Hello everyone, welcome to LeadDesk's Earnings Call for 2025. My name is Olli Nokso-Koivisto, and I'm the CEO of LeadDesk. Together with me on the call, I will have Teemu Rautiainen, our CFO, and we'll be presenting 2025 figures and topics for you during the call. The call will first highlight on the key takeaways for last year. We'll remind you what LeadDesk is all about. We'll let it off to Teemu to explain and deep dive on the financials. After that, we'll take it the focus more to 2026, our strategy, and then outlook. At the end of the call, we're gonna be having a fireside chat and a Q&A session together with Lotta Backlund, and you'll have the chance to ask those questions then in the chat at that time.
Without further ado, let's jump into the key takeaways from 2025. I'm super excited to be able to here present to you our success for last year. Last year was very much about the Zisson integration. We announced the acquisition of the Norwegian contact center software provider Zisson, and we closed the deal in early February, and we've been successfully integrating and executing on synergies for the year. Our revenue reached nearly EUR 40 million, and we managed even with all those one-off costs included in EBITDA, we managed to increase our EBITDA to 17% which I consider an excellent job. On top of this, of course, AI has been on everybody's lips the last few years. For our new AI products, we've had great success, and we've managed to more than double the usage of these products.
Now going to this year we'll be further investing into this transformation. On top of all this, we've got the new scale, and now we have also the new management team and the systems to support that. I'm very happy to say that we are in a great position now to scale even further in the coming years. In brief, Zisson integration successfully completed, EBITDA 17%, best for us ever, and reaching that nearly EUR 40 million in revenues, so 25% growth. I think this is a great job for us for 2025. After these takeaways, let's come back to this a bit later, but I'll briefly just remind you what LeadDesk is all about. LeadDesk, we are a contact center as a software and service provider, CCaaS.
That's the space we play in. Where we play in is the European market. Contact center software for the European market delivered from the cloud. We have two distinct markets, our home market, Norway, Sweden, Finland, where we have a wide range of product offering and where we have a significant market position already. On the other hand, our growth market in continental Europe, where we are more aligned. We are only focusing on the sales enablement side of the business and where we see the fastest growth also going forward. At the moment, 80% of our revenues are from the home market, and we have a nice big market share here in our home market. AI transformation is also a big topic of course on many software industries, and we're also on the wave there providing AI solutions for our customers.
I'll go a bit deeper into that later. We are a growth company and a profitable company. Since our IPO from 2019, we've achieved 21% CAGR, and we've been able to increase our EBITDA margin all the time. This is basically the cookbook for our growth, so profitable growth now and in the future. We have set our strategy on two phases. At the moment, we are working on strengthening profitability. We've done quite a few acquisitions. We have a wide range of products. We want to harmonize. We want to be even more focused. We want to be able to support that growth from our cash flows in the future.
That's the mission we are on now. In the midterm, we'll be moving the focus more to growth initiatives, remembering, of course, to keep an eye on the profitability as well. With this recipe, with this strategy, our Northern Star is EUR 100 million in revenues with over 20% EBITDA margin. At EUR 40 million roughly now, 17% EBITDA, reaching for that 20% and then to that EUR 100 million. That's LeadDesk in a nutshell. How this relates then to 2025. Going back to those highlights. We completed the Zisson acquisition, reached that EUR 40 million in revenues, 17% EBITDA. We invested in our AI product offering and the Spearhead products. We renewed our management team and the supporting systems to be able to scale efficiently also in the future. Regarding the Zisson acquisition.
Zisson, a bit under EUR 10 million in revenues, EUR 8.7 million in 2024. We acquired the business and closed the deal in February last year. They also had concentrated quite a bit on profitability, running down some business lines. Now I'm happy to say that that has been turned around, and we managed to turn the revenue growth positive for Zisson last year. This fantastic job remembering at the same time we managed to execute on synergies, bringing the whole group revenue and EBITDA up. We've been also able to cross-sell Zisson to other geographies and managed to secure other cross-sell opportunities as well.
Zisson is has a great go-to-market motion at the moment going on, especially in the Swedish market, especially in the Swedish public sector, where we are now ramping up sales and getting very good results. On top of that, Zisson has traditionally a wide partner network, and we've been able to really utilize that now last year. On top of the other synergies, We are also harmonizing the company structure. We are merging entities and having a more clear structure across the board. This is something that will continue to happen also in 2026. Zisson acquisition, number one thing for 2025, and the realized synergies and the completed integration. The second point, AI solutions. What we're doing for our customers is we're securing their customer communication.
