Hi everybody, my name is Henrik Bartnes. I work as an Equity Research Analyst at ABG and in the Oslo office. I'm pleased to have StrongPoint and Jacob with me today. Please, Jacob, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Jeff Bezos was asked in an interview, "What is the most frequent question you get?" The most frequent question apparently he gets is, "What's going to change in the next 10 years?" The question really should be, "What's not going to change in the next 10 years?" For Jeff Bezos and Amazon, that's lower prices, wider selection, faster delivery times. I never get the question from customers, "Jacob, what can you do to make your solutions less efficient?" It's typically more efficient. If you add on top of that, that we believe at least that in the next 10 years people will still be eating food, and predominantly food coming from grocery chains, that gives a little bit of foundation for what StrongPoint is all about. StrongPoint, we are a now 40-year-old, believe it or not, grocery technology company.
For those of you not familiar with StrongPoint, we have about NOK 1.3 billion turnover. About 1/3 of that is recurring business, recurring from service support agreements and not least license fees from owned and third-party solutions. We predominantly serve grocery retailers. More than 80% of our revenue stems from grocery retailers. We have, across the nine countries we operate, about 500 employees, and a portion of that is actually also doing the software development for our own solutions. Everything we do on hardware is typically outsourced to manufacturing and assembly partners, but the software we do predominantly in-house as we believe that's important. What does StrongPoint, how does StrongPoint operate? We operate typically in two different manners. On the one hand side, we are in nine countries, in the Nordics, in the Baltics, U.K. and Ireland, and Spain.
In these markets, we sell solutions, we sell our own solutions, also some third-party solutions, but we just do not only sell those solutions, we also install them to ensure that they do deliver on the capacity and capabilities they should be delivering. We also do the service, and we also do the support of these arrangements. That allows StrongPoint to get a close relationship with customers, a customer intimacy with customers, and it allows for more repeat business once those solutions are due to be replaced. The other part of StrongPoint operates outside these nine countries. We do this, again, predominantly through partners, but also direct, direct in particular for our pure software solutions. Those are really the two big ways that StrongPoint operates. One, in the nine countries with a full value chain, and number two, with sales partners to get to other geographies as well.
What does StrongPoint do? First of all, we create solutions for challenges and opportunities for grocers, and we have those solutions. Number one, if you want to deliver e-groceries, so groceries delivered online, the two big cost items are picking and packing the items and delivering them. At StrongPoint, we have the best of both solutions. We have an award-winning pick solution, we have very efficient Delivery Solutions also through Click And Collect Lockers, which is widely used also in Sweden, and we also have a partnership with AutoStore, which allows us to take customers also through automation. We also have, excuse me, the appropriate solutions to counter theft. Theft is on the rise everywhere, but in particular in some of the markets we operate, U.K. being the most prominent.
Theft is actually becoming such an issue now that the industry is coming together to put pressure on the government. At StrongPoint, we have our Vensafe solution as one of the solutions. We have a number of AI solutions to detect and prevent thefts as well. Furthermore, we also operate in the space of efficiency. As I said, we want to make things more efficient for our customers, and that goes for both the way that our customers order goods, but also the way that shoppers shop through Self-Checkouts and making those Self-Checkouts even more efficient by the use of artificial intelligence to identify not only theft, but also the appropriate items on the scale. On number four here, pricing and promotion. Getting the right price in place for customers and promotions in place is key.
StrongPoint has been for more than 15 years a partner of the Swedish company Pricer, being very successful in bringing the Pricer Electronic Shelf Labels out to the markets. We recently took the initiative to change that, so as of December last year, we took the initiative to get out of, I should say, the exclusivity contract we had with Pricer and at the same time enter into an agreement with the by far largest player in the Electronic Shelf Label, but also digitalization space for grocery stores and retail stores, and that's Vusion. Vusion, the French company with close to 50% market share in this space on Electronic Shelf Labels, but also a very impressive platform for digitizing the store.
Our partnership with Vusion goes beyond only the Electronic Shelf Labels , but we're actually their e-commerce partner, getting the recognition also from Vusion that our solution is a very, very solid solution for grocers. Lastly here, cash. Both with Mr. Putin and with electricity outages in Spain, we see that even though we live in Norway and Sweden, cash is not dead. When you do have a grocery store with SEK 100 million turnover, even with the 1%-2%-3% cash share, there's a very big portion of cash that needs to be handled. We're not expecting this to grow in the Nordics or Baltics, but it's staying remarkably flat whilst in other markets, in particular Spain, cash management is a big industry. With these solutions and the footprint that we have at StrongPoint, we try to build what we call customer intimacy.
