Welcome everybody to our First Earnings Release, yeah, so after the IPO, and maybe it's good to start with a few, let's say recaps of what we are doing, yeah, so basically our mission here at innoscripta is we want to make R&D more transparent research and development more transparent, yeah. What is the problem with R&D? The problem with R&D is that it is data stored in different data silos. yeah, so softwares there are a lot of different softwares used in companies and those different softwares create soft data inconsistencies.
yeah, so when you basically want to, let's say, make a documentation for something very critical from the compliance side like you get a tax cashback from the government, yeah, and then you have to reconcile, you have to consult all those different data sources, and this creates a lot of data problems, yeah. What we at innoscripta did is we developed the first software worldwide which is, let's say, using all those different data streams and unifying and creating a compliance documentation for R&D, yeah. In this way you can be as a company you can like always have a, let's say, a perfect documentation intake in case of a tax audit, yeah.
This is the mission-critical problem which we are solving. A few updates also on the basic parameters of this business. I want to highlight that we have, yeah, let's say, a continuing new customer growth, yeah. This new customer growth is pretty consistent. Of course there are, let's say, small variations here for let's say, January holiday times and August, yeah. In general let's say, we are consistently gaining customers. Again, as a recap here, our target here is to grow with larger customers, yeah, so that we can basically also employ our software solution better, yeah.
So the problem of R&D documentation scales with the size of the company and scales with the number of R&D employees. A small company might need it, but a large company has to use it actually because the, let's say, the documentation problem just gets bigger and bigger the more R&D employees you have. On average contract duration, yeah, again, we have exclusive contracts with auto-renewal, yeah. So and in the churn, we also calculate the non-renewals, yeah. So basically both figures are pretty consistent. Yeah, the churn rate is still under 2%. We have happy customers so we made a customer survey.
And so overall the customers are very happy with our service, yeah. So we also strive to formalize this a little bit in the future. But let's say what we see on the client side is that they are happy, yeah. And let's say the relationships they are firm, yeah. And let's say customers come back, yeah, and like to do business with us, yeah. So overall, yeah, let's say just as a short recapitulation, yeah, the financials it's a pretty profitable business, yeah, which is also growing nicely with a nice EBIT margin, yeah. Just not to tell you too much before the rest of the slides. Maybe I highlight a few words about the tax incentive regulation, yeah.
Maybe some of you saw our press releases here. And I'm happy to say that this is actually now formalized, yeah. First, you see a consistent upward trajectory on the tax incentive law since its inception in 2020. In 2020 already the cap that means the maximum amount of costs you can claim was raised from EUR 2 million to EUR 4 million. Again, it was raised with the Wachstumschancengesetz, and then now there was another uplift of 20% to EUR 12 million. This is still let's say not extremely attractive for very big corporations like Volkswagen and BMW.
We are still talking about the big German let's say like the larger Mittelstand company with 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 employees there. We see the sweet spot here. We see again this generosity w see continuous pushes to that so that we believe that this will not be the last raise of the cap, yeah. So maybe to look in other jurisdictions, yeah. There is for example, there is of course different incentive schemes, but a lot of countries in the OECD don't have any caps, yeah. So you can claim in theory an infinite amount. So Germany is still, with all due respect, not very generous when it comes to the cap and the maximum amount that large companies can claim.
There's another, let's say, mechanism which is more associated to the, let's say, majority of our customers. And this is the flat-rate overhead surcharge, yeah. That sounds like a complicated word, but it actually is very simple. So that means on every dollar or euro you have on cost, you get 20% on top, yeah. You don't have to do anything for that, yeah. So you just get it with the claim, yeah, the cashback. So that means like whatever costs you have, you get a 20%, let's say, on top surcharge, yeah.
And this makes the business case for us quite interesting because that means that we can suddenly, let's say, claim or let's say generate more revenue with the existing customer cohort, yeah, which we're having. I remember we are gaining new customers; we are not losing a lot of customers. On the whole customer spectrum, we assume we can, let's say, generate more revenues with this overhead surcharge. And the interesting and the thrilling aspect on this overhead surcharge is not the 20%, but the fact that the surcharge in other funding programs is typically much higher, yeah.
So when we are talking with let's say direct funding for those who remember our presentation, direct funding is next to tax funding the second big pillar where governments spend money. But there you have overhead surcharges of yeah sometimes 60%-100%, yeah. And so this also opens room for more for more generosity and also maybe for more yeah future more revenue with existing client relationships. yeah, like there's one caveat, you know, it takes into effect from the 1st of January 2026, yeah. So this has some yeah let's say there's some time lag associated, but nevertheless, we expect that this will also generate some uplift on our business.