We are providing the critical path for customers to reach our customers. We are providing this across a wide range of industries, many of which are mission critical, such as, for example, healthcare, energy, utilities, transport. It's super important to have that critical path always open and secured. We have that data gathering in our system for the customers to utilize then onwards. How we envision this is that as we are bridging the gap between the agentic world and the real world, we're providing for the critical path to be always open. In practice, what that means is that you can always be in comfort that those calls and messages will reach somebody, will be handled, and there's always visibility to that process. What we need to enable is to make that as efficient as possible for our customers.
Allow our customers to wipe code, to use any AI technology they wish on top of that while we always secure the critical path and allow those agentic agents to access the real world in a safe, controlled way. At the same time, gathering that data for our customers then to use in their AI tools. We are in a very nice position, between the real world and a critical business function, which also then safeguards our business going further. We're not a long tail SaaS. We're really in the business mission-critical parts of bridging that gap between the virtual and the real world. Lastly, one thing we really see is that the voice is really getting a new life.
As now voice is no longer a second-class citizen with regards to AI, but AI is able to process voice as well as text, we see that voice handling voice is becoming more efficient, and there's a lot of more value that can be brought into those conversations. We believe that voice is gonna be transformative to the AI revolution going forward. We're really there with our CPaaS platform and with our software bridging that gap between the virtual and the physical. Lastly, we announced an acquisition in February of Fluentic, which is a great addition to our customer service portfolio, enabling multilingual customer service in any contact center. We have some fantastic customers there, such as, for example, Finnair, Iberia, Volvo, and so on.
Big, great brands offering solutions, a multilingual service to their end customers. AI, a big opportunity for us and big, big transformation going on now. Lastly, last year, we renewed our management team quite a bit, and at the same time, we brought in a new financial ERP and other supporting systems to support our growth. We took a big, hard look at all the systems and all the processes we have and see which ones are scalable up to that 100 million. There was a lot of harmonization ongoing, and there still is, but now we've managed to secure all the necessary capabilities to execute on this journey.
Firstly, at the beginning of the year, Teemu Rautiainen, who you'll hear from next, joined us as our new CFO, bringing a lot of expertise from other listed and private equity-owned companies. A lot of SaaS expertise also on the financial side. Michael Østgaard came to us through the Zisson acquisition as the former CEO of Zisson and has taken up the role of CRO. He has a fantastic background, for example, from companies like SAP, running big enterprise sales organizations. Lastly, by no means least, Samuel Lehtonen, our new VP of Operations, joined us from McKinsey, where he was the engagement manager, and he's really bringing in those best processes and principles from the largest and the best organizations across the globe. Everybody knows McKinsey.
Everybody knows they work with the best. Samuel's worked with the largest and the best companies in the field. Now we have that knowledge also in-house to drive our best practices and processes to the right level to reach that EUR 100 million. Very excited about the team. I enjoy working every day with them. It's been a real honor to have these gentlemen with us now. That's it for the main highlights from 2025 from the executive side. I'll give it off now to Teemu Rautiainen, our CFO, to deep dive on the financials. You go, Teemu.
Thank you, Olli. As Olli already mentioned, our financials and operations were very much impacted by the Zisson acquisition in 2025. Our revenues grew strongly because of the Zisson acquisition. Our EBITDA grew even more strongly. We hit the all-time high EBITDA margin, and also our balance sheet was impacted by the acquisition. These are topics I'll explore more in the upcoming slides. Our revenue growth was strong in 2025. Our revenues grew by 25%, and that was mainly driven by the Zisson acquisition. The contribution of all acquisitions was roughly EUR 8 million in our revenue in 2025. Organically, our revenues grew quite well in the H1, and in H2, they were impacted by the regulatory impacts in the telemarketing, especially in the continental Europe and there Spain and the Netherlands.
Since we have a big contact center customers in these these countries, their businesses, as it was impacted by the regulation, it also impacted on our revenues. Positively, we also had some positive development in our business. The customer service business and software was growing, especially in the Nordic countries. There we had the Zisson impact. We also had other software in the Nordics, for example, in Finland, that were growing positively. Also our AI business relative to its size grew really well organically.