If you compare the different markets we're in, it's fair to say that the Nordics and Baltics are the most mature markets for StrongPoint. In these markets, we serve all the grocery retailers, all the largest grocery retailers, and you see their logos here on the page. For these top 10 customers of StrongPoint, it is important to recognize that we're not only selling one solution or two solutions, we're actually selling on average 4.7 solutions. That's what you get when you deliver reliable solutions over time, you gain trust, you get to know the people that are buying our solutions. I would argue we are having an advantage compared to newcomers simply because of the clout and credibility we've built over time. We never lost a customer, but it's also because solutions communicate with each other.
As in the case of order picking, once you have a StrongPoint's Order Picking Solution, you can make that solution even more efficient when you add on Electronic Shelf Labels. The Electronic Shelf Labels flash when the associate is in the space of where the merchandise is, increasing the efficiency even more. You can also add on Grocery Lockers, making the last mile delivery even more efficient. The trust through delivering solutions over time and the fact that a number of our solutions communicate and create additional value for customers allows us to get these kind of impressive, we would argue, figures for the penetration and depth of customer relations.
When a parent is asked to sort of single out their most cherished child, it's impossible, and I feel a little bit like a father here, and I will try to actually single out one solution, and that is our Order Picking Solution . Back in 2018, StrongPoint acquired a Swedish company called CUB AB. What became evident then was that CUB AB out in Täby in Ellagårdsvägen in a farmhouse had actually developed an amazing solution for order picking. I believe that the reason that CUB was able to create this fantastic solution is because we in Norway and Sweden have very high labor costs for low-skilled labor. And you know that when you have a store associate that costs two, three, four times what it costs elsewhere in Europe, that solution needs to be very efficient.
Almost without knowing it, the folks at CUB created a fantastic solution, and we have invested quite significantly into this solution to add on new features to get this into a cloud-based solution. After many years of large investments, it felt like last year we got the big breakthrough. Sainsbury's in the U.K., the second largest grocery chain in the U.K., with a turnover of about SEK 500 billion, to put it in perspective, that's more than the entire Swedish grocery market, selected StrongPoint's Order Picking Solution . They're picking their solutions in store. I think many outside industry believe that picking is done in distribution centers like Maltem and Oda.
That's typically for pure players, but the vast majority of orders for groceries, sorry, being picked are being picked in stores by the existing players, leveraging the store network, the infrastructure, the people that they have, and then they need efficient solutions. That is when it comes to StrongPoint. One thing is Sainsbury's, super proud about that, of course, it's a huge customer putting extra pressure on StrongPoint to deliver better on its service level agreements, IT security, and not least capacity. Doing so in a good manner also allows us to reach new customers. Last week, we actually also announced that Carrefour in Belgium will be leveraging our solution as well. I feel as a dad, I was not a mother, I feel as a dad very proud of the Order Picking Solution .
I think it has global scale and opportunities, and we're very prosperous about this solution in the future with long sales cycles, it should be said. If you start looking then at our recurring revenue, as I explained, 1/3 of our business is recurring. The license fees that we are getting from our own solutions have been growing quite dramatically the last few quarters. The 68% growth that we saw in the last quarter on a rolling 12-month basis is predominantly driven by our order picking, but also on our Self-Checkout software. We are working to all the time increase the quality of our revenue. I'm not trying to dismiss or talk down about sort of project-driven revenue, but having a quality in the recurring and repeat business is a priority for StrongPoint. This is a picture that we're very proud of showing.
Now, with that kind of backdrop, you'd probably think that, well, everything is going in the right direction. At StrongPoint, we have a long history of profits and dividends. As a relatively small company, it's been important for us and for the board to every year pay dividends. Although we've been growing, it's been pretty important to pay dividends to ensure that our largest shareholders and all shareholders get direct returns on their investments. When the pandemic hit, we had a fantastic year. E-commerce was booming. Grocery stores were really booming. I might say that if we didn't get carried away, at least we did start a number of investments, and most of those investments we have been taking over the P&L. All the investments of making our order picking into a cloud-based solution, adding on new features, we've done over the P&L.
If you look at the way that we wanted to bring out the solution, we also acquired a company into the U.K. and Ireland. The acquisition in itself did not affect the profit and loss statement, but of course the investment to build an organization capable of selling the entire portfolio of solutions that StrongPoint has has been an investment that we have been doing. We have also been investing in a Cash Solution specifically for the larger grocery retailers, and we are working still with the largest grocery retail chain in Spain, Mercadona, by far the largest, order of magnitude same size as Sainsbury's, NOK 500 billion turnover, in a market in which one third of value is cash, huge cash volumes. We also lastly have invested into developing our own point of sale solution out of the Baltics, where we have a very good and dominant position in that space.
