Good morning, welcome to Solteq's Capital Markets Day. At least for us, it is a morning. We're in Helsinki with live audience, 10:0 AM . Extremely happy to have physical people around. We also have, roughly 60 people viewing the presentations online, so I wish you warmly welcome to the CMD. We're gonna have quite an interesting day, hopefully. Exactly 2 hours. We will not overrun, which means that at 12:00 AM local time Helsinki, we'll be done. Perhaps a few minutes before that, then we can chit and chat. I'm Aarne Aktan. I'm the CEO of Solteq, been here as a CEO for pretty much half an year now. I was serving as a board member for quite many years, almost seven years. Has been an interesting ride. I have a view and idea of the company, or had one.
As always, when you step into the operative role, you learn new things. You learn about the culture, you learn about the clients, the client relationships, the skills, the people. Has really been interesting. I have a quite an extensive background in enlisted companies, been running a few before Solteq. My background and origin, my home is in the IT, Quartal. I was an entrepreneur for almost 1five years. It was nice to come back. IT is a good world. The agenda today is split into four presentations. I'll be the first one. We have our CFO, and then our business unit leaders talking about. We will, at the end, of course, have a Q&A. I really encourage people live and online to send questions, the tougher, the better.
Meaning, the tougher questions are always more interesting, especially for the audience, not always for the management. We're definitely prepared, and we try to do our best to serve your questions and have good answers on those. We've set three objectives for today. We try to keep it simple. We try to tell you about our ambitions and fears, namely upside and downside. Our thought is that we will not try to hide difficult things, rather than we try to talk about them quite openly. We've just structured the company in a new way, so we will like to put you on the map on our business processes, our business models and structures. As the last point, we try to explain the strategic choices that we've made, namely the industries and also the software strategies that we have.
Hopefully, we succeed, but we will know that in 2 hours. We have management here present. Starting definitely from the ladies, we have Christa. Christa will be running our Q&A session at the end. Christa just started three weeks ago as our head of communications and marketing. We have Mikko. Mikko is our general counsel, i.e. the lawyer. Has been serving in the company for quite many years, I think from 2014 or so. Mikko is sort of the first man standing. He has the longest experience of Solteq in our whole management team. We have Kirsi. Kirsi is our head of HR, located in Jyväskylä. Kirsi has decided to leave us, but she's still on board. She will leave us in February. Has done a fantastic job in our HR.
Has been quite an interesting ride for Kirsi for the last four years. We have Jaakko here, and Jaakko is our newly nominated Head of Utilities. Extremely capable, extreme knowledge on the industry, and that will come out today. We have Jesper and Jesper is our Head of Retail & Commerce, has been running our Danish company for the last four years, since 2019. Has made a miracle. Jesper's track in Solteq is second to none. Our Danish business has been a shining star. It was a logical thing that Jesper took the next step into the management team and also took our bigger business unit into his hands. An interesting thing for us is that for the first time ever in Solteq, we have someone who's a non-Finn. We've also switched our language.
It doesn't sound much, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but in the ordinary daily life, it is for the management team, and especially for our personnel, our employees outside Finland, it is quite a big thing. We have Kari. Kari is our CFO, will be presenting after me. Kari will walk through for instance, the long-term financial targets and certain developments that we've had here. Kari has joined the company in 2019, has seen the sort of the previous phases and stages that we've had here. A quick summary on where we are and where we're going and where have we been. This is our press release or stock exchange release from last Monday. We published our long-term targets and long-term financial targets, and in the targets, we've guided three different areas.
Both of our business segments, utilities, retail, and commerce, and then, our group-level targets as well, namely dividend policy and the desired leverage ratio. There was also a chapter, which was sort of my speak in it, this chapter is actually our today's story. The chapter was built in a way that it actually consists of five points. These five points are the ones that we're also emphasizing to you today. The five points can be seen on the slides now. Let's start from the first point. Three phases. Solteq was, someone would say, a sleeping beauty until 2019, I would say that it was slightly sleeping and boring. It was quite difficult to understand what Solteq was doing. It was also problematic to understand the competitive advantages.
That was also reflected in the market cap or the share price. At the same time, you could say that the financial performance was not thrilling. It wasn't lousy either, but it wasn't thrilling. There was a period of two years when from a share price point of view, Solteq was clearly an overperformer, namely the pandemic. I was the head of the audit committee at the time, so I can talk on my own behalf. Maybe we made a bit of a mistake there. Maybe we didn't really understand how much the pandemic was actually fueling our business. It's quite common that when things are going well, the company thinks, feels that it is because we did such a beautiful job. When things are going bad, it's because of the market.
Here I must say that the market really, really helped us during the pandemic. The overperformance, it wasn't a bad work at home. I mean, our people did good job. We simply cannot explain the overperformance without understanding that there was the pandemic. Another thing that we also had was in our Utilities. There's a thing in Finland called Datahub: Datahub 1 , Datahub 2 . Our Utilities team was very good in utilizing the Datahub change, which was sort of tremendous on that market. We were able to do organic growth heavily, and we were able to increase our market share. Some of the players left the market at that time. Some of the players did big entries, and we were the latter ones. It went well, even though it then afterwards generated a bit of problems.
Those problems led us being underperformer last year. Underperformer means that when the pandemic sort of disappeared or the world normalized, we came into a world where we had to face the facts. The demand, overall market demand got lower last year. That's no news. Everyone knows that. At the same time also, we created some of our own problems. I'll get to that later on. Profitability and growth, those are our primary focus in next one-two years. Organic growth and profitability. In order to prioritize those two, I would say that we prioritize now profitability over growth. Like to see both, but the do or die for us is profitability. We were on a good level 2021. We were not on an acceptable level 2022. Yes, I'm talking about the first nine months because the Q4 is not out.
In general, the focus of the management team is to bring this Solteq back on track. Two of the big problems, I said macro didn't help, and it will not. We know already now that we won't get. Well, our expectation is not that there would be a good, healthy demand from the market. There will be demand from the market, but most probably it's not growing that much. We're not expecting help from the macro. We will deal with that, which means that we need to be sharper in our own internal processes, efficiencies, the way we work, and we need to be better in our product development undisputedly. Certain laundry is self-created. Nice way of saying that we've had problems in our Utilities products. We've communicated that quite actively onto the market.
Q2 May, we had a profit warning that was because of our problems in our solutions and products in the utility sector. We created that problem, not the market. Actually, the utilities market has been quite good in terms of the market dynamics. Obviously, there are quite a lot of drivers over there. The war, the German gas pipe, everything that has affected in Europe, that has also had a reflection in Finland and also in Denmark. In Denmark, we do utility services, consultancy-based, but still we are a strong player on the Danish market. We've figured out ourselves that what are the competitive advantages that we need in order to be successful. Software products, that's both in utilities and in our retail and commerce. In retail and commerce, we're very active with our POS systems, point of sale systems.
We also have dental and car, softwares over there, so software products and product development. Second thing is that in our consultancies and integration work where we are a body shop, where we sell skills, our competitive advantage will not be really the technical skills, because technical skills on the market are commoditized. That's kind of like the starting point, that if you're in that business, you are technically skilled. But we need to understand our clients' business in a better way. That's really easy for the CEO to, you know, to jump into the stage and say that we need to understand our clients' business in a better way. Extremely difficult to deliver. But we have in-house solid knowledge about that area. We just need to make it stronger. And that would be our sort of defining factor, the USP in the market. Our people understand the business.
