Welcome to Lemonsoft Q2 2026 results call. We will begin the event with the presentation from CEO Alpo Luostarinen and follow up with a Q&A session. You can post your questions during the presentation. Without further ado, Alpo, floor is yours.
Thank you. My name is Alpo Luostarinen, I am the CEO of Lemonsoft, and I will be presenting our Q2 results in the next hour. Let's jump right into our first-half financial results. We've had a fairly good first half of the year. We've been improving our net sales. We've been growing slightly, and especially our SaaS income has grown roughly 10% in the first half compared to last year, which is our most important revenue stream. Our adjusted EBIT has grown 22% compared to last year, and especially due to our change in negotiations last year, we've been able to improve our cost base roughly 3.8 percentage points. Looking at our Q2 results, we've had good growth of 5.4%, which is mainly due to the Jakamo acquisition completed in March. Our SaaS income grew 12.4%, and we are focused on improving that figure going forward.
Adjusted EBIT was especially strong in Q2 with 39% growth year-on-year and 5.1 percentage point growth. The major events that we had in Q2 and actually after Q2 ended, we finalized a transaction, actually two transactions, in July and August. In July, we completed a financing round where we got new financing into our subsidiary, Lixani Oy, and got a new investor, a construction company which is already a Lixani customer, Redan, which joined Lixani's shareholder base and is now a new minority shareholder. We retain our large minority ownership in Lixani, and we think the business will continue in a positive trajectory in the next few years and will be a very active minority owner going forward. In August, we completed another transaction where we sold Finvoicer Group accounting and debt collection services to eCount.
We retained BillGO and Finvoicer financing business, which are now part of Lemonsoft, and we retain those businesses going forward. What we did there is basically we moved the accounting and debt collection services and focus on providing those services through our partner network. Both of these arrangements are aimed at sharpening our focus in manufacturing and wholesale and in software, and especially recurring SaaS business. The effects of both of these transactions will be visible in Q3 and forward. Looking at the market, the main industry areas we are in, manufacturing and wholesale, are performing better and better each month, basically. In July, the growth was above 10% and has been increasing every month in the past six months, which is very positive for our future development. Wholesale growth has been positive for almost a year now as well, but not as strong as manufacturing in Finland.
Looking at our focus in Q2, we have been able to transform the business quite well from a fairly mixed portfolio to a strong, focused software business towards manufacturing and wholesale. The first few things that have been affected in our focus segments is, first of all, the legacy ERP replacement cycle is actually accelerating quite fast.
One of the drivers in that space is, to my mind, the fact that AI functionalities are increasing, and while the modern service provider, software providers are increasingly adding AI features into their software and the legacy ones are basically not able to do that or are not willing to do that, the cycle is accelerating towards modern solutions, and we are well-positioned there to support the transition. Due to that, as well as our own sales organization developing into a positive direction and our new Chief Sales Officer in the past eight to nine months has been building a new organization, the level of sales activity in the beginning of the pipeline has now substantially increased and is higher than in the last few years. We've been able to maintain our inbound lead amounts and now expand quite drastically our outbound lead amounts.
We are also actively looking into supporting our Finnish customers and their growth capabilities internationally. So what we are basically doing is that we are looking to adjust our software to function well for our customers looking to expand into nearby markets, especially Sweden, some other Nordic countries, and in Central Europe. This is something that we are now investigating more thoroughly during autumn. We basically have a few phases planned where we investigate more and more thoroughly how we can support, first by software and second, later on, by services and sales. We've been focusing on getting our software solutions to be the best category-defining solutions in the market. We've been implementing during Q2 a new agent-based development model and getting the best tools into use in our software development, which is shortening development cycles and getting our software functionalities into market as fast as possible.
We've actually in Q2 already have been able to do important product releases to the market, especially in some smaller AI functionalities, as well as some of the manufacturing and wholesale functionalities that are relevant for our customers. In early autumn, in Q3, we are still anticipating to release new functionalities, especially in manufacturing and wholesale, but also in accounting and payroll solutions. As for our organization, we are still maintaining our focus to get our customer-facing capabilities to function properly and customer satisfaction and customer engagement to a new level. We've actually made several key hirings in Q2 and Q3 to be able to support our customers as well as possible. Now, overall, our operating model and our organization is finally, in the past six months, stabilized, and we are now in a new situation after quite drastic changes in the past 18 months.
I am referring, of course, to the platform transition as well as our change negotiations last year, as well as the most recent transactions that we completed now in the summer. All of these support our strong execution in the core segments that we want to focus on. Finally, we are focused on value-driven M&A, and now after Q2, we were focused on getting also the sort of current portfolio to be optimal going forward. The Finvoicer divestment as well as the Lixani financing round and also getting a new lead for the Lixani team are key pieces to support those set goals. Looking deeper into Finvoicer and Lixani transactions, what we did there and what was the rationale of those transactions. For Finvoicer, Lemonsoft is increasingly focused on getting scalable SaaS and recurring software revenue up.
