Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Brockhaus Investor Update Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Marco Brockhaus. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Brockhaus Technologies' earnings call for the fiscal year 2024. Before we begin, I would like to point out that the slides we are presenting will afterwards be published in the Investors Relations section of our website, brockhaus-technologies.com. After our presentation, we will open the call to questions from your side. To be fair to everyone, please limit yourself to one question plus one follow-up. Thank you very much in advance. Before we present our results, I encourage all listeners to review the legal notice on page 2 of our presentation, which explains the understanding of forward-looking statements. Additionally, please refer to note six of our consolidated financial statements for 2024 on page 93 onwards of the annual report 2024 for a discussion on alternative performance measures, as well as the reconciliation of non-GAAP figures.
For information on risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, we kindly refer you to the section on risk and opportunities in the management report 2024, starting on page 64. Flipping over to page 3 to give you a general remark on the delayed audit and final outcome. As published in our ad hoc release on August 5th, we received an unqualified audit opinion from our auditor, KPMG. The audit by KPMG confirmed our preliminary key performance metrics, group revenue and adjusted EBITDA, published at the beginning of March with only very minor deviations. The only significant deviation that resulted from very detailed audit procedures were the non-cash impairments in the consolidated financial statements and financial statements of Brockhaus Technologies , as published on July 16th.
I will now hand over to Marcel, who will provide you with more information on the postponed and the non-cash impairments.
Thanks, Marco. Also, a welcome to everyone from my side. On the postponement of the 2024 financial statement publication, we would have also preferred to be quicker, and we supported the audit with all our strengths, as well as with the support of external advisors. However, the timetable is largely determined by the auditors, and Brockhaus Technologies had only very limited influence on the speed and actions of the auditor. All requests from KPMG were answered timely to keep the audit process as efficient as possible. One of the main drivers for the delayed publications was the fact that KPMG significantly extended the scope of the audit for the whole group after certain concerns were raised by KPMG in March 2025, mainly with regard to one specific transaction at a foreign subsidiary of IHSE.
The Audit Committee of Brockhaus Technologies immediately initiated an internal investigation into the underlying facts after it had been informed by KPMG. As a matter of precaution, the transaction in question in the amount of approximately €2.2 million was not included in our preliminary group revenue. Brockhaus Technologies and its subsidiaries worked diligently to answer KPMG's questions and to provide all clarification and audit evidence requested by KPMG. This required considerable management and personal capacities, including a substantial amount of external support from advisors. Naturally, the Audit Committee and its chairman were in constant contact with the auditor and monitored the internal investigation at IHSE closely. The supervisory board, and in particular, the Audit Committee, discussed the findings as well as the potential consequences extensively with us and the auditors. Last month had been very challenging, not only for Brockhaus Technologies but also for our whole shareholders.
However, we are firmly convinced that we will emerge from this unfavorable situation as a stronger company. On the non-cash impairments, the goodwill of the Security Technology segment, so IHSE, previously valued at €80 million, was impaired by €40 million to €40 million in 2024 consolidated financial statements. In addition, certain TPA assets recognized during the acquisitions of IHSE and KVMTech were impaired by €8 million. In the 2024 statutory annual financial statements of Brockhaus Technologie , the shares in IHSE reported under financial assets were impaired from €96 million by €45 million to €51 million. This has no impact on adjusted EBITDA and no cash impact. The main reason for this impairment was the weaker than expected performance of IHSE. Regarding the Bikeleasing impairment, it is getting a bit more technical.
In fiscal year 2023, a portion of our shares in were transferred to another wholly owned subsidiary of us, so-called BT Zweite Beteiligungs GmbH, thereby realizing hidden reserves. The realization of hidden reserves allowed us to pay a dividend last year. To do so, we, of course, had to let an external auditor value the shares of Bikeleasing at that time, meaning end of 2023. At that point in time, the valuation came out to around €790 million, given the strong growth over the previous years. As a result, those shares were not transferred, carried in a value significantly above their original acquisition cost. Those shares were not transferred, are still in the books with their acquisition costs.
Due to the weaker than expected development of the German bicycle market over the last year, we had again to let an auditor compile an updated valuation opinion on Bikeleasing, now as per end of 2024. This valuation ended in a significantly higher valuation compared to our entry valuation from end of 2021, however, below the updated valuation from end of 2023 when transferred some of our shares. Hence, as of December 31, 2024, these transferred shares in BT Zweite Beteiligungs GmbH were impaired from €70 million by €23 million to €47 million. Despite the impairment, the carrying amount remains well above the original acquisition cost of €22 million. The remaining shares in Bikeleasing, which continue to be carried at original acquisition costs, remain fully unchanged. I now hand it back to Marco, who will present you our results for the full year 2024.
