Welcome to Siili Solutions' result info for the first half of 2025. My name is Tomi, and I'm the CEO of Siili . Today, we will go through the key highlights of the first half and, of course, the numbers as well. I have here today with me our CFO, Aleksi, and he will tell you about the numbers later in this session. Today, we have a few topics on the agenda. First, I will talk about the highlights of the first half. Aleksi will go through the numbers, and we look at a bit on how the future of Siili looks like. In addition to the kind of standard topics on the agenda, we announced today that we are planning to change our organization model, and we will update you on that as well.
Before we get to the first half of this year, maybe a bit update on Siili as a company in case it's not familiar to all of you yet. Our services cover the whole value chain from exploration, data and AI development, and test automation to maintenance. Our key client sectors include services, industry, public, and finance. Our key markets at the moment: Finland, U.S., U.K., and Germany. We also have four specialized Siili company, Siili subsidiaries, focusing on what they each can be best at. Our subsidiaries are Supercharge, which is focusing on innovation solutions, then Siili Auto focusing on car HMIs, Vala focusing on quality assurance, and Integrations Group focusing on integration services. Our client base is diversified, and typically, we have very long-lasting client relationships.
Mainly, we work with big and mid-sized organizations, either in the public sector or in the private sector. More than 90% of our revenue is time and material based. Our slogan is "Make AI real," and that captures the essence of our strategy. We updated our strategy roughly a year ago, and then we took the AI in the very center of our strategy. We are in the middle of transforming the company, focusing more and more on AI as well. The strategy, so these elements are the elements that have been there already quite some time, so nothing new on these. The target client segments are the same as they have been. The industries and the markets have been the same already quite some time. Our values, we haven't made any changes on our values.
A year ago, we updated our strategy and took the AI in the very center of our strategy, our data and AI. We identified for ourselves three key things in strategy. First, the community of top talent. This is not a new thing that has been there already earlier. Our aim here is to become the best AI-driven community for humans. The second, significant growth in data and AI business. Third, to be a pioneer in AI-powered digital development. Moving on to the changes that we announced earlier today, I will go through the key things that we announced today. First, we are planning to go through the change negotiations. All this is on a planning mode at this point. No decisions made yet as we go through the change negotiation process. The plan at the moment is to, first of all, simplify our structure.
We are moving to a simpler organizational structure, which is based on current competence communities and teams. Second, sales will be strengthened with more subject matter expertise. We started this already earlier this year. We launched our AI advisory service, which is exactly this. We are recruiting all the time more and more principal consultants who have the subject matter expertise as their main competence area. The third point, we are organizing ourselves or planning to organize ourselves around the three different client need types. I will explain this later, what we mean by this. This is to match better on the demand on the market and what different client needs there is. We continue to adjust our competence profile to match better our strategy as well as the needs on the market. All this, we are implementing through change negotiations.
Within the change negotiations, the scope is roughly 250 people. Our current estimate or maximum current estimate of the reduction needs is 47. We are expecting roughly €4.1 million- €4.5 million annual cost savings as a consequence of this process. If we put this a bit on a timeline, that's what we have done earlier and where we are now and what are the next steps. The timeline here starts a year ago when we implemented or announced our new strategy and put the data and AI in the very center of that. After that, we have identified the strategic focus areas where we will be focusing and have been focusing. Earlier this year, we aligned our support functions to be better aligned with the market situation. Now we are aligning the technical competencies and structure with our strategy. That's basically what we announced today.
We are expecting to get this process implemented by mid-September. We should be fully operational by the beginning of October this year. If we look at what changes we are making from the strategy perspective, first of all, this is not a new slide. We've been showing this already earlier. Our goal is to help our clients to become AI leaders in their own industries. As Siili, we support our clients on their own AI-powered journey through all the steps on that journey and how that reflects to the different client needs. In the picture, the green boxes are the needs where typically the client is after a faster time to market. Typically, they buy competence and delivery capacity from us. As the AI is part of the equation, the process innovation in the development is something where we are very good.
That's the kind of advisory the clients are asking from us regarding the development process. That's the green boxes in the picture. The blue boxes, the driver for client typically is new revenue streams, and their maturity level is typically lower. As a consequence of that, on the areas of the blue boxes, they typically want to buy end-to-end solutions from us. With the new organization set up, we are matching these two different types of client requirements. The third typical requirement is the maintenance or running. There, we run the services that we have built, and that's the continuous services we provide. There, the driver for client is typically reliability and efficiency. If we look at this from the organizational setup point of view, we are now organizing or planning to organize ourselves based on these three different client need types.
Also, the way we sell is obviously different in each of these types. The first, the creation, that's a working title now. The creation part of the whole thing is value-driven. There, client is after the new revenue, new services, and typically, they buy it as an end-to-end solution. The second, the development, that's more mature from the client perspective. There, they typically buy the delivery capability from us. In practice, teams and individual experts in some cases. The sales model is different in both of these cases. In the development, it's typically a competence-driven. In this creation or solutions, it's typically a value-driven sales. We are organizing ourselves based on this logic. The third element is the running service, the continuous services. That's typically SLA, service level agreement-driven. The client is after stability and efficiency on running the application landscape.
