Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the earnings call of Serviceware SE, regarding the preliminary figures of the financial year 2024 and 2025. I would like to welcome the company's CFO, Harald Popp, who will guide you through the results in a moment, followed by a Q&A session, where we would be happy to take your questions via chat. With that, I already hand over to you, Mr. Popp.
Thank you very much for the introduction, and welcome, everybody. Good afternoon, and good morning to you, for those of you who are at the U.S. at the time, a little bit ahead of us, or yeah, and the ones who are in Europe. Thank you very much for spending the time and the interest in Serviceware. We will talk about the figures of the last year today, and also give some outlook for the next year. We have put a little bit of ex course into slides today, because you might have seen that software companies are a little bit under pressure because of artificial intelligence. I will elaborate a little bit on that because I think it's important, and I think there are some...
hopefully some news for you, which makes you more confident, especially in the stock of Serviceware. As it's announced here, we will discuss the preliminary numbers. The final ones will be published at the 27th of March. Yes, 2026. I do not expect very material changes from today's figures, so therefore, I mean, we can talk about the things today, and I do not expect any changes or material changes for the final figures. Yeah, we don't wanna go, or we will not go into much the equity story, as I know that you are all very deep into the equity story.
I will more elaborate on the figures and the plan for next year, but there might be some points where I do have to explain some more things. Then I will go into our business model more deeply. I will talk about hopefully not more than 30 minutes. This morning, we had a German call. It took about 35 minutes, and then you have the rest of the hour to place the questions via the chat, as introduced. This morning, we were very proud having a record participant rate, which really doubled from last year.
The interest in Serviceware is going up, and hopefully, this will somehow will be reflected in the enterprise value, the following weeks, days, and months. Thank you very much. We go directly into the presentation. You might know this slide, and it's very important that we always remind us what Serviceware is doing. Serviceware enables people to achieve their ambitions in the service economy. Why I always repeat this is because of the addition revolutionized by AI. You all know that in the early 2023, the public release of ChatGPT disrupted our industry and modified, of course, our vision, because everything we do today is with AI, and it helps a lot and to take it in advance.
We do think that we are well prepared, and we do think that we will profit it from AI, so our software gets even, as our expectation, more available with AI. I will elaborate on that further on. We will see the following slides how this has impacted our work at Serviceware, because, I mean, AI is a disruption, and you have to distinguish, is it, do companies profited or not profited from? I think we at Serviceware, we will profit from the artificial intelligence disruption. What was the last year? The last year, before we, we, we discuss the KPI figures, we believe it's important to identify the main drivers of our ESM business and explain how these drivers make us optimistic for the coming fiscal year.
First, we did grow in a double-digit way, turning the EUR 113 million. It was in the upper third of the, of the guidance. We increased in significantly our EBIT and EBITDA. Since the IPO, it was the first year with a positive EBIT. If we go down further the line, it's even more than the EBIT. I come to some influences of this later on. I think this is a very positive thing, that we not only grew, but turning into to black numbers again, which we expect going to see going forward. Of course, we strengthened the international footprint, but to take it in advance, you might see that the figures for internationalization did not reflect it fully in the P&L account.
But we did win important customers in Asia, in the U.S. Even also the U.S. customer is about to update and cross-create this installation, therefore, we expect more international revenue this year. Of course, we expand our regions in the Italian market. Also, this is something for the future. We do expect from the, yeah, circumstances we see right now, yeah, the politics helps us not in the U.S., of course not, because they have a strengths mandate by American, it helps us in the rest of the world, where a lot of CIOs I spoke in the last weeks, internationally and nationally, think about how can they decoupling from American software.
These thoughts or this discussion going on in the enterprises, and I think this will help us in the future. Of course, our AI first execution, which we went to the market on the 1st December 2024, helps us because we have now an AI native core of the Serviceware Platform. We won a lot of customers there with our new AI process engine, released again in 1st December 2024. We have it on the market now for nearly 15 months. What helps also a lot, and this is a result of our thoughts since back to... since 2019, we get a recognition from the Forrester Wave, and we're a strong performer and one of the less European software companies.
We were in this wave, and think this is also combined with this political thing going on right now in the world. It helps us a lot that customers and also partners worldwide were seeing that the Serviceware is offering solution that will help their business, and therefore we are very optimistic that will help us to go forward and not only strengthens our international footprint, but also bringing it to growth and revenue growth. I'll have to look. We coming to our performance, so the key indicator indicator figures. Before we come to this, we see the figures here. We grew by 11.7%, as I said, the upper quarter.