Thank you. Turning to page six, let me briefly summarize what we achieved last year. Despite the significantly deteriorated economic and consumer climate, we were able to hold our ground and deliver another consecutive year of solid organic growth with high profitability. For the current fiscal year 2025, we expect organic revenue growth of +10% to +15% to €225 million, excuse me, to €235 million, despite the ongoing challenging economic environment. In light of the investments in the long-term growth of Bikeleasing and the still very challenging bicycle market, we expect adjusted EBITDA for fiscal year 2025 to be in the range of €50 million- €55 million. Brockhaus Technologies generated revenue of €204 million in 2024, which represents organic growth of 10% compared to last year.
Adjusted EBITDA and EBIT turned out 3% and 4% lower than last year, which was mainly driven by personnel and other operating expenses to enable future growth of our technology group. The next chart illustrates the development of our free cash flow before tax over the past four years. The compound annual growth amounts to an impressive CAGR of 60%, increasing from €11 million in 2021 to €43 million in the last year. Despite last year's challenges, free cash remained rock solid at record level. In the long term, to EPS, in the long term, adjusted earnings per share also feature dynamic growth momentum. Since our initial listing five years ago, EPS has increased by nine times. Still, at €0.88 per share, last year underperformed the record high of 2023 when EPS amounted to €1.05 per share.
The reason for this was materially the weak performance of IHSE, in which we hold 100%. In contrast, our share in Bikeleasing corresponds to 52%. As a result, the solid performance of Bikeleasing could not compensate for the difficulties at IHSE in 2024, unfortunately. Still, considering the various substantial economic headwinds, we think this development is still very robust. Move to revenue by quarter. Proceeding to the next slide, let us look at how revenue developed on a quarterly basis. At IHSE, on the bottom of the page, every quarter underperformed last year, unfortunately. Despite the strong uptick in sales in the third quarter, an unexpectedly weak year really took a toll at the company's income figures. The main driver was extraordinarily high customer-driven delivery postponements at the year-end. Bikeleasing, on the top of the page, performed very nicely until Q3, with significant year-over-year growth rates.
In the fourth quarter, however, we really took a blow from ramp-up difficulties at the newly established second-hand bicycle platform, Bike2Future. This led to a harsh dip in resale revenue of previously leased-out bikes. I will now proceed to the next page for the regional sales split. First to Bikeleasing. No surprise here, the company does business in Germany and Austria, and growth in revenue was 18%. IHSE was broadly flat in EMEA, while the Americas region was under strong pressure from tough comparables. In 2023, Americas revenue comprised a very large project, which IHSE, unfortunately, could not catch up in 2024. ApEx shows strong growth of almost 70%, however, on relatively low absolute terms, growing from €3.2 million to €5.4 million. Turning to the segment P&L table, KPIs here by segment.
In the first two columns, we see that Bikeleasing gross profit margin was slightly above last year's level at 65%. EBITDA and EBIT margins are somewhat reduced, which was due to increased personnel and other operating expenses to support expected future growth. This cost base also includes operations of Prob onio, which we acquired in April 2024. Proceeding to the next two columns to the right, at IHSE, the gross margin was also down a bit, resulting mainly from inventory write-downs. What is not positive was the margin development at EBITDA level, where IHSE was down to 9.1%. This was caused naturally by the top line level in conjunction with the fixed costs in personnel and other operating expenses. Moving to further columns to the right, in the central functions, expenses were significantly lower than last year's level. This is mainly due to reduced performance-based compensation payments.
In conclusion and summing up, on the consolidated group level, revenue was €204 million, showing a solid increase of almost 10%. Gross profit margin was at 66.5% and thus exactly on last year's level. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 32%, bringing our group to an adjusted EBITDA of €65 million. The group's adjusted EBIT of €60 million corresponds to a margin of 29%. Next page is on leverage. I would like to run you briefly through our financial leverage structure. End of December, the debt from loans amounted to €73 million. When subtracting cash of €48 million, we are left with a net debt from loans of €24 million. Furthermore, adding €16 million from other financial liabilities and €5 million of net debt from lease refinancing brings us to €46 million in total net debt.
If you compare that to EBITDA of the last 12 months, this corresponds to a leverage of 0.7x . This is a significant reduction compared to the beginning of the year when leverage was almost 0.9 x. As our limit for this KPI is somewhat 2.5 x, we consider our current financial position as more than conservative. This concludes the first part of our presentation, and I now hand over to Paul Göring, who's in charge of our acquisition team. Paul?