Moving on to the highlights of the first half and second quarter. First of all, we focused or have been focusing on looking after our overall offering and kind of transforming ourselves more and more towards the data and AI. Yes, of course, it takes time because we have other services in our portfolio. We launched the AI advisory service earlier this year, and that was one of the things taking us towards that direction. Another concrete step, we acquired the Integrations Group earlier this year, and we are updating our competence profile to better support the strategy as well as the market demand. We are strengthening our data and AI expertise. For instance, roughly 400 Siilis have completed our AI development course during the first half of this year.
Looking at the numbers, and Aleksi will go through the numbers in more detail, but on a high level, the first half, we made roughly €57.5 million revenue, and our EBITDA was 4.5% and international revenue a bit more than 26%. Looking at the second quarter, the same numbers, we made €27.6 million revenue and roughly 4.7% EBITDA, and the international revenue was roughly 25%. I hand over to Aleksi, and he will go through the numbers in more detail. Aleksi.
Thank you, Tomi. Let's take a quick review to our financials, mainly to revenue, profitability, and then a few key figures from our balance sheet. The picture on top here is showing our first half, second half revenue from 2016 up to the end of the first half this year. During the first half, as already mentioned, our revenue was €57.5 million and respectively - 2.8% compared to the first half last year. From the picture below, you can see the quarterly revenue from quarter one, 2021, until quarter two this year. On the second quarter, the revenue drop was roughly minus 6% from the comparison period. In general, the market continues to challenge us, and we saw revenue decline on the second quarter across the group, however, mainly on the international side.
Of course, revenue was partly also the revenue decline was partly driven by a lower number of working days during the second quarter. Moving to the international revenue side, the first half was here more challenging than last year, with lower revenue by roughly - 10% compared to last year. Overall, the revenue share was over 26% of the total group revenue, so still exceeding 25% share from the group revenue. Our focus has been in securing Siili's profitability in the tougher market environment. The first half adjusted EBITDA was €2.6 million and adjusted EBITDA margin 4.5%, as shown by the picture on the top. We initiated cost savings during the first half, and this clearly supported our profitability. Looking at the quarterly profit, the second quarter adjusted EBITDA was €1.3 million and 4.7% profitability margin. There was a decline from last year, roughly 1% point.
However, we have improvement in the profit margin level when we compare to the quarter three and the end of the last year on a quarterly basis. Looking ahead, we're determined and committed to continue our strong efforts to improve our profitability towards our long-term financial target. Our capacity at the end of the first half was roughly 1,000 employees and subcontractors. We have adjusted our capacity, and the declining headcount from the end of last year was primarily driven by the change negotiations carried out during the first half. Our focus remains in improving our operational efficiency while we maintain the recruitment activity in our core areas like data and AI competence. Finally, a review to our balance sheet. We continue to retain a strong financial position and a healthy balance sheet.
Our equity ratio grew to almost 50% from 47% at the end of the first half last year. Our net debt ratio was close to zero and in line with last year. Overall, Siili has a good financial position to move on with our strategy execution. Now, over to Tomi and going forward.
Thank you. All right. Now, if we have a bit look on how we are looking for the next steps for Siili . For the whole year, this is not a new slide. Our focus this year has been on two things: executing our strategy, meaning scaling up the AI and data and AI, and second, to improve profitability. This is our agenda for 2025. The actions that we announced earlier today are obviously in line with these two targets. We aim to support better our strategic execution and, of course, improve our profitability as well. The guidance, just to recap on that. Our guidance for this year, no changes here. Guidance is revenue between €108 million- €120 million and the adjusted EBITDA between €4.7 million- €7.7 million. When we have given the guidance, our expectation then was that the macro demand environment remains unchanged compared to 2024.
We do not see any changes on that. The market has been difficult. As far as we see it also from now on, we do not have any signs, at least not at the moment, that the market would pick up or become any easier than what it has been. The AI, of course, the implementation speed of AI, it's obviously a relevant question for us, of course, as well. That was all we had today. We are happy to answer any questions you may have.
All right. As previously, you can send your questions via Teams Q&A link. We already have quite a quite many questions here. I think there are several questions covering the AI and the impact to the efficiency. Maybe we can start with that one. The question is that, if I read it, how much the use of AI has improved the productivity of your own workers? Are you seeing such a productivity leap creating more overcapacity to the market, i.e., the amount of available hours growing more than the actual demand? There are other questions from the AI efficiency impact, too.
Yes. Mainly our, and not just our, but the business logic and the invoicing logic in this industry has been mainly time-based, so hourly based. That hasn't changed. How we gain the productivity or the productivity gains we get is basically that we split the gains between ourselves and our clients. It depends on that when we do kind of fixed price projects, of course, then it's easier for us to benefit on the productivity gains brought by AI. It also varies quite a lot, for instance, that we still have clients who are not willing to use AI. That's a limitation itself. We have clients who are willing to use it, but in a very limited scale. We are not in a full scale or anywhere near in a full scale at the moment.