Overall, this is an area that we want to address more going forward because we see there are positive areas where we are growing organically and where we can, by investing more in these areas, we can also grow organically in the whole company level and get back to the organic growth trajectory. Another focus area for us is the net revenue retention, where we also had both positive areas that we want to improve and that's something where we can also boost our organic growth development. One example is the cross-sales. We can cross-sell our AI solutions more broadly to our customers in other industries, in other countries, driving the organic growth development. I see a lot of upside for us also to grow organically.
As we are able to capitalize on these opportunities and investments, also the return on our marketing investments will improve, and that will improve our profitability. Our profitability already now reached, as said, the all-time high 17%, and this was also driven by the Zisson acquisition. As also said, our EBITDA was the all-time high, and we have actually been able to double our EBITDA during the past 3 years. In 2025 alone, we were able to increase our EBITDA in 4 consecutive quarters. In H2, our EBITDA margin was 20%, so that was a significant jump from the previous. Apart from the Zisson acquisition, that was improved by the synergies we were able to achieve, but also other productivity and efficiency improvement we had in our operations.
As Olli said, we had reported some one-off costs related to this in the first half of the year, and now we were able to see the results in the second half. Positively, the improved EBITDA converted also to increased cash flow from our operations. Our cash flow, operative cash flow increased by 35% from last year. Additionally, we invested EUR 1 million more in the CapEx, basically coming from the Zisson acquisition, as well as our investments in the platform competitiveness, both in the customer service and sales enablement side, and also the AI features and functionalities we are building for our customers. Overall, the EBITDA improvement is also important to manage our balance sheet and the debt we have raised to fund our acquisitions.
As said, our balance sheet was impacted by the Zisson acquisition as well. We raised some external debt, and already now since H1, it has come down by EUR 1.4 million. We have been repaying the loans and the net debt to equity raise has or is now 1.5, which is relatively low, and that leaves us room to acquire more companies in the future. The equity was slightly impacted by the goodwill amortizations we have been doing related to the acquisitions and also the financing costs. The operative performance improved from last year. Overall, I would say that we are well-positioned to continue executing on our growth strategy, and I'll let Olli to talk more about that later.
Thank you, Teemu. Then my favorite topic, our strategy and the focus then for 2026. As you all know, LeadDesk is a product company. We live by our product, and there I'm very happy to say, especially in these geopolitical times, that we are largely sovereign European provider with very little ties to the, to the geopolitically risky suppliers. This something that we'll be focusing even more on and targeting to for the future. We want to become the leading sovereign European provider on the CCaaS market. We're largely there already, and we want to take that even further and this is really one of the things that drives us going forward. As you all know, European sovereignty is a big thing now.
It's gonna be a huge thing going forward with the upcoming regulation, for example, from EU regarding tendering processes and so on. It's gonna be a nice tailwind for us going forward, and we're very proud of being European. Secondly, we are the backbone of our customers' customer communication, where they're guaranteeing that you can always reach somebody in your energy company, in your healthcare provider. Whether it's voice or text, whether there's an AI helping out there, we're making sure that our customers' critical operations always run, and they are well managed. We're super excited about all the AI opportunities. Even our HR is wipe coding nowadays, getting those efficiency gains. At the same time, we recognize that we are the critical path for our customers' customer communication.
Thirdly, we are reaching for that 1 billion annual customer interactions that we help. Now, we're somewhere between EUR 300 million and EUR 500 million contacts, and that we'll see increasing to EUR 1 billion going forward, which is a great target for us. These are our product North Star targets. Leading European provider, a sovereign European provider in the CCaaS space. Backbone of critical communication enabling the connection from the virtual to the physical world. Lastly, that 1 billion customer communications annually handled on our platform. This will lead to the financial targets, EUR 100 million in revenues, at least, with over 20% EBITDA margin. How we see this developing is that we'll be growing here in the Nordics still. As you know, continental market is huge. Compared to the Nordics, it's a much, much bigger market.
We'll be growing there as well. We'll be compounding this with inorganic growth as there's a lot of small competition on the market and as the barrier to change is quite high for the customers. This is the smooth way for us to widen our customer space and get more adoption of our platform and get that efficiency gains that we saw last year on the profitability margins. On top of this, enabling our customers an agentic way of working will bring further then opportunities going onwards. That's how we reach EUR 100 million. Then my favorite slide, second time today, the two-phase strategy here. Now we're super focused on the profitability side, which you also see in our guidance.