Thanks, Marco, and also welcome everyone from my side. As usual, let me start the operational deep dive with a look at Bikeleasing. 2024 marked another record year for Bikeleasing in terms of financial KPIs, with organic revenue growth of some 18% and adjusted EBITDA of 7% as presented earlier already. Bikeleasing was able to further continue the growth of its corporate customer base last year. As per year-end, the number of corporates stood at around 72,000, with around 3.7 million employees behind them. This corresponds to growth of 21% and 12% respectively and underlines that the growth has been particularly strong within SMEs. As announced with our Q1 figures for 2025 already, the number of corporate customers also continued to grow going into 2025, and in the meantime, reached a level of 74,000 with around 3.8 million connected employees.
Despite that positive development in new customers, the number of facilitated bicycles last year was roughly 8% below the previous year, with around 139,000 units. We already discussed the key reasons for this in our last earnings call, but to summarize it again, as it's a couple of months ago, there were three main reasons why, one of which is externally driven and two of which were active management decisions. Firstly, the generally weakened consumer behavior as a clear external effect, paired with high discounts within the bicycle retail space. Secondly, the adherence of a very strict rating management related to our customer base, despite countrywide rating downgrades, which led Bikeleasing to actually decline on a significant number of both new customers, so new corporates approaching us, as well as orders from existing customers who have expected a rating downgrade.
Thirdly, the ongoing shift of existing customers from a fixed to a floating rate leading factor system, where corporates that employ around 10% of the connected employee number have still not agreed to the new system, leading to a reduction of new orders from those specific customers. This being said, and this is now very important, Bikeleasing still managed to increase its market share in the German bicycle market in Euro terms, as you can see on the right-hand side of this slide, as the overall market volume in Euro terms decreased by over 10% in 2024. The reason for this is that average bike prices took a significant hit of - 8%, driven by the extreme discounts within the retail space, while the average price within Bikeleasing was broadly stable.
Vice versa, this, however, means that heavily discounted bicycles are not being leased, which causes a negative impact on units, which were down 8% at Bikeleasing and only down 3% in the broader market. Still, multiplied with each other, leading to the Euro volume leads to an outperformance of Bikeleasing in that respect. Moving over from financials to dive deeper into the strategic decisions we took last year. Most importantly, the initiated transformation of Bikeleasing from a pure play brokerage platform to a digital HR benefit ecosystem. Bikeleasing added two new synergistic business lines in 2024. First, Prob onio, a multi-benefit software provider by way of acquiring the company in April 2024. Secondly, Bike2Future, a digital platform for the sale of used bicycles by way of founding the company towards the end of last year.
This platform approach should not only enable Bikeleasing to deeper integrate with benefit programs of their corporate clients, thereby driving long-term client retention, but also expand the total addressable market more than sixfold. With this high-level overview, let me double-click on both new business lines separately. As just mentioned, Bike2Future is Bikeleasing's new subsidiary for the resale of used bicycles. Why is this a topic for Bikeleasing as a digital brokerage platform anyway, you might ask? The return of used bicycles to Bikeleasing is business model immanent. At every lease end, Bikeleasing offers the respective employee the option to purchase their previously leased bicycle. This option is being used by the vast majority of users also. Last year, for example, 93% of the cases. However, this means the other 7% that are left of bicycles return to Bikeleasing.
On top of that, Bikeleasing receives used bicycles stemming from early lease terminations, meaning the situation where an employee has left their employer, the firm that they're working at, before the end of the 36 or 48-month period, be it because of various reasons. They were fired, they resigned themselves, they become ill, motherhood, etc. Those cases are obviously covered by the insurance that's always mandatory for those cases, but the bikes still return to Bikeleasing nonetheless. In order to improve the monetization of a naturally increasing number of returning bikes, Bikeleasing incorporated Bike2Future as a dedicated entity to remarket the bikes through both physical stores as well as online B2B and B2C channels. On the bottom of this page, you can see Bike2Future's first physical store in Weiderstaedt, which is close to Frankfurt, as well as screenshots from our B2C and B2B online shops that are already live.
While shorter margins in the returning bikes' business are, of course, affected by the immense price pressure due to discounts in retail, as you could observe in Q1, the newly opened B2C channel should offer attractive margin potential over the medium term. A similar summary on Probonio on this next slide. As a brief reminder, Bikeleasing acquired 100% of Prob onio in April 2024, following three main strategic rationales. Firstly, expanding the breadth of employee benefits Bikeleasing can offer their large base of corporate customers out of one hand. Secondly, reduce administrative efforts and hence costs for their customers by using Pro bonio's benefit management software for increased digitization and automation on the client side. Thirdly, ease internationalization efforts by having a combined multi-benefit offering in place that can be tweaked to local benefit preference.