So, this was it from my side, yeah. I will hand over to Alexander Meyer now, who will present you the figures in detail.
Yes, hello from my side as well. Welcome to our conference and thanks a lot for attending, yeah. I'm very happy today to present to you our half-year figures. So again, a small recap where we have been coming from as a company. We had a steep trajectory over the last three financial periods, yeah. So when we started off in 2020, the last result that we show here, the oldest result, we came from roughly 26 million EUR in revenue. We grew to 39, close to 40 million EUR in the following year. And last year, when we basically started the IPO preparations and had the plan to go public, we finished the year in 2024 with 65 million EUR in revenue, yeah.
And today I'm very happy to present to you that our half-year revenue has grown to 44.1 million EUR. And if you compare year over year, you see that we have roughly grown our revenue year over year, from H1 2024 to H1 2025 by approximately 90%, yeah. We see major growth over both quarters. Quarter number one, we see a very strong growth. There is a slight seasonality effect here, which I would like to highlight and mention. Basically, the end of 2024 was the very first time in tax credits where companies would have lost money if they had not claimed backwards for the year of 2020, yeah.
So there was a strong incentive to apply for R&D expenditure in the year of 2020, within the last period of last year. This led to a lot of applications running through our system and a comparatively high revenue growth in Q1. Q2 is typically the weakest quarter, yeah. Why? Because after Christmas, everybody goes on holiday. And until our customer starts entering again significant R&D data into our system, it's beginning of February, yeah. So that's why typically Q2 has a slightly lower result. But even year over year, you can see, basically, a growth of roughly 60%, yeah. So overall, we are confident, yeah, that we could show you that our long-term growth trajectory continues.
And at this point of time, we also have reason to believe that we can continue our growth trajectory for, yeah, sometime in the future. Okay, I think next slide, fantastic. So this is our EBIT bridge that I can present to you. So talking about EUR 44 million in gross profit, and the three major cost items, basically EUR 8.9 million went into sales and marketing. Sales and marketing is majorly our sales force, yeah. Our approach is typically a one-on-one or direct sales approach where we get in touch with our clients, with the office of the CFO.
That's typically our main person. We try to continue investing into this platform, finding people, developing people, educating them, and then making them very successful within our organization over time, yeah. Sales and marketing accounts for approximately 20%. We have also increased our R&D expenditure. We'll go slightly in depth later on. It's EUR 3.1 million that we invested, which roughly accounts at 7%. We try to continue investing into our platform, our platform approach, yeah, to be ahead of the curve and offer a great technology solution to our clients and be best in class. We have G&A expenditure. It's yeah EUR 8.2 million, which roughly accounts for 18.7%, yeah.
We arrive at the EBIT. Okay, continued efficiencies in sales and marketing cost structure, yeah, so this shows you basically our sales and marketing expenditure over time. Again, taking an historic leap, where we expended EUR 7.7 million in 2020. We invested till 2023, and it grew from EUR 7.7 million to EUR 12.2 million, and we see in 2024 our SM, S&M expenditure was comparatively. Yeah, but still we grew a lot. There are various ways how we can grow. Number one is invest more in sales force. Number two is make our existing sales force more productive, yeah.
Try to target clients in higher segments, and those are the major two aspects, yeah, and what you can see now, if we come to our half-year result, is basically that we again invested more in our sales and marketing in absolute terms. So the expenditure has grown from EUR 6.4 million last year to roughly EUR 9 million this year, yeah. In terms of percentage, it's still comparable to, yeah, end of our last year's investment that we made, if you compare that to our revenues. Okay, maybe we go ahead. Okay, here we also see our R&D development over time. So our R&D is majorly software development. I'd like to highlight here again that we own our entire tech stack, yeah.
So everything that our clients use, also, most of the software systems we use internally is entirely self-developed. So software expertise is very important to us. And, you can also see that we increased the amount of money spent on R&D ourselves year over year, coming from EUR 2.1 million in 2022, increasing to 3.4 in 2023. Then we see a slight increase last year. And now if you compare year-over-year numbers, again, you see that we tried to grow our R&D expenditure significantly. So, year-over-year, it has grown from 1.6 to 3.1, yeah. It's still 7%. So the percentage in terms of revenue doesn't decline, yeah.
