Welcome to this webcast presentation for Etteplan's financial results for 2024. My name is Juha Näkki, I'm the CEO, and by the end of the presentation there will be a Q&A session where you will also be able to ask questions from our CFO, Helena Kukkonen. Looking at the contents of the presentation, so first we'll look at the highlights and overview of the year 2024, look a little bit more in detail what happened in Q4, and then also for the service areas what happened in the service areas in the last quarter. And then to end the presentation, I will go through a little bit our strategy, and we have now done a strategy update, and I will go through the results of the previous period and also the updated strategy a little bit. And of course then followed by the Q&A session.
But if we move straight to the highlights of 2024, so it was a difficult year for us, and the markets were considerably down, and our customers were receiving less and less orders after one quarter after another. So it was a difficult year and a struggle, but on the positive side, even despite the difficulty with the support of acquisitions, we did manage to have a very slight growth in our revenue, so we were able to hold on to what we had despite the fact that our organic revenue development was negative. We also saw good development in the defense sector and also in the energy sector, so there was a better demand situation than in our other customer segments, and we were also able to progress in these segments. Also, China was towards the end of the year, especially in H2, China was highly positive.
The demand was increasing substantially, and we were also able to capitalize on that. The demand is mainly driven by the development of the trend of buying services rather than the strong market itself, but with this trend we saw good demand and good development in China overall. And on the positive side also, we did go through different kinds of adaptation measures to adapt our business to the prevailing market condition and to prepare ourselves for the future. In the Q4 and in the latter part of the year, we did see that operationally our margins were starting to improve in all service areas, but then there were significant one-time costs that then burdened the results also in Q4. On the negative side, of course, the market situation was difficult as I explained earlier.
Our customers' new orders and order backlogs were on a declining trend throughout the year, and this resulted in very, very slow decision-making, and of course all the political uncertainty that is there did not really help the situation, so very high uncertainty and very, very few projects on the investment side getting started. In Europe, this was very visible in all the markets, but in particular Finland and Germany were very difficult for us in terms of demand, and of course then in the difficult situation, we were forced to do adaptation measures and restructure our organization significantly in certain areas, but a little bit of adaptation across the organization here and there, which resulted then in significant costs that burdened the financial result for last year, almost in all quarters, but in particular in Q3 and also in Q4.
And if we still go through a little bit the operating environment, so market uncertainty was clearly high, and the war in Ukraine, the events in the Middle East, and also other political events were really having an impact on uncertainty, and very few decisions were made. Defense industry, energy was good, electrification projects also in the car industry or in the transportation industry were on a solid level, but in most of the other customer segments we did see a declining trend, and in this kind of weakening market condition that continued throughout the year, basically the only investments our customers were willing to make were related to cost savings and cost saving measures, and in this kind of environment, offshoring and nearshoring services were a good tool to work with, and we saw also pretty good development with these types of services for our customers.
On the countries, Europe as explained earlier was on a quite negative trend, of course varying slightly per different countries, but for us, Finland and Germany were the most difficult markets. And in Finland, for example, we have close to 180 people, so close to 10% of our operational personnel are temporarily laid off currently, which is a very high number and reflects really the market demand and market situation in Finland. And of course the geopolitical tensions were then increasing, and that had an impact in the Chinese market as well, but as I explained earlier, in China the demand was still good and mainly driven by the sort of positive development of the sort of buying services trend. And this resulted in a good demand for us, and we had a good second half of the year in China.
If we then look at the key figures, revenue at EUR 361 million, so very slight growth of 0.3%, but then on EBITA EUR 24.4 million, so a 21% drop, and in EBIT EUR 18.4 million, so a 27% or almost 28% drop compared to last year, and of course significantly burdened by the non-recurring items and the restructuring costs that we had. EPS was at EUR 0.41, and the Board's proposal for dividend for last year is EUR 0.22 per share. If we then look at the development or the sort of different split on revenue, Engineering Solutions was still the largest, 53% of the revenue, Software and Embedded Solutions at 27%, and Technical Communication Solutions at 20% of the revenues for the year.
Revenue by area of Finland 47%, Scandinavia meaning Sweden and Denmark at 28% or slight growth there due to the acquisition of STRONGIT from the beginning of the year. Central Europe at 22% and China 3%. Personnel by area Finland 49%, Scandinavia 19%, Central Europe 21%, and China 10%. If we look at the revenue by customer segments, the ones on green are the ones growing and proportionately, and the ones on red declining. Clearly energy, automotive, and aerospace and defense were the ones that were growing. Automotive driven by investments into new fleet and especially the electrification of cars and the development of the powertrain area. In the other segments, large segments that we have industrial machinery, forest industry, metal and mining clearly down, and also slight changes in the smaller segments for us.