Since two years, we publish our service revenue beside the SaaS revenue. The line, as you know, the last seven years is the service SaaS revenue line. This increased nearly 30% from last year, but if you look into deeper, the two lines, then it's separated by nearly EUR 77 million of SaaS revenue and only nearly EUR 13 million in service revenue. You could see that the service net revenue went down again another time since 2022. It's going down repeatedly, repeatedly every year. That is due to the business, the last business, to the SaaS revenue we do.
We do not need so much service anymore. That is also our expectation, that we do not go to zero with the service revenue, not at all, but of course, it will go further down. Therefore, the SaaS growth you see here was the last year, 36%, which was also a record high number in terms of relative growth. Coming to the contractual liabilities, you will see that there is more to expect in the following years. When we look to the EBITDAR and EBIT line, then we have to keep two things in mind, which are very important. Because last year, the fiscal year 2020...
the year after last, before last year, the fiscal year 2022, 2023, 2024, was supported in the EBIT line by a EUR 1.7 million capitalization of R&D costs. This is a must, you have to do if you develop software which is not on the market. This year, we developed the AI process engine, but did not sell it or did, did not offer it on the market, so we had to capitalize our R&D cost for that part. What we usually do not do, other software vendors are doing it. We don't do it. We, we rather put it in the, in the cost. This means that this number, EUR 3.2 million, the year or the...
the fiscal year 2022, 2024, was $1.7 million higher, lower compared to this year, the EUR 5 million of EBITDAR. So you have to compare the EUR 5 million to nearly EUR 1.5 million the year before, because the EUR 3.2 million was supported by a EUR 1.7 million capitalization of R&D costs. That makes the growth even better concerning this 57.8% growth, which was really significantly. And when it comes to the EBIT line, we have the contradictional effect this year, because of course, if you put something to the balance sheet, in the following years, you have to depreciate it year after year, and that happened the first time this year.
The EUR 980,000 in EBIT means that around EUR 800,000 were deducted before. If we don't look to this effect, we did the past years because we had to, because the rule by IFRS, the figure would be much higher this year, the EBIT, EUR 800,000. On all, that means that our EBIT would have been additional EUR 2.5 million higher than the previous year if we wouldn't have done the capitalization of R&D costs.
We will not do it in the future if we don't have to, but now we can compare the figures in the future very good, and that is to be expected that we do another better step towards software profitability this year. You see that the ratio of recurring revenues went up to 82%. I think it's not the end. It will be, my impression, goes over 90%, like we can say, because we still have a lot of one-time revenues concerning services, but also licenses. Therefore, this recurring revenue will increase, but also increased last year from 78% to 80.3%, and the operating cash flow went down a little bit due to some pre-financing deals.
In that time, we, we also secured the bigger, the bigger junks, because to avoid some, some cash losing when companies go bankruptcy. We have a very strict reputation, how to say, reputation check before we do bigger deals with customers, but of course, you never know what the future brings. Especially in our core market, Germany, you see that the circumstances for making business are not the best right now. We're getting better, I think, but we have to watch at the fact that we look that, that our customers do not go out of business, and therefore, we are very conservative in this matter.
If the junk is, is higher, we, we finance, then of course, we make insurance that we get the money back if there is some, yeah, going out of business of our customers. The second side of our KPI is that the cash increased a little bit due to the same fact I explained the slide before. The equity arises again. I think it's also the first time after a long time that our equity is rising again.
Of course, the equity ratio went down due to the fact that the balance sheet total went up by 10%, 10.2%, and that is due to the fact that the contractual liabilities you see went up another time in a row by 21%, nearly 21% to nearly EUR 100, and I do expect that this will going up this actual year again. Then you will see that we have put some cash to the side in government bonds and really secure assets to try to have also a conservative cash policy to not lose any cash because we might need it for future activities like a cash buyback. Cash buyback, no, not cash buyback. A share buyback or some acquisitions.
I come to that later on, especially the acquisitions, because it's a window of opportunity right now. I will come to that when we talk about opportunities concerning artificial intelligence. Here you see again, the numbers. We have still a very strong SaaS momentum with a growth of 36.1%. The dynamic of the growth of contractual liabilities slowed down last year. Yes, you can see it if you look at the figures, you also have always to take in account, which is the duration of a contractual liability, it's getting more dynamic, I think, in the future again. We saw the same effect in the past. 21.
20, 2020, 202 1, was a little bit slower growth, and then it, it, it went up, and it is nothing, it's. One effect, of course, is the migration to SaaS, but also what kind of business you do today and put it to the profit and loss account, and that you will see the first quarter, short of lot of activity, which unfortunately will not appear in the first quarter in the, in the, in the profit and loss account or in the revenues, but will appear in the contractual liabilities. Therefore, I'm pretty, yeah, sure, confident, not sure, I'm confident that we will accelerate this growth again. Also, the duration went down. That means, how long will this contractibility fill up or last in the profit and loss account?
