Good morning, everyone, and warmly welcome to join this Talenom's Q1 2026 Business Review. My name is Juho Ahosola, and I'm the CEO of Talenom, and I started in my position in the beginning of March, as well as my colleague Matti Säkkinen, CFO, who's here today with me.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome also from my behalf.
Thank you. Okay, let's roll out then. Here's the agenda for this review. I will start with a short strategy recap. After that, I will comment review period. After me, Matti will talk in a bit more detailed level about financial figures and financial performance. Outlook and guidance. At the end of this session, there's time for questions as well. You can ask questions with the chat during the presentation as well. Okay, let's start with a strategy review. Basically the big thing of this first quarter and review period was this demerger with Easor . Company started in last fall, last September, strategy review of the potential separation of the Easor software business into an independent stock listed company.
After a couple of different stages, we are finally here that there are two independent companies, Talenom and Easor, and both are operating with own managements, own boards, own growth strategies and no cross-ownerships or structures like that. This was basically the biggest thing of this review period, and we're super happy and excited that this is now finalized and we can move on as an independent service company. The reasons behind this demerger, as a reminder, basically we had two main drivers or two different drivers for this big move. First of all, both companies, Talenom and Easor, can operate from software perspective much more flexibly and also grow faster in the long run. Easor, they can acquire clients through other accounting firms or other channels they found working.
We in Talenom's side, we are no more kind of like dependent on one single software solution in any level, and we can always use the best available tools and solutions to support our clients. Secondly, from investor perspective and also from operational perspective, it is much more clear case. It gives a lot of focus and we here in Talenom's side, we can focus fully on our clients and creating great customer experience with services. To be clear with our software strategy, we always use best in class solutions for our clients. Sometimes it's Easor, sometimes it could be some other solution. If we move on and think about this new Talenom, as we say here, yeah, internally, so this new start.
What do we do? What's our thing, so to say? We are a service company. First of all, we help our clients, entrepreneurs, usually with different kind of accounting, consulting, payroll services. We are operating in three countries, Finland, Sweden, and Spain. In our growth, we combine two pillars. First of all, organic growth, which is super important for us and where we want to deliver, selective acquisitions. How we work, what is kind of the core of our strategy. We combine strong local ownership, local expertise with the scalable ONE Talenom concept. Combining these two elements, we believe that we will achieve great long-term growth. This ONE Talenom concept is basically a really important part of our strategy.
We have seen that it affects positively in our main business outcomes like employee experience, customer experience, and profitability as well. That's the new Talenom. A couple of words of our operating areas and organizational structure as well. We are operating in three countries. Company has been started in Finland, 1972, more than 50 years history, strong growth history and a solid organization. In Sweden, we started 2019 through first acquisition and in Spain 2021. Here on the right-hand side, you can see this from financial statement, our personnel is located in different countries and offices. An important thing or part of our strategy is that we are not in a near future looking to expand to new countries.
We believe that we have a massive growth opportunities in these existing markets. Worth mentioning, when it comes to this Easor split that during previous year we built organizations in both, like, organizations, Easor and Talenom, and also in Talenom's side, we gather management team and local management teams as well in countries. That's important that we have now structures in place. When it comes to our revenue sources, revenue sources of new Talenom, the main part of our revenue comes from our core services, Accounting services, Payroll services, Accounts receivable services. These are highly or almost completely recurring. That's of course, important and easy to forecast as well.
In addition to these core services, we have value-added services, for example, CFO services or HR services and Business intelligence services. We see that these are important source of growth in the future, and we are also focusing on this. Secondly, they are supporting our customer experience, so affecting positively in customer experience and that way, customer retention. Also worth mentioning that we have industry-focused teams for some selected sectors, and there we can give even deeper, like, knowledge and service for our clients. Revenue, mostly recurring and that's important and comes from services. If we then look into our markets where we operate, we have three markets. Basically the structure of markets, it's pretty much the same.
There's a lot of fragmentations, a lot of small companies and players in the field. We can also recognize this consolidation trend in all our operating countries. The main point here is that when we are looking our market shares in Finland, where we have a really established organization, strong history, we have roughly 5% market share. In Sweden, more or less 1%, and in Spain, 0.1%. When we are looking those pie charts, we can see that there's a lot of growth opportunities and potential in these our existing markets. That's basically the reason why we are not looking to expand to new countries in the near future. We have great opportunities in these existing ones.
