Hello, and welcome back. Curtains up for our third presentation of our Austrian Select Conference. I'm very happy to present Frequentis. The company will be presented by Stefan Marin, who's head of investor relations. You know the format, 30 minutes altogether, 20 minutes presentation, roughly, and 10 minutes Q&A. As always, please use the chat box to enter your questions, and we will address them during the following Q&A session. I would say, without further ado, let's get the show on the road. Maybe one quick note, we will record this, and you will be able to access the recording and the presentation deck later today on ResearchHub. With all this in mind, Stefan, it's all yours. Go ahead.
Yes. Thank you so much for having me here. Yes. Maybe let me first introduce Frequentis. We are a company acting in the national safety-critical control centers, be it the air traffic control, be it police, railway, or maritime organizations. In each of these organizations, Frequentis provides applications that are running there for decades, and are part of a police in London, of a police in Bavaria, of an air traffic control organization in Germany, in Austria, in the U.K., in 150 other countries, because that's the number of countries where Frequentis products are in place. We published, two weeks ago, our full year 2025 figures. We are very happy with them. Short highlight slide. Order intake was up by 17%, orders on hand increased by 10%, the order backlog. Revenues increased by 21%.
That's now the fifth year in a row that we were growing double digits or double digit in percentage terms. You will later see how that then translated into a compound annual growth rate of about 15% revenue in the past four years. EBIT was also up. EBIT margin was also up at 8.1%. We had a little bit of a positive effect there. But nevertheless, we were able to increase the EBIT margin. Net cash, we do not have net debt. We have net cash of about EUR 105 million. However, thereof, about EUR 90 million are advanced payments from customers for their projects that they do with us. We are a project company. We are not just a software delivery company. We deliver the applications, which are, to a certain degree, custom-made and adapted to the needs of the customer to almost all over the globe.
This customization, as we call it, happens by us. Also more than 90%-95% of the software that we use in our products is being coded, written, tested, checked, documented, not to forget the documentation, for our customers internally. Our customers are more than 90% authorities, governments. Mostly authorities. What did we have in place? What did we win in 2025? On the one side, we have the rollout of the IP-based air-to-ground protocol converter system for the Federal Aviation Administration in the USA. First orders for the modernized voice communication system in the USA, or also countrywide drone traffic management for the civil part, civil drones in Sweden. A lot of defense contracts coming from Germany or also in the case of Australia. We are part of it. It's not that we cover everything that defense needs, of course.
We are one part of defense, and here it's about digital air traffic control tower. I will come to this concept later on. Multi-domain communication systems where we bring together all the communication needs, and we bring together all the data that a customer receives. Public Safety, if you're from Germany, you know, of course, Thuringia as one of the 16 federal states in Germany. There we deliver an integrated operations and control center system, and Frequentis is their general contractor. Also, the same solution in Norway for their fire emergency call centers. Maybe I'm always asking, what is Frequentis actually doing? We provide applications. We integrate with the help of our software, the hardware, which is not from us, of the customer into our systems.
We take the antennas, the radars, all the traffic data, the weather data that the customers have and get from their sources, and we integrated them that they all see it nicely on one screen and can act with all these data and calls that they get from the outside. Yeah, as you'll see, we have another record high order intake. We were growing nicely on the order intake side and also on the orders on hand side. We have two segments, one is Air Traffic Management and the other one is Public Safety & Transport. It's approximately between 60%-70% and 30%-40%, as you can see here. If you just have a look at the revenue split for the past two years, it's 70% Air Traffic Management and 30% Public Safety & Transport.
From this 69% or approximately 70%, in total, we also have a good chunk of revenue with the military, with the defense departments of NATO and NATO-friendly countries, which is approximately 20% of total revenues. In 2025, it was 17%-18%, to be exactly, but about 20% is in defense. Yeah, as already mentioned, we were growing in the past four years with 15% on average revenue growth. We can digest this revenue growth, and we are able to find enough employees to manage their projects. That's also, of course, an important part of being an international organization to find qualified people. We saw strong revenue growth in the Americas region. Americas consists of North and South America. Strong countries there are Brazil, Mexico, U.S., Canada. Overall, as you have seen on the past slide with revenues, we have a very stable business model.
We do not depend on economic cycles. That's one, let's say, advantage of our business model because the need for safety-critical infrastructure is always there, regardless if the economy is going up or down. We have a strong European home market, which was also growing by almost EUR 40 million in the past year. Regarding the revenue split, you see an increase in the Americas, a little bit of a decrease in Europe. Nevertheless, Europe is by far our biggest market for our products. The next slide shows the revenues and EBIT margin development. On the group, we are at the 8.1% that I mentioned before. However, the two segments are a little bit different, and I would like to start with the segment to the right, Public Safety & Transport. Here we see EBIT margins, which were in the past five years always at 10% or above.
