Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's call of the q.beyond AG following the presentation of Strategy 2028. We are very pleased to welcome the CEO, Thies Rixen, and the CFO, Nora Wolters, who will guide us through the presentation and the results in a moment. After the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session in which you will be able to ask your questions via chat and audio line. With that, I would like to hand over to you, Mr. Rixen.
Yeah. Thank you, Mara. Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining the call. Nora and myself, we will present you the Strategy 2028. As you know, we both joined the board 2023, then we executed 2023, 2024, 2025, the Strategy 2025. We've developed in the meantime the Strategy 2028, which we'd like to present today. Nora will start with track record of 2025, so what we delivered. Nora.
Thank you, Thies. A warm welcome from my side. I would like to start with a quote of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "A goal without a plan is just a wish" . Three years ago, as Thies already mentioned, we started with Strategy 2025, and today we are taking stock. Following this, in the follow-up meeting, you will see the new strategy. Let's look back for the last past three years. The Strategy 2025 based on three strategic pillars: the focused business model, the go-to-market approach, and the efficiency program One q.beyond. If you look at these pillars, all were seen as visible successes in our financial reports this year. We doubled the EBITDA margin up to 7% in the current financial statement. This is the third year that we have a positive free cash flow.
One of our strongest goals, the positive consolidated net income, was reached this year. If you look on the second pillar, the strategic go-to-market, we established the direct and the indirect channels with about 85% revenue in the direct channel and 15% in the indirect channel. This is the basis for our go-to-market in the Baltic States and Spain that we already started this year. The third pillar, the efficiency program, One q.beyond. When we started together as a board team, we had to reduce complexity. q.beyond made a lot of acquisitions in the last years until 2025. So we integrated them, reduced complexity, and additionally we raised up the international subsidiaries. Now we have nearly 20% in the near and offshoring subsidiaries, starting from 3% at the end of 2022.
As you remember, 5% nearshore ratio means 2% of staff cost. So we did a great headway in the last three years or to say it in other words, we promised and we delivered. Our main goal in the last three years in the Strategy 2025 was profit over growth. I'm very proud to say we reached it. If you look on the guidance for 2025, you see that the guidance was reached. Especially we are very proud for the positive consolidated net income. The last year was a very challenging year, especially the United States and the politics of Donald Trump, and the tariffs are influencing the markets, especially the small and medium-sized companies in Germany that have a very strong export orientation. As you see, we are a very reliable partner.
Clear goals with a reliable plan, and we have demonstrated this in the Strategy 2025, and I would like to say implementation is our commitment. Please look at the details for the new strategy that Thies will now present to you. With this, I would like to hand over to you, Thies.
Thank you very much, Nora. Nora will join later, during the Q&A session. I'd like to present you now three things. One is who we are and why we win, then I'd like to present the details of the Strategy 2028 and also the financial outlook, including the guidance. Who we are and why we win. Most of you know us, so we are one of the leading IT service players in the German mid-market and likely to be in the European mid-market. We are well-positioned. Left-hand side of the slide, this you know. We have five core industries, 70% of the revenues is there. We have our own data center. We have BSI or C5 certified, so we can play the sovereign game.
We have a team of 1,000 tech experts. Nora mentioned already the international footprint, 14 locations in Germany. More or less headquarters in, or the heart is in Hamburg, and all over the place, and then we have Baltics, Iberica, and the U.S.. We are very proud of our customer relationships, so we have 100 direct customers and over 1,000 indirect customers. This is our indirect channel, so there's huge potential for us, developing these customers. You see the revenue split 85%-15%. When we approach customers, we are always try to do the Consult-to-Operate approach. We start with consultancy project-based business and like to convert it to recurring, to managed service business.
We have a portfolio, strong tech portfolio which covers all the needed topics of the German European midmarket. You see on the bottom that we have a reliable customer base which stays long with us, contract duration over four years, high satisfaction, and we are more and more able to cross-sell. Why I am telling you this? Because it gets more and more important in the AI space. With whom we play. We are well-positioned, and you see here with whom we play. This is important to understand, especially for the guys who don't know us. We are playing with, especially with DATAGROUP, with Allgeier, All for One. Adesso, for example, also Arvato. We're playing not so much or competing not so much with Deutsche Telekom or et cetera. Why is that?