Next, I will walk us through our key elements of our strategy, three main areas. First of all, starting from ONE Talenom concept. This is the core of this new Talenom's strategy. ONE Talenom, it's our concept. It combines our processes, best practices, ways of doing things, way to lead, basically this organization. We have built this concept, of course, we are further developing it and testing it. We can see that when we are applying the concept, it affects positively in our business outcomes in terms of employee experience, customer experience, and profitability as well. This is the important part of our strategy for upcoming times, we really believe, we have seen that this works for us.
Second point of our strategy is M&A. We have done a lot of acquisitions in past and also during this review period. I would like to say that we have, first of all, learned a lot when it comes to acquisitions, and we have found our way to acquire companies and, like, found what kind of companies to acquire. We want that the companies that are joining us are growth-minded. They really believe in this ONE Talenom concept and approach as well. They can build that organic growth in the future, which is important for us. Maybe something I want to highlight here is that we are not doing this kind of like volume acquisitions at all.
Only because of revenue we never acquire. If we don't find suitable ones, then we don't buy. That's important part, that we are really selective. That's something that I want to highlight. Third part, organic growth. In addition to acquisitions, this organic growth is really important for us, and we believe that it's the most challenging part of growth in all organizations. There's basically two parts. First of all, acquiring new clients, selling new to new customers. We have in all our countries, sales teams, marketing teams, organizations for doing new customer acquisition. We are doing a lot of marketing, digital marketing.
We have a strong local footprint in areas where we operate, and we do a lot activities around new customer acquisition. Worth mentioning that in Spain especially, it's not that normal in this industry to actively sell for new clients. We are doing that and see that as a important part of our strategy and way of doing things. Secondly, as I mentioned, we have different kind of consulting services, we believe that this is one like area where we can grow. We see that it's important in a couple of ways. First of all, revenue-wise, we see that it's a good source for growth. It's also important in terms of customer experience, and it supports retention.
The clients that are buying more services are usually those who are the happiest ones. Organic growth, it's definitely one of our focus areas. If we then move into this first quarter, so Q1, and here's a couple of highlights from the review period. First of all, as I mentioned, this demerger split with Easor was basically the biggest thing. At this point, I also want to thank our personnel and of course, personnel in Easor. Easor as well, organization did a lot of work around this, and it was a really massive exercise. Now we are super excited that this is completed, and we can focus in developing this new Talenom as a service company. This is important that we are finally here. Super exciting.
During the review period, we also continued work with our strategy and growth strategies, ONE Talenom, and it's been a good start that way. I'm happy with the work that organization is doing and proud of the organization, how we have started with the strategy and this new era. Third point, I said, we are now in this software-neutral environment, so to say. We can freely choose softwares that we are using. I want to emphasize that Easor is important partner for us in the future as well. That's obvious. In the long run, we believe that when we can acquire now clients with other softwares as well, that is opening doors for us and opening significant growth potential.
That's something that we are working with right now. If we look into those priorities which we have set for us for this year, 2026. We have three areas. First of all, this implementation of the new strategy as we have started, first of March, yeah, as a new company or like new Talenom. It's important that we work a lot around this implementation of new strategy and ONE Talenom concept especially. Secondly, super important to us where we want to show profitability and profitability improvement, both Sweden and Spain. That's something where we are focusing the whole this year. This is important for us that we have three countries that are EBITDA-wise profitable.
Third, implementing growth strategies in all countries where a lot of working around growth. Also, as said, these acquisitions are part of this third focus area. These are three areas, and here's a couple of points how it's going with those. First of all, with strategy, as said, we have been working with implementation of ONE Talenom concept in all countries. I'm happy when I'm seeing how it's going. Management in all countries is doing good work in my opinion. Maybe something I would like to highlight here is that we have measured during this review period employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Good results from Finland. It's not mentioned here.
In Sweden and Spain, we had, I would like to say that really remarkable improvements, and that's really, really good we are seeing. I'm happy with the figures that we are seeing. It's definitely going to right direction. Usually it tends to go in that order that first employee satisfaction goes to right direction, then customer satisfaction, and then we can see finally those improvements in financial figures as well. That's usually the order. When it comes to profitability in Sweden and Spain, I want to highlight that this is extremely important for us that we can succeed in all our countries and be EBITDA-wise profitable. That's obvious.