We are now all about getting that profitability to the level we want so that we can then turn the page and focus on those growth investments going forward. Through this, then on the financial side, we reach the Northern Star of EUR 100 million in revenue, at least in revenue and 20% EBITDA margin. How do we then plan to accelerate? Firstly, of course, we're not done on the M&A path. This market needs consolidation. There are too many players on the field, and because of AI, many of them can't compete anymore. It's better to consolidate the market now. We'll be also doing sector expansion more to the public and especially the healthcare sectors.
These are big sectors for us, with nice NRR, nice positive NRR, nice growth rates. We'll be further going into these segments in the future. We turned around Zisson revenue development. Now it's on a growth path, and we see that this is the magic we can bring in to the acquired companies. Lastly, on the Nordic market, we'll be shifting our focus from sales enablement to customer service, where we are already strong at. In the Nordics, we will be still looking for acquisitions. We'll be doing sector expansion. We'll be working on that positive momentum on profitability and shifting more, even more focus into customer service, where we can really bring in that value of AI to our prospects. On the continental market, it's a huge market. It's very big.
In the Nordics, we have some 20 million people in Finland, Sweden, Norway combined. In Netherlands alone, there's 18 million. In the continental European market, this will continue to be our organic growth hub. We will continue growth there. However, we will be shifting the portfolio focus so that we have a wider portfolio going forward also to the customer service. Widening away from only sales enablement in the continental market, thereby addressing an even larger market. Here we need to really work well, and we need to work wisely. It's a huge market, we need to be efficient and choose the battles we want to take. Here we are focusing on the higher profitability customers, the ones where we can really excel and bring in that growth and the margins. That's our recipe for continental Europe.
Together by exceeding the targets in the Nordics and our home market and these continental European targets, we can really make a big change. Very excited about the market now. There's a lot happening there. I mentioned our outlook a bit earlier. Looking at then the outlook and what are the drivers behind that. On the short term, there are some tailwinds helping us out and some headwinds then taking us back. Firstly, customers are increasingly investing into AI. They are seeing the opportunities and now they are seeing the effects. And this where we can help. This where we can bring in those efficiency gains. Of course, at the same time, there's regulation. There's regulation regarding AI. Europe wants to be a regulatory superpower, so there's regulation taking that growth down a bit.
At the same time, it's giving sovereign European players such as us, opportunities going for to the future. As mentioned, customers need efficiency. That's the name of the game nowadays, working on those margins, and we help our customers be more efficient. The macroeconomic situation, of course, at the same time, while helping us out, in that our customers want our solutions which bring in efficiency, at the same time, that macroeconomic uncertainty is bringing the investment levels down across the board, especially in the Nordics and especially in Finland. Again, new technologies, such as us can bring in a lot of that value. At the same time, customers are looking around and we need to really be the best in class for our customers.
Lastly, just to close off, being sovereign European and having our own technology stack, which we own and operate, is a great benefit now going to the future. With these tailwinds, headwinds, our guidance also connecting to our two-phase strategy is that we expect our EBITDA margin to be between 15% and 20% for this year. Here, as said, we are very focused on getting that profitability to the level where we can turn the page and look at those growth investments. That's 26, at least the first half very much in a nutshell. This might include also then, giving up some less profitable business, that especially has come through the few latest acquisitions. That's something we are looking into so that we get all the benefits.
On the other hand, we are interested in getting that profitability up and having a more focused business that we can really grow going forward. We see in the mid and long term, we see a lot of opportunities on the market, and we see that as the market is consolidating, there's gonna be huge opportunities for us. AI, we consider as being also a tailwind for us, helping us out then grow into the future. To summarize, EBITDA margin last year improved to 17%, and we're targeting now that we get to 20% in the midterm.
We are increasing our focus on the customer service segment, both in the Nordics where we already have a substantial part of our business in the customer service part, but also now in continental Europe where we've been focusing more on the sales enablement. Our customers are adopting our AI solutions. We really love to work on these AI solutions with our customers and get those benefits delivered. And looking at the guidance for this year, we are looking at the EBITDA to grow, and that's between 15% and 20% for this year. Thank you for the session so far. Next up, we'll have Lotta Backlund hosting the fireside chat. We'll be right back in one minute. Thank you.