Since the acquisition, Bikeleasing has spent a lot of time and capital on the continued platform build-out, specifically for products and technology development, as well as go-to-market. Some examples include the brand of Prob onio that was relaunched, the expansion of our sales and marketing organization, new benefit modules that were continuously added to Prob onio, such as, for example, employee discounts or also daycare subsidies. Of course, the technical integration with Bikeleasing's platform was deepened last year. At the same time, the first upselling activities for Prob onio were launched in late August 2024. Even though the conversion was progressing slower than initially anticipated, corporate customers still nearly doubled as per year end to round about 1,500 individual clients. Proceeding to our other subsidiary, IHSE. As presented earlier, IHSE revenue declined year on year.
However, the underlying, let's call it, base revenue has been broadly at the same level as in 2023. The comparison is distorted by the largest single order IHSE has ever received in the amount of approximately €8 million the year before. The non-recurrence of such a solitary project is also the reason why the Americas region was significantly below the previous year. Contrast development in EMEA was stable, while APAC experienced significant growth year- over- year. Nevertheless, just to be clear, APAC is still impacted by a general decoupling dependency of China, especially in relation to critical infrastructure. In addition, several medium-sized projects that were originally expected for year-end 2024 were postponed over the year-end, increasing backlog but lowering recognized revenue even further. This is also a good bridge to the next slide.
The shift of projects over quarter or year ends are the normal course of the project business of IHSE. It's not nice, but projects can shift over deadlines, and it is like it is. As presented earlier today, the Managing Director of one of IHSE's foreign subsidiaries, however, apparently did not want to accept this fact and wrongly booked revenue for one project end of last year. This misbehavior was identified as part of the audit processes and was the tipping point for the previously mentioned internal investigation, as well as month-long audit postponement. As a result of that, not only the local management but also the Group Management of IHSE was reorganized. Frank Breitenfelder, you can see on the left-hand side of this slide, joined IHSE in April as new Managing Director and CFO to strengthen governance, financial oversight, and more generally run the operational divisions of the business.
In addition, Dr. Enno Littmann, the longstanding CEO and current Chairman of IHSE, has temporarily rejoined the operational management to provide support and continuity. He's especially taking care of IHSE's sales and business development activities. Lastly, the local Managing Director for this foreign subsidiary of IHSE was also replaced by a long-serving IHSE team member in that region. These measures aim to ensure continuity of operations and reinforce IHSE's internal control systems, allowing the business to come back to a normal modus operandi. This concludes the operating update, and I'm happy to answer any questions you might have later in the Q&A. I now hand back over to Marco, who will present our forecast for the fiscal year 2025.
Yeah, thank you, Paul. Flipping over to the last page of today's presentation, our forecast for the fiscal year 2025. We expect revenue between €225 million- €235 million, corresponding to solid growth, organic growth of +10% to +15% compared to fiscal year 2024. For adjusted EBITDA, the group plans a range of €50 million- €55 million, which represents a decline of -15% to -23% compared to adjusted EBITDA for the 2024 reporting period. As part of the ongoing transformation of Bikeleasing from a single product provider to a multi-benefit platform, the 2025 fiscal year is expected to include significantly higher expenses for personnel and other operating costs. These increased expenses are primarily driven by strategic growth initiatives, particularly the rollout of the digital multi-benefit platform Prob onio and the development of the used bike sales platform Bike2Future, established in 2024.
Despite initial signs of recovery in the German bicycle market, the overall environment remains challenging. High inventory levels among bicycle retailers continue to lead to significant discounts in retail, which impacts not only the resale prices of used bikes but also the demand for new company bikes. The Executive Board expects this situation to persist into the second half of 2025, and this is reflected accordingly in the full year forecast for 2025. A significant portion of the higher expenses at Bikeleasing this year will be offset by the introduction of a bicycle dealer commission, which became effective on August 1 and is already common practice among most competitors. Please note that this forecast assumes that there will be no further change in the scope of consolidation within Brockhaus Technologies . The reason for this approach is the difficulty in predicting the nature and scope of future acquisitions.
We do not believe that any estimates in this respect are sufficiently reliable, even though we are constantly working towards finding the next hidden gem in the market. That concludes our presentation, and we are now happy to answer your question. For that, I would like to hand over to the operator.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to cancel your question, press three and the star key. Please press nine and the star key now to state your question. The first question goes to Christoph Hoffmann of Montega AG. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation. My first question is on future capital returns to shareholders and what's your take on this? Secondly, maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on the M&A inbound you reviewed intensively last year, or maybe also on the number of offers you received, if it's more than one, and then your final decision and also the nature of the buyer. Let's move on to some operational questions, but maybe these two first.