It's a bold promise. Then Jesper and Jesper's teams need to make that a reality. They will. Timeline. Does it happen immediately? Are we back on track right now? No. It takes a while. We're working hard, but we have three years max to deliver. When we're here after three years, having a capital markets day of Solteq, we should be able to show you numbers that we've just published on Monday. That's 8- 8 in retail and commerce, 8% growth, 8% EBIT, not EBITDA, EBIT, and it's 15-18 in our utilities. 15% on growth, 18% on EBIT. three years it will take. Hopefully a bit less. We're working on it. Comes the good news. We have all the ingredients at home. The company really has the skills, the understandings, the capabilities. Yes, we've screwed up certain things.
We've learned. Will we screw up again something? Most probably, yes. Bigger things? No. Smaller things? Yes. Then we'll learn again. We have everything we need in-house. Does that mean that we would not be interested in M&A? No, we are. Solteq has been opportunistic in terms of the M&A during the last five years. As the head of audit committee, I should head, sorry. Not anymore. We will continue to do so. We will be opportunistic. We will take a look on cases on both sides, be it on acquisitions, be it on divestments. Our plan is not based on the fact that we have to buy. We will if it makes sense. Making sense is of course, it's always a question of valuation.
For us, a dominant thing over there is that does it fit the strategy that we have? If it makes our strategy work in a quicker manner, we're in. If it's an expansion because you might have a better allocation of group costs, have a better EBIT on the buyer side than the seller side, but it doesn't fit the strategy, we're out. Not interested. Is it possible that we don't buy anything during those three years? Yeah, it's possible. Is it probable? No, I don't think so. The plan is done in the way that we do not need external help. If we take external help, then it makes the realization of our plan quicker. Those are the five points we have with Solteq right now on our table.
We are, or I think that we understand the situation where we are, and I think we know what to do in order to sort of turn the company into being greater. I know that the phrase "Make Solteq great again" doesn't really resonate in a proper way. Let's not use that one. Jumping from a thought to a knowledge, I know that we have a very, very good team in order to execute what we need. This is the situation before. Sorry, before jumping into Kari, at this stage, I would die for tough questions. I would really have to get some tough questions. The questions can be posted online, right, Christa? Yes. There's a way of posting it, but certainly everyone live here is welcome to shoot anything they have in mind. Okay.
We have Joni from Inderes as a first shooter.
Yeah. Aarne, thank you for your presentation, really happy to see that Solteq organizes this Capital Markets Day. We've been waiting for this to have a deeper dive into your strategy and looking into segments. The segment questions, I'll save those to later, of course, then I expect to have more about those. You've been active previous years in M&A, and now you mentioned also divestments. The previous CEO already made some divestments and now you say that we can have some tough questions, and I understand that it's always difficult for a CEO to say which are the non-core businesses. Can you somehow, if you can't say the businesses, that's fine, but...
How could we from the outside evaluate, like, which part, how much, like, it could impact your business and the type of businesses you are looking or to divest? Is the non-core only retail and utilities? We know from previous that you have a lot of small businesses. Maybe you could a little bit talk about those.
It's actually not, it's not that tough of a question, for a CEO because the CEO actually likes to talk about that because it also opens up the avenue for the CEO then eventually to do the changes. We don't have a hit list. We don't have the list that these are the assets that we're going to dispose or those would be the assets that we'd like to acquire. On the acquisition side, we just made a smallish, an acquisition, STB, in November, STB Energy. It was in our utility segment. The financing capacity that we have currently doesn't allow us to do any big things. We need to fix our profitability first.
On the divestments side, if I was the analyst, I would take a close look on the strategy and think that what are the units that are closest to the core competencies that we try to build, i.e., in Utilities or in the POSs, the software and the capabilities of the software, and then in Retail & Commerce, I mean, really the business-critical systems where client business understanding is required. I would say that those are the ones who are closer to the things where we try to really hold on to those. The ones who are not, then they're slightly further away.
I follow up on that point. Can you mention a little bit of names and how big these. You had something with the cars and teeth services, at least these are two, but I don't remember, was there still more businesses that you had, in-
Well, we do have quite a color. I mean, even looking at our POSs, you'll see that we have sort of POS solutions and ERP solutions that are in different sort of life cycle or sort of maturity levels. So it's not a single area, and the portfolio is quite colored. In terms of the sizes, in terms of the numbers, you're gonna need to wait a bit because now that we've changed the structure into the new segments, we will have a bit more information than on the segments themselves eventually in our Q1 report. I know it's slightly a dull question, answer, sorry, but I'm a dull boy. Very good. Christa, do we have questions online?
No. Not at the moment.
What a pity. I was dying for I think Joni made a very good opening here. How about the backseat guys who are normally. I mean, in school, the backseat guys are always the tough ones. Normally they shoot the tough questions.
Yeah. I don't know whether we are going to deep dive into the numbers later on, but I would like to question about the target for the retail and commerce, especially on the EBIT side is 8%. It sounds a little bit low in my ear.
Yeah.
What can you comment that?
When setting the targets, I mean, bearing in mind our performance that we've had, when setting the targets, we wanted to sort of set targets that are sort of, that are realistic to hit. In retail and commerce, we sort of concluded that 8% is something which we can hit. There's a bit of an ambition in there, but Tommy is definitely right in his question. It's not over-tuned. Looking at the first box, sleeping and boring overperformer and underperformer, I don't think that we should come now into the under the eyes of the shareholders or possible shareholders or lenders and saying that, "Yo, guys, we're gonna shoot 20." It definitely would not be credible. We use these targets also, to sort of guide our businesses internally. Hence, we concluded with 8%.
I agree with you, Tommy, that it could, it definitely could be higher. Yes, we did say minimum eight. I'm extremely happy to take 12 if we can. We first need to get it eight and eight.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
I would like to know about what part of the revenue is like services and what part of the revenue is software. Also then talking about software, how much from that is recurring revenue? I don't know if this is coming in a later presentations, but that kind of split would interest me very much.
That's a, that's a logical area of interest. We do have something about that, but we're not publishing today anything that we would not have published beforehand in terms of the revenue splits. We're referring to the Q3 numbers later on today in terms of the recurring revenues. We do have a slide on that one.
Thank you.
Very good. I technically need to say that we will not take more questions. We have a Q&A session at the end of the Capital Markets Day after we more than an hour. Please do shoot in as many as you like then. Our next person to present is Mr. Kari Lehtosalo, our CFO. I've been working with Kari for quite many years now, quite closely since being the or having been the head of audit committee. There's a sort of a tight connection with the CFO. Enjoyed it. Kari has a strong background in the IT, mainly in the world of IBM. Yes, Solteq's slightly smaller, but we do have same dynamics and same challenges and same opportunities as well.
Kari will go through now more into the numbers and also into the long-term financial targets that we published on Monday. Very good.
All right. Thank you, Aarne. Good morning, good day, everybody, on my behalf as well. Great to be here. Glad that we have this CMD. Like Aarne said, I'll go through the financial updates. Obviously now based on the 3Q 2022 situation since we are about to disclose our 4Q on 16th February. On the first slide, I think, we can actually see from a financial performance point of view, most of the points that Aarne already laid out or sort of gave background that, you know, what has been the past, you know, how are we performing currently.