In Sweden, we moved slightly into right direction, and I'm happy with the trend that we are seeing. We have taken a lot of actions during last year and then also in the beginning of this year during this review period. We believe strongly that we will deliver that positive EBITDA during this year from Sweden. Management has done a lot of work locally with profitability and I believe that we will deliver. When it comes to Spain, profitability was weak and reasons behind the figures, basically a lot of integration-related costs. That's maybe the main topic I would like to say.
We increased some investment in sales and marketing, and that's also important that in Spain we want to keep this growth track and focus on organic growth because we see a lot of potential. We have not been cutting from sales and marketing costs that way. Because of this demerger, some software-related costs. Like, when it comes to these integration costs, it's both, like, operational costs and personnel costs as well. We have a clear, detailed plan for the rest of year, for the whole year, how to work with development of and improving profitability in Spain. Really detailed plan for that. Thirdly, implementing growth strategies. This is important for us as we want to be a growth company.
We have been working a lot with like these software strategies. It's important element for us, and we believe that in long run, it will open us remarkable opportunities. In a short run, we don't see that we will see effects in our figures, but in the long run, it's really important and offers a significant growth potential. Something that I want to also emphasize is that in Finland when we are looking at this, like, market conditions, it's really challenging and actually accounting market declined previous year and we believe that it will remain really challenging for this year as well.
At the same time, like, our approach is that we want to be a little bit better every day. We work really hard with growth strategies, with actions, and we focus where we can. It doesn't make any sense to focus on those market conditions or challenges. We focus on our actions and we believe that over time that is the right approach. In Spain also when it comes to growth, acquisitions are important part of it. We completed a couple of acquisitions in the beginning of review period and one after as well. It's going according to plan. Here are the financial figures and highlights from there.
As we know, net sales, when it comes to net sales, it grew a bit driven by Finland and Spain, and then EBITDA and operating profit-wise it decreased a bit as we were expecting as well. Matti will next go through financial figures in more detailed level and then it's time for questions. Thank you at this point.
Thanks, Juho. Let's jump to the financial figures. In my presentation I will focus on comparable figures in our continuing operations. At first, let's look at the group's net sales. It was EUR 30.3 million in Q1. Our growth was 4.5%. This growth came from Finland and Spain. In Sweden we had negative growth. Our group's EBITDA was EUR 5.5 million, 18% of net sales. The development in Finland and in Sweden had positive impact on profitability in euros. On the other hand, this development in Spain impacted negatively to our profitability. Operating profit was EUR 2 million, 6.5% of net sales. In addition, this little bit lower EBITDA, we had little bit higher depreciations and amortizations in the period. Now we jump to the country-specific key figures. We start from Finland.
In Finland, we continued stable performance. Our net sales was EUR 20.2 million. Our growth was 3.7%. This growth, it was entirely organic. Still, we want to say that this general economic situation is continuing challenging. We see lots of bankruptcies in Finland. Also companies are closing down the businesses. We estimate that this will also impact to our growth during the rest of the year. EBITDA in Finland, it was EUR 5.9 million. 29.2% of net sales. This EBITDA improved due to the revenue growth. On the other hand, as we have commented earlier, our relative costs are higher after this demerger. It was impacting negatively to our profitability and especially this relative profitability. In Sweden, our net sales was EUR 5.4 million. Decline in net sales was almost 9%.
The previous year, high customer churn was impacting negatively to our net sales development. We have continued our efforts to reduce customer churn and acquire new customers, and we still see that this net impact of the new and lost customers, this trend is going to the right direction. We estimate that it will also help our net sales development in the future. Profitability in EBITDA, it was EUR -100,000, so small improvement there. Of course, this decline in the net sales was challenging our profitability development. But we have continued this costs adjustments, and we still estimate that we can achieve positive EBITDA in Sweden in 2026. In Spain, we had our strongest growth. It was 31.8% and our net sales was EUR 4.6 million. This growth, it came mainly from the acquisitions.
We have made four acquisitions after the comparison period. This was good growth for us. In EBITDA, so the profitability in EBITDA, it was EUR -300,000. As Juho commented earlier, we had some integration costs and increased investments in sales and marketing and also higher cost in software. These were impacting negatively to our profitability. We are continuing our efforts in terms of profitability development, and we estimate that we can turn this on the right trend during the rest of the year. Let's look at outlook and guidance. Our guidance is unchanged, meaning that we estimate that our net sales will be from EUR 110 million-EUR 120 million, and comparable EBITDA will be from EUR 18 million-EUR 22 million. That's all from my side, and now it's time for the questions.
Yes, there's quite many questions from online. We are starting from Finland. Strong growth, 3.7%, where did it come from concretely? What was the contribution from pricing and volume and so on?