It's more still not experimenting anymore that now it's, I mean, that it used to be a proof of concepts and now it's a kind of real life. Still, the scale is, let's say, rather small. It's not kind of that straightforward that we can say that, hey, the productivity has increased this and that much because then it goes back to the invoicing logic. Traditionally, this industry has been based on the time-based invoicing, and it takes time that will change.
Right. We can see a few questions about the pricing. Maybe we take that one. Any comments on the customer price levels if you compare to the front book versus the back book? Have the prices in public tenders continued to slide?
Yeah. Now the prices have dropped. That's not a surprise or secret. Do they continue to drop? No, I wouldn't say so. At least how we see it is that the environment, yes, the environment is tough, but that it would have been getting worse or that we would see that it would still get worse, we don't see such development. In the market perspective, and that, of course, reflects the prices as well, now I would say that it's rather stable. Like I said, no kind of any significant signs that it would improve. Like I said, we have been prepared for this already when the year started. When the year started, we did not expect that the market would get any better this year. That has basically been how the market has developed. It's not a kind of surprise to us.
Of course, it's something that we have to step by step adapt ourselves.
Right. The decline in international business in the second quarter was steep. What was driving this? Any commentary on Siili Auto versus Supercharge?
Yes. No, that's true that if I look at the kind of history in a bit longer term, our international revenue has typically been stronger than the revenue development outside Finland has been typically stronger than in Finland. Now, it's not the case in the second quarter. That's sort of kind of a well-pointed or picked. Regarding the international business, we basically have two kind of elements there, the Siili Auto, which is purely focusing on automotive, and then Supercharge. In automotive, the situation is difficult. The tariff discussion, for instance, goes kind of left and right every week. That has created uncertainty on the market. That, of course, reflects to the demand on that simply because of the uncertainty. You can see that in our numbers as well. Supercharge, yes, we have challenges there as well.
Siili Auto, the automotive is the main driver of the challenges outside Finland at the moment.
Continuing from here, actually going to the global trade tensions. I think you already partly answered to that. Are you seeing the global trade tensions having a direct impact on the customer's decision-making, especially in the international business? I guess we.
Yes. Of course, we can see that. It doesn't impact us directly, but indirectly because, let's say, the bigger and the more international the client, then, of course, the uncertainty, I guess it's pretty obvious that the uncertainty is there. That reflects on their buying behavior.
At least not helping or supporting the market on that side.
Not helping, yes. There is a question from the defense sector. How fast the market in the defense sector is evolving? How easy is it to penetrate to this client vertical? Can you penetrate the market in the coming 12 months?
Yes. Now, the defense sector is very defensive in terms of that it's not an easy market to enter. We have kind of a few angles. We are trying to enter the defense market. It's not an easy market to penetrate. The ways we are trying to penetrate the defense market is, one, is the automotive because there, let's say that there are a lot of, of course, the automotive is completely different than defense, but there are a lot of similarities. I mean, the requirement level is very high and the competencies we have. Basically, the human-machine interfaces for cars, that's, let's say, in principle, it's easy to adapt on the defense. What slows it down is that we don't have references on the defense. That then depends on the client case, that how easy it is to enter the defense sector.
The first steps we are taking are not directly the, so basically, we are aiming to the subcontractor role because that's clearly the easier step. Step by step to kind of build our position. That's, by the way, exactly what we have done. That was a long time ago. Anyway, the automotive, that now the big automotive companies, Mercedes, Volkswagen, etc., are directly our clients. That obviously wasn't the case when we started the automotive. Now, we are, of course, exploring exactly the same route towards the defense, but it's not a fast track to do.
All right. We have a few questions about the new billing process that we announced. Actually, that wasn't the billing process to Siili . It was the work that we carried out to our customer. Hopefully, hopefully.
It was in the press release that we have worked on a customer or client's billing process.
Yes. I think we have pretty much covered all topics that we have currently in the questions. Maybe a summary. Do you see signs of market turnaround? That's one question looking ahead.
No, I cannot say that we see signs of turnaround. To me, it seems obvious that sooner or later, the market will pick up because there is a development depth that the clients are building basically every day. Things are postponed or the decisions are slow. At some point, there are things that in practice are kind of they are forced to replace something or update something and build new integrations, etc. So sooner or later, the market will pick up. When that's, no, it seems to take time.
All right. There is maybe one question from the employee net organic employee growth. When do you expect net organic employee growth for the entire Siili reflects to the market turnaround as well? I'm going through the structural change here, so probably hard to.
Yeah. No, hard to estimate because now we are, of course, you won't see it on the net numbers that we are recruiting all the time very actively on the areas that are growing, so meaning not data and AI, for instance. There are other parts of the business that are not growing. Of course, the net what you cannot see from the numbers outside is the kind of transition between these two. Obviously, how the market behaves, that has a, of course, a big impact on that. That's difficult to estimate. We have been focusing on kind of making sure that our efficiency is on a proper level. Whenever the market will pick up, then, of course, that will kind of we will benefit on the improved efficiency and also that we are transforming the competence profile of the company.
That will serve us whenever the market will pick up.
I think that's it. I believe we have covered at least all the topics, and there are no new questions at the moment.
All right. Thank you for this session and for the good questions you have.