutions in a SaaS model. At the same time, we have worked on freezing a lot of expense, of travels expense. We have worked on the way we purchase in a CapEx or OpEx mode. We have put in place a lot of measures to drive our trajectory of expense.
All the person we need to realize our plan, our operations are on board. We do not need additional people. All these measures, all these efforts will have an effect of our margins on our EBITDA and a positive impact to help WALLIX to come back to profitability. If I try to summarize, to resume the situation today, we are still confirming the evolution of our annual recurring revenue, monthly recurring revenue. We are confident with our capacity to continue to hyper-grow the top line of the company with more recurring revenue, while we have developed different levers to boost our margins and to increase our operational efficiency. All the employees, all the managers, all the executives of the company are now focused and aligned behind this effort, this global effort to come back to profitability.
We are confident with the capacity of WALLIX to be profitable in the second semester of 2024. We are confident with our capacity to become a European champion of the cybersecurity space in the future. I think this presentation gave you different details on our activity in the first half. Perhaps we have forgotten things, and we are open to give you more details.