Good day, and a warm welcome to Today's Earnings Call of the secunet Security Networks AG, following the preliminary figures for 2025. I warmly welcome the CEO, Marc-Julian Siewert, and CFO, Jessica Nospers, who will guide you through the presentation shortly. Afterwards, you will have the possibility to place your questions via audio and chat box directly to the management. Having said this, I'm handing over to you, Mr. Siewert.
Thank you very much, and it's a great pleasure to see you all this morning, to have you all this morning. Today, we are reporting the preliminary figures for the fiscal year 2025, and we have great news. Because in a very complex market environment, 2025, secunet was able to really show what it's capable of in all the different verticals, scaling up and delivering to the market, what, what was needed. We were really a strong partner to, to our customers in these very special fields that we serve, which were really going through complex dynamics in last year, looking at the geopolitical situation. Today, it's a great day reporting the preliminary figures. We will also give some guidance for 2026, and obviously look forward to your questions and inputs following the presentation. The market remains...
As an introduction, very briefly, the market remains driven by a lot of geopolitical developments and tensions. The pressure is high, very fast-moving, and cybersecurity is ever more important to sustain ever more sophisticated cyber attacks, to really always be ahead of the wave. And it's our job to help our customers to always be ahead of the wave. The sovereignty discussion has picked up substantially throughout 2025, and is expected to continue through 2026, considering the developments between the United States and other countries.
So there's a big debate going on about sovereignty in Europe, which secunet gives a very proper answer to, with the only today certified cloud environment that is really 100% certified and sovereign from a German perspective, and obviously also pushing into the European Union, the E.U. Commission, and into NATO. Obviously, there's a very strong dynamic in the defense and space segment. We have the NATO 5% target, which is one target that we try to directly address in the years to come. There's also the German EUR 500 billion infrastructure fund for the future that will be spent on physical, but also on partially digital investments.
We also remember from last year that the German Bundeshaushalt was extremely late, which, again, had an impact on the seasonality of our, order incomes and also sales. However, we have seen the performance of secunet to really pick up, even after the Bundeshaushalt was only approved in October. So a very strong November and December. But let's dive into what is really exciting, the preliminary figures. You see the highlights of 2025, underlining very substantial, very sustainable growth of more than 13%, in sales, reaching EUR 458.8 million, far above, still the plan.
We were able to really scale up and ramp up supply chains, manage our people to deliver up to this much higher, much increased standard, with a lot of this being in November and December. So operationally, a very good performance from the team, which we greatly appreciate. Also, the order intake was quite substantial, which helps us for a baseline for this year to further create the foundation for our growth trajectory and the transformation of certain business models, moving more from a hardware to a as a service and recurring revenue models. We see the EBIT at almost EUR 52 million, EUR 51.7 million, up by 22%, and an order intake of EUR 532 million, up by 26%.
With this, I would like to hand over to my colleague, Jessica, and she will give some more deeper look into the financial figures.
Thank you, Julian. Also, a very warm welcome from my side to everybody. Let me now take you through our main financial figures by starting with group revenue. As you can see, revenue increased considerably by 13% year-over-year. While an unusually strong start in the year in Q1 certainly supported this positive development, the main booster came in Q4, following the usual seasonality pattern, which is still intact. As I pointed out in the last earnings call, orders were picking up in October, and not only contributed to this favorable development, but will also give us some tailwinds for the new year, but we'll come to that in a second.
The public sector grew 11% year-over-year, with the defense division being certainly one of the major growth drivers, accounting for roughly 1/3 of total revenue. But we are also very happy with the growth taking place in our Homeland Security division and the business sector. The latter was certainly driven by sales to enterprises that were processing classified information, security-cleared industry. As pointed out in our earnings call for the nine-month figures, the public authorities division was facing some headwinds last year, but normalized again in Q4. Exactly. So the momentum of the business sector was around 27%. That is something that I missed to say, but certainly on a lower level compared to the public segment. Now I go on to the operating result.
We are very, very happy with the development of our EBIT, of course, particularly as EBIT growth is, is exceeding sales growth very clearly. This is also true for EBITDA, which grew by 24% year-over-year. As a result, both margins increased and ended up at the upper end of our guided corridor. As usual, we make most of our profit in Q4, predominantly reflecting the seasonality of the business with paired with fixed cost depreciation. Coming to order intake. Order intake took a huge step forward and increased considerably by 26%, not only fueling year-end sales, but also supporting an increased order backlog, which again supports our growth ambition. The seasonality of the business is certainly also reflected in order intake.