But in absolute terms, we try to increase our revenue and, yeah, continue investing into our product to be very competitive and build the foundation for, let's say, a global success. Okay, next one. Yeah, G&A, I think, that's a fairly simple number, yeah. G&A has developed from 7.5 to 8.4 in 2023. Then you see, yeah, a little upstep in 2024 to 11.4. And this year you can also see that we in absolute numbers increased our G&A expenditure. We had also IPO costs, which are included here. But in terms of revenue, it's, let's say, close to being constant, yeah. So it's slightly grew from 17.4% to 18.7%, but overall, we can see that we have high operating leverage.
Despite becoming a much more professional company, becoming a public listed company, fulfilling much more compliance requirements, we still manage, yeah, to keep this cost item comparatively low or constant. Okay, here we again talk about our EBIT growth basically over time, yeah. So we had the revenue growth that we looked up earlier. And this shows the EBIT development, the significant step up in EBIT over time, starting at 9.2, looking back to 2022, growing to 15.5, last year before the IPO. And those numbers were public before. We increased our EBIT to EUR 38 million.
And yeah, now new, our half-year EBIT is EUR 24.5 million. So this is again a record number, where we show that we grew the company to a new stage, yeah. And if you compared year-over-year, we have grown our EBIT from 10.7 to 24.5, yeah. So it's a significant growth. And you also see that our margin is constantly high or increases over time, yeah. So you see 35% where we took off in 2022. Then we were close to 40% in 2023. And last year we had a very high margin of 58%. And now even if you compare the half-year numbers year-over-year, you can see that we have improved our profitability, yeah.
We're also ready to continue investing heavily in growth, yeah. But the core message is, we wanted to show and demonstrate that we can grow profitably. And this has always been an aim in the past as well as a founder-led or founder-owned company, basically. Okay, here we have some further details. I think the core message is that we have minimum CapEx levels, yeah. Our cash flow is very strong. So if you see our EBIT, our adjusted EBIT is EUR 24.5 million. Our cash flow from operating activities is EUR 21.6 million. So if we compare that to year-over-year figures, you can see that our basically cash conversion, cash generation has dramatically improved.
This, some of you might remember, is related to payment targets, yeah. So a couple of years ago, we offered long-term payment targets to our customers because the customers have a very long lead time until they finally receive the cash backs for tax credits from the German government, yeah. So as a compromise, a couple of years ago, we offered payment terms with up to two years. And that was basically resulting in a delayed cash flow, yeah. Roughly a year ago, we have changed all standard contracts to much tighter payment terms. So the standard payment term now is a payment within six months, full payment within six months.
Typically, first payment is due at the time of the R&D approval, yeah. It's called BSFZ Bescheid. Then the client pays 66%, yeah. And within the following six months, they have to pay the rest of the 34%, yeah. We also use factoring to basically be able to collect our cash very quickly. And you can see that, yeah, this was a measure how we have improved the contracts. We still have old contracts running, so not every contract is changed, yeah. But most of the new contracts already have all these payment terms. And that leads to a very positive basically cash flow. And we managed to convert our cash that we can collect from our clients.
Okay, now I'm giving back to Michael.
so last word is for me. So if you look at basically the strategy, how do we want to grow, yeah? So let's say we don't change and never change a running horse, yeah. So basically we want to stay on that what generated this success, yeah. And this is primarily invest in an educated sales force. And this is sometimes a challenge, let's say not a small challenge, yeah, because of course you a sales force as large as ours, yeah. So of course measured by the size of the company, yeah. So you have to let's say do a lot of KPIs, yeah. You have to develop people, yeah. This takes a lot of time.
And it basically but it is a very let's say conservative approach, yeah. Because at the end, if a salesperson is performing and is well established, then he's generating revenue, yeah. For us, let's say more EBIT, yeah. So whatever we invest in there comes back several times. The trick here a little bit is to go on a conservative approach to carefully develop the company culture. Because if you hire too many people which are not performing, you have, let's say, a non-performing culture, yeah, suddenly. The good people will leave you. This is something we want to avoid by all costs.
This is why we, yeah, let's say, experiment with ideas, with hiring ideas, yeah. This is why we, let's say, constantly wrap our heads about how can we educate our salespersons, how can we train them, how can we coach them, how can we help them, software assisted. So also we invest a lot of our software efforts in actually perfecting our sales approach and getting KPIs, yeah. Here, let's say a culture which is a performance culture clearly, yeah. So which is let's be very transparent where you have to meet targets, challenging targets, yeah. At the end, it's a challenging sales pitch.