If we look at the revenue performance on the left upper corner, we had good years 2021, both organic growth and actually supported by acquisitions as well. Fact is that, during 2022, that organic growth break off. We still have some help in terms of revenue growth in our software segment, namely due to the acquisitions we have done in the utility side, but organic growth break off. That combined with the issues that we have seen and also disclosed during 2022, we gave 2 profit warnings.
Combined with the issues on the utility side, namely related to the quality of our products and installations, has obviously resulted at also our EBITDA and EBIT levels have gone down significantly during 2022. The second point on the performance till 3Q 2022 goes back to the profit warning. The second profit warning we gave on the fall is that we also saw the macroeconomic impact, specifically on the digital segment that resulted us giving the second profit warning. Two sort of main factors behind the 2022 performance till 3Q, utilities and then the digital macroeconomic factors. There was already a good question from the audience regarding the recurring revenues.
Company has been reporting the recurring revenues now for, if I recall right, almost exactly two years. Definition being recurring revenues share of the total software segment revenue. Software related, no direct link or correlation to the work performed, but not pure software license fee. That's also included here, but there are certain work-related elements. That's the definition we have been using. That's the definition we have been reporting. If we look at the trend from last year, we can see that within the software segment, the absolute amount of the recurring revenues have been growing, which is obviously encouraging news.
The relative share, of course, you need to, need to bear in mind since if you, if you look at the absolute numbers or shares, you can say that then, you know, 70%, 75% of the business is sort of for time and material based purely. Of course, the share changes when, for example, in 3Q, which is by nature the lowest time and material invoicing quarter due to the vacation period. I think the most important sort of a trend and fact here is to look at the absolute number and development of the recurring revenues.
Going forward with the new segment structure, as already pointed out here, of course, this sort of changes since we are now leaving the Utilities alone in their own segment, and from this picture, we are actually moving the POS, IPRs, and related services to Retail & Commerce. Like Aarne said, bear with us, we will come out. Actually, before releasing Q1 2023, we will actually disclose the comparable data from 2022 in the new segment structure to the market, and then the new structure obviously in the Q1 report 2023. Long-term financial targets. Already good questions on this one. I think Aarne pointed out the philosophy and the background of setting these targets. I just make one point. Retail & Commerce, time and material, service-based. That will be the focus, that will be the largest part of that business.
If you look at the utilities targets, obviously specifically EBIT, fact is that, you know, looking at the total software segment now, you can draw a conclusion that, you know, we are far behind of that. These are long-term financial targets. Obviously when you look at the business model, product focus, productization, quality of the products, improvement in there, that sort of sets the scene. We are not. When we are talking about true software product business, you know, makes sense to set up that type of targets for three years. Few words about the group level targets. We set the target for dividends. I don't recall when have been the last time where Solteq has set such a target, but we have done that now.
I think it's, it certainly makes sense and, you know, it's of course, you know, obviously demanded a lot that we can switch the gear in terms of profitability and improve that. Leverage, we are definitely not happy with the current level of leverage we have and we have set the target to be at net debt to EBITDA 3-1 going forward. Dependency again, obviously, that we need to switch and improve the profitability versus the current situation we have.
A comment on the leverage in overall, as you may have seen and read, we made a bond amendment, you know, bond amendment voting process or request for our bondholders to allow us to add a bit of working capital, which was not allowed in the current bond terms. Obviously, we are very happy that we got that through. We do have some more flexibility right now. But definitely, you know, following the profitability improvements, goal is to certainly set the net debt to EBITDA ratio, the leverage, around 3- 1 going forward. Now I think it's, are there any questions, live online. Happy to answer. Maybe we start to Joni again.
Yeah
Joni. Yeah.
Now when we open up the question for the targets as well, I'd like to ask you as CFO a little bit about the retail and commerce. These targets, I also agree that especially on profitability side, seem quite low, keeping in mind that you should have quite big or substantial part still of software business in this segment. Can you maybe talk about this in retail and commerce? Which are the elements that are, you see are limiting the profitability upside? With service business you should already achieve this kind of profitability level. Where does the software profitability part go away?
I think, looking at the whole context, you still have to bear in mind that the pure digital side is in the current or in the old organization, that is by far the biggest share. Yet we've been doing in the old digital segment a good result, I would say during 2021 actually overperforming if we look at the sort of a benchmark, the services business. And I think this goes back to Aarne's comment that yet we do combine a certain share of IPR and software business in there. But still, I think, we are I'm happy to take 20, 13 or even 15 EBIT. No problem with that.
I think given the background and where we are coming from and the size of the software business we are moving there, maybe a bit of a lowballing, but I think, you know, it makes sense to set up the target of eight, to be honest. Given the whole context and the complete picture of that.
I know maybe this is too early or should we take it in the end. I have a question on pricing in general, software and also the, like, the time material based. Could you already now give some, like idea, how you can, keeping in mind the high salary inflation in services business, but also the inflation in other areas? How are you, like, able to put this into service customer prices and again in the software business, which are your, like, possibilities to increase prices over there?
obviously, I mean, the price increases, I mean, of course we look at the contracts we have with the customers. There are certain clauses allowing us, of course, to the pricing increases. We have been along with the other companies as well in all industries, been very cautious on that one and look at the possibilities already during actually last year that where we have the capabilities to increase prices, we have done that. On the software side, in general I think the same comment. To me overall, if I look at the strategy we have selected, and this goes specifically to utilities, it's, I'm not concerned about the pricing.
I'm concerned about the quality and level of product, true product that we can offer to the market and customers. That is where we will get the financial results and benefit.
Last short question about the bond outstanding. Can you give some like your view on when would you think that the refinancing could be done?
Current bond maturing, beginning of October 2024. Given the current leverage ratio, I mean, fact is that, you know, a year, a bit less than a year from here, obviously we need to see a different performance because then we need to start to think about, you know, our capability of refinancing the company. Hence, the net debt to EBITDA ratio 3 to 1. Underlying that we are definitely not satisfied with the level of debt we have currently. I think Jerk had a question as well. Mikko, can you-
Thank you. Häyhä, from Evli I'd just like to ask about the kind of the utilities EBIT margin target, without knowing the exact level currently. Could you maybe just kind of open up how you see the development during your long-term target strategy phase? How much is kind of up to just kind of getting the personnel kind of developing at the moment, correcting issues? How much will that bring up EBIT? How much would, for instance, be then ARR over the coming years?
Yeah. Good question. we have suffered, and we are suffering still, that, you know, we are fixing things without being able to invoice all of that work from the customers. It also has a secondary impact, and has had a secondary impact, meaning a negative hit to our top line in utilities. I see that in overall, you know, the issues in the utilities, that is, you know, micro-driven. We have created the issues ourselves. It's not a market-driven issue. Hence, you know, allocating the resources to a certain, you know, internal things has definitely hurt us on the top line. Fixing the internal things will also gave us more, you know, benefit or upside from the top line, because we definitely see that the market is there.
There are no significant macro-driven issues from the market hurting us on the utilities side. Fixing things, productization, you know, getting the installations to the customers without, or much less quality issues, bugs, bug fixes, will eventually support the EBIT target as well. We are certainly looking at that, you know, back to Joni's comment on the pricing side. If we look at and benchmark to a true software businesses, it's not about, you know, maximizing the price or the sales volume for single case or single software installation or monthly license fees. It's actually maybe putting in the market a product that delivers what it promises. It could be maybe even the cheapest or almost the cheapest solution.
Then the aim is that, you know, the end, the quantity of the installations, the quantity of the customers will be much higher than what we have nowadays. Any other questions? Christa, do we have anything online?