The fireside chat. My name is Lotta Backlund, and I have the pleasure of posing your questions and mine to Teemu and Olli. Some housekeeping to start with. You may notice that already there's a lot of questions in the chat, so you can post your questions. We will get to all of them. All right, first of all, thank you for the presentation, and congratulations on yet another quarter of profitability improvement. Even the headline of your presentation talked a lot about Zisson , and you were saying that we need consolidation in the market. Growth through acquisition seemed to be a solid strategy. Is there anything other potential companies that you're looking at right now, and what would you be looking at in that case?
Yes. Thanks, Lotta. Great question. Regarding the market, as I said, the market is ripe for consolidation. There's been consolidation happening. We've been driving that consolidation as well. We see that both in the Nordics, as well as, of course, in the continental market, there's a lot of competition that's potentially coming to the market and that we can really leverage then for our growth and profitability in the future. On top of that, of course, like we saw with Fluentic, there's great AI technology that we can bring on board to then horizontally sell to our existing customer base, whether it's LeadDesk Cloud solution, callback solution, so on. There's a great opportunity also in that regard.
Well, you mentioned Fluentic, and there's actually a question about that in the chat. How do you see Fluentic's growth and profitability profile as part of LeadDesk? Can you comment further on the acquisition price? Was the purchase price comprised solely to the EUR 300,000 bank loan? Is the question.
Yes. Regarding Fluentic, which was formerly called Transfluent, they are providing translation solutions, automatic translation solutions for customer service, and they have some fantastic customers. We've been talking for them for a long time, and now things just clicked, and we had the opportunity to bring them aboard. We see that we can then bring these capabilities to our platforms as well at the same time, and enable our customers to service their customers multilingualy. There's great opportunity there. Regarding the purchase price, it was within those limits. It's we had a fair deal which was in line with the previous acquisitions we've made.
Let's stay on the AI topic because there's a bunch of other questions around that as well. Has the rapid development of AI agents in recent months changed your view on the short-term impact of AI on your business?
S hort-term, especially short-term, no, because where our business lies is of course, with large customers who have longer-term momentum going on. What I do see is that all software needs to evolve. Long tail, long tail SaaS, of course, has a lot of risks involved. Well, that said, we are not, in my view, we are not long tail SaaS. We are providing a critical, systematic solution. What we are doing for our customers is that we're providing the connectivity to the real world. We are providing those APIs, we are providing that connectivity, and on top of that, we're providing that secure channel that you know is always on and that you know, is gonna help your customers reach somebody on your end.
Whether it's AI or not, you want to know what's happening with your customer communication. That's your most important asset, we're providing that visibility then. Like, how you handle that's another topic. Like, I love ChatGPT, I love Code, manners all these, they create fantastic stuff, and we use them a lot in-house as well. The thing that we provide is then, the platform for you to reliably have those, wipe coded apps running on all those agentic agents, serving your customers with-With our platform, you know what's happening, and you can securely do that.
O ne of the first things that, for example, our first Voicebot customer now wanted was that they wanted visibility to what's actually happening on the voice channel, because they have this bot and it's then becoming invisible. W hat's happening is that it's a big part of their business. T heir business would be down if that bot would be dysfunctional. We are providing that security to our customers.
This is a little bit connected because there's another question. Are you seeing customers being able to reduce the number of contact center workers, thanks to productivity gains coming from AI-powered solutions? Do you have visibility into that?
Yes, to somewhat, that's a twofold because this is like, this the typical way. Economics 101, when there's when there' the marginal cost of something comes down, the volumes go up. Having a dialogue with your customers is the most important and like the most valuable thing you can have. Then, of course, you don't want to have unvaluable discussions. You'd rather automate them. Like, automate that, provide like digitalize, whatever. T hat's happening or been happening a long time.
Now, those discussions with your customers, because of the regulation, are harder and harder to actually reach out to your customers. S omebody's talking to them. If it's not you, if it's not your bot, it's gonna be your neighbor's bot. That's the world we live in, that we need to be where the value is being created in those conversations. The secondary conversations that bring no value, should be automated, but you should remember that there is the opportunity then to talk to the customer or to upsell through authentic means, because somebody's gonna do that.
From the monetization point of view, of course, then when we deliver value and we find the right monetization vehicles, there's a big upside for us. I don't think anybody has really cracked that in the market yet, so that's something. We have the same tools and how we package those to our customers that we know well provides us with upsides.
