Good morning, good afternoon, everyone online. Welcome to the Investors and Analysts Briefing by Qt Group. The topic for today is our recommended cash offer in IAR Systems that was published today. My name is Jouni Lintunen, CFO for Qt, and here with me I have our CEO, Juha Varelius. Please mind the disclaimers on these following two slides. Investors considering tendering their shares in the offer by Qt Group Plc subsidiary, Qt Company Ltd, should rely only on information disclosed by Qt Company Ltd as the offerer of the offer. Now I will hand it over to Juha, please.
Hello everyone, my name is Juha Varelius, I'm CEO of the Qt Group, and I'll go briefly through the offer rationale, and then we have some time for Q&A. We've done a public offer for all Class B shares in IAR Systems Group at the offer price of SEK 180 in cash. The total value of this offer is approximately SEK 2.293 million or EUR 204 million. We have a unanimous recommendation from the Board of Directors of IRA, which we are very grateful for, and we have shareholders representing approximately 25.8% of the outstanding number of shares that have irrevocably undertaken to accept the offer, and shareholders representing approximately 10.9% of the outstanding number of shares have confirmed their support for and are intending to accept the offer. That's roughly 36% of the current shareholders backing this cash offer we've made.
Of course, in these kinds of deals, there are conditions, and completion of the offer is conditional, among other conditions, upon the receipt of all regulatory, governmental, similar clearances, approvals, decisions, acceptances by shareholders holding more than 90% of the shares of IAR Systems Group on a fully diluted basis. We do expect this offer to commence around 18th of August 2025 and expire on around 25th September 2025, and the financing of this will happen with the funds we have and funds committed on new debt financing. If we look at the IAR Systems Group in brief, how we see it, it's a leader in the market for secure, reliable, and high-quality software for embedded systems with over 40 years of experience.
The company was founded in 1983, and there we have the similarity with Qt, so we've been on the Qt Group has been in the business for a very long time, as well as IAR, and we are both focusing on the embedded market. IAR solutions support the development of embedded applications across various industries, including automotive, industrial automation, IoT, MedTech, military, and public safety. And for all those people that have been following the Qt, you know that the Qt Group is basically pretty much on the same industries, although we do have 70 different industries, but those are the main focus areas for Qt as well. Currently, IAR is supporting 15,000 devices from over 70 semiconductor partners, and they have a global presence with 230 employees in 14 strategically located offices in North America, Europe, and Asia.
We are both pretty much focused on the same markets throughout the globe internationally. IAR Systems Group shares are listed in Nasdaq Stockholm Midcap, and the company is headquartered in Uppsala, Sweden. IAR's EBITDA percentage was 38% in 2024, so highly profitable with the revenue of SEK 487 million, and the revenue growth in 2024 was 9%. IAR 62%, and the earnings per share SEK 10.20 last year. Let's go to the next slide. Now really the beef that the why do we see that this transaction is in line with Qt Group's ambitions. IAR Systems have strong capabilities in embedded development solutions, and they do complement Qt Group's existing offering. Qt Group has stated that we want to be a multi-product company, and we want to be in the software development process for our customers in embedded.
IAR Systems products are actually complementary, and they are more positioned in the earlier stage of the purchase process for customers looking to build embedded products and to do software development around that. This also enables Qt Group to enter a decisively broader MCU market. We do have a small MCU offering of our own, but I would say that it targets a bit on the higher end of the MCUs, and it is of course substantially smaller, so this will strengthen our MCU position, or this would strengthen our MCU position substantially. We do have software quality solutions, so they are basically quality assurance products, so Axivion and Squish, which are meant for the software testing, software quality use, and there would be a possibility to sell these services to IAR Systems' current customers, and this would enlarge the quality assurance addressable market substantially.
This would also put us in a position that we would be a more comprehensive one-stop shop solution for our customers as a multi-product company. That would mean that the customers would get more products for the whole software development process from one party. They would not have to go and buy these products one by one. We do have, of course, some overlapping customers because we've been operating in the same industries, but we do have also customers that are not overlapping in a large extent. This stronger market presence to serve global customers with local customer experience by joining forces would add a lot of value to our customers. IAR Systems, with their offering, I would say that they are earlier on in the customers' buying journey.
When customers are thinking that they're going to start building something, IAR products are there; they are earlier than Qt, which means that now we would be able to be in engagement with customers on an earlier phase when they start thinking about developing new products and services. We have done this journey in Qt where we had the license change to a subscription-based model, and IAR is in the beginning of this transition. We think that we can support and facilitate that subscription-based model, leveraging our Qt existing experience to drive long-term growth and customer value. We've been through this journey, how to go from the do this SaaS change. We did that in the past three years or so, and the IAR is in the beginning of that journey. I think that the lessons learned, we could bring value on that.