Yes, we actually do. There's a question from Juha. "I'm interested in hearing the precise plan and strategy to substantially increase revenue and profit.
Okay. Precise plan. I think mostly the answers or the background and more concrete items will come from Jesper's and Jaakko's presentation. I would echo with Aarne in a way that, you know, it's always of course a matter of prioritization. As a CFO, I have to admit that what Aarne said, profitability probably is our priority one right now. Precise plans, I think the chance following me will lay out the market potential and our opportunities and possibilities there. If we could save that part for them.
We can probably revisit that.
Yep.
Yeah. Okay.
All right. Very good. Thank you, Kari. It's a good show. Next one, live on stage, we will have Mr. Jesper Boye. Jesper is heading our Retail & Commerce. Has a very, very long and extensive background in IT, software services, consulting businesses in various different companies. Joined 2019. As said earlier today, made Denmark our Danish business that we acquired in 2017, made really a shining star out of that. Has a beautiful track. Jesper has taken over now Retail & Commerce, and he's running the business, and he's got an interesting story regarding that. Jesper, welcome.
As you know, I'm Danish. I will switch to English. Is that okay? I will promise that I will learn Finnish. It will help me driving the business going forward. As Aarne said, I have been in Solteq for the last four years. I have around 20 years experience from IT industry, software, and services. That experience I will use here to grow the business together with my team and my managers around me. The last four years in Solteq have been a brilliant journey. I started taking Denmark, then became in Norway, as well in Sweden. What I saw when I joining Solteq was a company with a big potential. We used it in the Scandinavian countries. We also struggling a little bit in Solteq Group. How could we optimize our different experience and also our knowledge, capability cross-border?
I'm very, very happy to be here today, and I'm very happy that we took the decision to merge the company together, so we now have two units. We have the utility sector with Jaska. He will come after this one. Now we have the retail and commerce sector right now. The retail and commerce are for experts of services and software solution for the retail and commerce industry. Right now, the portfolio is third-party leading vendors we have. I will come back to that in a moment. Also our own IPS. The total group of retail and commerce have more than 1,000 customer. We have right now people in six different countries, and totally we are 450 IT experts to serve our customer.
If I take the next step into how are we organized in our retail and commerce and why retail and commerce. All what we're doing in the retail and commerce is of course supporting our customer no matter where they are and what needs to have in this portfolio. First of all, we have our ERP. ERP for us is the financial way. We are supporting our customer with Business Central for Microsoft. We also supporting the same customer with the Iceland company software called LS Retail. That part have been a significant journey to follow, both in the Scandinavian country, all four, as well down Europe. This one is a matter of how can you be in place with your customer with using that kind of technology. In that specific group, we are now around 80-100 professionals serving our customer cross-border.
The next part is our commerce and data. What are we doing there? We are doing e-commerce for our customer. We are serving them to support the end customer, as well in the product information management and the data, master data management. We also have the BI from Microsoft. We can see there is a trend right now where people need to drive the business within data. You can't drive a business, grow the business, without the right data and the right time. Therefore, it's a big area for us as well to focus on. Of course, we right now have in our portfolio some of the biggest e-commerce platforms we provide to our customer cross-border. We can actually see right now in the new setup that we have different customers.
We are served in all four countries in the Nordics. That is actually a privilege to be there and help people cross-border without internal things not could serve the customer at the same way we could before. There have been some questions regarding our own software, our own APIs, all that single point of sale. POS is right now in the retail software, also gathered with our own developed software for the dental and the care. The dental and the care is for the municipalities and mostly in the Danish part. Will we take that one into Sweden or Finland and Norway? Yeah, if it's possible. If it's possible, it will take. It is possible to do that as well. We also have our POS. Our POS is our own developed software. We have been very success with that one in the Finnish market.
We have a huge potential as well in that market. Could we take it into the Nordics, into Denmark, Sweden or Norway? Yes, we can. Will we do it? Yes. We actually closed one of the biggest venues in this software as the first customer in Denmark last year. We're going live with that customer and can now see all the things we gather and the knowledge we got that's the way we want to go. One thing I also have to mention here when we are talking about ERP, commerce, data and our own software, all of that is related to each other. You cannot run a business without your ERP or the commerce. It's merged more or less together today. We also see last quarter, it actually changed the way people behave when they are doing e-commerce or shopping.
It changed that 55% globally is going now for the mobile device when you're shopping. 30% of that one is now going into an app. All people globally are not using the traditional Mac or PC, they are going mobile. We need to be there. Again, 30% of that one are using app. I hope you can see right now. The POS, whatever is a single point or is it here, it's belong together with the commerce, integrated into the ERP. Yes, we also have customer who only use our services on the ERP. We're happy to serve them. We also have customer who only use our services on the POS. We're happy to serve them. I think our competitive advantage here is our broader portfolio of product we have, as well we are in all four countries.
Why I'm saying this? Do we have had challenge in the future or the past, sorry, the past? Yes, we had. Could we be better working together? Yes. That is exactly why we try to change our go-to market right now. I have to be honest to you, we have been through a journey internally, spent a lot of time. Where can we use our resources? Can we use Finnish resources in Sweden or Norway or in Denmark? That have been internal, I have to be honest. Right now, we moved away the border, and now we can offer and go hand in hand with the customer and provide them with the best service at all. We have, again, 450 people who knows how to go to market. We have experience. That's why we need to go there with the customer.
I think we are one of the few in the Nordics who have opened up the borders to so many professionals, and I think we are one of the only ones in the Nordics who have so many brands together with our own APIs. I think, and I know we'll achieve our 8% growth annual year-on-year. We've done it before in the other countries, now we have to do it together. I have to take you through micro headwinds because they are there, and they are there in the retail sector as well. Those rising costs, we're seeing we have a situation right now in Ukraine, it impact the retail and commerce industry as well, and the manufacturing. We also see that the micro also have the influence of inflation. We see the rates going up.
All of that will have an impact. You can't not just close your door if you are a retailer, you need to open up and think smarter. How can we come to the market smarter? How can we use our data? How can we use it to bring our business to the next level? Again, here we have the commerce and the data to support our customer driving the business. Challenging in the labor market. Definitely. Do we see it? Yes. The market has changed three years ago, everybody was working at the office. It was very easy to create an environment to create how we want to work. We have spent a lot of time to make a culture where we are open, we are honest, and we are directly.
I hope you can hear it when my two colleagues, Kari and Aarne, also very open. We need to be very open and honest in the way we are driving the business. Why I mention this is because the challenging in the labor market is how can you as a manager run a business from distance when the all your colleagues is on the screen? It's not very easy. I think all of you have tried. You are on Teams, you're not on Teams. How can we create an environment? How can we create a culture? That part will be the biggest challenge for me as a leader together, bringing the business back on track again. Is it fair to say so? It is a challenge in that one, and we need to take it seriously. Supply chain.
Some years ago, there was a lot of talk about integration for the commerce. How can we serve the customer? The battle right now is not only how can we serve the customer with POS data or commerce, how can the supply chain support the commerce? What I'm meaning here is that if you are doing business with any shop, when you put the order, it go directly to the ERP. Those come with some data, and the product is delivering. Please bear in mind here, when you please place the order from that point to the order will come to the customer, it's via a transport or whatever. If something go wrong here, it will go directly back to the shop again. That one is also a very close relationship into that part.