Yes, hi, this is Harold, Head of Finance. Touching on your first topic, if I got that right, that was with regards to dividend payments in the current year. As we said in our financial statements, unfortunately, the impairments that we had to do on our financial assets, namely the shareholding in IHSE, and also this transferred and up-valued share in Bikeleasing, not the one as original acquisition cost, but an up-valued one, depleted in our single individual, the German GAAP individual financial statement, the profit reserves. The profit reserve as of today is zero, and therefore, it is not possible for us to propose to the annual general meeting a dividend distribution.
Sorry if you can still hear us. Remind me, the second question was related to the inbound cost adjustments, right?
No, not the costs directly. Just the number of offers you received and your decision, and also the nature of the buyer. Just a little bit more color on the M&A inbound in total since there's not quite much information on that.
Yeah, that's, of course, on purpose because we can't give any more information on that. I mean, the topic itself is hopefully then well understood. We receive inbounds all the time, but sometimes you already know that they are, let's say, not serious, and sometimes they are serious, and in a letter, you need to, unfortunately, hire advisors that support you on, let's say, really following such conversations, which then costs us money. That's the background of it. We can't really give you more detail on how many offers you received and from whom, because that's also bound by confidentiality.
Okay, clear. Just to go back to the first question, I mean, yeah, obviously, dividend payments are not possible. I got it. Thanks for the explanation. I mean, another possibility are share buybacks, of course. What's your take on this? You didn't announce anything yet. What's your view on this today?
With Harald again. With share buybacks, the situation is extremely comparable to the ability to distribute a dividend. You need to have some retained earnings. You have additional flexibility with share buybacks because for a dividend, you need a closed financial statement that shows you a positive retained earning. For a share buyback, it is completely enough or sufficient if your current, during the year, accounting shows you that you have retained earnings that you can use for that. It would be easier to be done, however, still not sufficiently foreseeable as per today.
Okay, got it. Maybe just one operational topic on Bikeleasing. Last year, you have made compensation payments to the insurance company due to higher damages. I'm wondering, is this continued to be an operational risk for Bikeleasing in the future, or is it done?
No, this is, of course, something that can happen again in the future, right? The background to this was that insurances have some internally set, let's say, maximum damage quotas, that in case you surpass those quotas or breach them, leads to a situation where they either need to increase the prices of the insurance that they're offering you, they need to terminate the insurance completely because of internal processes, or thirdly, which we used last year, you can do a compensation payment to basically heal the damage quota and get again below the threshold that they have set internally. This can happen also in the future. Of course, we are, or not we, but Bikeleasing is doing their best to counteract this by making the product mix in the insurance part more profitable.
Okay, got it. Maybe to hear your thoughts, Paul, and maybe Marco as well. I understand the legal aspects of the share buyback topic, but in a capital allocation view, what's your take on this? I mean, the share price declined sharply in the recent months, and I mean, this is a key question for many shareholders, I would say.
Marco, yeah, we will consider this internally and we'll come to a conclusion. We did share buybacks, as you know, and this is an option, but it's an option out of many.
Okay, thank you. That's it for the moment. Thanks.
Thank you.
The next question goes to Lasse Stuben of Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Just a question. Sorry, two questions from me. To get on the bike market environment, I understand it's very challenging still this year. I was just wondering, I'm not sure if you've disclosed this, but behind the guidance you're providing for this year, what your general assumption is in terms of unit growth, if there's any color you can share. I understand you may not share a specific number, but any additional detail you can give here on 2025 and also potentially looking into next year, even though it's early. The second question is just on IHSE. I appreciate you had the big project in 2023, but if I take a bigger view, this business hasn't really gone anywhere since 2018. I'm just wondering, big picture, strategically, how you're thinking about driving that business forward and what the future is. Clearly, they have a good product.
It's very profitable, but we just can't seem to get off the mark in terms of revenue. I'd be keen to hear your thoughts on that. Thank you very much.
Taking the Bikeleasing piece or question as the first one, we, of course, as in the past, don't give more color on different splits or anything per segment, but only the consolidated number. The market remains challenging, especially because of high discounts. What you have also seen in the slides earlier that I presented, hopefully, is that you have the, let's say, interesting situation that those bikes that are extremely discounted, I mean, we sometimes see 30%, 40%, 50% discounts of some of the bikes that are sitting there at the retail stores, that they don't go into the leasing business models. This is irrational, to be honest, because for the retailer, it doesn't make a difference.