Right. Thank you. back to business. The profitability guidance appears cautious following the strong H2. What are the key variables determining where within the guidance range you will end up?
Yes. One thing, Teemu comment more concretely, but one thing I want to highlight always is that I've always been a straight shooter. Like, if you look at the guidance, there's no one-offs or adjustments. That's like the EBITDA, that's it. That means, of course, that as we are working on those synergies, as we are working on that, there's gonna be one-off costs and all that that are gonna be included there. On the reasoning behind the guidance, we say that we are reaching for 20% in the short-to-midterm, and that is the ambition, of course. Always there's the other side of the coin, but Teemu.
No, that's correct. We, of course, we aim to reach this 20% level, but there may be things that are impacting on our outlook, so we don't want to. Like, there is a bracket and hopefully, we are at the highest range of the bracket.
All right. Very good. We talked a lot about, or you guys talked a lot about Continental Europe, obviously. You did mention some regulatory changes, specifically in Spain and, the Netherlands. Do you wanna explain a little bit what that was about?
In Netherlands and Spain around summer, around the same time, they had changes with which in Netherlands was about opt-in. Telemarketing without an opt-in became illegal. Naturally, the volumes of telemarketing went down, and that's reflected in our second-half numbers. Happy to say though that we were at the beginning of the year, we already saw growth there. That was what happened in the in Netherlands. In Spain, it wa the same story around the same time. That is also now like they're mostly behind us. Although for Spain, there is this big package on energy regulating all energy companies.
It's like 200 pages, there's only one small section about marketing. That will have some impact also going to the second half. We don't know yet what the full extent, it's like a long regulation to the energy companies, which it's only a small part is marketing.
There's a question here. Could you comment roughly on the current split between inbound and outbound software in your home markets versus Continental Europe? There's a follow-up. Could you comment on your growth outlook in Continental Europe with customer service software?
In the Nordics, as I said the customer service split is actually like leaning towards customer service. Customer service in the Nordics. Of course, it's quite an easy question for the continental market. As we said, we've been focusing on sales enablement until now. Naturally there's gonna be like great growth on % in continental market. We're still formulating the plans now and piecing everything together. That's gonna be one of the growth initiatives going forward as well.
We cannot comment on the outlook on that level, but as Olli said, the sales enablement software has been our main product in continental, and one of our biggest customers is the contact center or the contact center operators. When they are hit by the telemarketing regulation, then that impacted on our, of course, then the sales enablement growth. We have many other products and software also and now we prepare the plans on how we are going to actually grow with those because there we have a good platform to grow.
All right. Thank you. I wonder if there was another question about, do you still believe the regulation changes in Europe to have tail impact on annual returning revenue in 2026?
The ones we know of is, so Spain has these energy companies are gonna be, but that's still out in Spain, but other than that, we have no known impacts from regulation. Although there's could be also a tailwind, so positive effect that we are a registered telecoms provider and operator in the markets where we operate in. In the Nordics, in our home market, we are licensed quite high, which means that we have opportunities then when it's recording the regulation, meaning that we have a moat from anybody offering outside of the market. Everybody wants to keep the telephone network and the that side like contained.
sed telecoms provider and operator, in many markets, we have a, have an edge towards any providers who are not working on the local market like we are. So that's like a being the sovereign European player, then enables us to also like provide services to our customers that other providers can't, like self-provisioning telephony, for example
Related to this, there's a question. In continental Europe, in which client sectors or verticals, do you think you can penetrate with the inbound solution?
Looking at, looking at the industries where we are strong is of course, one is public sector and healthcare, especially in Norway and in Finland. Those are of course, certain segments. On top of that, actually we see quite a bit of growth in the automotive industry. Car dealership and related services. Everything related to cars seems to be a growth with nice growth and NRR. Then, other services such as professional services, for example, and so on where we can grow. That's the, that's the industries where we see. Lastly, actually something that we have both on the customer service and sales enablement, the home security, we are doing great in both c ustomer service and for sales enablement, we're a top provider in that segment.
All right. You've mentioned Finnish healthcare, and there's actually a question specifically about that. The financial situation of Finnish healthcare areas, those are the governmental units that provide public healthcare, has improved. Do you see this as a possible catalyst for 2026 ARR growth?