We are up against the Big Four, Deloitte, KPMG, EY. They have an advantage, yeah. They are with the CFO, yeah. So they are doing a lot of services with the CFO. So they have the advantage of the big brand, yeah. This is how we have to basically educate the customer that it is not enough, yeah, just to rely on an Excel sheet here for his documentation on R&D costs. But he has to employ our software and start this journey with us, yeah. But at the end, as you see, as you saw at the beginning, when a customer chose this, he's usually staying with us, yeah. So what is the further upside, yeah?
We strongly believe that what we have built is, let's say, country agnostic, yeah. So we don't rely on the German tax funding scheme for being successful. So our software can be employed in the Netherlands, in the U.K., in France, in the U.S., yeah. And there is always a new market popping up, yeah. So there is this new tax credit regimes which are to be launched like in the United Arab Emirates, yeah. So there's a lot of change on the way, a lot of opportunities being created.
But again, you know, we have to be. We want to pick here careful approach to be victims of our own success. So this is why we constantly evaluate potentials how to grow outside of Germany. And yeah, we are, let's say, in discussions here how to enter new market with M&A, yeah. And then employ our software processes on those companies. And yeah, let's say be successful together, yeah, with the local founders here. This is something we believe could work, yeah, with also a minimal product adaptation, let's say, costs. Because our core logic is the interconnection of different software systems. And so for example, this is time tracking, this is project management.
If you do time tracking in the U.S., in Germany or the U.K., it doesn't matter, yeah. So there's only, let's say, legal differences. But at the end, time is time. And the project is project and costs are costs. So the basic logic is the same and follows an OECD schema, yeah. So last but not least, let's say, I talked about the geographic expansion. I talked about the sales uplift, yeah. What is left to say about the product enhancement? Yeah. So also here we wanna take a careful approach.
For example, one of the feedback we got from the tax investigations our customers had was that the, let's say, Betriebsprüfer in Germany, the tax investigator, they want a closer connection of track time with the project itself, yeah. There's different options here. You can import from an existing time tracking system. This is what we usually do. We import data from existing time tracking solution or you choose an integrated solution. This is what we can offer with our Classics platform. We are also having discussions with clients here and think that we can offer them an additional service, yeah, which we can maybe use as an upsell potential, yeah.
To offer them our own in-built time tracking solution, yeah. Still, we find that a big chunk of companies still don't have any time tracking, especially in the mid-sized segment or smaller segment. So even it's a law, yeah. So it's still a let's say not a fully crowded market, yeah. And we believe when we have a good solution, which is very let's say user-friendly and at the end it's needed because your tax investigator asks for it, then it could create also the potential for another yeah let's say revenue stream or let's say another small business unit contributing to the bottom line. But again, this is in the moment in the discussion phase.
And we expect some early results in the second half of this year here at the end of the second half of this year. So this is from my side. So maybe we open up for Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and then one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and then two. Anyone who has a question may press star one at this time. Our first question comes from Fabio Hölscher, Warburg Research. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello everyone. Congratulations on what appears to be a very strong quarter. Thanks for taking our questions, of course. I have a couple. I take them one by one if that's okay. Starting with, can you remind us again on the seasonality of your revenue, so how revenue typically is by quarter and the reasons behind that? Maybe also if there was no growth, no special situation like the tailwind at the end of 2024, for example, that you explained.
Yeah, I'm happy to take on this. In the end, it was a very first-time effect at the end of last year that companies that had R&D expenditure could not have claimed anymore. You can claim up to four years backwards, and that's why at the end of last year, R&D expenditure you wouldn't have claimed as a company would have been lost, and this led to, let's say, an increase in filings or significant increase in the last quarter of last year. Now the revenue recognition, yeah, for us is within three months after filing, yeah, so I just wanna explain this again. It's a two-step process. We have got a slide here in the appendix, yeah. Maybe we can exactly go here, yeah.
So, first of all, as a client, you have to aggregate your relevant R&D data, R&D expenditure, salaries, projects, et cetera. And this is what they do on our platform. And then they file for an R&D approval, yeah. It's called BSFZ Bescheid. This process takes three months or basically this approval is granted within a period of three months after handing in this application via our platform. That's why when companies hand in Q4, it leads for us to a revenue event in Q1. Now, this was the first time that companies would have lost because 2020 was lost.