Because they are not so much or so deep in the German midmarket. What we do is we combine our IT portfolio, tech portfolio with industry knowledge. We will do it more and more in our Strategy 2028, and we are playing very strongly our Consult-to-Operate approach. The market in Germany is big, but there are several, let's say, challenges, no? When we look at the market, we have 70,000 companies with a turnover above EUR 10 million. This is our addressable market, so to say, with EUR 50 billion IT services. When we look at the challenges, there are many of them. New to it is cost pressure, not only because of competition, because of rising hardware prices. We are the one who are helping the midmarket to overcome these challenges.
This we do because we are able to help them in their tech challenges and also more and more in their industry challenges. We think more of business and business model than in tech and therefore the Consult-to-Operate approach is getting more and more important. With that, we like to simplify and secure the mission criticality of our customers. How do we do that? We combining our IT portfolio, as I mentioned, with the industry expertise, especially in retail and logistics, we are very strong. We like to enhance it. I will come to that later.
We have this Consult-to-Operate approach, so everyone in the company is trained on this approach and is following the process so that we help the customer with consultancy and industry expertise, and then we transform it to managed service recurring revenue. We developed two examples to show you what we do so it gets more tangible. One is Röchling. It is one of the biggest customer. We just prolonged the contract for five years to 2031. There you see consult, integrate, operate. This is what we do. We started five years ago this consultancy. Then we integrated several technologies for them. For example, SAP.
We implemented cybersecurity and with SAP we implemented the transport management system, which is very important for the logistic value chains also, say, and we are operating it worldwide for 36 countries. This is what we mean by Consult-to-Operate, no? We start with consultancy, we implement tech projects. We know the processes, otherwise we cannot implement and adapt the transport management system, CargoWise, and then we run it and develop it even further. When Röchling, for example, is entering a new country, a new market, then we just roll out of the box all the solutions we have developed with them. Same as for Dr. Beckmann, known at least in or as a worldwide champion in, let's say, washing products or hygiene products, Fleckenseife in Germany.
There we started with the IT roadmap, IT strategy. We implemented SAP. We did the S/4HANA project. Microsoft, we rolled out several Microsoft services, and now we are in the engagement to run the whole tech suite with several millions. Of this kind of clients, we have several, and this we're doing more and more to have this Consult-to-Operate approach. Now, the Strategy 2028, scaling growth and margins. The ingredients are threefold. Here you see them. First one is more industry focus, second one is AI orchestration, and the third one is internationalization.
I like to walk you through each of the pillars. I will give you an overview and then give you more details what we mean by that. Industry focus is, as I told you, we are strong, so we have industry knowledge in every of the five industries. We are very strong in retail and logistics, and we like to enhance it to new industries, especially for energy and healthcare. There we are playing the macro trends. Why we are doing that is driving margin. We see it in retail and logistics. Let's say, the EBITDA margin, these two segments is above 10%, and we see a great possibility or likelihood that we have it also for several other industries.
AI orchestration will be for us a new portfolio. What we're doing right now, we are building agents for our clients. We see more and more agents coming up, as we all see, and someone at the end of the day has to orchestrate them, to manage them. There we see our sweet spot. For us, it's nothing more than managed service. If we manage applications, for example, it's more or less the same, from the method we are doing in our AI orchestration. This is driving top line, so it's a growth segment, and when we use it internally, we'll drive efficiency. If we have more industry focus, more industry expertise, we combine it with AI orchestration.
By the way, when you like to have vertical industry-specific AI agents, you need this kind of industry expertise, otherwise you can't build them. It's like a prerequisite to have industry expertise to build these industry-specific AI agents. Then we will roll it out. For example, for Germany, then for Spain, but we'll come to that later. Spain is half the size of Germany and third priority is the Baltic states. This as an overview. I will start with the industry focus. What we are doing there. Please keep in mind that we have as a blueprint our joint venture, logineer. With that, we are serving Röchling, and we like to do the same in the two industries. Here you see left-hand side our current industry focus.
I just put the numbers to retail and logistics. We are doing like EUR 50 million in retail. Dr. Beckmann is, for example, in retail, Tchibo and Fresenius and others also. Logistics is EUR 75 million. Manufacturing is strong. It's around EUR 40 million, but we at least in Germany know that manufacturing is under pressure. Then we have for sure financial, banking insurance and the public sector is also kind of size of EUR 10 million. We will focus on healthcare and energy, playing these two macro trends. One is aging population for healthcare, and the other one is, let's say, the decentralization of energy production, plus the energy demand of AI and all the other electronic products which are now coming up.