Financial development, then going to Q4 a little bit more in detail. So as said, revenue slightly increasing, but then negative development on the rest of the key figures, which is of course very disappointing. Slightly less personnel, so minus 2.5% in personnel at the end of the year compared to the previous year. And if we look a little bit more detailed on revenue in Q4, so revenue dropped by 4.1% and was at EUR 91.3 million, and at comparable exchange rates, the same 4.1% drop. Organic drop was 7.2% for the fourth quarter, and the revenue from key accounts was actually dropping by 10%.
Clearly weaker demand for the fourth quarter, and also the quarter was affected by very many heavy vacation days and other free days that our employees were taking around Christmas, which was basically in the middle of the week, which is professionally the worst time of the sort of timing for Christmas for our type of business. So lots of vacations, which had an impact on the revenue development, but also the declining demand had an impact. Acquisitions of course increased the revenue throughout the year, and for the sort of full year the revenue was at EUR 361 million, so just slight positive trend compared to last year. EBITA, very heavy restructuring costs also in Q4, so we did have to do changes to adapt to the market situation that has been prevailing for the previous quarters and also in Q4.
And also we did during the year in Q3 decide to stop certain businesses in Germany where we didn't see any future and not the perfect fit for our strategy. And with these restructuring costs, we did have 3 million EUR of non-recurring items during 2024, and also in Q4 the non-recurring items amounted to 0.9 million EUR, which is still a very significant amount. And we are happy that it seems that our measures that we have taken are starting to pay off a little bit. All our service areas were on operational level, excluding the one times are improving on the preceding quarters a little bit.
If we look at the company profitability in terms of EBITA %, so excluding the non-recurring items, we would have been at 7.6%, which is not good and very far from where we want to be, but still in a very, very bad and difficult market condition, some kind of decent result. With the non-recurring items, of course we are not happy with the result level at all. EBIT was at EUR 5 million for Q4 and EUR 18.4 million for the full year. Amortizations related to acquisitions was at EUR 1.5 million for the last quarter and EUR 6 million for the full year. EPS, of course, the lower profitability had an impact on our EPS. Of course, also the slightly higher financial expenses and other things had an impact there.
EPS was at EUR 0.41 for the full year, and as mentioned earlier, the proposal for dividend by the Board of Directors is at EUR 0.22. Operating cash flow was good throughout the year, and it also improved in Q4. We have worked hard to work with our working capital, and also the accounts receivables has dropped during the year after hard work on certain accounts and certain contracts. The full year operating cash flow amounted to EUR 31 million, which is a good level for this type of a year. Of course, our cash flow accrues unevenly during the year. Personnel has stood at 3,803 at the end of the period, and there's a slight drop by 2.5% for the full year compared to last year, and the people outside Finland were 1,921, so proportionately increasing slightly compared to last year.
As mentioned earlier, due to the restructurings that we made, the headcount was dropping a little bit. Of course, there is still attrition as well, and we have slowed down our recruitment due to the weaker market condition. Perhaps as a final note here, the layoffs at 178 employees in Finland kind of gives the picture of the Finnish market. The demand is very low, very, very low number of new projects are starting, and it's very difficult to find enough work for our workforce. On the income statement, no major changes, and on the balance sheet, basically the trade and other receivables dropping slightly compared to last year, even if the revenue was increasing slightly. The work which we've done with the accounts receivables and also the working capital is paying off here a little bit, so that's improving our situation. No major changes here.
The balance sheet stood at EUR 297.8 million at the end of the year. If we then go a little bit more in detail to the service areas, so of course the same story a little bit continues. Difficult market for engineering solutions, and in particular here the low level of new orders for our customer and low level of new investment projects starting had an impact for the service area. And here, of course, we did do quite significant adaptation measures and restructuring measures for our business. In Q3, we closed down the sort of building technology related business in Germany, which is not really our core, and that had an impact on the non-recurring items. And also we did do considerable measures to adapt our capacity and adjust our organization for the prevailing market, but also to be fit for future.
The costs related to this service area were amounting to EUR 1.9 million. The EBITA was at 7.3% for the fourth quarter and 7% for the full year. This is, of course, very different than what we're used to seeing. If you take into account the one-off costs for the full year, EUR 1.9 million, without those we would have been at around 8% levels on the EBITA for the full year, which is not good, but still some kind of decent performance for this kind of very weak market. As I said earlier, also this service area without the one-off costs for the last quarter was improving compared to the preceding quarters.