That shortens, so the higher, the relative higher share of the EUR 97 million will appear this year in the P&L account, and the last year it was less. Therefore, this is a good sustainability of revenue and a good forecast for our for our this year's revenue forecast. Here, the left chart, you see how the lines develop. Keep in mind that the the strongest line, SaaS and services, is divided. I showed already the figures, but it's still overall a 23% SaaS services CAGR. This year was over this over this average CAGR. I think we will see it, of course, also in the future.
What you also see, and that is something I have you focus on, not because it's very nice, to better understand our guidance for the, for the next year. You see that there was EUR 6 million nearly, which the licenses went down. If we also take some other one-time revenues, then it, it sums up really at, at, at, at EUR 10 million. EUR 10 million less in revenues has to be replaced by recurring revenue. As recurring revenue is not acquired today and released in a profit and loss account today, that means that could be some unlikely event, that our revenue next year does not grow with 20%.
I will come to this on this later on, but I will just highlight this to keep in mind when we come to the guidance for the next year. The middle chart shows that our main cost driver remains stable. Our revenue is growing, that comes by leveraging AI internally and putting work to our artificial colleagues, which supported us doing the work. Compared to last year, we have 28 natural persons less, but we are three artificial to colleagues more, and I expect this trend going forward. Not that we lose so much human employees, but that we raise a lot of artificial persons who work for us. We integrated some, as I said, some new AI colleagues in the back office and of course, in the R&D.
R&D department is working with artificial intelligence nearly since 2023 or before. What is new now, that you really can get or put the work from a natural person to AI person. For example, we have one person called Fridolin. He is in charge of reading contracts and putting red flags to our contracts for what we learn. He costs EUR 35 a month, EUR 400 a month. The average salary is about nearly EUR 100,000 a year for human for a human colleague. Therefore, you can see that there's a lot of efficiency lying ahead of us when it comes to the cost.
That does not mean that we see next year EUR 30 million in HR costs, but the biggest cost driver, we are happy in raising our revenue, but meanwhile, we still. We keep the HR cost stable. With AI, this is one effect. On a cost side, we can keep that stable and also can do more because with less money, we can do the same output or even more output. This is very important to keep in mind. So you might sense that there's a big cost efficiency potential ahead of us if we leverage AI consequently. That is our main job in managing the company, that we keep this AI disruption aware, and that everybody knows either he uses AI or he's getting out of business because AI will stay.
It will not go away, we better adapt it very early than, than too late. Therefore, we also bought some bank, a bunch of AI agents, which we now, step by step, will harvest. My personal opinion is that in two to three years, we had a lot more artificial colleagues doing the work, and that will be steered and controlled by human beings. Also, that means that human beings need more another qualification to do so. Employees who will not adapt this will have difficulties in the future. The chart on the right side is a real is a result of that.
If you raise the revenues and keep the cost stable, then of course, you will do a better EBIT, EBITDA, EBITDA in the future. Here are some other KPIs, and if I turn your eyes on the, on the left-hand chart, then you see that there's a recurring revenue growth, and it's stronger. That overall growth means that the same reliable recurring revenue is growing, and this is, of course, good for the future. More security resilient business model, of course, and that is very important. If that grows, you know that our forecast and our stability in revenue for the future is, is very good, especially if you combine it with our churn rate, which is still very low.
Of course, the little upgoing trend, from 3.1 to now 3.5, is due to this migration we went through, going from, yeah, a non-AI architectural software to a AI-native software, and I, I come to this point, this very, very important point later on. In the middle chart, you see how the international or non-German revenues develop. To be honest, I'm not very satisfied or I'm, I'm... Yeah, it's not good what we see here, because the revenue turned down. As I said, not only today, but all the time, our destiny and our success lies in the international business because it's more profitable, and of course, it gives us more strength.
The good answer is that we see a bigger closed contract rate in 2025, so the base from where we are is better. We see some churn in Switzerland, and that is the main reason why we churn the figure down. When we look to international business, going forward in the rest of the world, not Europe, but in Asia and the U.S., we will see that there was a growth and there will be a growth further on. Also, the gra- cash increased again, due to, to the operating cash flow, which was, was increased. We now have no bank, bank loans anymore, so we do think that we can do better also in the, in the future. This is what the analysts think about us.