Still, given that a lot of competitors of ours have historically had the commission model already up and running, there are certain retailers that have a guidance or a guideline internally not to discount leased bicycles. That's what led already last year to us still having a rather stable pricing on the bikes that went through our platform as compared to the market that was already seeing a big crunch in the price. This, however, means heavily discounted bikes have not a direct cost, but an opportunity cost, so to say, because those bikes that get heavily discounted don't go into Bikeleasing or one of our competitors. That's what you've also seen going into the year, right? We have Q1 figures already out there, and you saw that Bikeleasing was down on Q1 in terms of units. We are seeing some good progress here.
It's going in the right direction, but we can't give you more color on what we expect full-year unit numbers to be because we just need to actually also see how the market continues to develop.
Yeah, and maybe to add, Marco here, I think I do see, in the near future, a consolidation of the bike leasing or Dienstrad leasing in the German market. Plus, I see, if you ask me in the strategic sense, clearly, more internationalization, especially in other European countries. That is on a general remark, maybe on the market. Coming to IHSE, I see, I would say IHSE is a clear, typical technology leader, which we would like to acquire. It has shown in the past that it runs on a 70%- 75% gross margin, which as such is, clearly, a very good company. Under the assumption it is very good managed, it should run at between 25%- 30% EBITDA margin.
It's clear that with the occurrence of the Russian war against Ukraine and the new dimension which we are in, I see quite a good growth potential, especially in the defense sector. That said, we might also see here some kind of consolidation in the market, in terms of other competitors as such. Yeah, but that's very broad. If you ask me that question on a strategic side, then I would say this is my summary.
Understood. Thank you very much.
The next question goes to Sebastian Weithuner for Paladin. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. I have a few questions, and I will make them one by one. Maybe to come back to the share buyback topic, the technical side, to get it clear, would it be enough that Bikeleasing keeps the two looking upstream dividends to do this again this year?
Hi, Harold again. Assuming that those dividend income for the AG, so for the Corporation ultimate parent, exceed ongoing cost and anything else that might come up, essentially ongoing cost, yes. Yes, a positive income would be available. That is only a technical note and not a forecast.
All right. Thanks. You mentioned higher costs. My next one will go to the higher OpEx base this year. I assume that they will increase significantly, maybe up to €30 million. Is this the right assumption?
There's nothing that we got individually. I assume, looking at revenue forecast, assume making some assumption on gross profit margin and then comparing that to EBITDA, the ballpark is not wrong. As I said, we cannot give any more details to you than we give to the broader market.
Okay, yes. Maybe you can clarify if these additional OpEx are mostly fixed or not fixed. Are they mainly personnel expenses or marketing spend? In which areas of your business are these investments going into? Where do you plan to allocate these higher costs?
Yeah, I can only echo what Harold just said. We won't give any more color on OpEx or where those OpEx sit, but not to your surprise, probably, if you just look at the size of our two different segments. Any, let's say, OpEx increases that are material will probably come from the larger side. The larger side is Bikeleasing. Full stop. We, of course, invest a lot of time, capital, resources into the transformation of Bikeleasing into this multi-product world that I explained earlier today.
Okay, maybe it would be good to understand if this is more marketing-related or personally related. Maybe you can say something on that.
Everything. I mean, as mentioned earlier, we, of course, invest in the sales and marketing organization of Bikeleasing, Prob onio, and in Bike2Future. This, of course, has always people involved, but it also has completely external costs involved that we have in that respect. Not only that, right? Also development work is that we're on the product side.
What return on capital are you aiming for with these increased huge OpEx? How do you plan to ensure that costs are scaled back quickly if these return on investment become uncertain?
I can only repeat what we've just said. The details that we give out on this are limited. What we have out there is what we have out there. We cannot give you, let's say, more information on the individual return on capital calculations for all the initiatives we have planned.
Okay, maybe in terms of Bikeleasing, you launched the new partner program. I think you said it's eight weeks ago. Have you already won corporate clients who were aggressively referred by bike dealers?
Good question. I mean, we are seven days into the month, right? We get quick reportings, but I don't have the details yet. We get them, we get referred corporate clients all the time. This is not the topic. The topic is that we want to increase the referral rate from the retailers because maybe just taking one step back, we had a lot of conversations in that respect. The bicycle retail space has a very strange logic over the last months and years. We were the only major player who didn't have a commission for the retailers. All the other competitors slowly, after each other, introduced their commission models, which directly reduces the margin for all the retailers.