But we expect the same effect year over year again because at the end of 2025, companies would have had to file for R&D expenditure in 2021 and so on, yeah. So, this is the first time we've seen this dramatic effect in our business. But overall, we expect a recurring effect like this year over year because the systematic will still be the same. Here on the left side are some official figures, yeah. So these are not our figures. These are the overall figures, from, basically a German government website, yeah. And there you can see the quarterly filings in thousands, yeah, quarter over quarter, yeah. And here you typically see, let's say, a similar seasonality.
Ours is by far not as, as rigid, yeah, and as tough, as here. But you see here, for example, the filings in Q4 2024 were at its peak, yeah. And in the following quarter, the filings were not even half, yeah. So there is a seasonality that not even 50% of applications are filed in the first quarter. So why does this typically happen? Because, people are on holiday, yeah. You need to aggregate data. You need to hand the data in. Typically a lot of R&D departments or people from accounting who have to deliver data, who have to feed in data in order to be able to hand in a claim, they're on holiday, yeah.
Typically it starts picking up again from February. That's why the hand-ins in Q1 are typically the weakest. This is also what we expect in our business. Because of the delay of revenue recognition within three months, yeah, this is what we try to visualize here on the right for you. This leads to lower revenues in Q2, yeah. We expect overall, let's say in the future, Q1 to be strong, yeah, Q2 to be weaker, yeah, where we see also a seasonality, not as dramatic as overall in the German market. And then again, the history shows that we typically have a stronger second half of the year than the first half of the year, yeah. So, that's basically what we expect in the future.
Very clear explanation. Thank you very much. Can you comment on how your market share has been developing recently? Because it looks like you've been doing pretty well considering your revenue and customers, correct?
Yeah. So we can't, unfortunately we can't disclose a figure, yeah. So we had a figure in the prospectus, and that was based on the amount of applications, yeah. For the past, I don't have the exact figure here, but I think it was roughly 16-17%. However, the amount of applications is not entirely relevant because it depends on the R&D expenditure you file alongside the application, yeah. What we roughly saw in the past is that the German government in 2024 spent approximately 1 billion EUR in R&D expenditure. We had a revenue of 65 million EUR, yeah. Our take rate is typically on average around 5% of the costs, yeah.
So basically, if you multiply that yourself, you come basically to a conclusion how much costs were handed in through our platform and how much the government has spent, yeah. However, this correlation is not entirely clean. And that's why we cannot use a proper market share figure here because clients might have filed for several years. And this makes the calculation a bit unclear, yeah. But we assume that our market share is at least constant or has slightly grown.
Sure, fair enough, and then I noticed personnel expenses increased from quarter over quarter from EUR 5.6 million in Q1 to now EUR 7.2 million in Q2 with the same, roughly the same number of employees. Last year there was no change in euro personnel costs between Q1 and Q2. From the bridge you showed in your presentation just now, it appears there's been mainly sales and marketing. But can you comment on what specifically drove this?
Yeah, maybe we can go back to the slide, Michael. We go to the sales and marketing expenditure. Okay. So this is what you're referring to, huh, that you see year over year a slight increase. And that in Q2 it has risen more.
Exactly. So Q2 versus Q1 in 2025, right? Quite a hefty increase.
So, we have a bootcamp on how we educate people. Typically we don't hire in the month of January, yeah. Or let's say this is not an official hiring starting month, yeah, apart from a couple of exceptions. But when we talk about bootcamp employees, people who we try to find for a marketing and sales position, and try to educate them in a big format and educate them, with lots of, let's say teachers in a very structured format and try to educate them to become salespeople.
This process typically starts from February, yeah. Basically, let's say additional expenditure from our investment in January is, let's say, close to zero or not much more than in the past because this is just for the starting months, yeah. And this maybe has an effect that Q1 figures don't look as if they grow systematically despite us having a strong hiring process in the background, yeah. And then we see typically bootcamp hires, a lot of people who we hire who tried to onboard picks up from February and then typically becomes much stronger in April, May, June, yeah. So, this could be an explanation why Q2 expenditure was comparatively higher than the Q1.
Okay. So if I understand you correctly, the Q2 figure is a better run rate for the future than the Q1 because Q1 is typically understated, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
At least this could explain in the last half year, yeah, how figures evolved, yeah. And, of course we can't really forecast how now, Q1 and Q2 next year will look like, depending on our strategy, how to onboard talent, in terms of amount, numbers, or more seniority in the team. But let's say at least for this half year it's an explanation.