The, the, the price target was actualized by Montega on the February 10th, and you see it's EUR 25, and also Karim has a good, good, stable, growing price target. That means, from a personal opinion, it's a good, good frame window right now, or window of opportunity. If you get more shares or if you wanna step in Serviceware, then I think it's a good opportunity, because over a time, the, the, how to say, the attitude in how AI will react with software companies will differentiate, and there will be software companies that really suffer from the AI disruption, and there will be software companies really profiting from.
Then you, you separate these two companies, and these companies who will profit it from will be still having a good business model with good, good margins. At minimum upside now, when you concerning these analyst quotes, are relying on that, it's more than 70%. I think it's a good opportunity, and you also see that Dirk Martin and me did not change any of our shares. We are still at 31.4% each, which gives the company a stable background to go to the future. Before we come to the outlook, I want to elaborate, as I said, a little bit about this debate going on. Is AI destructing or really bringing down business model of software companies?
To say it in advance, I don't think so at all, because there are two layers we have to differentiate. If we have the business software, then we talk about the infrastructure layer of a company's value creation. This will not disappear. It will not disappear if AI getting stronger, because AI is intelligence layer intertwined with the infrastructure. Infrastructure doesn't appear when intelligence improve, it becomes more critical. Here we come to the point that AI, if you use it without a software, becomes a little bit risky if it comes to governance, to data integrity, to trust, reliability. This is something which is more important than ever when we talk about software and AI.
Of course, you see these articles about OpenAI or some agents which do everything on its own. They write software, they use the software, and so on and so forth. You have to give the data, the keywords, the credentials. You have to give them data. If not, they take some data, which is not sure. They hallucinate. There's a lot of risk leaving AI on its own, but implementing it in your software, leverage the software, and that's what we did with our AI process engine, and that is why enterprise software remains essential to the value creation. It will not disappear. The debate is traditional software versus AI- native software .
While we think that traditional software, if they do not change, will suffer over time, also, the business model, we do think that AI- native software as AI process engine will profit from the AI disruption. AI versus software is not the right debate we see so far. Therefore, we are very confident and optimistic about our business model. If we come to this debate, then AI agents are integral players in business operations. As I said, we use them today as colleagues. We use them today in, in, in steering our software. We use them today in developing our software. That is all true, but they're integral players, and only if you integrate them in your business operations, they give you the value.
Otherwise, they give you value, but with a, with a very high risk, and you are not aware of the, of the, of the result. For example, if you do not have a certified database, which you send the AI agents on, then you get to get in trouble. And also, traditional software was built for human users, not for controlling and being used by AI agents, so it's vice versa. With our software, AI agents can work with our software, and we use AI agents to, to leverage our software. So it's both directional. That's only possible if you have the right architecture. And as, for example, Mr. Andreessen in the Silicon Valley said, he's a very good investor. He invented Netscape, and, and he knows what's going on.
He said, "You have to do AI first version of nearly everything, especially software." That's what we did since 2023. We did this step. Traditional software manufacturers are sometimes about to do this step, and I can tell you, as you could see, the last three, two years, it's very heavy and painful, because of course, you have to deal with the customers, you have to deal with the technologies. Today, we have on the market AI-native software, and AI agent will maximize the output of the AI- native software, like the alternative service or platform, hence drive demand for the platform. We do think that AI will drive the demand for our software.
As I said, you might remember that last summer, a big software company, an American software company, laid off 5,000 people in the support department. We all know that they did not do it because the work were getting less, or they have some problems in their profit and loss account. They did it because they could do the work with AI, but not AI alone. For example, they do need a software like ours, that they can leverage the AI agent, and that AI agents are doing the job with our software and not alone, or just the software with human beings. That is a mixed setup for the future, where we are, we do think are well prepared for it.
We think that AI is accelerator and a margin differentiator for Serviceware. Why do we think this? It's a trusted platform for AI adoption. As more AI agent are deployed, and I'm pretty sure we will see this development, that AI agents are taking over the work of human beings, but they are controlled by human beings, and you have to take care about governance, trust, reliability, data protection, compliance, and that is not provided by AI. Therefore, you need software which is leveraging this AI, and only software with AI-native architecture can handle this job. Again, software companies who are not turning into this AI age, will suffer, we do think.
Companies who do the painful step to do everything from scratch in a AI architecture will profited, will profitate from, from the AI development and the disruption. Also, I know I had a lot of talks to investors the last weeks, and they do think, well, that the time of the very profitable business model is over. They do think that the margin we saw in the past will not appear in the, in the, in the future. I do think we are on a very low profitable margin, so I think there's a lot potential, but this is not my, my, my reasoning. My reasoning is different. AI will lower costs, as I showed, for development of software, for service delivery, and for internal processes.