Some of the measures that we have taken seem to be paying off, but for the situation to really get better and for us to be able to move really forward, we would need to see a little bit of market pickup to get back to the levels where we are used to being in this service area. Also in these prevailing market conditions, saving measures were important for our customers. So outsourcing solutions were at high demand, and we did manage to make several outsourcing deals during the year, and this is helping our customers to reduce their own cost levels and improve their operational efficiency. So this is a trend that has been continuing throughout last year, and we also hope that it will continue during the start of next year.
If we move on to Software and Embedded Solutions, so here a little bit better performance overall in Q4, EBITA at 8.7% and for the full year at 8.1%. Again, for the full year, there were also in this service area adaptation measures which amounted to EUR 2.3 million for the full year, so not that much, but still. And with that, we would have been at something like 8.4% for the full year if we take those into account. So not good, but on par with last year, slightly improving. And when the market picks up, we are confident that also in this service area we will have a much better situation.
In the weak market, there was of course a lot of competition for all the few projects that were out there, and we were able to utilize our global offering and in particular our nearshoring service from Poland. And with that, we were able to win cases, which was supporting our growth and also our margin development during the year. And we feel that that's a strong asset for us also going forward. In the Technical Communication Solutions area, also difficult market. This is the service area mainly working with project deliveries and the volumes are coming from project deliveries. And when the project delivery volumes are down, of course the demand will be down in this service area. So we had a quite tough time, and we did have to also here take non-recurring items and do different kind of adaptation measures.
For that reason and for the operational difficulties, the profitability was not where it should be, 5.9% EBITA for Q4 and then 6.1% for the full year. Here the amount of non-recurring items was EUR 0.5 million for the full year. With that taken into account, we also in this service area in Q4 would have been close to 8%. That also shows that in the latter part of the year, especially Q4, our performance operationally was improving if we exclude the non-recurring items, so hopefully when the market picks up, we will be in a better structure to start improving on our profitability again. In this service area, we have also started perhaps the fastest on our AI development, and we have been able to sell the first service solutions, including AI, to our customers, which is proving to be very, very promising.
We're also now working a lot with data solutions in this service area, and we feel that there's a lot of opportunity also in that area. So these are things that we are pushing forward with our new strategy and will affect this service area and the whole company going forward. If we then go to our strategic development and our strategy development, so first taking a look back on our previous strategy period, which we started in 2020, we updated some of the targets in 2022 at the end of 2022, and now this strategy period has ended at the end of 2024. So if we look at the outcome, so on revenue, we are at EUR 361 million compared to our EUR 500 million target, so very far from the target.
But of course, when we set the target in 2019, we did not know of COVID, we did not know of the war in Ukraine and all the other uncertainty here. So that has had a significant impact on our ability to grow organically, but also to make acquisitions. So it's not a reason for the full deviation, but certainly the environment was completely different to what we expected when we set the target. Looking at the revenue outside Finland, here we progressed well. We have made organic investments into our business outside Finland, and we've also made acquisitions more outside Finland than within Finland. And the development went to 53%. This target was originally at 50%, so that we exceeded, but we lifted the target up to 55% in the end of 2022, and that we fell a little bit short of.
But still, very good development in internationalizing our company, which we feel will give us great opportunities to grow in our current markets going forward. In the Managed Services share of revenue, we are at 65%, so quite far still from our 75% target. Of course, here the market condition having also an impact, and especially the customers' delivery-related services in Technical Communication Solutions and also in Engineering Solutions are on a low level. These services are counted into, many of them are counted into our Managed Services share of revenue, and this had a little bit of an impact on our numbers, so it's actually declining year on year from 2023. But still, we are behind the target, and we have work to do. That's very clear. And on the operating profit EBITA, we should be above 10%.
Now we're very far from it, so there's a lot of work to do there, and we feel that going forward with the structure, with all the measures that we've taken, we will be able to move closer to our targeted levels, but then for the new strategy, so we set three-year strategies and three-year strategy periods, and we have now revisited and done a lot of work during 2024 for our new strategy, and this is now the new strategy picture that we have, and the strategy period is called Transformation with AI, and what it means is that AI is coming more and more into play, and we see that that will have a big impact on our business and the way we do things in our company, but also the way our customers are doing things.