How do we do that? Therefore, it's important that we have this kind of experience for five years with logineer and Röchling. We'll do it mainly by M&A. We are aiming for a joint venture where we own like, let's say, at least 51%. The focus will be healthcare and energy, as I said. The approach is that we find companies where we can play this Consult-to-Operate approach, that we have the chance to get managed service, recurring revenues in the industries. Selection will be very strict KPIs-based selection. Most of you know that we have bought several companies, let's say five years ago. We have not bought anything, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
We learned a lot, and all the learnings we will put into the new M&A targets. The fourth one is the funding. We have this financial solid base with no debt and net liquidity and like to spend it for M&A, for share buyback and for dividends. The AI orchestration is for us, it's a logic, the logic way and with two arguments. One is if we have enough industry knowledge, then it's easier for us to play the AI game. Plus when we orchestrate them, when we manage them, it's in our DNA, we know how to do it. The market is big enough from our point of view, so we analyze the market.
As you see on the left-hand side, EUR 1.6 billion, it's big enough. The figures are for four years. It's big enough, it will evolve. When you see the middle, the regulatory environment and market drivers, it's more or less the same as I mentioned before. There's a lot of pressure coming from competition to the mid-market. There's a lot of regulatory pressure, let's say, the geopolitical threats or uncertainty is growing, and they're all looking for a way to build agents, or all our clients are looking for a way to build agents to combine them and to run them. For them, we will build, and this is our goal, in sovereign AI orchestration service. Why we can do that?
Because we see we have three structural competitive advantages. The first is we are sovereign by design. Now we have been delivering sovereign cloud services for years, and we know how to build them. In our private cloud, all what we do, it's all sovereign in a way. Not 100%, there is no 100%, but we know how to do it. The second argument is that we're part of the German Mittelstand, or a mid-market. We are, as q.beyond, we are also a mid-market player. We know what is important. We know how they think. We know how they feel. We know how you can execute projects. The third one is we know how to deliver and track record and delivering value.
Otherwise, no one will stay with us for 10 years, as I showed you in the beginning of the presentation. No one will trust their data, their infrastructure, their processes in our hands if we are not able to delivering value. These three advantages we will also adapt for AI. What will we do, and how do we will earn money? We will do four things. The first is, for sure we will run the, let's say, the infrastructure, the data, the logic. Huh? This we can do in our own data center, but we can do it also on partner infrastructure like Deutsche Telekom or like STACKIT. We are focusing on the service part. We are not going to invest millions and millions in hardware. That's very important, so we will do that. We will build AI agents.
If the customer wants to have an AI agent, maybe an industry-specific AI agent, we will build them for them. We have, like, built for ourselves. I will show you in a minute, 300 agents. We have built several for our clients right now. This, and there's a third element, we will combine with other agents, let's say third-party agents from SAP, from Microsoft, whoever. We will build them, and then the fourth element, we will orchestrate them. We like to manage them so that the clients are working in the way they should do technically. The second element is that the governance of the company, that then operate like they should do.
There's, let's say, the compliance part, that everything is as it should be. This will be the biggest part. This is a recurring part. We can also execute, and this is very important for us, the Consult-to-Operate approach, as I mentioned several times. We have 4x the chance to generate business. How do we do that? We lay in 2026, we lay the foundation. We are already in it. 2027, we will speed up. In 2028, we will scale. We analyzed, let's say, the average revenue per customer, and this will be EUR 500 thousand per customer per year. You see left-hand side what we do.
There will be project-based business in it as managed service business, and the main part will be managed service. This we like to do not only in Germany, we like to roll it out to Europe, and starting with Spain and Baltics. Here are some more specifics into the foundation. We are in the middle of it. As I said, we are in the middle of it. We start at 2025. We have built several agents. We have a seven-figure pipeline with, let's say, 50 deals in it right now. We are convinced that we get the first 20 clients this year. With this revenue as I just described, and then we'll do it more and more in the coming years, so 2027, 2028.
We will build our own platform as a management platform, and on this platform, we will set up client after client. We will transform ourselves. We keep the IT service provider business. We will enhance it with industry expertise, so getting more margin and value out of it, and then we will combine it with the AI portfolio as the sovereign AI orchestrator for the European mid-market, as I mentioned several times. This is, let's say, the heart of the Strategy 2028. Here you see several agents we built for our clients, for ourselves. We have already deployed 300 AI and automation agents for ourselves. This is like in four weeks we are able to, AI agents we are able to let's say to save the amount for four or five headcounts.