We also see increasing in that area here, again, due to gas, oil, et cetera. The last part is, of course, cybersecurity and data protection. It says itself, we have people in our company as well here can support, and it is a big issue because when you open up your business for the e-commerce into the data, into the ERP system, there can easily be a lack here. Who wants to open your business with commerce knowing that people can hack you directly into the data, directly into the ERP systems? I hope you can see the trend again. We can deliver that one, but we also need to take it in to our mind. If we're looking into the trends in retail and commerce sector, we see the frontline empowerment is boosting by the edge.
In-store automation is actually coming in the front line right now. I think the store-based fulfillment is top priority right now. The next one is digital business transformation. We actually see right now that a lot of customer are looking into this one. How can traditional shops, how can traditional brick and mortar retailer be technology? You have to get to remember that we have more transaction right now on the mobile than we have at the PC. That's top priority right now. Here again, Solteq can support with the retail, the data and the ERP. Emerging technologies. We have to take it seriously. This mixed reality right now, are we using reality glasses or how we working? You can't not just have a shop. You need to be online with your customer wherever they are when they need your services.
There's right now a lot of cases also in us how we can serve the customer with the new technology because the shops needs to be there with gift cards, loyalty programs. Solteq have both, and we need to be there as well. We're following the trend right now. Sustainability. I think that is top on the ESG agenda everywhere. In Solteq as well, yes. Also, when we're working with customer, it's an area we have to touch as well. These four trends, what we see right now is all four trends we every day use in our work with our customer. I want to show this one. This is the global IT spend in EUR billion. If you look into this number, you will see the curve is going around 10%, 8% plus minus.
In the below, you have the IT spent in services, on the top you have on software. Please see here, there is a higher spend right now in the IT services, how you can use the software, not rather just buy it. We spent a lot of time to be advisory as well for our customer and optimize. We have customer, yes, they're buying software, we develop the software, but we also have customer who ask us, "Now we have the software here. Now you create this platform integrated with the data, integrated with API. How can we increase our business with using this one?" We have examples for the Danish and the Norwegian market, I'm happy today that we can do it in the whole Nordics together.
If we look into this number here and try to look it into Europe, because this is the global market, we will see in 2025 there will be a growth in the area of spend in software solution for more than EUR 800 million. The funny part is because Solteq is a business who do business with human, are doing business to each other, and we're selling capacity. We're not selling software. Yes, we are our own APIs, but we're also selling capacity and knowledge. The IT spend in 2025 will be more than EUR 3 billion in Nordic, and we need our share of that one. If I take this number here and try to look a little bit, how would I prioritize in the customer, in the market when we take the retail and the commerce industry?
I want to show this picture here. This picture showing where will the money be spent over the year. The list is long. I have take 11, the first 11 on the list, and why I took exactly this one. I'm happy that the first 11 on the list is more or less all areas where we, Solteq, can support the customer. Please again, cyber information security is on top. That's the most important things in the future, I'm happy that we can serve our customer and advise them again when they're using our technologies, serve on Amazon or Microsoft's platforms when we're doing cloud services. The list is long, I don't want to go through all of them, but I'm happy to take it after here because there is a lot of area where we are serving the customer right now.
I hope so much to see you here again next time on the Capital Market Day. I will promise to be a little bit better in Finnish because the audience here is Finnish. That was all. If any questions, please be free. No? Yes?
Yeah. Thank you, Jesper, for the presentation.
You're welcome.
You talked about working cross-borders, and can you a little bit talk about this? We know of post-corona this is more possible, but how much do you actually do it now?
Yes.
Yeah, that's the first question.
That's Perfect. There is 2 things in this one. Our first priority when we have customer, no matter if they are from Jyväskylä and Tampere or Turku, Copenhagen or whatever, when we are fronting the customer, it needs to be in that language our customer are speaking, okay? First priority, if we have an ERP customer or commerce customer, they need a Finnish or Swedish, Norwegian or Danish project leader, manager to communicate. The team who do the technology could easily sit in Karlstad or in Oslo, in Turku, whatever. We haven't challenged with that one before because we have a lot of internal stuff. How can we invoice internally? How can we move around? Right now, we moved away the border, we can actually give the customer the best on the best projects.
I have one number, it will be announced later on, to achieve. I will do it. Before, I have my own focus on the Danish, the Swedish and the Norwegian numbers. I hope, to be honest, you can see for my own sake, I want to use my own consultants in my own projects. Make sense? As well, we have a huge location as well in Poland, in Wrocław, where we have around 75 professionals we also use in our different projects.
Next question on the growth. Biggest part, of course, is in Finland, we can look already before from the numbers. But can you talk about a little bit like geographically and then maybe on like which are the growth areas on service side that you see? You mentioned cybersecurity here, but we know that there is like big competition about those professionals so-
Yes.
Maybe you could a little bit explain this.
I think, if we look into the Nordics, the budget spent right now is EUR 3 billion in the Nordics. Since I'm the manager for the Nordics, I will go for the projects wherever they are. Of course, Sweden is much bigger if we compare to Finland or Denmark, so there will a big huge potential to growth there. How we will growth? I think our experience the last 40 years in Solteq, my experience the last four years here, how can we help support customer in the e-commerce journey they are? Because that is the battle. I have to say, if retailers, the commerce not taking it seriously, I don't think they will be here in the future. Sorry.
We also see right now, maybe you have tried yourself, if you go into a website and use your phone, the website is very nice on the PC, on the Mac, but it's not ready on the iPhone or whatever you use. There is a lot of low-hanging fruits. We need to be there, we need to have a strong sales force going out and find the potential because it is there. I have seen it the last four years. It is there, now we can do it in all four. I can't answer specific where, because the market is here in Finland, in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
Lastly, maybe if you could a little bit explain on recruitment, what do you think, what are, like, your competitive advantages in recruiting? Also another one on that, like, you used quite much some subcontracting the last years that been also burdening you. Do you see, or can you talk about those areas that you use subcontracting and which obstacles you see that you can't hire those guys?
Competitive advantage. How can we attract the right people? Can we do that? I hope so. Could we do it? Yes. Are we using subcontractor? Yes. Let me start with how can we attract the right people. I think it's a matter of create the right environment. Why is it good to be in Solteq? Why do you want to be in Solteq as employee? It's all a matter of HR, okay? Because to be quite honest, if you are working from distance and you, for example, are a dynamic web developer or HCL developer, why couldn't you work for company A like company B? You can look at your paycheck. I can get 10% more here than we have the labor market changing. We have it before.
We need to create a good environment, a healthy environment where it's funny to be, and not at least we have to find the right customer who can bring the right projects into our consultants. What is attract the right consultants? That the right projects. I'm not saying that the salary is not priority number one, but the priority, one of the biggest is, do you have the right customer, the right projects? Yes, we are using subcontractors. Will we do that in the future? Yes, if needed. The market see some challenge, if we can't find the right consultants, of course we know it need to go to subcontract. There's a question maybe here.
Thank you. I was maybe gonna ask a bit, Solteq has been quite known for having a strong presence in wholesale and retail and you talked about kind of the market growing all the time, quite a lot. Now we're looking at certain headwinds. I just maybe wanted to get an understanding of if you look at the key customers, how much have you been able to actually kind of grow the key accounts? How much has come from new business? How much has been kind of price increases with key customers? How is that kind of reflecting at your 8% target of to my understanding, for instance, in government contracts, we can be seeing kind of mid-digit price hikes at the moment due to inflation.