So with this picture, we try to show change that we must achieve during this period, and we need to really move forward and be able to transform the way we deliver our services and value for our customers. We have three cornerstones in our strategy: trusted partner, which we feel we already are to a majority of our customers. But it really means that in order to, for us to be able to really utilize AI, we need to work even more in depth with our customers and jointly understand where AI can bring benefits to their business and then move forward with new types of solutions. AI and technology-empowered service solutions is something that we will continue to work on. We have had this element before, and it has worked well for us. The name is a little bit changed.
AI is more coming into play, but we see that we will have more and more new technology, more AI-based service solutions within our portfolio, and this will help us to really create new kind of value streams for our customers, and then the third one, success with people. We are in a people business, and still, even if we have more technology and AI, people are the main asset for our company, and they are the ones that are really generating the value for our customer. The name is the same as it was in the last period. It has been a good agenda for us. Now the content is a little bit different, but still, we will work hard with our people to create success together with our customers, so these are the three main elements.
The business focus will be still on Europe and Asia within the existing countries and widening our service portfolio, introducing new services and widening the portfolio for our customers, both in product business and also for asset owners. We've also set new strategic targets. Three of them are the same, but the means to get there will change, and the order of presenting the targets are also slightly different. So 35% of AI-driven solutions share of revenue, and our starting point is 2%. So it's a clear sign that we have a lot of things to do here in this area. And by AI-driven solutions, we mean service solutions where an Etteplan developed AI component serves as an important part of the service solution for our customers. Not just utilizing a commercial AI tool in doing, for example, coding. That is not counted in.
If Etteplan has developed an AI component that is necessary for delivering a service solution, then we would count it into the 35%. This should change the way we deliver services to our customers. It should increase the value, but it should also help us increase our Managed Services share of revenue. We should be able to move closer to our 75% target, which is the same as it was for the last year. If we can achieve this, we are very, or these two targets, we are very, very confident that we will be able to provide new kind of value for our customers, and we will be able to grow organically, and we will also be able to top that and get up to EUR 500 million by also doing some more acquisitions to get us forward with our strategy.
With the sort of AI-driven solutions, with the Managed Services, we feel that we should be at a point where our profitability is above 10%, and this is the same target that we had before. With the new strategy, of course, we will enter next year, and we feel that the market is starting a little bit slow. There is a lot of turmoil. There is uncertainties continuing, and the global political situation is also a little bit strange at the moment with different kinds of trade war talks all over the place. We do expect that at some point things will calm down, and our customers will start to invest. We already now see some small signs in certain industries that orders are starting to pick up slightly, and we hope that during the year this will pick up to a wider range of our customers.
With this pickup, with the measures that we have taken during last year to adjust our organization and with good performance, we feel that we should be in a position to improve our growth. The revenue target or the revenue range is now, for our estimate for next year, EUR 365-400 million. This, of course, includes the acquisition of Noccon that we already announced in January. Then the operating profit EBIT range is at EUR 23-30 million. We should clearly grow. We should clearly improve on our profitability. The difficult question for the financial guidance is that when does the market pick up? We expect it to pick up during the year. When is the million-dollar question? This is something that we and probably everybody else is looking for answers to.
But with that, I would like to end the presentation for the time being and now invite questions that you may have.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Arttu Heikura from Evli. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. This is Arttu from Evli Research. I have a few quick ones. Just going back to the guidance, so it's quite puzzling to me if we think about the guidance low range. The net sales were 361 last year, and now the guidance low is 365. Taking into account the acquisition, what kind of scenario is that low range based on?
It's of course a cautious number, but we need to bear in mind that we are starting the year. Last year when we started the year, we had, for example, in Finland, which is not the full company, but still in Finland, we had about 60 persons temporary laid off. Now we are starting the year with 180 people temporary laid off. So our starting point is quite low, and if the market does not pick up at all, if it gets worse during the year, which we do not expect, but then we might be looking at worse numbers. But it's a cautious number, and you're very right in observing that. But given the profit warnings that we made last year, we feel that being cautious is not a bad thing at this point.
Yeah, understood. You commented on that you see certain industries where you, or there are certain industries where you see orders picking up. Could you further elaborate on what are these industries?
If we look at, if we look at, for example, the cargo handling companies have been reporting slightly increasing order intakes, which is a positive sign in my view. There are certain other companies that have come out with their reports that are doing really well, for example, in the marine sector. There are small glimpses of slightly better market for at least some companies in some segments. This has really not been visible for anything else except for defense sector and energy sector during last year as we see it. We feel that these are some sort of slight positive glimpses at least at the market.