This is a current trend. Having this in mind, you can imagine what this means for us, but also what it means for other clients where they can enhance their competitive situation. Our focus is for sure in IT operation and security and also for customer service. We are doing a lot of things. We have built for human resources and recruiting agents. We're doing all the knowledge management for ourselves. Procurement is a big thing.
It's also for procurement that you can save a lot of, let's say, license costs if you need not so much SAP any longer, and especially for the governance with all the regulatory things, you can automate with AI very easily for us and also for our clients. The third element is the internationalization. I covered several times. We'll start with Germany for sure. Spain is half this when you look at the IT service markets. It's half the size of Germany. Different dynamic. They're growing much faster than we do. Third priority is Baltics. It's a smaller market but still with EUR 2 billion some business to do. Let's see which market we can enter, w e can enter also.
Our aim is to have, in end of 2028, 10% of our business outside Germany, and we are in the middle of rolling out our core portfolio. We will design our AI portfolio as a European portfolio. Important to mention is also that the nearshore quota, Nora mentioned 20%, we will push to 40%, you know, also to driving margin also with the nearshore quota. To be honest, we have to balance the AI effects and the nearshore effects, but we're aware of it and we'll find a way to use both levers. This brings me to the financial outlook and value creation.
When we execute the Strategy 2028, we like to have a company with EUR 250 million of revenues and at least a margin of 10%. The components are we'd like to grow the business by 5%. Once which knows us, we told you or reported last year that we, let's say, optimize our sales. We have new guys on board, very experienced sales guys, which we know for quite a while. With this approach, we like to grow the business again 5%. This will bring us to, let's say, in three years to EUR 210 million. M&A strategy, let's say, another EUR 20-30 million of revenue with this joint venture approach. Very, not so much cash needed.
Then with the AI orchestration, we like to have EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million of revenue at, in the end of 2028. This will bring us to EUR 250 million of revenue and at least a margin by 10%. The margin, the main drivers will be AI, nearshore, and then the additional business we get over M&A and AI. In a nutshell, what will we do? We will increase our customer value and our margin by combining what we have as IT portfolio with the industry expertise.
We like to get over M&A deals. We build a new portfolio, which we call AI orchestration, where we will buy or build and combine the agent, and we run it for our clients so that they have not the hassle to do it. We are convinced, or we see out of the discussions that they don't have the expertise for that. We will roll it out to Europe and position ourselves as the, let's say sovereign IT service and AI orchestrator for the European mid-market. This is our strategy in a nutshell. At the end, I'd like to give you some details about the guidance for this year. I'd like to invite Nora again to the stage so that we can.
If there are some questions, we can answer them. This is our guidance. In terms of revenue, and you know all the, let's say all the trouble in the world right now. This is a cautious guidance, especially for revenues and also for EBITDA. We like to say we have like EUR 182-EUR 190 in revenues, and then EBITDA EUR 10-EUR 17 for next year for sure. Nora and myself, we will work hard to get the EUR 190 and the EUR 16 EBITDA, but we are not quite sure what will happen in the world, so we took the spread to be more or less on the safe side. With that, I'd like to thank you for your attention, and we are happy to get your questions. Thank you very much.
Yes. Thank you very much for your presentation. We will now move on to the Q&A session. For a dynamic exchange, we recommend your questions personally via the audio line. To do that, please click on the Raise Hand button. If you're connected by phone, please use the key combination star key nine to activate the question and then star key, star key six to unmute yourself. If you don't have any opportunity to speak freely, you are also welcome to place your questions in our chat. We have already received a question in our chat from Mr. Ekberg. Actually, three questions. I will read them out loud for you. First question is: When is the earliest possible date to start buybacks?
Yeah. I will take this one. The first possible date is mid of August. I think the 17th of August we can start the buyback, and we are able to buy, let's say, 2.5 million shares back with the current value. This is the allowance of the shareholder meeting to take this question also. 17th of August.
Thank you. His second question is, will you consider selling the data center this year and return the money to shareholders, or will you keep it for now to build further value first?
Yeah. Value first. We will keep it for now, to play the sovereign, let's say, to be sovereign in a way. We have a lot of customer demands. Let's say if this converts into business and, so our current approach is to keep the data center, and to push it to the maximum value, and then sell it in the midterm.