In short, if I summarize this slide, IAR's products are considered earlier on than the Qt products in the software development process. They are complementary products, so they would add into Qt's product offering greatly. They are geared towards the same type of customers Qt has been dealing with all along. We've been like in automotive industry automation and so on. There is this product fit and customer fit on embedded. This would add combined companies, it would add the total addressable market substantially, and some of our products would be comprehensive to IRA customers, specifically our quality assurance products. We do see that there is actually a lot of synergies, and the complementary benefits would be on these transactions combining the operations of these companies. Based on this analysis and based on this strategic fit, we've made this public offering.
We've obviously been following the IAR for a long time, so coming to this point has been a relatively long journey for us. Now with these short presentations, we are ready for Q&A.
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 Matti Riikonen from DNB Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. It's Matti Riikonen at DNB Carnegie. I think the first question that comes to mind is that why now? I think the speculation that Qt and IAR would fit fairly well together has been there for a couple of years already, if not more. What makes you think that now would be the ideal time instead of maybe a couple of years earlier?
I think that it's a good question. Obviously, we've been following IAR a long time. First of all, it always takes two to tango, and we think that now there's been, in that sense, the timing is right. If you think a couple of years back, when we've done two acquisitions about three years ago, give or take, we acquired Froglogic, and then we acquired Axivion pretty much a year apart. I think that the integration, getting those up and running, from our side, being that doing an acquisition, getting them integrated and up and running, and then being ready for the next acquisitions is also part of the equation. Putting this all together, that kind of gives you the timing, why now?
All right, fair enough. Then we know that IAR has only started the process of going into a SaaS model from the license-based model, and you say that you are already at a more advanced stage, but isn't it so that you are still kind of selling licenses, and you have not yourself yet transformed into a SaaS-based software model, although you are selling kind of continuous licenses? How does it actually work in practice to run a company where you have still license-based sales, and then you have a SaaS-based offering on the other side? Do you think that at some point you would have to merge these together so that you would be offering a SaaS offering?
Because if we look at it from the point of view of your customers, which might be basically buying products from both companies, wouldn't it make sense for the customers to have kind of such an offering where they are only basically buying something from new Qt Group, assuming that the deal goes through, and then it would be more likely a SaaS offering?
Yeah, let's not get ahead of ourselves in a way that today we are announcing a public offer, but on general, I would say that when we acquired the two testing companies on quality assurance, the Axivion and Froglogic, our approach on Qt was that each product that we have needs to be good enough, say, standalone. They must be, we must be able to sell them separately. They need to be good enough for that. One reason for that, obviously, is that each product we have, they do have a lot of common customers, but they also do have an addressable market that does not overlap. For testing, for example, our testing products can be used for Java and Windows testing, not only Qt.
Having said that, the other part that we looked for is that the buying for our customers needs to be as simple as possible. If we do have a customer that wants to buy all of our products, the terms, the pricings, and the agreements, they need to be such that the customer does not have to do a situation that you have a different pricing and different terms for each product. If a customer wants to buy them all, it is somewhat too complicated. The buying for the customer needs to be as easy as possible for the purchase process, which means that to your question, ultimately, yes, at some point, the pricing models, they need to come closer to each other.
All right, thank you. Regarding customers, you mentioned that there is some overlap between you and IAR, but could you be more specific about what kind of percentage of your current customers would also be customers on the IAR side, and what is the kind of number of customers at the IAR side that would be completely new to you at the moment?
That's not a very good question. Unfortunately, I can't answer that. What I can say, obviously, is that if you look on IAR's website, they work on functional safety on areas where different kinds of certificates are needed. If you look at Axivion, for example, it's clearly a focus area for Axivion. If you think from the industry perspective that what are industries where these kinds of certificates, functional safeties, whatnot are needed, then you are in the automotive, defense, and whatnot.
Right, okay. You mentioned that the MCU market, the microcontroller unit market, is something where IAR is significantly larger than you, addressing more customers. Could you quantify that in some way so that what is your share of MCU customers compared to IAR, or what is the number of customers compared to IAR?
That number I can't give, but I can give you guidance that we are tiny, tiny, tiny. On the MCU, IAR is giant. To give you an idea, but I can't give you that number. IAR is really, really big compared to us. We are really, really small.
Okay, understood. Thanks for this. That's all from my side.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Jaakko Tyrväinen from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, gentlemen. I would start with kind of an inquiry for you to simplify in just a few words. What are the key products of IAR, meaning that what is the value add customers get when they acquire those products, and how close those products are with Qt's existing product portfolio?