So if you could kind of reflect all of that and then maybe elaborate on what's the kind of new growth to achieve the target.
The first one, the new growth. I will not say, and I can't say, is it on our own API software or is it in commerce or ERP? I think it's all three. All three have to grow in the same area up to the 8%, okay? If you're looking into our existing customers, it's the low-hanging fruit. How can we serve? As I said before, we have customer where we only provide data, only provide ERP, only provide commerce. Why? Because we have struggling internally. Definitely we will go and see how can we offer our services to our existing customer. That's one part. You can see the market is growing 7%, 8%, 9% until 2026. We need that share as well.
I need go for the existing customer with our existing portfolio, we also need to go for new customer and have that market share. Are we a known brand in Finland? Yeah. Are we a known brand in Denmark? Today, yeah. We wasn't four years ago. It took a long journey to be there where we are today. Are we a known brand in Sweden? We are maybe the biggest secret in Sweden. Okay? Do we need to change that? Yeah. I think right now the growth needs to be, first of all, have our brands in Sweden, Norway, as it is right now in Finland. Therefore, I'm very glad that we have Christa for our new marketing to help and support on that one. I can see Aarne on the stage with me as well.
Very good. Thank you, Jesper.
You're welcome.
That was a good one.
Thank you.
Good show. Thanks for that. Next one, we will go into our utilities, and I'll introduce Jaakko Hirvensalo. Jesper was referring with the name Jaska, as we all do. An interesting, really an interesting background, not just because Jaakko has been working in the industry for quite a while, but also Jaakko has been an entrepreneur, company called Partitur, a consultancy in the utility sector. Sold the business to us. It was a part of our, that opportunistic strategy. In late 2020, the deal was done. Normally, when people sell, as an entrepreneur, business to a corporation, they stay there as long as they have to. When the first day comes, the door opens up, and they're gone. They, they serve their time, as they put it that way. Jaakko didn't.
He became our new head of utilities at year-end. Jaakko is extremely aware of how that market works. Jaakko is also extremely aware of our problems in that, in this business sector. He's got a very interesting presentation. Let's welcome Jaakko.
Here we go. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the show on my behalf too. Great to be here also to the audience, well, looking at the stream live today. As mentioned, my name is Jaska Hirvensalo, and Aarne gave a good presentation about my background, and thank you for that. Yes, I did spend some 10 years, a decade, in working with the, let's say, the utilities customers, hand in hand, peer to peer. Especially now we talk about the utilities. What is utilities? You can also call it the energy market, the players within the energy theater. We're talking about the electricity retail and distributors. We're talking about the district heatings. We're talking about water that we are drinking from the faucet.
We're talking about wastewater after that, if I may say so, and all the related activities around this business domain that we call utilities. You can also call it energy if it is easier that way. Now, as mentioned there previously, it was very interesting, nice to understand the customer's world. What are these precious energy companies that are known to us from other sources also? How are they operating in depth? What are they thinking? What are they facing? What are the current problems? How they see the future. And when now being here with the Solteq Utilities, how they utilize software in order to build a future business and overcome their own internal issues when it comes to profitabilities and efficiency.
Spending that decade with those customers, that was my, let's say, learning of the business. Prior to that, I did spend a dozen of years in the, let's say, more on the technology side in a company called Vaisala. There I did run a business for five years about, well, the main business of that company. How to build a profitable business, that is the source for that understanding. Also a few years in the U.S. and doing turnarounds after mergers and acquisitions and whatnot. How to do turnarounds is something that I'm quite acquainted with. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm showing you a very busy slide here.
It is intentional that this slide is very busy because the situation is very busy looking at the utilities industry and then the companies serving that industry. When you are moving around in all these boxes, please concentrate on the black one on the right of the slide, which says that the European Climate Act is mandating to bring the greenhouse effects down by 55% from the level of 1990s. It goes without saying that we are all affected by the climate change and the energy sector or the utilities sector is right in the middle of the generation of those emissions.
Having said that, having the black box, the target on the timeline going from today to 2030 and aiming towards that target that is very important for each and every one of us here today. The boxes that are prior to this target are extremely interesting because those are the results of European Council giving out the regulation, market forces moving their own trends, all the players in the energy market adjusting to this picture, and thus creating a lot of activities in order to fulfill this one simple goal. Those ones who are interested in theory, this is entropy, entropia, entropy in its very making. The end result is clear, and the fuzz that generates from this simple goal is enormous.
Well, for a company like Solteq Utilities that I'm running today, this is an opportunity at the same time when it is a challenge or difficulty. All this change that we see in these boxes, they result in some kind of a software implementation, use of software and digital tools in order to make the whole play happen. The change, that is a drive, that is, let's say, fuel for our company. That requires innovation, how to find the solutions to the customers who don't necessarily themselves even know all of that. An innovation, let's say, generation pool of professionals and individuals, and then turning that innovation and understanding into software, which the companies in this turmoil, at the end of the day, they desperately need to succeed in their business.
Then, of course, looking it from our point of view to our customers and further on to the customers of the customer, so the entire picture in there. Obviously, this is not. Well, some of these issues are coming from the regulation, like the council regulation. Some are coming from domestic regulation and stuff like that. Some of those are purely from the market-indicated needs. Some of those are market player changes in that game. Regulation, utilizing the data, doing the supply-demand, balancing the exchanges of solar and wind compared to the fossils, and also the change of the players also from the retail market, electricity moving from the traditional ones to new ones.
This is a Klondike, ladies and gentlemen, when looking it from the software point of view, because the innovation is there to fulfill with our products. Yeah, well, we can also look at it from a more traditional point of view as this slide here indicates. The changing markets, the new regulations, intensifying competition, especially between the players in the market. Why not also amongst our peers and competition? Extreme weather, yeah, okay, then we can also embed underneath that the winds and the solars and the changes in the production methods. Finally, the outcome of that's never changing story. Okay, we talked about this slide already in the previous. Now, Solteq Utilities.
As I did define a little bit what utilities means for those who don't understand it. Let's move into the market and what we're aiming to do with it. Today, as we know, we are mostly operating in Finland, but also outside of Finland. Our target is to broaden our offering and operations to Denmark, to Sweden, to Norway in a reasonable and realistic manner. Also, a few company, let's say, brands here underneath, showing that what kind of operators we are typically dealing with. When transponating that or translating that to the, let's say, Swedish or Danish theater, then comparable customer companies that we are looking after in there. Today, Solteq Utilities is, let's say, the second-largest service provider in this niche domain in Finland and according to our own calculations.
Well, let's say that, yeah, to this year, the coming year, those years where we penetrate then with our improved operational efficiency towards the new markets. About 200 people, professionals that we are proud of working on the crew and having the, like, as we know, the in-house R&D and IPRs. Yes, market outlooks. Well, we use Gartner, as many people, as a source of basic information there. Let's say if we look at the market size and development of that market, we clearly can see that it is not diminishing, but it's on a growth path. We're talking about, let's say, aggregate growth rates of 14% whatever, but enough for our purposes.
When we look at the Nordic energy sector spend on the IT services, we're looking at the number of EUR 4.5 billion, so humongous amounts of money there in year 2023 according to this picture. When we look at our aim of what kind of a size of a pie are we aiming at from that, let's be realistic again, as mentioned here previously in many occasions. We are looking at a slice of EUR 365 million per annum, per year, and a slice from that total market of 365 million. Anyway, the message is there, that there is the business, there is the growth of the business, the macro trends, micro trends, whatnot, and also the budget of that we can measure from the market to be targeted.