That was a last 25 years, always the same, software pricing was not determined by customer value, it was determined by customer value and not by cost structure. That is very important to keep in mind if we talk about business model of software. You have to have a modern architecture, and then you can price your software about the value the customer gets, and that is more important than looking who is working with the software. The future for us as the AI-native platform, we expect revenue and margin growth while some of our customers and not prospect customers will suffer because with their current provider, they will facing some legacy vendors not delivering the AI format and additional monetization of AI through value-based pricing.
I think there's also one important fact, we turned the value-based pricing on last autumn. We reported about in a press release in January, and I think it's important now that even if people are less natural human beings are working with software, can also get a better price, because you get your pricing from the value of the software and not by seat or by budget. We did this with the first customer last year, and in our pipeline, there are more customers who will adopt this value-based pricing because it shows that the risk for the customer is less, and we can calculate this risk and hopefully get more revenues in the future for that.
Increasing the revenue potential through demand for controlled use of AI agents, and also this vendor opportunity I announced is there, that a lot of software vendors do not have the power to do this step into the AI age. They cannot build... They are not able to build their software from scratch again with the same functionality because it's costs, it's customer handling. It's so many things you have to deal with, and it's a painful valley, and not everybody has the power.
The opportunity for us is with having cash, cash on our side, looking especially international markets, where we can harvest, for example, software vendors, not for the technology buy, but for a sales channel buy, that we see some customer who ask their vendor questions in one or two years, how they can participate in the AI age. Because today, our customers want to do AI, but mostly they do not know how they approach this thing because it's so complex. With the AI-native platform, they can really easily leverage AI in their service management, and this is also something which makes us confident and optimistic. What are the growth driver for this year? Contractual liabilities, as last year as well.
A lot of this EUR 100 million contract liabilities, nearly 70%, I think, will be released this year. The ratio last year was 60%, something like this. Of course, we have AI-native value creation. AI agent will drive the value creation with AI-native software, so the demand for the Serviceware Platform. Of course, we do better in the internationalization, but we see some footsteps, as I already reported, not only with our pipeline, but also the Forrester Wave report initiated a lot of inquiries all over the world. Also, we do think the trouble or the resistance we see in the U.S. because of the politics Buy American, and we lost some deals last year because of this politics.
Our customers, when we met them after the decision, told us we had a better solution, but they were pressured to decide for the American solution. This vice versa comes in the rest of the world, that I see CIOs discussing the decoupling of American software and talking about alternatives outside the U.S., and that gives us also some, some, some backwind. Of course, you might have seen it in, in Instagram or some other social media. We do some Serviceware rebranding, and we do some performance marketing. You will see a lot more communication over social media because we from October last year, we have a new marketing leader who is really in the case and really put us, put us in social media to the next level because it's important.
It's not the trade fair anymore. Of course, it's also for physical meetings important, but more important, we'll get the social media. With this growth drivers, we come to a guidance which will, is, similar to the last year, 5%-15%. Of course, to take in advance the question about this, I do expect personally that we will end up between 10%-15%, rather than to 5%-10%. As I said before, the one-time revenues are still at a level where we can lose more than EUR 10 million in a year. Then you first have to compensate this EUR 10 million, and then additionally, you have to grow.
Looking to our contractual liabilities, there is a possibility, and if everything goes the right way, we will definitely grow over 10%. What we have to avoid is really bad messages concerning adoption of guidance in the near market, in the market this year. Our share, you know, is kind of illiquid, and if we do bad messages in capital market communication, that will hurt us a lot, and therefore, we are on the very conservative side with this guidance.
What we raised, compared to last year's guidance, is that we do not improve our EBITDA, and EBITDA and EBIT, we will significantly improve it, because we can see, as I said, elaborated on, that the cost base is, constantly, constant and, and the revenue is going up. Therefore, in the good case, we make over EUR 130 million this year. In a bad case, we are about, more than EUR 120 million, coming around EUR 115 million. My expectation is that we go between 10% and 15%, but to try to avoid to adopt the guidance in a very unlikely event... an unlikely event, we took this 5% with us, and, you have seen how it, worked on the last two years.
We all, we all- we always adapted our guidance or strengthens our guidance by the second half of the year, and I expect this to do so this year. This is my personal opinion. This is official guidance we work on this year, and I'm pretty sure that we can deliver this guidance for this year. I overstretched a little bit the time. I'm sorry for that, but it really happens that English is not my mother tongue, and therefore, something I have to say in more words than in- do it in English. I'm sorry for that, but we still have 20 minutes time for your question and answers. Thank you very much so far for your attendance and your time you spent with Serviceware, and therefore, I would want to give back to the moderator.