But of course, this would then need to spread across many industries for the market situation to actually improve. But some small signs we start to see and are hopeful that they will lead into better things. But at the same time, of course, uncertainty is really high, changing every day basically nowadays, and it's difficult to say.
Yes. Then on the automotive sector, quite surprising to hear the kind of hopeful comments and that the demand is on moderate level, taking into account that the overall industry has faced quite significant headwinds, at least here in Europe. Do you see that you have performed better than your competitors perhaps, or what is the market like there?
I think we have been gaining inroads, yes. And of course, the automotive is not just the passenger cars, but it's mainly for us on the truck side.
There are some of the companies that have been doing relatively okay, but we see the key driver there being the necessary change in electrification and developing new models and new features and new things for the powertrain. That is basically where the demand is coming from. New kind of development in the powertrain area and electrification of the cars, bringing out new models in this respect, that is the driver that we see. As said, for us, the bigger clientele is on the truck side rather than the passenger cars. These have been the drivers. I think we've also focused on the area a bit. It's starting to be big for us, and we focused a bit more. I think we have also gained inroads within the industry.
Okay, very helpful. Thank you.
Then lastly, the AI-related goal that you introduced, it's quite ambitious coming from so low levels at the moment. Are you kind of aiming to move there or grow there with acquisitions perhaps, or what is your kind of plan there?
That is one thing. That is one thing, of course. But with the target that we've set, we mean the service solutions that are AI-driven. So not everything needs to be AI. It can be also normal services. But within the solution that we are selling, there needs to be a crucial AI component that Etteplan has developed. And we have these kinds of services already.
And we do see that, for example, in the technical communication solutions area, some of the services which we are already doing today with our customers, for example, outsourced models for certain technical writing or data-related services, there we can convert our existing business into AI-driven models by utilizing our own offering development and introducing new types of services. So it's both building new types of services, building new types of offering, but it's also converting our existing offering so that we can be more competitive towards our customers and create more benefits for our customers. So that helps us to have this type of revenue more and more. So maybe that is the answer that I can give at this point. Of course, we are looking into different kinds of acquisition-related targets as well. But we don't mean that we will charge for the AI bit that much.
But the solution itself needs to contain an AI component which enables the higher value delivery for our customers. And basically, those services couldn't be efficiently done without AI. So those are the types of services that we mean.
Okay, thank you. That's all from me. Thanks.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Emil Immonen from Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi Juha, thanks for taking my questions. Maybe to continue on the growth guidance, I understand that you can't impact really the market improvement, but what kind of actions are you taking to improve your organic growth rate by yourself with the company?
Basically, a lot of it has to do with offering development and especially introducing the AI components into our service solutions that we are currently selling.
We are continuously renewing our offering, and we are continuously working to improve also the existing offering and introducing new components, AI components also into our existing offering. With that, we feel that we are able to increase the value that we provide for our customers, and that should help us grow organically. There are also areas where we have had services in the past, for example, data, master data creation, asset information data management, etc., where with AI we can really have a compelling offer for our clients.
This is an area that we see will grow significantly with AI because if you want to use AI with your product business or your asset business and utilize the data that you have, the data needs to be correct and in the correct kind of systems and organized in a correct manner, which it clearly is not today with quite many companies. There will be quite a lot of things to do around this area. We have great offering around that, and we feel that there's a lot of opportunity in this area. These are perhaps some of the examples that we see where we can really grow also organically.
If we continue on that, it's a lot of the now AI offering and the organic growth focus on existing customers. Your key account revenue dropped quite a bit.
So is that losing market share maybe with those accounts or what's your thinking?
Well, I would say that we have not really lost market share. Maybe some customers, yes, but majority, no. But our key customers are in certain kinds of industries. Many of them are in industries which are really not seeing good order development, etc. And the sheer fact that there is less and less orders, less investment decisions, so there is less work to do for our customers and thus less work to do for us. And this is the main sort of driver for the drop in the key accounts. We have been able to then find other accounts and mid-size companies and small companies to replace some of that. So our drop in organic revenue was not as high as it was in the key accounts.
But I would say that the key account drop really represents the business situation and the new order intake for our customers. So that's the main driver of it. Of course, some key accounts, yes, may have dropped for other reasons as well, but generally speaking, this would be my view on it.
Okay. On China, I know it's a small part of your operations, but pretty impressive growth figures there. Could you maybe explain what kind of customers do you serve in China and what expectations do you have on that market?