If we take a closer look at Q4, you'll see an increase of 72%, which in turn translates into an order intake of EUR 218 million. Besides the usual seasonality pattern, this also includes one major order we received in December. So as mentioned before, a strong order intake positively impacted order backlog, which is up by 36%. So you can see it here on the slide. This shows our very healthy market position and also will support our growth ambition for 2026. And with that, I will hand over back to Julian for further remarks on guidance.
Great. Thank you so much. And, finally, it's really... Let me see. Can we move? Sorry.
Sorry, that was my synthetic, yeah.
Yeah. Let's look at the guidance and, let's take a look at 2026, which is obviously always the most exciting to look into the future. We are building the foundation to continue this growth momentum that secunet has seen in recent years. We have made a few, minor adjustments to the key figures compared to previous years, which I would like to draw your attention to. As you can see, we have decided, to keep the key parameters of revenue, EBIT and EBITDA, which have been our driving, parameters and key performance indicators, since last year. However, we have decided last year as well to put more emphasis on our margin development. In the end, this is what drives our, on the one hand, competitiveness in the market.
On the other hand, is really the KPI that we can steer every day in our everyday decisions. And while this is very important in remaining a key KPI for us, we have decided to change our guidance into giving a range of absolute figures, which is then completely touchable. We have also decided to do this already today with our preliminary figures, different than in recent years. So the guidance for 2026 will be in terms of revenue, between EUR 460 million and EUR 500 million, EBITDA of EUR 76 million to a range of EUR 84 million, and an EBIT of 53- 58 million euros. You can see on the left side the direct comparison to the preliminary figures of 2025.
I think this will also give a lot more transparency to the market and we are also reacting to the various questions that you have raised in the previous earnings calls and in our exchanges. So let's keep this for a moment, and I think then we can move into the Q&A session. Looking forward to your questions.
Thank you very much for your presentation and the update. We will now move on to the Q&A session, ladies and gentlemen. For a dynamic conversation, we kindly ask you to ask questions in person via audio line. To do so, please click on the Raise Your Hand button, and if you do not have the possibility to speak freely today, you can also place your questions in our chat box, and let me have a look. I just gave you the permission to talk. Mr. Cohrs, you should be able to speak now.
Yes, hello. I hope you can hear me well.
Yes.
Yes, thank you. Well, I have a couple of questions. I will mention them in a row. First of all, you've had strong order intake and sales in Q4. What does this mean in terms of working capital and flow? You had a working capital build-up, if I'm not mistaken, in the first nine months. So I would assume that there was some sort of, yeah, working capital relief in Q4, and maybe very high order intake. Was this also linked to, maybe some prepayments? So maybe you can shed some light on the cash flow trends you've had so far.... Secondly, I, yeah, highly welcome, that you provided already with an outlook, and I think also mentioning ranges makes a lot of sense.
But could you maybe shed some light on the key assumptions for the very low end of the guidance, which actually assumes a stagnation, which is a bit, yeah, I believe in terms of all the mega trends you mentioned at the beginning of your presentation and this very strong order intake we have seen lately. And lastly, you mentioned the demand drivers. Here are some questions. Lately there have been additional funds for space and satellite programs, which will in the end also mean that there must be on the ground dealing with the information. So is this a driver for future demand?
Also, there are digitization programs for the land forces in Germany, so if this is also something which will increase demand for your business, and we have a digitization ministry finally in place in Germany. There are announcements that many changes in digital solutions will come up for German citizens starting next year. So is this also a potential source of new orders and its prospects? Thank you.
Hi. Thanks a lot. Sorry, I was muted. Thanks a lot. I think there were a lot of questions, so I will jump right into the questions of cash flow and working capital. Both showed a very favorable development. We had a free cash flow well above EUR 50 million, and also a big release on working capital, which is between EUR 20 million and EUR 30 million, depending on how you calculate it. So our calculation in accordance with our calculations, it is a bit above EUR 20 million. So, we had a big release coming from, certainly from inventory to a fair amount. So, that is kind of reflecting our typical seasonal pattern.
So we start into the year with, let's say, a regular or good level of inventory, then this inventory decreases, and then we start to increase inventory around summer. Certainly, this time it was a bit special because, due to the fact that the Bundeshaushalt was approved quite late, we built up inventory a bit more than we usually would, considering the same order intake. Could you please also give me a short note, what were your other questions about?