However, since they got, I don't know, €1,000 bonuses for their service work or whatever, if they refer customers, a lot of retailers were referring corporate customers to competitors of ours who were taking a hefty commission from them just to get, let's say, the €1,000 service bonus. Net-net, still paying, let's say, a lot of money to those competitors of ours. We were basically penalized for not having a commission in the market. What we have now is, in our opinion, the still fairest option on the table, which means if you are a retailer that only benefits from the, let's say, gravity of our platform, meaning the corporate clients and employees we bring to you, and you have no, let's say, you don't want to support us, then that's perfectly fine. Then you pay for, let's say, the platform volume that we bring.
If you are a retailer that just wants to do some work together with us, that's also fine. You are in the, let's say, medium segment, and you have the option to get a, let's say, reimbursement from us up to 100% of the commission that we have collected. That's, let's say, no change to the current system because it's 0% commission then in the end. If you are a retailer, which we have a couple of, that really wants to bring, let's say, the combined platform forward, and you actively hunt for new corporate customers for us, you actually get 3% on top. In all directions, we have, in our opinion, the most fair solution right now.
How many bike dealers or what share of brokerage volume has not agreed to the new model, and how do you handle those bike dealers going forward?
Again, we won't go into that detail. Sorry. It's not only you guys that listen on our earnings calls, but it's also every competitor of us, of all the companies we have. Please excuse that we don't give too much detail on here on this topic.
Yeah. Okay, maybe one last for Bikeleasing. You and Marco also, you mentioned plans to expand internationally. Which countries are you focusing on, or when do you expect to enter markets outside Germany?
Yeah, Marco here. Look, we won't tell that into the market because we would like to keep ahead of the market and our competitors. As we recognize in calls we had in the past, calls like this, we had our competitors in the call. That is, unfortunately, the way if you are listed. Therefore, please allow me to say we don't say that.
In the higher OpEx, are there costs for going internationally? Are we being one country maybe this year? You don't have to say the name.
We can just repeat once again. There will be no more detail on the OpEx that we have planned this year, except for what we have already said, that we will ramp up sales and marketing for all the products we have now under our roof and, of course, continue to invest in products and tech going forward as well. Full stop.
Okay, thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question goes to Lukas Spang of Tigris Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes, hi, good afternoon, gentlemen. I would be interested in Prob onio because you talked very little about Prob onio today, and I think one year ago, this was a very promising and interesting acquisition. We have now more than one year ago that you have bought Prob onio, and I would be interested in what is your current conclusion after more than one year. Are you progressing as well as planned, and how many companies have you onboarded at Prob onio since then? Until, let's say, end of July, how good are you progressing with cross-selling between Bikeleasing and Prob onio? How many Bikeleasing customers could you win for Prob onio? Also, regarding P&L numbers, you have communicated last year that you think it could be possible that Prob onio could contribute a mid-single-digit million euro number for this year.
Do you still think that is achievable, or what is the current assumption on that?
Sure. I can take this and the colleagues chip in if they have anything else on it. Again, we won't provide, let's say, too much best practice knowledge of what we have experienced so far. It was roughly a year ago, or let's say more than a year ago now. Last year was split in two phases, as you know. The first one was, let's say, just post-due diligence work because it was a small company, so we needed to get it on, let's say, stable feet. Then we started, let's say, first upselling activities from end of August onwards. Until end of August, there was basically no combined sales effort there. Harald has kindly just put the slide back on. You see that when we acquired the company, they had some 800 corporate clients, roughly. We increased that to 1,500 corporate clients by year end last year.
On the July numbers, you will receive an update, but we, let's say, have another report up on our calendar soon. This will then be also an update on how H1 went. This will include the Prob onio update, of course, as well. What we see is that the operating KPIs we have there are continuously increasing, continuously climbing. It's going into the right direction. The one thing that, as I said in my part earlier, that we expected to be quicker, right? It's a very long sales cycle that we experience with Prob onio clients. Why is that? Because it costs the employer money. Bike leasing is a benefit that you can just introduce completely free. The only cost you have is some administrative effort on the HR side or whoever is taking care of that benefit. Prob onio costs you something as the corporate itself.
You always have more, let's say, parties involved internally that want to chip in their feedback on a potential new solution. You have budget circles that are relevant for that. We just see, even if we approach a lot of clients together, the conversion of those is slower than expected. This needs to be factored in. The interesting part for us is that the onboarding speed, so meaning number of corporate clients, but also the users behind that, are increasing continuously. It's going in the right direction.
Okay, and in terms of the EBITDA or earnings contribution for this year?
Yeah, we also don't give the individual detail there, as let's say, yeah, just answered multiple times already.
Yeah, sure, but last year you gave this indication. Is this still valid or?