My point is we took on a lot of investments when we were in the pandemic, and it's potentially easy to say, well, maybe we took on too many investments. Those investments certainly have hampered us in the two years that we've had. They have been challenging for StrongPoint. We've seen that our customers have been investing into price or lower prices for customers. Discounters have been growing, and to counter the price difference, the supermarkets have had to invest into price. That has meant that investment cycles have been pushed out in time. Now we have an ambition to get back to both black figures and start paying dividends again. I just wanted to explain a little bit the history of StrongPoint and where we are. We are getting back there.
Last year, we had to take some organizational restructuring measures to right-size the organization and the cost base without jeopardizing or hampering the development in the investments that we have been doing. We are now back to black when it comes to EBITDA figures. I do not like to, or we do not like to guide, but we are cautiously optimistic about this year, and we are very optimistic about the years to come. I want to round off before Henrik, you start bombarding me with questions. Why should you, as an investor, invest in StrongPoint? First is that in the core markets or the legacy markets of StrongPoint, the Nordics and Baltics, we have a very solid customer base with long-standing relations, allowing us to sell more solutions, and we are doing that already in a very profitable manner.
If we only looked at the Nordics and Baltics, we would be very much profitable. We have a solid base that, of course, all the time needs to be challenged and renewed and rejuvenated, if you want, but there is a solid base of customers we have. Oops, sorry. Secondly, we're seeking to replicate that customer intimacy in larger markets. We are into the U.K. and Ireland and Spain. We have that first solution with Sainsbury's. I'd love for that to be both two and three and four solutions. We are already running a proof of concepts on our Vensafe solution to help Sainsbury's protect the items in store to reduce theft. We are also running pilots on lockers, so there are things in motion. There will be long sales cycles. Let's not fool ourselves.
These are very, very big companies, but I also feel comfortable that even these big customers of ours see the same as our Nordic and Baltic customers, namely that the solutions from StrongPoint can be trusted and that the value of getting more solutions on top of each other adds to more than the solutions individually. There are question marks there, which is once the timing is right, we might go to other markets as well. Right now we're focusing on making the U.K. and Irish market and not at least the Spanish market a success before moving anything further. Lastly is our order picking. I dare to say my favorite baby. We have customers in Europe and all the way to New Zealand, showing that we can sell our software solution really anywhere people shop groceries, which basically is anywhere in the world. Thank you.
Perfect. Thank you.
That was a really great presentation. Are there any questions from the audience? All right. There is more time for my questions. Obviously, as an analyst, and I guess the investors as well, are waiting for the investment cycle to return. In that manner, what do you see in the market? What are feedback from the customers in regards to the decision-making cycle, and what do you expect? When do you think it will return for good?
First of all, following the pandemic, it has been slower. I think a lot of companies operating in our space have seen that. With Mr. Trump throwing out all kinds of things nowadays, that does not really help on security. I think we have to look a little bit past that.
I mean, the fortune of serving grocery retailers is that there's very rarely any grocery retailer goes bankrupt like you see in other retail space. So we have very solid customers, and this is all about sort of where do you prioritize to invest your money. Now we've had a couple of years where the investment has been into pricing, but there's not a single grocery retailer, at least if you look at it in large terms about this, that doesn't see the, for instance, e-commerce growing. In terms of segments, e-grocery growth is by far the biggest out of any kind of segment. Of course, you want to be in that space. You're also seeing theft rising, and you want to sort of prevent that. Actually, the returns on that kind of investment could be a lot larger than investing in prices directly.
I think, sure, it's an explanation, maybe even an excuse at some point in time for investments to take place, but a lot of the solutions that we offer, we believe, are something that the customers would not be wanting to be without.
Yeah, perfect. If I can ask on the competitive landscape, how do you position yourself in comparison with your competitors, and how are the mechanisms or processes behind the tender processes when retailers are considering investing?
Sure. First, when it comes to the competitive landscape, I think there are few companies that offer such a wide portfolio of solutions that StrongPoint does. As a company you can go to to get any kind of solution, the competitive landscape in the traditional markets is lower than you might anticipate.
Sure, there are other providers of specific solutions, but the whole portfolio is very few that actually delivers. We're yet to see in the U.K., Ireland, and Spain, the larger markets, how that's going to play out. What's been very important for us is to get our very best solutions in at the first instance, like in the case with Sainsbury's and order picking, and then start building on top of that. When it comes to tender processes, of course, some of these investments are big, and there needs to be a tender process. As everybody else, we like to work with our customers to help them shape the tenders to be correct. You can interpret that whatever way you want. We're not alone to want that. I believe that the long-term relations we have with customers allows us to be in exactly that position.
That is what we want to strengthen both in the Nordics and Baltics, but also replicate outside the Nordics and Baltics.
Perfect. Thank you. I think we have to conclude the presentation today. Thank you, Jacob. This was really great.
Thank you.