Cash flow, you answered everything. Yeah, you answered everything. Just one, one additional one. I asked whether you've received prepayments. You have had very strong order intake, and is this also related to prepayments? I know in the defense industry, often this is, yeah, this is linked to any prepayments.
No. No, we do not receive prepayments.
Not substantially.
Not substantially, sir.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah, and I think the second question was around the lower end range of the guidance.
Yeah.
This is really a range that we are providing to the market, where the lower end is built on basically backlog and supply chain as is, and obviously the projects we see for this year, where the upper range is built on additional potential with ramp up of supply chains, ramp up of production. We have to, I think, keep in mind that as of today, the supply chain is quite stressed in many areas. We are seeing also... Yeah, we have quite a long supply chain, let's put it this way, and so on this, and that's why we are providing a range.
Thank you also for the additional questions around the funds for space and satellite, which is an extremely interesting field of business for us, and perfectly put, whatever comes from space has to be processed on ground in a very secure way and in lifetime, especially when we think about any kind of defense use cases. What we can say about this is that we are very close to this market vertical, and that we are monitoring and obviously positioning while the actual orders or real business deals haven't been signed yet. We see potential in this field, and this will also flow into our strategy process that we are starting in February for the next cycle in order to, yeah, to capture parts of this market.
Whether it's relevant for 2026 remains to be seen. The fourth question around digital solutions for German citizens, I think is quite crucial, and the company with all its verticals, especially in the cloud area and through where we have to understand the cloud business as an overlay or as basically impacting all our business fields, where one of the first ones might be parts of digitalization of German government and solutions for German citizens. It's the same thing. We have a number of proof of concept projects and MVPs, and we are looking forward to transforming these into real business. I would say it's a progress where the market is currently forming.
Okay. Thank you.
I hope that answers your questions.
Perfectly. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Cohrs. The next question is coming from Andreas Wolf. You're already unmuted. Can you speak to us?
Hi.
Yes. Hello.
Hello, everyone. It seems like you can hear me. First of all, congratulations on the strong Q4 and financial year 2025. My first question is related to your business sector. What is the current demand for entry and exit systems for international exports? Could you provide an update? You had a strong business in Q3 last year. How is this business year proceeding? And then, on the orders that you secured in Q4, and that are reflected in the order backlog, over which period of time will those be reflected in revenues? And then, regarding the EUR 500 billion fund, are you already seeing projects coming up this year? And when will the associated revenues materialize? And my final question, the fourth one, is related to chip capacity shortages in the production, which apparently lead to higher hardware prices.
How is this influencing your business, top and bottom line development? Thank you.
Thank you for your questions. When it comes to Homeland Security order intake, we are very happy with it. It shows also good growth in this year. It is part of the public segment, though. Just I wanted to add that, the entry/exit systems, because it's always a public authorities requesting them and also being responsible for them. When it comes to the order backlog, the majority of our order backlog is usually for order intake, is for the current year. And when I look into the ratio of order backlog at the beginning of the year, around 75% are for the current year, with the remaining 25%, having usage for more than a year. So the last question was, sorry?
The last question was-
EUR 500 billion.
It was the third question, the EUR 500 billion fund, whether you already see the funds reflected in the project pipeline for this year. The last question, the fourth one, was related to chip capacity shortage and how it's influencing your business.
Yeah. So maybe I'll try to start on the EUR 500 billion fund. In all fairness, we... It's split throughout the government projects, and we do not see specific large projects coming out of this. However, we see in general traction in the government. We can't, we cannot, at the moment, trace it back to which part it's coming from. I would consider that parts of the spending, especially in the armed forces, are at least relieved through the various funds available. And there we see an uptick in really how the German army and also certain NATO states are starting to ramp up, which is helping us to really also guide for the next couple of years. Especially because it's super important to secure the supply chains.
It's one thing that we take a lot of emphasis on, to have additional sources, and at the moment, we see the demand that we can project, not at risk, and we are securing supply chains. You were asking about the increased prices, which at the moment we see even more in hardware than necessarily in chip supplies, except for very high performance GPUs. We are obviously taking good care of passing on these price increases wherever possible, and we feel confident around the supply chain.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Wolf. I hope all questions are set. If you have any follow-ups, let us know. And with that, I will jump over to our questions in the chat box, which are partly answered already, but I will read them out for you. From Sascha Gebhard: Will you be reporting the figures for the individual divisions in future? How are the orders received divided between these divisions?
So, thank you for your question. We are giving some information on the divisions, but we are not going to report figures on order income or sales for the single divisions. I can just tell you that we had a good order income growth over all divisions, and it's reflecting also the current revenue pattern.