Well, we have been for a couple of years already. We have been working more and more with the sort of local Chinese market with Western companies that are operating and selling their products to the Chinese market, but also in an increasing amount to Chinese companies serving the local market.
So the trend of ordering services is increasing, so that creates good market opportunities for us. And certainly we will continue in China. We have had a very good second half, especially in China, and we see lots of opportunities. And we will continue to grow our business, grow our customer base, but mainly the growth will come from the local China business. So this is the direction that we had. But we still want to grow in China. We will make investments into expanding our footprint in China, etc., in the following years, given that the market conditions remain favorable. But we see there's a lot of opportunity in the local China-China business. Can you disclose any specifics on what kind of industry segments you are serving in China? Basically, it's pretty much the same industry segments that we have.
Of course, depending on where we are and which city and location, it is slightly different from one place to another, but it's pretty much similar customer segments that we have here in Europe. And perhaps the car industry is a very small area for us in China. Maybe that is an area where we could do more. But then it's a wide variety of different kinds of customers that we serve there. And as I said, increasingly also Chinese customers, and some of them are really, really large. So if we can get good inroads, there can be great growth potential in China.
Sounds good. Then maybe one final question. Could you maybe help us understand a little bit how your guidance and thinking is on a segment specific level?
Well, let's put it this way. All the sort of service areas, of course, now in Engineering Solutions, we have made the acquisition of Nocacon, which will be placed in the Engineering Solutions service area. So that will change the setting there a little bit. But overall, I would say that all the service areas have the potential to continue growing and for different reasons. We expect their possibility to grow organically should be similar. And they should also all be in a position to, after the restructurings that we have done, they should all be in a position to improve their profitability. So I wouldn't say that some segment within Etteplan has better possibilities than some other. There might be different reasons for why the growth is, or the growth potential is similar.
But I would say that all the three segments have similar potential to grow when the market starts to pick up, and also they have similar opportunities to improve their profitability.
Great. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Juha Kinnunen from Inderes Oy. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is Juha from Inderes Oy. Most of my questions have already been asked and answered, but I do have a couple of boring ones left. So first of all, could you comment on the pricing side of things? I guess there will be some salary inflation, and in the difficult market situation, the clients might not be so interested in raising the prices. So how do you see this dynamic, and will this affect your profitability in the current year?
Well, of course, in a more difficult market, getting the prices up is a tougher call, of course.
You need to have more in-depth negotiations. But I do believe that we will be able to be successful in this area. Perhaps not as successful as in some of the other years where the market has been better, but still cost increases related to salary are understandable for the customers. They have the same. So it's not different from us to the customers. So it's understandable. And with our ability to also, I mean, work with the cost side with our offshoring and nearshoring solutions, we are in a position to really help the customers to reduce their costs significantly. And with the help of our minority-owned company in Bangladesh, for example, we can introduce significant cost savings for our customers. And with that, the total cost for customers reduces a lot.
For that reason, we feel that we should be in a position to do well in the sort of local negotiations because we are able to provide them additional benefits through these kinds of models.
All right. Sounds good. Another question is about these adapting measures you have made last year. Are they going to make a significant impact on the fixed cost side, or are they mostly on the variable cost?
There is some fixed cost, but mainly it is related to restructuring the organization. So there have been significant costs during last year. There will be a little bit of spillover from certain decisions taken last year also to the beginning of 2025, but it's not fixed. Some, yes, because we have also tried to reduce our fixed cost base. But mainly it is then personnel-related costs and other things which have been reduced.
All right. That's all for me. Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial #5 on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay, thank you very much, and if we look at that last year, so of course we're happy that on the growth side we were able to keep the sort of growth momentum going just slightly, but still, so we are happy that we were able to do that. On the profitability side, of course, there's a clear dip on EBIT, and this is something that we just simply have to improve on during next year. There were significant one-offs during last year, which had an impact on our profitability.
There will be a little bit of spillover of that for the beginning of 2025, but with the restructuring measures that we have done, we feel that we are ready. As long as the market doesn't continue to go down, we are ready to improve both on growth side and also on profit side, supported with our new strategy. We'll be able to move forward and are very much looking forward to seeing better levels of profitability during next year and also higher growth, and this is our target, and I'm convinced that we will also be able to achieve it. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at any time, so myself or our CFO, Helena Kukkonen, or Outi Torniainen, our SVP for Marketing and Communications.
But at this time, I would like to close the conference, so thank you very much for tuning in. Thanks.