Perfect. His last question is: When do you roughly think you will achieve this acceptable level of transaction value to start looking into selling the data center?
As I said, we think midterm for now. Midterm is two years. For now, we like to push it to a certain value or to the maximum value. Pipeline is good, demand is good, and then we can sell it only once, and we will do it in the right way and also to maximize the return for the shareholders.
Thank you so much. We have also some raised hands. The first one from Mr. Kindermann. Please, you can unmute yourself now.
Yes. Thank you. Hello.
Hello.
My first question on the AI revenues you currently have, could you share how many customers you already have and what revenue you did with them in the last year?
We have like several dozens. It depends. We have some in Microsoft, we have some for SAPs, or they use this Joule for the Joule agent. We have built up our own competency where we have like 10 customers. The revenue is small. It's under EUR 1 million last year. We see it's growing. As I said, we have now a funnel with 50 deals in it, with a seven-figure pipeline. We see the growth rate is accelerating.
Okay. Thanks. Maybe to specify with the AI orchestration where you targeted 20 clients for in 2026. How many are from these 20 do you already have?
Yeah, like 10.
Okay.
Like 10. We will get for sure another 10 this year, and then we will build a platform for it. This application we build a platform for it to manage the AI agents. I think there will be. What we see is there will be they're all building agents, all the clients are building agents. There will be a point in time, as we have seen in the cloud business or in the application business, where someone has to manage them. Therefore we're building the platform so that we can, let's say, next year, 2027 and 2028, play these orchestration or use this platform to generate revenues in the AI agent orchestration.
Okay. The EUR 500,000 per year per customer would also be a target for 2027 or 2028?
Yeah. This will be evolved. What we see is that if you build an agent, it depends a little bit, but it's project business, so it's EUR 1 or EUR 100-EUR 200 per agent for now. For sure, the price will go down. We will be getting better and better and better. Then someone has to run their agent and has to integrate the agents, has to update the agents, and has to control the agents. This will be our job, huh, as we now do with application processes or with cloud services. This will be the focus.
Okay. Thank you. That's from my side.
Thank you so much, Mr. Kindermann. We have more raised hands. The next one from Mr. Nilsson. You may unmute yourself now.
Thank you very much. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes.
Great. I want to continue on AI. I mean, could you give us some example how your industry expertise have influenced the agents you have made for customers so far?
Yeah. For example, if you like to automate how the contracts and logistics. If you're in the logistics area, if you like to automate how the contracts are getting into the transport management system, then you need to understand how the contracts are coming and what is in the contracts, and what is important for the logistic company. If you don't have knowledge about the processes and all the specialties, then you're not able to build an agent who can automate this kind of process. This is what we mean by it. You need to understand how they work and what are their challenges, the client challenges. Otherwise, you're not able to build an agent which is able to cover 100% of the process.
I see. Great. Also in general, what is the interest in AI agents from your customers at this point? Are they ready for this new technology and willing to invest in it?
What we see is the main focus is automation, is process automation, because of the pressure of the pressure from competition, of the cost pressure. They need to get rid of costs and to stay in the game. Therefore it's automation is everything, and therefore you need this kind of industry expertise. Otherwise, you're building agents which can be copied by others and then you end this commodity price gamble. We like to stay out of it and build agents which have a moat, which have a barrier to entry. It's automation all over the place. The technology, yeah, it's complicated. Everyone can use AI, but only a few can really get value out of it. We must make sure that we get the right talent or build the right talent and be better as our client. That's more or less the prerequisite for it.
Okay. Great. Regarding the internationalization focus, I mean, taking non-Germany sales from 3%-10%, I mean, it won't have a huge effect on the group in total. I mean, could you elaborate a bit why it's a wise move to go into the Baltics and Spain rather than to focus 100% on Germany?
Germany has positive and not so positive macro environment right now, and we like to balance it. For us it's. We started with the internationalization though with the delivery hubs four years ago. Now we have 20%. For us it's the same journey. Why we start with Spain and Baltics, because we have great teams there. We know the market. We have a good network. This doesn't mean that we stop there, and therefore I talked about priorities. For sure we will start with Spain because it's a very big market. Our third priority is politics. We are able to balance and to or to be not so independent from Germany and also due to to get used to roll out our portfolio to different countries.