Considering that Finvoicer is mainly focused on services and transaction revenue, which is not our key focus at the moment, it was fairly good, clear rationale to leave that to our partners. We will focus on getting or providing accounting services, payroll services, debt collection services through our partner network and allowing us to focus on the scalable software business. That transaction also increases our focus on manufacturing and wholesale, considering that most of Finvoicer's customers have been smaller general SME customers. Just a reminder that we retained BillGO, which is a very easy invoicing solution which fits really well to our strategic goals. As for Lixani, construction is an industry that we haven't been focusing on strongly in the past few years and sits outside of our core industries.
We have been thus interested in still retaining our ownership there and maintaining our long-term upside with the company, since we see a lot of potential in the product, but that is not the product that is directly in the core of our focus right now. Of course, the addition of Redan to the shareholder base of Lixani brings a lot of expertise that we can then utilize to grow the business in the next few years. Moving into financials for Q2, looking first at the revenue streams. Overall, our revenue grew 5%. Organic growth was slightly negative at 2.1%, driven by the transaction and consulting revenue decline. SaaS revenue increased quite well, 12.4%, and organically, 2.7% as well. Transaction and consulting revenue decline has been fairly vast, and we are looking at 14%-16% decline.
We are expecting that in Q3, those figures will be smaller, the decline will be lesser. Afterwards, of course, Finvoicer's consulting and transaction revenue will not be in Lemonsoft's figures in Q3 going forward. Looking at the revenue mix and our SaaS revenue growth, our new sales growth was 1%, net downsell/upsell was -0.4%, and churn was 1.5%. Churn has been somewhat elevated still, and the first half was roughly in line with last year's churn figures. In the next few months and the end of the year, we still expect that figure to remain elevated. There are a few reasons for that. There are especially some bankruptcies still with our companies. Otherwise, we see the market developing quite well, but there are still some companies that are suffering from a long three-year period of a worse market environment.
The new sales figure is still much lower than we want it to be, and we are now looking to utilize the good atmosphere as well as our good early pipeline and close deals in the second half of the year. SaaS revenue on the right-hand side grew from, or the share of SaaS revenue grew from 75% last year to almost 80%, which is a really good direction, and we want to continue that direction. We also expect that figure to grow quite significantly after Finvoicer's figures are not included in those figures anymore in Q3 and Q4. Look at our cost base. After last year's change negotiations and organizational restructuring, we were able to reduce our employee benefit expenses roughly by 2%. Our adjusted EBIT is increased by 5 percentage points.
Of course, also our other operating expenses have been lower, and depreciation and amortization has also been lower than last year. Other OpEx is mainly due to our credit losses and legacy data center shutdown in the comparison period last year. This year has been cleaner in that sense. Looking at the organization, our headcount was roughly in line with Q1 headcount. We are looking into hiring good expertise, especially in our customer-facing functions. Now we've been executing that in Q2 already and continuing to grow in those functions in Q3. The number has not been increasing due to our decline. We've been reducing employees in some functions, especially in Finvoicer before the transaction. We expect that figure to grow slightly in the second half of the year.
Now we are looking into hiring employees, especially in functions that are focusing on our core growth areas, especially in manufacturing and wholesale. Also we consider in all of our hiring decisions, we consider also our international growth ambitions going forward, which we are now investigating. Finally, we are publishing our Q3 report on 5th of November, and happy to invite you all to listen to that report after Q3. Now handing over to our host for any questions that we might have.
Thank you, Alpo. We have plenty of questions. First from Atte Riikola at Inderes. New sales activities up, quote-unquote, "substantially." Can you put a number on it?
Yeah, to be exact, I'm referring to the beginning of the sales pipeline. So our leads and offers that are out have been increasing, let's say 2x-3x compared to a normal period, which is quite good. But we still are looking to or are waiting to see those numbers reflected in the closed deals, but roughly in that sense.
Okay, then Visma's legacy L7 ERP reaches end of life in 2028. How significant demand driver is this for you?
Well, it's one of the biggest legacy ERP solutions that we are looking to replace. There are, of course, other let's say three to four other legacy ERP software in the market that we've been replacing in the past one to two years as well. Visma's client base has been very interested in looking at our solutions, and we are working on that. At the moment, it's quite big share of our new leads. But of course, we are looking to direct our sales efforts in a more wider sense to manufacturing customers. There's a lot of manufacturing customers that we haven't been talking to in the past few years. And there's a lot of also energy sector clients that we are interested in directing our efforts to.
Okay. Are you expecting churn to cool down in H2? Have you noticed any AI-related churn in your customer base?