Yep. It was mixed of the customer base and also of course the price increases are impacting to positivity over growth in Finland. As we commented, yeah, it was good growth in Q1. Still we see that this economical situation is a little bit challenging our growth efforts. Of course, as we said, we estimate that the rest of the year we will see like these continuing challenges. Well, about these reasons.
Yeah. How about the trend in this growth? Are we seeing that it's going to be at the same level upcoming quarters? What is our point of that?
Yeah, I could comment on that. I would like to say that this was quite strong quarter and as we can when we are looking the situation now and looking into the future, I would like to say that it might be challenging to keep that track going. We're working hard with around the growth. As said, when looking towards future, it's challenging market conditions.
Yes. Yeah. We go to Spain. Here is breakdown in Spain growth in Q1. How much was the organic and how much M&A driven?
It was mostly inorganic. Some organic growth as well. At the same time, when we are looking our sales and churn figures, we expect that we will have support from organic growth during this year. Team is doing good work around new customer acquisitions. I would like to say that churn is also well under control in Spain. When thinking Spain, in general, we don't see that kind of trends that we saw in Sweden at the same time with the story. Spain is doing well.
Yeah.
Now I meant how it was in Sweden back in a couple of years ago.
In Sweden, positive EBITDA for full year 2026 in Sweden would require clearly positive EBITDA in Q2 and Q4. Q2 is seasonally strong, but do you expect to be profitability in Q4? Q3 and Q4?
Of course, we know that we have some seasonality changes between the quarters. If you look at the full year profitability, we estimate that it will be positive in EBITDA-wise.
Yeah, yeah. Our actions are in line with that market.
Yeah. Yeah, the guidance for 2026, was Q1 in line with your expectations, and are you ahead of or behind the assumed development?
Yeah. I would like to say that things are going in line with our guidance. Of course that, like, Finnish figures were quite strong in Q1. Like, in general, it's going according to guidance and plan.
Yes.
Yes.
The asker wants to know about the seasonality and how the accounting high season goes in Spain and Sweden, like compared to Finland.
Yeah. Usually, the high season is a bit different in Spain. Basically this Q1 is not usually that strong in Spain, and it's Q2 and then also July actually is part of that high season invoicing-wise. Usually in Spain, the holiday season is a bit later or later than in Nordics, it's usually in August. That plays also important role here. It's the high season is longer than in Finland and Sweden.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's also some questions in Finnish. The one I try to translate it because we are speaking English here. We have more offices compared to revenue in Spain and Sweden. Any plans to lower the number of offices in those countries? Flow costs. Yeah.
Yeah, it's true, especially in Sweden, we have a lot of small offices, and of course, that's like one element that we are like considering what is the right way to organize our office network, both to support our profitability, but then also to support our growth. When it comes to costs, our plans in both, as this, like improving profitability in Sweden and Spain is important objective or target for us, so our plans are aligned with that. Of course this, like office network is one element.
Yeah.
to consider.
Yeah. There's still one in question on Spain. The profitability improvement plan, what are its concrete actions, and which quarter do you expect them to start showing in numbers?
I could comment first.
Yeah.
There's a lot of software related costs when we have acquired companies and then we are integrating those companies to our IT system. When changing environment, that's one thing. We are implementing new ERP system, a lot of cost from there. Also some personnel costs. We have clear, really detailed level plans how to work with those costs. I think it's quite normal that in this kind of speed of acquisitions, there's kind of double cost. Trying to reduce those first of all.
Then at the same time, we have been investing in sales and marketing, which is important that cause we want also to keep this like, positive trend in terms of, new customer acquisition on the right track. It's important that, like, we keep that growth going. I mean, organic growth.
Yeah.
Yeah, like those operational costs, IT costs, and then, of course, costs in terms of personnel.
Yeah. Yeah. There's still one question regarding to Sweden. There's revenue decline of 8.9% was deeper than expected. Has churn stabilized in Q1, or is there still a locked decline coming through?
It's from previous year.
Yeah.
We had high churn previous years. We have commented so now it's definitely looking good, trend is really positive and we are like happy with figures that we have seen in the beginning of this year. Also worth mentioning that those like customer experience results and then also results from employee survey were really high and it gives a lot of trust. Like this, like operational figures are definitely going to right direction in Sweden and management is there doing really good work.
Yeah. Thank you. That was all the questions for now.
Thank you. Thank you very much