This year, it was positively influenced by a claim settlement that we had, as written in the note below. Nevertheless, Public Safety & Transport, which has already been transformed with software-centric business model, only shows the double-digit EBIT margin. In Air Traffic Management, we are currently in the transformation from a hardware-centric business model, so software that is embedded in a hardware, in the big racks. These racks are in the basements of our customers, so on premises, yeah versus software that can run in a virtual environment in data centers. That's where we have to transform the software, so more or less to write it completely new from scratch with all the requirements that safety-critical software has. On the other side, also, the customers have to build their own data centers and things like that.
Nevertheless, we are looking forward to an EBIT margin for this year of about 7%, which is above what we have seen in the past years and in the past decades. Where do we want to go? What is the strategy going forward? Frequentis wants to become number one in control center solutions through innovations, yeah. Innovations is important for us to stay on the cutting edge of the technology, also to be able to offer our customers increased possibilities, yeah. Before I start with the rest of the presentation, I would like to talk to you a little bit about these three segments here, because that is our core, let's say, business model. This is our core way, our core drivers, yeah, the major drivers that drive our business, yeah.
It's the growing importance of security on the defense side, but also when speaking about public safety or safety of railway, things like that. That is what is driving our business. We have the mobility. Mobility increases in Europe, in Asia, in the U.S. People travel more. If they travel more by plane or if they travel more by railway, we are agnostic to that because we have an offering for the railway operators, we have an offering for the air traffic controllers. We are part of this continuous growth of mobility. We have within growing technological advancements. Here, the importance is that, for example, air traffic controllers is a very scarce resource. There is a global shortage of air traffic controllers. Only two out of 100 applicants are then being admitted to be an air traffic controller.
That's why, given the increasing capacity, just think about the approximately 2,000-3,000 planes that Boeing, Airbus, Embraer, Chinese COMAC, are bringing to the skies every year. They have to be controlled at some given point in time. That's why the air traffic controllers, for example, they are happy if there is automation, if there is technological advancements, because it allows them to handle the increasing growth with more or less the same amount of air traffic controllers as I said some sentences before, there is a shortage of air traffic controllers worldwide. How do we want to go forward? We will have your 5G-based critical communications. I will come to that in a second. Drone management. These are all topics that we are now in, and topics that will, let's say, even increase further our revenue line or top line in the future.
Future communications and tower infrastructure, and also the inclusion of AI assistance systems. We have about 6% of R&D, owned financed R&D, of revenue, and another 6%, approximately, per year are being financed by the customers. We are also active in new deployment models, cloud solutions, software as a service, but currently the overwhelming majority, the software is being sold to the customers, and then comes the maintenance phase, and then comes the change request phase. Once the application has been installed and this maintenance phase that usually lasts 10, 15, 20 years because that's the length how application is being used. Mission-critical services, that's, let's say, the future for European, but also for U.S., North American first responders, emergency workers. You might recall your first Nokia mobile phone. These were small phones. That it's approximately the same technology like TETRA.
This TETRA is being used by the police forces to do communication. Other than communications, it only can do the very short text messages, but exactly no applications. As you recall, your first mobile phone, you only could use text messages, sending SMS. This now is being replaced with 5G network. In the not so distant future, in the U.K., because they already made a tender in the U.K., and where Frequentis, together with IBM and Samsung, is involved for the rollout of this MCX called standard. It will be a standard. A lot of interoperability. You can bring groups together and separate them and then bring other groups together. That will really drive forward the ability of first responders and emergency people to be more integrated, to be more alert, and to be faster at the site where something happens. Drone traffic.
You might experience for yourself that there is not so much drone traffic, if at all. The problem here is a little bit, or a challenge, is that nobody is really responsible now for the lower airspace or for the very low airspace between 0 and approximately 200 meters, depending on the European country. Unless there is a no-fly zone because it's the approach for the airports, there the air traffic control is responsible, but for all other areas, there is no air traffic controller responsibility. Without responsibility, it is very difficult and hard for drones flying beyond visual line of sight. If you see your drone when you fly it for fun with your family on the weekend in a park or so, it is all excluded.
This, we are speaking about professional drones, for example, taking care about power lines, taking care about railway lines, just to fly, see if everything is correct. These all. There needs to be some more regulation, still, and also business model, so that the controller can provide. Because all the helicopters, they fly on visual sight. They do not file a flight plan. Also, the Cessnas, the private pilots, they also do not file a flight plan. So things have to be sorted out there. What does Frequentis has to offer? First, there's airspace management. We have applications website where the professional operators can file their flight plans. We distribute to all the participants where and when a drone flight is being planned. We also offer systems for automated control systems, for estimation and then inspection flights, so with small hangars.