Solteq Utilities, next steps. We have heard here already that we have to be talking about quality challenges, we're talking about operational issues, and I just want to emphasize that that is all true what is said previously. Now when we're looking at the activities in utilities today, so we are kind of utilizing the first half of this year, 2023, for turnaround and restructuring activities and fulfillment of that action plan that we have ongoing at the moment as we speak. Thus, have reached, let's say gradually, the second half of this year with, so to speak, normal capability to perform business and thus get into the better economic situations and growth paths that we are in that aiming for.
Having said that, then the expansion, as I mentioned previously, the Nordics market frame, gradually starting this year and then continuing from that. Back to basics, the first half of this year, fixing what is broken, and then gradually from there, coming back to normal business and then building on those realities further on. Having said that, a few words about the product families. I have two sets of information here. The first one deals with the product, software product, and the second one with the professional consulting services. This is now the utility software product family presentation with this picture. I, as I defined the utilities business, the electricity retailers, distributors, district heatings, gases, waters, waste waters, this kind of a customer base in industry. We have two kind of base product lines to...
from the software product point of view to serve this market. Those are our own IPR application-specific software products, as we had known in the, in the previous world, built exclusively for this market and proven then by the customers in daily use, invoicing and whatnot. You can say it is a one-stop solution, so for the, for this customer base. On-premise, SaaS, whatever the customer likes. The other range is the newly acquired business that is this, let's say, we can brand it today as Solteq Utility Cloud software products, which is based on a commercial platform, the Salesforce platform in this case. It also includes Solteq IPR extensions to fit to the customer purpose, the customer being the electricity companies and that market. Now, of course, we are listening to the, to our customers.
What is your preferable choice from our product families in software, but able to allow support both of those approaches? A kind of nice thing to have. As promised before, the second product of, let's say, line of business that we are having is the professional services and the consulting services. There we are, we are concentrating on the best energy sector business, let's say, advisory, understanding the fuzz I showed to you on the first slide. What does it mean actually there, the advisory? Also the ICT implementation, let's say, partner, how to then put into action those digital solutions that come out from the mess to sort out the customer solution. As an architect, so to speak, from a business side, and then also performing the labor to support that. Yeah.
Well, perhaps I've still a few words about that when we compare the product business with the consulting business. I'm just looking very briefly to the clock here. Yes. When we compare the product business models and then the professional service, let's say, business models, they're quite different. On the professional services consulting side, there we are serving the customer in terms of labor hours, outcomes, solutions, fixed prices, time and material-based invoicing business models. Traditionally, it's done that. Healthy margins to be achieved there also.
The business logic on the product side, obviously, being the, that, the volume there can be reached with less of the labor, so that selling the product instead of selling the time, and thus being able to produce also the profits related to the scalability of the software and the product to the market, rather than having to invest too much in the implementation. That actually must end my presentation here because Aarne is approaching from the right. This is a glimpse to Solteq Utilities, ladies and gentlemen. Pleasure being here.
Very good. Thank you very much, Jaakko.
Yep.
You have a seat actually.
Yes
O ver there. The immense complexity that we have in the Utilities area, it really is interesting. As Jaakko's presentation showed, there will be tons of things, that we can do there within the next 7 to eight years. 2030 is the big, big target year. We have seven years to run to that.
We will. We're going to see interesting things from our side as well during the forthcoming years. The next thing that we have is our Q&A session, and let's start with questions that would go directly to Jaakko in reflection to Jaakko's previous presentation. Let's have those first. Then after that, you know, the stage is free. You can shoot any questions to any one of us. All the presenters are here. Christa is also here, and she will also read the questions that we have received online. Thank you, Christa.
It's Branch from Inderes. I have understood that your competitors have also had somewhat similar problems with their products in the utility sector, and you have been really strong in the competition now that you have been able to grow so quickly. Now, could you describe the competitive landscape, how it has evolved during the last year and half, and has there been new entrants to the market?
Yeah, good question. Thank you. I would say that the utility service provider sector is actually quite fragmented. It is divided by between a lot of players. I would see that as a signal that no one has really taken the realm and the theater so far, but there's room for that maneuver for instance, like Solteq Utilities as one player in that, in that area. The market itself and the supplier point of view is still like holding and opening up or able to, or allows the penetration into that market. If I get, yeah, got your question good enough, we can take that position in due time with having our things in order if so chosen.
Yeah. I'm not sure if you wanna comment on how much of your business is directly related to Datahub, but assuming it's very much, I was just wondering kind of the, looking at the process, I mean, we've had the Datahub 1 and Datahub 2 now going in. Kind of assuming a typical development path would probably be a huge step, leap in the beginning, and then future versions would be like smaller implementations once you have the framework. How do you see this kind of now with the market's implementing kind of the basis or frameworks for our customers, and then the future would be maybe smaller adoptions and add-ons? Am I wrong, right fishing?
Yes. I think that you are on the right path. Yes, there was a starting point to fix the or create a structure to start with, call the Datahub 1s, Datahub 2s. It's let's say the starting point for being able then to grow on or to work on that information flow, having centralized data streams and so on. On the other hand, this putting or starting the evolution there with the Datahubs opens up the rest of the funnel, which is all the mutations between the information sources and streams that result from the Datahub 1s and 2s.
Personally, I see, and from the market point of view, the Datahub progress as the starting for the development into the future, which on the business point of view opens up opportunities we haven't seen before. It also might be so that, yes, the biggest, let's say, individual projects in this phase we have seen already, but then it multiplies in several smaller opportunities that we are seeing from the starting, let's say, below.
Just maybe a follow-up now. Kind of considering 2023 will be, with some of the turnaround year, how much do you think or how do you see this kind of affecting your ability to compete then for, let's say, if the market becomes saturated quite fast, how do you see this being kind of affecting your ability to grow then and compete in the other Nordics?
Well, yeah, all the companies have internal friction, and when we can, let's say, reduce the friction in our organization, meaning that we are more competitive than our competitors, then we have a fine place in the marketplace. Again, I would like to go back to the point of the innovation where our customers have need the support in how to utilize the data streams, how to be profitable in their areas. In that sense, we have a competitive advantage I think that very few have on the market. In that sense, I'm looking in a positive way into the future, as long as we can get our internal stuff in order as we are working with it today.
Johnny from Inderes. If I shortly my understanding of the market share and then asking you of the differences. You're strong in Finland. You have some business in utilities in Denmark through the acquisitions.
Recruited people, but you have very little business in Sweden. My question is actually, can you a little bit talk about the market differences, how ready your product is for the different markets, and then maybe the bigger regulation triggers that from the outside looks that they lived a little bit when they are happening in the different markets? Can you see what's the current situation about the bigger regulation triggers in the different markets as well?
Yeah. This is an excellent question, and I could talk for the rest of the day about that. Let's say that when Solteq Utilities has been implementing the business architecture for the Finnish utilities companies, this picture has to be compared with the target markets outside of Finland. In order to be able to do that, you need to spend some time there to do the architectural understanding and changes. That is why I perhaps a little bit would see that the initial estimate about the work of doing this comparison and building the architecture for those legit and other change needs for, let's say, Swedish and Danish markets, needs to be taken in a more systematic manner than it has been done today.