Sure. All right. Thank you very much. I'll step back into the line.
Okay. Many, many questions. Let's see if we have got other questions.
Our next question comes from Amelie Dueckelmann-Dublany from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thank you for taking my questions as well. I have a few from my side, if that's all right. Perhaps starting off, so it'd be interesting to hear, are most customers filing for multiple years' worth of projects when they first join, or do they typically start by filing for just one year or one project?
Yeah, that's a very good question. So the whole spectrum is there. The reality is that we have to develop customers over time, yeah. Imagine you talk to an R&D department. They file for patents, yeah. It's the treasure box of each company. This is how they see their future. This is where they invest, yeah, and this is also the most sensitive environment where the CTO and the CFO are willing to share information, so that's why very often once we start a collaboration with a new client, yeah, we have to develop this client over time, yeah. Let's make it more practical, yeah.
Let's say we had a client with EUR 10 million R&D expenditure, yeah. So the expenditure is there. It's expensed, yeah. It's also proven for the last years. But before typically a client gives us the full expenditure to file for, the client would say, "Let's start with a pilot project. I'll give you an R&D expenditure of EUR 1 million or 2. And if this works out successfully, then I give you access to more data." The client with this approach doesn't lose anything, yeah, because he can still file up to four years backwards, yeah.
But this explains why, once, basically a big client is signed, yeah, with such an expenditure, it takes some time to really bring the client to its full revenue potential over time, yeah. And another remark, why is this the case? Until a client finally sees success in terms of this tax cashback, there is often a delay of 12-18 months, yeah. So again, I would like to remind you of the customer journey. We onboard them into our platform. We aggregate data from various data sources, then through our platform, they apply for R&D approval, step one, yeah. So when they get this approval, they know this will definitely be funded.
But this is not the time of payout. The payout happens at a second step, typically together with the annual reports. And there's another delay, at least of six to 12 months, yeah. So until the client really sees that the data collection and that the refund works, a lot of time is needed. And this explains why it's a very sensitive journey with a client over time to, let's say, get the maximum R&D expenditure on our platform, yeah. So it's very rare that a client applies for the full set of R&D expenditure at once.
Very clear. Thank you. And then perhaps what are your thoughts about hiring and generally growth in employees? Do you have enough people to keep up growth? Are you expecting hires in H1 to improve productivity in H2?
Yeah. So the main focus of our investments at this point of time is investments in Salesforce. So, there are various ways, how we can grow as a company, yeah. One is, of course, onboarding and educating more successful salespeople, yeah. This is what we are doing. And you can see this through the increased expenditure in sales and marketing in our EBIT bridge, but number two is, to make our salespeople more productive, yeah. So if we educate and teach and, feedback our, successful salespeople over time, we can see that there is a significant, productivity increasement, yeah.
So the same sales employee year over year could potentially contribute more revenue, yeah. So even this is a very important, sales, let's say trigger for us and investment that we do. And number three is, coming back to our last point, yeah, developing clients over time, yeah. Making sure they come back year over year and we get the full expenditure into our platform, yeah, so there are various avenues, but let's say the main avenue is, in terms of what you see in the P&L, sales and marketing investment and expenditure, yeah, and play around with our bootcamp concept, add on also seniority, experienced salespeople, but this is definitely where we will invest in the future.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you. And then maybe finally, could you provide us with more detail about the level of knowledge and education in the market about R&D tax credits today? So is it easier for you to sell the solution today versus a year ago, or is there still a lot of education necessary?
It's a mix. Though we see it's a slight trend to delivering or explaining more the USP, so how we are different. Let's say two years back it was entirely education, yeah. A lot of customers have never heard of this instrument of tax credits because it was only introduced in the year of 2020. So until 2023, maybe, first half 2024, a lot of education was needed. This is still the case, yeah. So very often, CFOs or relevant contact people who are decision makers here don't know the instrument in detail. But what is changing now is that they have heard about it or have read the first aspects about it. It's not where you start off and a person is totally unfamiliar with it.