Thank you very much for your interest.
Thank you very much, Mr. Popp. Ladies and gentlemen, now it's your turn. We're opening the Q&A session. You're very welcome to ask your questions in our chat box. We will read them out loud for you. With that said, we already received a question by Mr. Kapoor. He says, "Congratulations on the record results. You talk about the capital allocation policy going forward. How will the cash generation be used for organic growth? Are you hiring more salespeople for international push, dividend M&A or share buybacks?
Okay. All of you have listed our opportunities. As you might have mentioned, last year in May, we did some changes to our company documentation. I cannot say it in English, but that means that we are not able to buy back shares, not only from a cash reason, but also for the legal part. We can do since February, I think, 26th. In three days, we are able to announce a share buyback. That was not possible because you have to wait half a year after putting it to the register, and this was done in August last year. We are now able to buy back shares, and we are also to pay a dividend. It's rather unlikely to pay dividends.
If we do a share buyback, then we do a tender, so offering the shareholders to give back the shares to the company by a little uplift of, of the current share price. This is something we discussed, and as time goes by, this discussion go more and more precise. M&A, a long time was no topic, but it becomes on our agenda a higher priority. I already elaborated on that, because we see in, especially the foreign market, also in Germany, but Germany is not interesting for that kind of opportunity because we have a good standing, we have a good reputation, we get customers who are asking us, and not vice versa. In the foreign markets, internationalization, the way to the go-to markets, rather than rather buying, for example, a company with an-...
product, which has not the power to do the next AI step, as I talked about. Therefore, their customers will ask for a solution, what will they do? Before they really go to the market and look anywhere else, where they get a good solution, we think about looking to companies who do not have this power and want to have to sell theirself, and then we are here to really go buy it, not as a technology buy, but as a go-to-market. That is something which is on our list right now, and there might be a, there might be a success this year, but nothing very precise that I can say, "Well, we are in talks," or something like this.
We found out that this strategy might help us to get a bigger footprint, especially more revenue and profit in the international side. Yes, we do hire salespeople, that is the only growth path. Of course, we do some international marketing activities to put some money there. As I said, I do not expect that we put cash in that in terms of that we put more cash in it than rather getting cash back or cost back from using or leveraging AI internally. I mean, with the savings we do in using AI, and there's still a lot of potential. I said we today have three AI colleagues. I expect this more than 100 in a few years.
There's a lot of leverage or potential going up. With this savings we do, I expect we can invest into marketing and sales activities internationally, because, as I said, this is really a big issue we have to solve.
Thank you so much. Mr. Kapoor has another question: Can you please also give your view on the competitive dynamics, especially on international push? Who are the competitors, how does their product normally compare, especially with regards to AI native features? Can you specifically discuss view on why U.S. players like ServiceNow may be suffering with the share prices?
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, it's difficult for me to tell you something about ServiceNow. I'm concentrated on Serviceware, and like to see that Serviceware is going well, and then we'll have success in the future. Of course, this, there are some U.S. players who did not do the step to be AI native because it demands that they do their software from scratch. Of course, you can read from some of the U.S. competitors that they offer artificial intelligence features, but it's not about artificial intelligence features, it's about the architecture. In the German call today, I was questions, "Are you able that customers bring their own large language model with it?" Yes, we can do because of our architecture.
I'm doubting that, that with our U.S. competitors or other competitors who did not do the step in doing the AI first or AI architecture, native AI, native architecture, if they can really offer their customers bring your own large language model, because that is something customers will see, especially if you talk about big customers in the future. International customers say, "Well, I don't want to use ChatGPT. I want to use Perplexity," or you name it. Can you do that? If you say, "No, we cannot do it because our architecture is not delivering," then, of course, you struggle a little bit. We can do it, and therefore, I'm optimistic that we can do it.
The first part of your questions, we see, of course, a lot of dynamics, not knowing where they go to, as I said, U.S. business is come some kind of hard right now because of politics surroundings, and we had really a good chance last year, a very, very big customer, and we lost it. Not because of feature, not because we were European. Yeah, of course, we were European. That was the case, because they had to buy American. This, as I said, will be vice versa, lead to the point that the rest of the world is really thinking about how can we decoupling, because everybody is aware of the situation.