Great. One last question from me. I mean, regarding the discussion of potentially selling the data centers, how will that affect your profitability? Can you reach 10% EBITDA also without those data centers?
Interesting question. I have not thought about it or we have not thought about it. For us, in the 2028 figures a data center is included, and all the revenues we are generating is. We can say, I cannot calculate it right now what the impact without the data centers. In this 215, 10%, the data center is included.
I see. That's all for me. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Mr. Nilsson. We have another question by Mr. Preis. Mr. Preis, you may unmute yourself now. Sorry.
Hi. Do you already copy?
Yes, we hear you.
Cool. Thanks a lot for being allowed to ask a question. The numbers have been a bit odd because of the reverse split. I might say that maybe next to Inverse Cramer reverse splits are the biggest red flags in the stock market that there are. Yeah. Basically buying back your own shares is the only viable reason that can be positive for shareholder value to do a reverse split. Basically that's good, but it needs to be communicated. When I took you up as an investment case, the shares were about EUR 0.76, and I had understood that you have cash of about EUR 0.43 per share net. Now, the shares at EUR 3.50 are even cheaper than they were at the time, adjusted for the split.
I understand that more than 50% of free cash about the capitalisation of the company are used to buy back shares. Only 10%. I mean, of course the six months you cannot do anything about it. I think you would have to deliver on your promise saying that basically right now buying back your own shares is the best investment that you are seeing in the market. 10% I think are not what people like me had been looking for.
Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. You're saying we'd like to see a higher buyback.
Well, the case was you said that your shares are the best thing you can think of. Yeah? If you have more than 50% in net cash of the cap, then there is something in between 10%-50%, I guess.
I said also that we have an allowance to buy back 10% of Grundkapital. I cannot translate it. This equals 2.5 million shares. What we're allowed to do right now, and no one hinders us to go back to the next annual shareholder meeting and ask for a higher percentage.
Are you going to do that?
When the first program is going in the right way or the first tender is going in the right way, why not?
Good. That's good to hear. I mean, basically, I really like your case of not being or staying too dependent on the U.S. players. I think that's a great game to play, and I also appreciate you keeping the data center. You said that we promise, we deliver, and I think you have to do that. One more technical question. I just asked my wife who heads the Allianz SE commercial about the offshoring and nearshoring quota of the guys providing the services to them. She said that Infosys and the likes have more like 80% offshore quota. I understood you are right now at 20% nearshore and need to accelerate that to 40%, or want to accelerate that to 40%. Nearshore, not offshore.
It's just the difference in the type of customer, of course, Allianz is not quite Mittelstand, that you can allow yourself to have such a high onshore quota compared to their consultants.
Yeah. That's the main reason. We are providing German Mittelstand, so they are very reluctant in terms of offshore. They like to keep the data in the EU, so you know you are to nearshore. The history of the German Mittelstand to allow players like us to deliver out of Germany is like two to three years now. So it's a different picture than talking to a global Fortune 500 player like Allianz. They have done it since 10-15 years. They're purely globalized. It's a different picture. I would say it's a different picture.
Okay. You don't see much danger in that kind of competition from Infosys and the likes?
No, no.
With your customers?
The regulatory defends us, let's say. This is the main defender, and it's a big entry barrier for them. We don't see it.
Good to hear. Thank you for your answers. Just to conclude, I think you should communicate that in a bit more progressive way that you are still trying to buy back shares. I mean, that the shares are now lower than before you communicated the buyback. Yeah, you should do something about that maybe.
Oh, okay. Thank you.
Thanks a lot. Bye.
Bye.
Thank you, Mr. Preis, for your questions. We have one more raised hand from Demeir Agi. You may unmute yourself now.
Oh, I'm sorry. I should have changed my name maybe.
All right.
This is Philip. Hi, guys. Hi, Thies.
Hello.
Hi. Hi, Nora. Thanks for the presentation. My first question would be regarding the data center and the 2028 guidance. Maybe remind me, what is the current utilization of the data center, and what is the implied utilization within your 2028 guidance?
What is the first one? What is the value?
No, the utilization.
Oh, okay.
Of the data center.
Utilization is like what we have in kind of a kind of free capacity, huh? Free capacity.
Exactly.
Like this.
That's what I mean.