Yes, for certain. H ealthcare across the board is gonna be huge for us. Finland as one of our home markets is of course instrumental here. That being said, of course, like the Finnish market and the macroeconomic situation is what it is. Sweden and Norway are looking more lucrative as options. Those are that's something to take into account. Of course, like being headquartered in Finland, then we'll be focusing also on the Finnish market going forward. Sweden and Norway, like the economy, the macroeconomics are fantastic compared to what we have here, and that's gonna bring us tailwinds in the in our home market.
Right. Let's take a step back. When do you believe the ARR could be turned back to growth, and what are you seeing as key enabling drivers for this?
I can start and maybe you can add. The key drivers are the NRR basically. ARR to us comprises of two things. One is the new ARR, so winning new customers, and the other one is NRR, growing with existing customers. We, of course, both are important, but we have more upside and where we want to improve is the NRR part, so growing with our existing customers. What does that mean? It means that we have a wide software portfolio and also services. We then sell software that we are selling to a customer in a specific industry, to another customer in the same industry. Then also bringing these AI solutions that we have.
We have introduced eight, so bringing those to this, the customers, so that we are bringing our offering, the selected, not everything, but selected offering to the customers. You know, I believe that there we have upside. I think those are the main things. Of course, we need to be better also in managing the customer relationships, then that will also improve the NRR.
This is a question that came from two different askers actually. There's a follow-up. Is it customers squeezing their number of seats or are you seeing customers changing to rivals?
It's like the biggest effect was from the regulatory change in Spain and Netherlands, so that was by far the largest effect, right?
Yeah.
That's why we see that's the regulation, so there's nobody. Most of them are still our customers, just with lower seats. That's the biggest item for us is the regulatory change in continental market driving down those seats. That was the biggest effect by far.
All right. We've covered part of this question, but maybe there's something you wanna add. Your gross margin improved notably in H2. What was driving this, and are you seeing continuing tailwind in gross margin for 2026?
Yes. Our gross margins, again, we have a wide portfolio, so it varies between products. We have some software products with very high gross margins, and then we have some where we the slower. We see potential in improving that like on average level, and that's coming from being more efficient in our own customer support, being more efficient in our own cloud operations or hosting the services and then on the service function. There are drivers that enable us to improve, but we are not promising a huge jump in gross margin. We are relatively good in that already, so always more difficult to improve.
All right. I'm being mindful of time, but if you still have questions you may post them in the chat. We still have time for a few of them. There's one more which is very numbers. How do you see your CapEx level developing in 2026 compared to 2025?
Our CapEx has been growing a bit. It grew by EUR million, and that part of that was coming from the Zisson acquisition. Yes, we need to invest in the competitiveness of our platforms. We aim to, like other costs, we of course want to look at it critically, and we don't want to grow it like too much, so we aim to, if it's growing a little, but we aim to relative to revenue at least, we aim to keep it quite stable.
Yes. Here I think it's like more about like where do we invest at to shift a lot of that effort into AI and the horizontal products. Providing for all our customers, AI Insights, great opportunity there, fantastic product. Combining that with our Quality Assurance Tool, really makes a big change. For example, in the Dutch market I mentioned that had the regulatory change. Like this combination of AI helps also there working in the Dutch market in the new regulation, where you need to actually guarantee that certain quality metrics are made when you are talking with your customer. Great opportunity there. Voicebot, that's another spearhead product now we have. Actually, the first use case that went live was for our 24/7 hotline. We used to outsource our 24/7 hotline.
Now we have our Voicebot there, helping our customers out and then of course waking up on-duty personnel when required with sufficient information and so on. T hat's a great opportunity with regards to these horizontal products, and there's a lot more, and we really want to help our customers out. Wipe, go their own on top of us and really then bring that efficiency to their customer communication. I believe that co-software like us, like this one-to-one communication, that's where AI is taking everything. There's not gonna be like newsletters, mass mailings. That's gonna be out of the door, and it's all gonna be one-to-one communication, powered by AI.
Very cool. Your depreciation increased notably from H1. What was driving this, and was there any exceptional items impacting or is it now the normal level?
It was mainly driven by the goodwill amortization. When we acquired companies, we generated some goodwill, and that was amortized. It's non-cash items, so it didn't impact on our cash flows, but it is there in the depreciation. They are amortized over a long period of time, so they will also continue.
All right. Those are all the questions we had in the chat. Thank you so much for being very, very active and sending in your questions. We'll meet you guys again in a quarter or two to hear what exciting news and developments has happened within all of your business. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.