That picture that you see here is a small hangar that opens and then the drone starts, and then it returns back. Then of course, friend-enemy detection for drone defense for military users, but also for civil users, to protect specific buildings in a city. Yeah. The last big, let's say, step forward is Remote Digital Tower. Here we are speaking of not having a physical tower anymore at an airport, but having this in an office, in a container, in a bunker. Yeah. Especially important for the military, far away from the airstrip field, in the ground, not detectable by the enemy. The controller, as you can see here, sees exactly what he would see if he would look outside the tower. With the systems with infrared, and the cameras for the night and things like that, he even sees more than he would see now.
This is already in operation in Germany, U.K., Brazil, and we're looking forward to the certification for the Federal Aviation Administration. That is to come, in the next couple of months. This kind of technology is also okayed, certified, and allowed to be installed, exclusively by us, because we're the only one who did this certification with the Federal Aviation Administration, to be then rolled out and to be implemented at the various airports within the National Airspace System within the United States National Airspace. Yeah, looking forward to 2026, we have about EUR 800 million orders on hand, projects on hand, signed contracts, confirmed orders, that are now orders on hand or order backlog. Approximately half of it will be executed this year and the half in the years to follow. Our goals, we want to increase order intake again.
We want to increase revenues by about 10%, and the EBIT margin should be at about 7%. Yeah. With this, it was the presentation from my side. Yeah, I'm looking forward to your Q&As from your side.
Thanks so much, Stefan. Congrats on the strong results that you accomplished in 2025, and also thank you for giving us a glimpse at what the future holds for you. There are a lot of questions regarding the composition of growth, because of course right now we're in a special environment where defense spending is rising dramatically over the last couple of years. Security, IT security is more on the forefront than it was. Can you give us a feel as to how much of your growth was driven by these, let's say, almost extraordinary effects, and how much is actually solid growth behind it that can be prorated into the future as well?
Thanks for the question. All of our growth was organic growth. Yeah, I think that's also important, so no acquisition in the past year. Frequentis rests on two segments and five pillars that you see here. Defense, as of now, there is no significant increase of order intake or revenue with Frequentis right now. This has to do that we integrate, as I said before, we write the software to integrate the hardware of the customers. This integration will only come when the hardware, the tanks, the rockets, the drones, the radar, the missiles, have been produced, have been manufactured. From our perspective, in about two years' time, we will then see, hopefully, potentially, the increase from the defense spending then coming to us. We are the integrator of the hardware, but the hardware, especially in Europe, because there is a big, let's say, gap.
There is one figure, Ukraine uses 5,000 drones a day. Germany has 5,000 drones. Yeah? It will take time till all this hardware is being produced, and till this hardware will then be integrated, and that's where then Frequentis comes into place. Defense is growing, but not growing as much, as for example, the civil air traffic management or the public safety is currently growing.
Okay. Thank you. You touched on the organic growth and that there was no M&A involved. One of the questions concerning just that going forward, where do you see the next white spots in terms of M&A, and how do you think about buying versus building it yourself?
No, thanks for the good question. We did, as you can see on the slide, we made 10 acquisitions in the past 10 years, none in 2025. We want to buy products. We want to buy technology. Yeah. We don't need the market, we don't need the customers because there is only one civil air traffic controller and one military air traffic controller per country. We cannot expand there. We were quite successful in integrating all these products and technology into our global offering. Yes, it was make or buy decisions. Exactly. That's also the kind of decisions that we do and we make. As of now, especially everything that has to do with defense, as you can imagine, is far beyond what we would be offered to pay, on the one side, and on the other side, we have a very tough M&A regime.
Cultural fit should be profitable, so having its own customers already, yeah, its own market already, financially being okay. The most important software engineers, management, they should be willing to stay on board when we acquire them. It's a lot of things that need to be in place that we then actually do and then with the transaction.
Thank you. I do have two questions which are both dealing with margins, and we only have roughly a minute left, so I almost feel bad asking you this question, but if you could answer it briefly, and it is, what's the concrete path to structurally expanding your margins to 8%-9%, and what timeframe do you see that as being realistic?
Yeah. We see it's medium term. Yeah. The problems we are in, or let's say the challenge that we have is that we are a project company. We cannot exactly plan, yeah, what customers, let's say, will order or plan. Yes, these projects, smaller or bigger, will be exactly executed in 2028 or 2029 or 2030 or 2031. One big part or one big block of expanding the margin is to make the offering that we have in Air Traffic Management also available for data centers in a virtual environment. That will be a big step forward because a lot of R&D money is currently going into that.
Great. It's 10:59 A.M. We've got 30 seconds, and I will just occupy that and thank everybody for participating in this call, for the good questions we've received and would like to invite you to jump onto the next presentation, which will be AT&S. I just posted the link to that presentation room in the chat box. Of course, feel free to review this presentation on ResearchHub, where you will find the recording as well as the presentation deck. Thanks so much, Stefan, for the insights, and I hope to see you again soon here. Goodbye.
Thank you, and all the best for the colleagues of AT&S. Thank you. Bye-bye.