What will happen if the U.S. not only raise tariffs, but put another pressure point to the world, saying, "Well, we do not deliver our services anymore"? I guess Microsoft and all these players are not don't like it, but of course, politics will do the politics and not companies. I don't think that is very likely to. Do not misunderstand me. The threat which comes with this opportunity really make people in the rest of the world think: What kind of alternatives do we have? If we appear in the Forrester Wave, then, of course, we have the big wind to be one of those players who are taking this business, and also to be very clear and sure this is not something overnight.
I had some, some talks to, to CIOs last week, as I said, and they do say, "We do just the analysis." The analysis shows that it will be a hard, painful way to decouple. Yeah. Then, therefore, it comes step by step, but we can offer to be a, a, a competitor in that way. Hopefully, I got all this question answered. Who are the competitors? Yeah, we do not see any right now, we don't know. There are competitors, of course, especially AI lead to the fact that there are new kids on the block. We did build up from scratch our software in, in, in, in six quarters. Anybody else can do it. The new kids on the block are the main threat to our competitors, Lab49. Then there is another big advantage from, for Serviceware
We do service management since 27 years now, so therefore we know what we are doing. It's much easier for us to build the software from scratch for any new kid on the block. Of course, that is a big, bigger threat than the bigger, bigger software vendors, which are now must do the next step to be AI native.
Thank you so much for your questions, Mr. Kapoor. We have another questions by Mr. Nari: Your order book grew EUR 25 million in 2024. In year 2025, the growth slowed down to EUR 17 million. What is the main reason behind this slowdown? Do you see signs of uplift in 2026?
For me, I think it's liquidity, I do think. Yeah, this is a hard question for me to answer, as I'm not an expert in capital markets. Of course, the 2025 in 2024 was, I think, one of the results, because, I think, this is numbers or is it revenues? I don't know. Of course, the share price developed last year very good, of course. People who are into the share, and I think there was a little bit of changing in equity on investors, changing investors that started 2023.
Of course, these investors are still like to be in the, in the share because they think it's not all done yet, and therefore they won't sell. It's really, really hard for me to tell you if I see signs, if that changed. I was very surprised, but of course, this was something which happened to every software vendor, that the share came down. The big threat was last autumn, and that was a time where we at still a high, higher level, and it was at the beginning of the year. Our slowdown in the share price came, I think, in, in the beginning of February, and was very surprised that we did it after all went already through the market.
Therefore, I think with ongoing better revenues and better earnings, we will see, of course, in 2026, an uplift. I'm really not an expert in this, therefore, let's see. I'm confident in our share price, and I think we are undervalued by far. Therefore, with that the market can see in that and the interest is rising. As I said, we doubled the participant in the German call this morning, and also in the English call this afternoon. We see a lot more people in the call than last year. I do a lot of road shows physically and non-physically, so hopefully we get this story better to the market, and then, of course, the order book will grow.
Thank you so much. We have another question by Mr. Christophersen: Can you explain in more detail why the contract liabilities were flat since Q1, and why you expect them to grow?
Yeah
... in full year 2025, 2026?
Yeah. I mean, that depends a little bit on the seasonal character of contractual liabilities. I know in the middle of the year it was EUR 100 million, and I came back in EUR 27 million. That is depending on the thing that the main invoices are at the December, January. Therefore, I expect the biggest growth in the contractual liabilities in the first quarter, because of what? The main invoices are now out, and therefore it first, because it's recurring, the invoices are for recurring revenue, and that is the reason why by the end of February, I'm pretty sure, I don't know the figure yet, because we have 23rd of February, but I'm pretty sure that this figure will grow and will grow tremendously.
Then, then it really depends if we do bigger deals over the year, that will grow again. The, the, the, the, the, the dynamics is like this, that from February onwards, the natural power is that they go out- they go down on a higher level until end of November, end of December, and then making a jump to the next level. Therefore, you have to compare the contractual liabilities always to a, to a, to a date, which was the same date last year, then you really see what happened over the year. There you see it was nearly or over 20%, nearly, a little bit over 20%, and I expect this growth rate going further this year.
We will definitely grow, that I'm pretty sure, and you will see a big chunk in the first quarter. It will be the biggest chunk, I expect, but not sure. It depends on if we, if we get in big deals, but the number of deals are also important, the higher ticket of recurring revenue, the higher the recurring revenue will, will grow.
Thank you so much. We have another question by Mr. Huswerk. He says: Great job on maintaining the strong growth in software as a service. You alluded to expecting re-acceleration in contractual liabilities from the 21% year-over-year growth level again. What data points are seeing that gives you confidence in this view, and how much is growth tremendously?