Again, we definitely do know how to do it, and we are at the moment in the progress of looking at that, of doing it practically and doing the documentation for it. The basic need for the customers and the customers' customers is exactly the same. There is the need for the electricities and district heatings and so on. Then at the end of the day, the, there are differences in those markets, in the processes, but well, the change or the differences are actually not that great than we would think. The here it comes to the picture, the concepting capability, which in our company is on pretty high level, that we are now bringing to support the expansion from Finland to these other countries to define those differences.
Let's say that the approach that we are having today in utilities, is a bit different than it has been, let's say, when going back two years from now.
More on triggers, on the last slide or one of the slides we showed, we saw, like, Datahub, version 2 and 3 for Finland.
Yes.
Can you talk about, like, the, on Denmark and Sweden, which are the or, like, the triggers or regulation that there is happening bigger moves on the market and the utilities players need to decide the supplier? Then also on the Swedish market, more follow-up, you made or you have deliver delivery capacity in Denmark now, but do you need to make some sort of small acquisition in Sweden to have the capacity to deliver, or can you do it from Finland and Denmark?
Yeah. I would say that pilot small grow on the experience that you get from the first implementations. The first ones are chosen to be the smaller ones, obviously in order to learn about the implementation in those target markets and also build up the man up the capability. Whether it will be acquisitions or organic growth, we'll see about that. You are right about the fact that when doing implementation, for instance, in Sweden, it has to be backed up and produced and implemented by people that have to have the local language skills and cultural skills.
Anyway, the approach is so that we are not going with the flying flags, but we are going in small in order to build up then the capacity and capability based on the experiences that we get from the entry to the market. In that sense, we're taking it easy in a pragmatic way, in a realistic way, rather than full-blown activities.
Then, on the short term, I'll like to hear in your words a bit more about the problems. Aarne discussed the problems and the timeline and how you are fixing it. Could you elaborate in your words how you see the problems in R&D and the project things? What are actually the problems there?
I think that the problem is actually quite general to any business, that when a business is being set up and started, we are in a starting phase, and then when the starting up, let's say, and start of phasing of the business is then growing, every company then faces issues how to scale, how to structurize, how to organize, how the routines are in place, how to take care of the competencies, how you recruit, how you train, how you form your organization, how you motivate your people. In that sense, what we have seen perhaps in practice is that from the early beginnings, we have now reached a certain maturity where we have to do these things that I just mentioned in my previous sentence.
Now, as I mentioned previously, the reduction of the internal friction, getting a clarity on the organization, on the competencies, expectations, prioritization, documentation related to it, and all that, basic stuff brings already Solteq Utilities to a sufficient level to be a healthy company in that sense, and then build on those basics that we are now fixing as we speak.
All right. I think that was all from the live audience. We have a couple of questions. If we don't have time to answer all the questions, we promise to get back to you personally via email. Going back to Jaakko, there is a question about the Swedish market. Like, how do you view that, regarding like in... if you compare it to the other markets? Is that where we have the biggest potential, and do you think that we are a little bit late already in the game?
Thank you for the question. You are never late on this game because the game is changing all the time. As I showed you the boxes in the timeline to 2030, they're all they're good points of entry. The Swedish Datahub is still under consideration about its schedule, we are not late on that. Let's see, we, there's always a question when the market window is at its best. I have to admit that if there is something like Datahub was in Finland, if Solteq Utilities wouldn't have been ready to invest in that and sell stuff into that, then obviously that would have been late. Now we're looking at Denmark and Sweden and, or then later on to Norway.
I would say that there are openings, not at the same time in the same areas in all those countries, but understanding the market dynamics, we can find our share of that evolution all the time.
I have a question here for Jesper. Cybersecurity is a broad area. Where is Solteq focusing in that?
I think the main focus for us right now, as I also tried to explain, is when companies open up the solutions for the broader public, if you're talking about e-commerce, you actually open up directly to your engine, okay? All orders go right for the e-commerce platform directly to the ERP systems. That's the way in and the way out. We need to be there, we need to support our customer when we are talking about security. Security is a lot of things. You also have the internal. We can't support there because there is a big threats internally actually in security way as well. It's not always outside. If you look at reports, there is more security software, et cetera, for the inside hacker, sorry to say, than the outside.
We can support the outside coming in through the gateway in the commerce. There we need to be, and there we need to support our customer.
Next one. In terms of potential business disposals, what would be the size you'd be looking at, AAarne?
Anything from 0% to 100%. I mean, we're a listed company, but the fact is that getting back to my previous wording, that we're opportunistic, and we don't have a hit list, which means that we will take a look around, reflect current businesses against our strategy. Also being sort of tradesmen in the way that we look at valuations, that what we have internally, what could be an external value, reflecting that to our financing situations and capacities. virtually, I can't put a number on that one.
I guess we'll have to accept that. The next one goes to Kari. How do we cope with the current amount of debt? How will you be able to refinance your current debt?
Yep. I think the most important thing obviously is to turn around the profitability. That is number 1. Number 2, as already mentioned, we reach out to our bond holders to gain an option in case we would need additional facility of debt. We obviously aim not to utilize that option, but it's good that we have that, and obviously we do appreciate the support we got from bond holders. Priority 1, profitability up.
Okay. We still have time for 1 more question. You announced 2 new segments, in December. However, it has become unclear where you stand in terms of product development. Will you be reducing efforts in product development in the future?
I'll take that one. Yes and no, even though that's a weird way of answering it. Yes, meaning that we used to have, until November, we had a unit called Robotics. It was not big of a success, but we did spend quite a lot of money in it, and it was all product development, give or take. Which means that, shutting down the Robotics brings down our product development spend significantly. Now, in both of the segments, we still have software products that we will develop. In Utilities, we only work with our own product. I mean, we don't have third parties in there. We use platforms. We use Microsoft platform and Salesforce platform with the S2B Energia, and there we will continue developing, and there we take a look on the spend on an annual basis.
In retail and commerce, we have our POSs over there, including with then the dental and our car service systems. There, the spend will be, you know, give or take on the level that we've seen the past years. Give or take. Hence, apples to apples on the current business portfolio, we will remain our investment levels, product development levels on the levels that we've had. On an overall level, it will come down because of the shutdown of the robotics.
Okay. Thank you. I think that's all for the questions for now, and we'll get back to the ones that were left unanswered later.
Very good.
The stage is yours.
Thank you. 2 hours have gone. It's actually, it's funny how quickly the time flies when you're shooting the presentations and so on. I don't know if you've had the same experience with the audience. I hope so. Hope it hasn't been too boring. We laid down the sort of the 3 objectives for the day so that you would understand our ambitions and fears, i.e., the upsides and the risks in the business. You would also get a view, a better than previous view on the business models. Also would get to know the people in our, both of our segments in the corporate management. The third one being sort of understanding the sort of the future potential and our path of getting into becoming a better company.
I really hope that this day has served the needs. At least we've had an interesting day. We've had some fun. I think for me, by far the funniest moment was when Jesper was speaking Finnish. It always makes us smile on the Monday mornings when we, when we meet. Notwithstanding that, I really thank you all for coming both online and live into our Capital Markets Day. It was the first one, I don't know if it was ever, but at least after quite a long while. Not the last one. Most probably we will have an interest and a need to invite you, not necessarily on an annual basis, but say biannually into these meetings, depending on what's happening both in the company as well as on the market.
Having said that, I gave a promise that we'll be done by 12 local time. It's two to 12, at least that is definitely the promise that we will keep. Thank you very much and hope to see you again.