Thank you very much for your questions. Could you shed some light on the high order intake in December? What was it about?
It is the usual seasonality pattern, so it was also spread between the divisions, comparable to, let's say, November. But usually, from October to December, order intake is very high. So there was not a particular thing I would like to point out about this.
... Thank you very much. And ladies and gentlemen, the last question so far, if you have any questions left, please let us know. Congrats on the strong Q4. I have three questions. One, given the strong order intake in Q4, could you comment on the level of conservatism embedded in your full year 2026 guidance, particularly with regard to revenue facing? And second, defense space has become a significantly larger contributor. How should we think about the sustainability of this momentum beyond the current budget cycle? And three, could you provide some color on SINA Cloud in terms of usage and profitability?
Great. Julie, thank you very, sorry. Thank you very much for the questions, first of all, and let me go through. So the strong order intake in Q4 was substantial also for 2025. So, looking at only the order intake, we have still delivered a lot of this already in 2025. You now see the backlog for 2026, as Jessica outlined, at 75%, which is giving us a good basis. The conservatism, as it's called here, is basically the function out of the real bottom-up planning of what is there in orders, what is there in pipeline, and what can be delivered in time.
Because the supply chain, as we discussed before, remains quite long, not only because of extended lead times, but simply in general, we have a turnaround time, and while, when we know orders are coming, we work with working capital. This is what we really see feasible, and in fairness, as we see upsides, that's why we're also providing a range rather than a single figure. The defense and space has become a significant contributor with potential, and we strongly believe, and from all the information we have, that this momentum is going to continue until the end of this decade, because the planability and again, the lead times in the entire defense industry are really substantial. Even obviously much more substantial for other players than us.
The planning is quite, I would say, reliable until the end of 2020 or 2029, 2030. The SINA Cloud is a real important portfolio element, which, as I said before, is to an extent providing functionality and also strategically allowing us to move from more of this one-off orders, which are coming from a large frame contract. So we have large frame contracts, but they are coming from one-off orders, moving into as-a-service models, moving into into recurring revenue models, which is one of the... Which is gonna be one of the key targets of our ambition to really transfer a lot of the business into recurring revenue models. The cloud is helping us there.
At the moment, the SINA Cloud is the only real, secure, certified cloud, as I mentioned before, and it is, at the moment, an investment, clearly to really develop, to really develop the perfect proposition for the sovereign cloud offering in Germany.
Thank you very much for your questions, and we have one more. Do you have any substantial investment plans for 2026?
Maybe I start, and then, Jessica, you add. The main investment plan is what I actually just outlined in the last question, is really the transformation of our business models in various clearly defined portfolio elements, and especially the cloud. This is where the focus for investment lies for 2026 from a business perspective. Jessica, please, complete my answer.
Thank you, thank you. So as Julian said, we are happy to grow the business. We are all divisions. We are certainly looking for organic, but also inorganic growth. And when it comes to inorganic growth, I think we have a very good position when it comes to additional funding that would be required to do larger M&A projects, but you can have a look at our balance sheet. I think there, there's plenty of room for some funding ideas.
Thank you very much for your question, and as no further question has come in, I will hold the room another moment in case somebody is typing right now. Yes. Do you also consider M&A?
Absolutely. Yes, we do.
Okay. Thank you so much. In the meantime, we have received no further questions. We therefore come to the end of today's earnings call of the Secunet Security Networks AG. Thank you for joining, listening, and all your questions. A big thank you also to you, Mr. Siewert and Ms. Nospers, for your time. Should any questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Director Investor Relations, Christopher Marks. I wish you all a lovely day, and with this, I'm handing over for some final remarks to Mr. Siewert.
Thank you very much, and my gratitude to everyone attending the call and to your interest in, in secunet. I believe in summary, now also being for a bit more than 6 months, 7 months in the job, I believe that secunet is having a substantial momentum in this market environment. As, as much as the geopolitical situation challenges all of us, probably in private, there is, potential for, for the company, and we take the purpose very seriously to really become the, the key, the key guardian of, the Europeans, Europeans' digital freedom.
We play on the sovereignty game, and we transform the company into a future-proof, also cloud-based and as-a-service-based company in the years to come, using the momentum that we have from the defense space, from NATO, from the standing that has been outlined by the countries in order to ramp up the company further and continue the success story of the last decade. So thanks for being with us, and we look forward to any additional questions to Christopher. I look forward to seeing you personally throughout the year, and wish you all the best. Thanks a lot.