Well, we see this figure. It's one part, but it's a very weak, weak argument. I come to the bigger argument by the end. Of course, it's experience. We always see every time that the contractual liabilities grew over time, sometimes with a higher gross margin, sometimes with less gross margin. That is, as I said, a very important KPI here is the duration. If you have a high duration, then of course you have a bigger contractual liability, absolutely, but it doesn't mean that the majority of this contractual liability goes in the profit and loss account.
If you lower, for example, the duration from three to one, then it means that you have 1/3 in contractual liability, but also means that you have the same amount coming into profit and loss, profit and loss account the following year. What I mean, the duration has a lot of influence, and I saw this coming down over the years as companies are not willing to go into five years, three years contract. Of course, the main contract is the standard contract is three years from the beginning, but then it's returning one year after another. This is something where it gives me confidence on this view, and also seeing what the pipeline is. And, yeah. But of course,
The duration right now is a very low level. I always saw in the past that this low level is good for getting a better level. If the duration is rising again, then of course, without any new deal, means that the contractual liabilities will grow only in the case of higher duration. Therefore, I'm confident that it will grow. Tremendously, yeah, we saw 41%, 71% in the peak times, and not far away, that could be, of course, a growth goal for the future. Again, depending on the business and depending how many years the company's locked in. Tremendously is more than significantly, so meaning at 20%, 20%, 20%, 30% plus.
I also do think that 20%, 30% is a tremendous growth. As we are at the lowest point now with... Not lowest, that is wrong. We also had years where we grew by 5% and 4% in the contractual liabilities. So, growing 20%+ in contractual liabilities is a tremendous growth in my, in my point of view, and 41% and 71% in the past year was somehow extraordinary. If we can hold on this growth, even if the duration is, is stable, then I think we are doing a good job helping to grow the revenues at the same, at the same ratio.
Thank you so much. We have two more questions in our chat box. One is from Mr. Robertson. He asks: "You mentioned paying artificial people EUR 400 a month.
A year. A year.
Who are you paying?
EUR 35 a month. Sorry. Yeah, sorry.
He asks, "Who are you paying this to?
Well, to, in the moment, to Microsoft ChatGPT, our internal model, large language model, is Microsoft, so therefore we're paying it. We had to buy a bulk. We have now one potential of 150 artificial people. We harvest about 40-50, but this is much too less. The minimum bulk you can buy when you do need this functionality, we do have, because we wanna have a focus on and wanna have insight how our human people are working with artificial intelligence, and that is not possible if you buy three licenses. Therefore, we started with a minimum of 150 artificial intelligence people.
I think over time we will turn it into high usage, but we need the inside information to see who is using artificial intelligence and who's not.
Perfect. Thank you so much. Our last question for today's call is from Mr. Nari again: "Your license revenue decreased sharply. Are you expecting similar decrease in year 2026?
Yeah, this is a tough question, and I would have known the answer, I would more narrow the guidance, or put it from 5%-15% to 10%-20%, because I did not expect that high decrease. The nature of license revenue is that the license revenue can come on the 30th November with a EUR 2 million, EUR 5 million, and then you have EUR 5 million more revenue and nearly a high amount of margin. I do not see this in the pipeline right now. I do see that there are still license revenues in the pipeline, but less than last year. If I deduct the same ratio from last year's, then of course, we could see a sharp decrease again.
At the end, the more you decrease, the more you give place for recurring revenues and for a more sustainable revenue model. Therefore, one day you have no license or nearly no license revenue anymore, a one-time revenue or at a very low level, that doesn't matter, and reaching that point means you are at the point where you have a sustainable revenue business model, which is very good in, in forecast terms. Hard to say, but I do think, yes, we see a sharp decrease again. Saying that, I'm also sure, or not sure, but with this decrease, I also expect that we can turn 10%-15% growth.
Perfect. Thank you so much. With no further questions in our chat box, we have come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in Serviceware SE. A big thank you also to you, Mr. Popp, for your presentation and your time.
It was a pleasure.
Should you have any further questions at a later time, please feel free to contact Investor Relations at Serviceware SE. I wish you all a successful remaining day. Handing over to you, Mr. Popp, once again, for your closing remarks.
Yeah, thank you very much. I really appreciate that you took the time for this call today. I do think we are in a very good position from now on to grow, to do better as our competitors, because we are AI native now, and we do see customers adopting this, and we do see customers coming back, we do see customers coming from the competition, and therefore, I'm confident. My personal view on the share price is there is a good windows of opportunity until the market realizes that there are companies who will profit it from AI, software companies, and some of them will struggle with AI.
We are on the path which will profit it. If this comes through as opinion in the market, I think we will see a better share price with the same data from today. Thank you very much. Have a good day, a successful day today, and seeing you on the next one-on-one. Thank you very much.