When it comes to the details, still education is needed. Let's say the bigger the segments we target, the bigger the clients, yeah. The clients with thousands of employees plus very often are served by KPMG, PwC, or other professional accounting firms and have an established relationship. There, it's, of course, important that we demonstrate our USP, our software platform, yeah. It's a mixture of education and then also demonstrating our USPs and show the clients that we have a unique, let's say, product in the market.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Once again, to ask a question, please press star and then one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Jean-Marc Müller, JMS Invest AG. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my questions. Also a couple, maybe one by one. During the company roadshow, I remember you said that the typical seasonality, first half, second half is around one third to two third. Now you don't have an official guidance, but if you can play around with the numbers a little, I mean, if I take the EUR 44 million in sales that you now showed in H1 and if I assume that this is one third of what you can achieve in 2025, I get to a sales level of around EUR 130 million. Is this a number you feel comfortable with?
So, important today, we don't give any guidance, yeah. And please, feel free maybe to watch out if we will, let's say, explain or release any news in the future about it. Overall with, let's say, the growth or the mechanics that we've seen over the last six months, we feel confident that, let's say, the historic growth trajectory is overall achievable, yeah. But again, we today don't talk about specific numbers for this year. This is especially there to, yeah, potentially explain how we achieved the H1 figures. And let's say we are confident that we can continue our growth journey in the future.
Mm-hmm. Now, what do you mean with historic growth figures? I mean, then the history of the company is not that, is not that old, you know. So you mean we should look at 2022, 2023, and 2024 and look at those numbers, or we should kind of look at H1 and take the growth in H1 as a basis for what you can achieve?
Yeah. So what you see in the past is that we have grown around or even beyond 50%, yeah. We don't, let's say today want to announce any, let's say, concrete growth figures for the end of the year. But we are certain that we will, let's say. We are confident internally that there is a possibility we can grow significantly in the future.
Okay. My second question, and it goes back to a question which has been asked before. I mean, you kind of grew your client base by nearly 700 clients in 2024. Probably you will come close to another 700 new clients in 2025. And the way you described it, that it takes a lot of time to develop a client, et cetera. And given that the incentive scheme is kind of new and you can retrospectively kind of claim credits for four years, I would assume that there is a substantial backlog with your client base of R&D credits which haven't been claimed.
So as you explained a little, you know, that a lot of people filed in Q4 2024 for stuff that they've done in 2020, even that the client base is growing, this backlog of 2021 tax credits and 2022 tax credits and 2023 tax credit, et cetera, must have grown considerably. Is there a way to quantify that?
So you are speaking about a very interesting assumption, yeah. And this assumption we can basically derive, yeah, from the effects we saw last year. Just today we can't talk about any quantitative numbers, yeah. But generally, let's say this is the assumption we had for last year.
Okay. And then some understanding questions. And maybe we can also take this offline. But I mean, also the question was, you know, the personnel cost in Q1 and in Q2. It already came up with, oh, why was Q2 so much higher than Q1? I also struggle a little bit with that number, also the number of employees. It also seems that you have quite a big number of freelancers, right?
So we don't disclose any numbers about freelancers. But generally we do have freelancers. That's correct.
I mean, you did in the prospectus, and in the prospectus as of March 2025, you had 105 freelancers, mainly in R&D, and I understand that this is booked in kind of in the cost of goods sold. But why would then that number be so low? If you maybe can help me there. I mean, if you have 100 freelancers on your payroll.
Yeah. So, again, we won't disclose any specific numbers. But in terms of our balance sheet, this cost is included in material costs. And, let's say the relevant freelancer expenditure, that is contributing to R&D is also included in R&D expenditure.
I understand. But the cost of materials was EUR 1.9 million. So for the first half. So if you have 100 freelancers, it seems you're not paying them much, maybe if I can phrase it that way.
Yeah. Well, again, so today we don't disclose any specific numbers on freelancers. It was just basically a bridge to potentially assist in understanding this figure.
Okay. And also maybe my final question, just in terms of the overall costs, you know. I mean, if I look at all the costs, personnel costs, and then the other operating expenses, if I take all this together, that number was EUR 8.4 million in Q1, was EUR 9.9 million in Q2. I mean, do you think that this number will now grow considerably in Q3 and in Q4 so that, you know, personnel costs or maybe for one or the other reason, the other operating expenses might go up a lot? Or would you say that we should work with kind of OPEX costs of around EUR 10 million for the following two quarters?
I mean, our cost structure overall, I think, is fairly simple, yeah. So the major cost drivers are sales and marketing, yeah. It's R&D. And then, of course, in terms of G&A, it's let's say potentially costs that add on to, yeah, serve the requirements of a professional setup being a stock-listed company, yeah. So it means even in the future we might add on more seniority here. Then, of course, we are at this point also in the transformation of the company converting to IFRS, yeah, where we potentially also let's say have additional expenditure in the future.