We have like this, we have sold last year 10%, so we're left at like 900 sq m. Last year it was 1,000 sq m, now we have 900 sq m. This was very. Let's say, not very, but this was. For us it was not what we expected last year in terms of selling. When we look at the funnel, we are able to. We have good deals in the funnel. Let's say the.
Disadvantage.
Disadvantage.
The disadvantage is that it takes some time to close the deals, so we are able to sell end of the year, let's say 75%, right now. We have a funnel of selling 75% of the data center free capacity, and this is included in the, let's say, guidance 2028.
That you get it to zero, the vacancy basically.
Yeah, sure.
Okay, understood. That's helpful. Maybe regarding this year's guidance, the lower end of the EBITDA guidance, is it pure macro stress implied there or is it also incremental AI and internationalization investments you have to take?
No, it's pure macro stress.
Okay. All right. Coming back to the near-shore target of 40%, question one, when do you want to achieve that? Question two, what gross margin effect would that have?
The gross margin is?
Up to EUR 3 million, and we will reach it at the end of 2028.
That sounds promising. Another one on the AI revenues you wanna make until 2028. You said EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million would be your target. Can you give us a bit more color on the margin profile there?
It's hard to say because we don't know the market environment. At least we're aiming for a gross profit of 30%. For sure we are aiming for a margin versus higher in managed service right now. Let's see. This is what we see right now. At least it will be the margin of managed service, so we are aiming for 50% recurring revenue.
50%?
That we have to see how good we are, huh?
The EUR 500,000 you mentioned per client, this is recurring, right?
No, that's the average. This is the average revenue. So when you build agent and you run it, and this will convert over time. So first you build it, you build the agent, then maybe it's 50/50. Over time, if you run more and more agents, it will be more and more recurring revenue.
Okay.
This is a long-term play. We applied more or less the same logic we see in managed service, huh? There you see that when you do it in the right way, you get more and more revenue each year because you're running more and more process the application infrastructure.
Okay, understood. Yeah. I'm interested to see where this is heading one year from now maybe. Regarding M&A, we're really clear right now in this call that you're targeting healthcare and energy. You also mentioned, I think it was in the last call, that you wanted to buy some companies last year but you didn't get them. How concrete is that right now? Will we see news flow in that regard this year?
You know that, Philipp, that's always hard to say.
Yeah.
Because we have not signed it. Last year we were very reluctant on price, no? Not reluctant, cautious on price. We have some targets, especially in healthcare, which are well-developed, and we will if we get to the table, then you will see news flow. Not floor, news flow. This is for healthcare. For energy, we are, let's say, in the screening phase, this will take longer. Healthcare is, let's say, hot.
Okay. You will not, just because you lost out on some deals because of price last year, you won't tend to overpay. You will remain hands at it on that one.
Yeah, yeah. No, we will not change our strategy. We will keep it and, you know us a little bit now, right now.
Yeah.
We will take care of the money.
Yeah. Sounds good. Yeah. Perfect. That's it from my side, guys. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you very much as well. We do have one more question in our chat. We have been to that question, it's regarding share buybacks, but I will anyways read it out loud for you. It's again by Mr. Ekberg. He writes, "Regarding share buybacks, what is the maximum premium price level you are allowed to buy on? Can you buy both over market and blocks at premium?”.
I think we are free in the way we buy back shares. It's on us. If you ask us right now, we think more about the tender and there's no limit as far as I know, no price limit. For sure we will be very cautious on putting the right price in the tender. It's more a tender, if you ask me right now, and I don't see any price max limit to it. I hope this answer the question.
I guess so. Thank you so much. We have not received any more questions or risen hands, ladies and gentlemen. If you have any further questions, please place them in the chat box or raise your hand by clicking on the Raise Hand button. I think there are no further questions so far, and everybody seems perfectly happy. Mr. Rixen, Mrs. Wolters, we therefore come to the end of today's earnings call, I guess. Thank you for your participation and obviously your questions. If you have any further questions at a later time, please do not hesitate to contact investor relations. A big thank you also to you, Mr. Rixen and Mrs. Wolters, for your presentation and for taking the time to answer all the questions. We wish you all a good remaining week. Goodbye. I hand over one last time to you, Mr. Rixen, for the last final remarks.
Yeah. We'd like to thank you for your time and we hope that you see the way we are taking. The foundation is what we did the last year. This we will, let's say, enhance with industry and AI, and we like to develop the q.beyond to a European player. That's in the strategy for the next few years and we are happy to give you an update soon. Thank you very much.