We are expecting new churn to cool down in H2. But to be frank, this is a sort of long cycle, so we've seen some churn in the first half of the year, and all typical customer churn is at least three months. So if we get the notice of customer churn, it takes at least three months to be reflected in our figures, and typically it might take even 6 - 12 months before the customer actually leaves. So those numbers may not be cooling down in the second half of the year yet. AI-related churn in our customer base, we have not seen at all, or almost. Some smaller customers may have been, we don't know everything, but all the larger customers or mid-sized customers, we know the reasons, and we haven't seen basically at all AI-related churn.
We are considering that at all times, but majority of our customers are looking into getting AI-related functionalities on top of the large suite of solutions that we already have.
Okay. The next question, still from Atte Riikola. How has Jakamo been performing since the acquisition?
Jakamo has been, if I can say so, it's been a very good, even a positive surprise to us. Jakamo has been continuing its profitable growth and has been doing that very successfully in the first six months that they've been part of Lemonsoft. For now, it seems that pace will continue. The most positive sign there is, of course, that an aspect of that is that all the Jakamo customers are basically manufacturing customers in Finland, Sweden, and so on. So that's very sweet spot in terms of our strategy.
All right. You mentioned evaluating internationalization as a part of your growth strategy. Can you elaborate on that a little bit more?
Yes. In the past few months, we've been seeing a lot of our customers asking for our solutions to support them in their international growth, and we are, of course, very happy to support that. As for Lemonsoft, and now I'm talking about Lemonsoft ERP since Jakamo, Spotilla, and Logentia all have customers in all Nordic countries. I'm now talking about Lemonsoft ERP, but Lemonsoft ERP customers are looking to grow as well in other countries, and we are supporting that, now working on the Swedish market especially, looking to get our functionalities to support that market. It seems that the localization needed is actually lesser than we've thought before. So it looks rather positive.
We are evaluating what type of overall product suite we need, what type of overall services we need to provide, how local services, consulting, and so on, and trying to fit those requirements to the competitive market in each geographical market. But that work is still in its early stages, and we'll report on how that develops further on.
Okay. Are you screening M&A targets from international markets?
Yeah, we've been doing that all along, but that hasn't been a strong focus in the past one to two years since we've been focusing on getting everything together at our home market. But yes, we are looking at the M&A as well, but that's not actually the main objective in the internationalization investigation right now, but that's a key part of it, of course.
Okay. Are you still planning to increase your headcount in the coming quarters?
Yes, we will, but not drastically. Our aim is to keep our headcount fairly at the same level where we ended up after the organizational changes last year. We are looking to hire individuals, especially customer-facing functions and some specific expertise in product development as well, and information security as well. But not drastic increases, some individuals here and there.
All right. Then about the financial targets. Are these still valid after the latest Finvoicer and Lixani transactions?
We gave basically two different revisions to our financial targets for the year during the summer, and the latest of that was after the Finvoicer transaction and Finvoicer divestment, and those targets are of course valid. They were given roughly a month ago.
Okay. What is the revenue impact of Finvoicer and Lixani transactions in H2?
We are talking about roughly a bit less than EUR 1 million total impact on our revenue for both of those transactions together.
Okay. Thank you. Then a few questions from Daniel Lepistö at Danske Bank. How much did you get from the Finvoicer divestment, and what magnitude of a goodwill impairment should be expected for Q3?
The whole transaction was a bit complicated since we had three different businesses in that subsidiary, and we retained two of those businesses and divested the Finvoicer Group Oy. We haven't published the divestment price, but it's fairly insignificant from our point of view. The goodwill impairment, it's also a number that's not that simple to calculate since we need to divide it into three pieces. You will, of course, see it in our Q3 figures, how it's dealt with on an accounting point of view.
Okay. How do you expect the gross margin to develop now that Finvoicer is divested and Lixani is no longer consolidated?
We don't expect that to have a significant effect on our gross margin. We expect those figures to somewhat improve, but not a significant change.
Okay. Can you discuss employee costs a bit more? It looks like that the average cost of FTE is up quite clearly in Q2 compared to a year ago. Was Jakamo average cost per employee clearly higher compared to group average?
Yeah, there are a few different aspects of that. Jakamo's average cost of employee is higher than our average group employee. The main reason is that Jakamo is focused on large customers and is working with some of the largest manufacturing companies in Finland and Sweden, and they need very high-level expertise to support those customers. Finvoicer's employees are basically quite much lower than group average, so there are many changes in that aspect. We have also been hiring quite a lot of senior leaders into our group, so that has a smaller aspect as well.
All right. That was the final question, so back to you for any closing comments.
All right. Thanks from my part for our Q2 report. We will be happy to discuss again after our Q3 report in October, November.