IAR is selling a compiler. Basically, they are talking with people when customers are thinking about starting a new project, and they are choosing the hardware. That's kind of at the early phase where they are. They also have a development environment into that workbench and some security solutions around it. They are on that early phase. Then software design is started to think that how would the design look, then comes to actual software development. In all of this process, you have the static code testing, and then you have potentially architecture testing, and then you go into deployment, and you have the testing on the functional testing that how everything actually works. IAR is the—it's very difficult, the three letters. I'm confusing all the time. Sorry about that.
The IAR is in the early process on the microcontrollers with their compiler ID and the security solutions. That's where they are. We continue from there on the Qt products. This would be a complementary product, yet another step towards that the customers can get more from one place. Where IAR is very strong is these environments where you need certifications. They are, like I said, functional safety and different kinds of critical software components where you need certifications. They are very strong over there. Our Axivion product is extremely strong over there. These customers are the segments where Qt is used. Of course, we do have customers that are common customers to us, but we also do have customers that are not common but are in these segments. This will add to the addressable market for both companies.
Okay, good. Thanks. Just to kind of confirm, you are just expanding your value chain position in the embedded systems market.
Yeah, you can say that.
Okay. Then regarding IAR's kind of sluggish growth over the, let's say, over the past five years, what is your, in your analysis, the key reason for this, and what is the plan to accelerate the growth going forward? Or will this product or this possible transaction kind of result in deeper sales growth for Qt's existing products? Which way around it will it be, kind of accelerate IAR's sales or Qt's current offering sales?
I think my expectation is that a bit of both. I do expect that specifically on the quality assurance side, it'll accelerate because I think that many of the IAR customers would benefit using the quality assurance products we have on Qt side. I think that it would accelerate both companies' sales in a way that we would be able to offer a wider product portfolio for both companies' customers as of now. We would be also able to offer new customers a more comprehensive solution going forward. That I do expect. IAR has announced a new strategy, I think, last year. They also announced the long-term growth targets where they had their strategic initiatives. I won't go into that in more detail. You can check it from their website, what's their plan going forward.
I think we think that it's a credible plan.
Okay, on that last one, do you have any understanding of the current status of the subscription transformation process of IAR, meaning what has been the kind of response from the customers of theirs? How the customers have been responding on the ambition to change towards the subscription model?
It is a public company. Obviously, I have the same information that pretty much everybody else has and no more further detail on that. Although having done the change from perpetual first to term and then into this subscription model we are having today in Qt, and we are operating in embedded markets. We are in, and we are talking about pretty much the same type of customer type Qt has. I think that I have a pretty good guess how it is going to go. If you remember, when we started the subscription chains at Qt, we said that we do expect—our guesstimate then was that, well, there is going to be a certain amount of customers that will never change. They are going to stay in the old versions. I am talking about Qt. We said that is probably going to be 10%.
We said that this transition for us is going to take roughly three to four years. That guess then turned out to be pretty accurate. When you start this kind of change, it'll take a few years. Some part of the customers will never change. Given the experience we got on Qt, not knowing, I know that IAR is in the beginning of this process because that's what they've stated publicly, that they are now starting the process. My guess would be that it'll take a few years, but I have no doubt that it would not be successful because that's basically the business model on embedded for pretty much everyone.
Okay, thank you very much. All from my side.
Thank you.
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The next question comes from Matti Riikonen from DNB Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Matti Riikonen again. I was just thinking about your midterm targets and the guidance for 2025. If we assume that the bid would go through, do you think that this would be such an acquisition that will not kind of fit into your current guidance range so that it would be kind of a factor that is outside of your current guidance principles? You would basically give a new guidance if the bid goes through. That is question number one, how would you respond to this year's targets? The second question is that, and assuming again that the bid goes through, do you think that this would change your midterm top line and profitability targets?
For the guidance this year, we're not, I think it's kind of too early, and it would be very speculative. We've made today a public offer, and it's going to be towards later this year before we see how successful our bid will be. On a longer term, same thing. I think that we need to first see that if this goes through, and then we can come back to that. We're sticking on our old guidance, and we don't want to speculate what if kind of scenarios at this point of time publicly.
All right. Thank you.
Okay. There are no more questions from Telco Lines. Thank you for all participants. And thank you for the very good questions. To summarize, we are extremely excited for this opportunity, and we've made this public offer on the IAR today. We have a 36% backing on this from the major shareholders. We've done a fair offer, and we hope that it'll be successful. Remains to be seen. With these words, I wish you all a very good weekend. Thank you.