Of course, we gave the indication, but there is a learning process also that one needs to factor in.
Maybe to add from my side, Marco , it's very simple. We had no experience with that.
To make it clear, we shouldn't anticipate €5 million or lifting the chip number anymore.
As we multiple said, no comment on individual numbers.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, since we didn't receive any further questions, if you would like to state another question, please press nine and the star key. We will leave the line open for a brief moment. We have a follow-up question from Mr. Weithhuner. Please go ahead.
Hi again. Maybe a technical one. Will you still publish a more detailed Q1 report, including a full cash flow statement after the annual report is now out?
We are still compiling H1 figures. Depending on how much it adds to the value of the information, it is still being considered. We have not made up the data set that we would publish on H1.
Can you comment on last year ERP investments? Are the related costs now completed, or will there be further expenses this year for ERP?
That's still ongoing, that project.
How many costs do we have to take into account this year?
I cannot disclose further detail because it's not in our report.
Is this a kind of new system, or how do we have to look at this?
Yes, it is. It is an ERP migration. Yes, it is a new system.
Okay, maybe to come to IHSE. To what extent have sales discussions started following the new certifications in defense areas? Do you expect any order intake from this already in the current year?
Yes, already last year also. The investment we took to, let's say, build up the defense competence and certifications at IHSE were the right decisions. That is a very interesting market. It has already grown as a vertical quite substantially for us. We are part of some very interesting projects there that we will also expect this year, and we already had also this year already.
When you take a look at the different markets by IHSE in general, how the market share developed over the past quarter, what feedback are you receiving from your distribution partners?
Good question. Next question. You can pay a lot of advisors a lot of money to do such, let's say, market analysis. What we know is that some of our competitors also publish numbers as part of, let's say, normal annual filings. You see that they have taken, in some cases, quite significant hits that have nothing to do with solitary projects, just baseline revenue. We can't really judge on what that means in terms of % market share of IHSE as compared to the other ones. There is one competitor in the U.S. who does only defense. I would expect in the current world that their business is going well. That is also why we invested already a couple of years ago quite heavily into defense certifications to be also part of this market.
How do you view the U.S. market in light of the recent tariff policies?
That's an increase of 15%, right, coming from some single-digit number. I won't say that this is a burden for IHSE, even though there is a big competitor in the U.S. As that big competitor in the U.S. and IHSE have more or less the same qualification and certificates, more or less, we do see ourselves in a good position with IHSE to further grab market share in the defense sector. I hope that answers your question.
Okay, maybe a last one for Prob onio. How do you look at the white space opportunities? Do you know how many of your 72,000 clients already use competing benefits providers and how many have none? Do you have any kind of estimate for this?
Very little, because there are not that many multi-benefit softwares out there that work as Prob onio does. If your question is how many of those offer different benefits to their employees, then there are a lot. That's exactly the, let's say, appeal we see in Prob onio, right? Instead of jumping between four different platforms, plus there is an HR person going to the gas station each month to buy physical vouchers there, we have a software solution that lets you, let's say, very easily orchestrate all the benefit management topics on the backend and also import your personal data there from your employees, get an automatic feedback loop into payroll, etc. There are a lot of benefits being used across those clients. Is there a big, let's say, penetration of a multi-benefit software in ur client base now? Not that we know.
Maybe you can say how you are thinking about the two big also publicly listed companies, Edenred and Pluxee, in terms of competition?
Yeah, of course. Edenred is turning more and more into, let's say, competitors for us by transforming bike leasing into that direction. You always, let's say, need to differentiate where the companies have come from and what their strengths are, right? Bikeleasing has an immense pool of corporate clients that, according to our information, I mean, we are only in Germany and Austria, right? The two companies you mentioned are globally in, I don't know, South America, Africa, wherever they are. If you just compare them to our markets, from the corporate client numbers, we're significantly larger than both of those companies. However, we only offer one single benefit to our clients, whereas they offer sometimes more benefits to their clients. However, both companies are coming from meal vouchers.
Even if you look into their client pool, I would be surprised if meal vouchers would not make up the vast majority of their, let's say, benefit penetration. Apart from that, I can't share any, let's say, more opinions on that. That's a market that we will push into now, and they will more and more become competitors of ours. There are also smaller solutions in the market, right, who are more comparable from a size currently.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Since we didn't receive any further questions, let me hand back over to your host for some closing remarks.
Yeah, thank you very much. All right, if there are no more questions, thank you all very much for attending today's earnings call of Brockhaus Technologies AG. I would like to use this stage and moment to thank our employees for outstanding work and performance, as well as our shareholders for their continued trust and support. Goodbye and have a great day. Thank you very much.