But let's say from what we observed in the past, let's say there is not let's say a single cost item, at least in the past, where we say this is an uncontrollable expense. There will be a big surprise shooting up, yeah, at least for the most of the past.
Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. I just noticed that last year, actually, personnel costs in the second half were a touch lower than in the first half. So I don't know, you know.
Yeah. So I mean, overall, we can just say what we try to always monitor is our profitable growth, yeah. And what we saw is basically that our EBIT grew even, let's say, faster than our revenue. So the revenue growth, year over year is roughly 90%. EBIT growth is close to 130%. And even when we do invest, yeah, in sales and marketing, of course, it requires some cash. It requires an investment. But of course, we try to keep a strong return on sales and marketing as well, yeah. So if we do invest, it's not on a horizon of a couple of years, but that, let's say the payback, the cashback could be coming in in the near future.
Yeah. I mean, overall, I must congratulate you. It was a very good result. That's clearly.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next and last question at this time comes from Lukas Spang, Tigris Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon, gentlemen. I would like to follow up on the increased guidance from EUR 10 million to EUR 12 million. Is it possible to quantify how many of your existing customers can use this uplift of EUR 2 million in the future?
A very good question. Maybe I'm happy to take on this. Thanks again, Mr. Spang. So, basically there are two variables. One is that the R&D expenditure, the ceiling, is lifted from 10-12 million EUR. So this is the first aspect here. This typically applies for larger companies with a comparatively high R&D budget, yeah. Now the second aspect, and this applies for every single company applying for tax credits. The second aspect is there is an overhead of 20% that anybody can apply, yeah. So it doesn't matter if I do have 500,000 EUR in R&D expenditure, then I get an automatic overhead of 20%, yeah.
Or if I do have 1 million EUR of R&D expenditure, then I get this 20% overhead, which is 200,000 EUR. This applies for anybody, yeah. So this effectively means every company suddenly has, from the government perspective, 20% higher R&D expenditure, yeah. And now if we were to manage, yeah, to monetize this, then, this would be an increased revenue potential with the existing client base, yeah. So the first aspect applies to every company or basically every client or every company, active, trying to apply for tax credits.
And then the, the lift of the ceiling from 10 to 12 million is something, of course, for slightly bigger companies, that have a certain amount of R&D expenditure.
Yeah. Okay. Understood and did you calculate internally what revenue potential could come out of this?
We, let's say, have a rough idea, but today we can't disclose this figure or this quantitative figure.
Okay. And then just some general P&L question. Is in the P&L any cost related to your listing, or did you, as a shareholder or as shareholders, took over every cost of the listing?
Yeah. There are a couple of costs. So the majority of IPO costs are entirely carried by our two holdings. So the holding of Michael Hohenester and my holdings. But there are some accounting costs that are also carried by the company, and that's included.
This is roughly how much?
I think we have it on one of the slides. Let me just check. It's in the adjusted revenue slide. Okay. You can see that on Slide 12. So basically down there in the footnote, you see that the IPO, basically the EBIT is adjusted for IPO costs. And let's say the cost carried by the company in 2024, no, sorry, 2025, we're EUR 393,000 plus 265000. So that is roughly EUR 700,000, a little bit less. And the first item, EUR 250,000, was, still in 2024, yeah, 2024.
Okay. That's clear. Thanks.
Yeah. But again, the majority of the IPO costs, the banking costs, everything is carried by our holdings. So, you know, innoscripta doesn't basically have any expenditure out of this.
Yep. Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. This concludes today's Q&A session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Michael Hohenester for closing remarks. I'm sorry, sir. We cannot hear you.
Maybe some sound issue. Yeah. Otherwise, I'm also very happy for the closing remarks. Yeah. So thanks a lot. Yeah. This was our first earnings conference call as a listed company. I appreciate everyone who took part in this. Yeah. And this is still, yeah, an exciting journey for us. One thing is clear. We really want to deliver substantial value to customers. We want to build a great platform for our employees. It's also important for us to deliver very good returns in the future for our shareholders who trusted us. Yeah, of course, to every shareholder, but also especially the shareholders who trusted us within the IPO.
Yeah, when we were still a company with no formal track record. Yeah. Again, your support is highly appreciated. And we will work with whatever we can. This is a great success for everybody who trusted us from early on. And yeah, maybe with these words, thanks a lot for your time.