Welcome to the Enea Q3 presentation for 2024. During the questions- and- answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Anders Lidbeck. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for giving me this opportunity to walk you through our Q3 numbers. We will follow the agenda that we normally follow in these calls: short intro to the company, discuss our financial results, and then discuss way forward and outlook. With me here, I have Ulf Stigberg, our CFO, and he will take us through the financial numbers, so he will speak a bit later. But let me start by discussing where we are now as a company. So the vision of Enea is to make the world's communication safer and more efficient, and that's a vision very much shaped by the journey we've been on for the last many years.
Especially what happened in the last 10 years has added a lot of capabilities and skills to the company, especially when it comes to telecom application and cybersecurity software. That has formed a unique cybersecurity, security, and telecom portfolio that is unparalleled anywhere else, and this is what is underscoring the opportunities we have to reach that vision over the years to come. But not only is this a unique portfolio, it's also a world-leading portfolio. In traffic management, for example, we are the traffic management product that is running in the fastest network in Canada, the fastest network in Italy, and our customer in Argentina can show a 30% additional video capacity using our products. Lots of innovations, lots of first, and lately, we're also adding a AI-based traffic congestion management to this product.
It's deployed in 50 large-scale operators around the world, and we're optimizing around 1 billion-plus subscribers daily, optimizing their video usage or their video experience. We're also a leader in cybersecurity. Here we have some ninety operators and aggregators around the world, and we are processing some 3 billion messages a day and protecting some 1.5 billion subscribers and their devices around the world. Also, here, we have a lot of innovation, and we've been in this market for a long time in our operation in Ireland and in Paris. What's very satisfying to say today is that we have double-digit growth in the core areas, and the two products I just discussed represents those two areas. We have more products in those areas, but they are representing the key growth drivers for us.
We've always said that we are aiming for double-digit growth in our focused areas, and if you look at the nine months of 2024, we have achieved 11% organic growth in these business areas, 13% in the security business, and 9% in the network business. Another product we have in our network portfolio is our Stratum product. That's a product that's been in the news many times over the last 18 months. It's not the product where we have the most customers, even though we're managing some 150 million subscribers in the older generation of this product.
But why it's worth mentioning today is that we, at the beginning of Q4, signed the biggest contract in a long time, probably one of the biggest or if not the biggest contract in the Enea history, and that's a $17.7 million contract with a potential value of $21 million over the coming three years. And that said, the support and maintenance is not yet agreed, so that will come on top of this contract. It's an amazing contract for Enea, and it's an amazing contract for the product. It's mostly recurring software licenses and services that will be recognized during the period. $7.7 million will be recognized in Q4, but this is mainly a 2025, 2026, 2027 deal.
I think it's underscoring the quality and the interest the market is showing in this product for us. It's also a product full of innovative features, and the most important thing is that it is a 5G UDR product that solves the problem of vendor lock-in. So, it opens up the network for many different applications, which was the original thought when you architected 3G. But the good thing here, and the main takeaway from this slide, is the record deal that we closed beginning of Q4, and we press released only some days ago. With that, I would like to hand over to you, Ulf, to take us through the financial results.
Thank you, Anders. In Q3, we report an organic growth of 3%. The unadjusted figures is in line with the previous year. In total, we had a lot more higher software license sales in Q2-Q3 compared to last year, and the total revenues for the quarter is SEK 217, compared to last year, SEK 221. Looking at the Security Solutions area, we have a strong license revenues up 67% year-on-year, driven by upgrade and expansions and a stable base of recurring license revenues. This forms a very stable base for our revenues to come. We have some variations in professional service, based on project milestones, and that varies over time. We have a support and maintenance area where we increase with 4% year-on-year.
This is driven by a stable customer base, and also as a result of higher license base, installed base. Looking into the Network Solutions, compared to last year, we have a reduction in license deals, and this is based on the, which was on a different level this year. We also have some variations in professional service revenues related to ongoing projects and ongoing milestones. We have a stable support and maintenance base, increasing with 2% compared to last year. The EBITDA margin was reported at SEK 71.8 million, and this is at 33%, compared to last year at 34%, unadjusted, also 33%, compared to last year 32%.
The gross margin is slightly higher compared to last year, and this is driven basically by higher share of license revenues in the product mix. Our operational expenses have decreased with a few million SEK and partly driven by a lower depreciation amortization figure. This is as a result of lower after the write-down last year, so we have less in depreciation schedules. The operational expenses, excluding the G&A, is in line with last year, and it's a combination of slightly higher spend and slightly higher capitalization of R&D investments. During the quarter, we have experienced a change in currency development, and this impacts our financial numbers.
Profit before tax was impacted by a negative financial net, and this is related to unrealized currency adjustments on cash balances in the group. During the quarter, we experienced some stronger Swedish krona, which had these effects on our balance sheet. If you look over the nine-month period, we are actually in line with the same financial net reported. So, for this quarter, we had a quite negative, but over nine months, we are in line with last year. Something I would like to brought up also is two comments on the balance sheet. With regards to intangible assets, we have a policy with capitalization of R&D expenses.
During a period up until quarter two last year, we had a growth in our balance sheet on the net book value of capitalized R&D. After the write-off, we are in a situation where we actually are in balance, which means that we're not growing our balance sheet on the capitalized R&D, which makes lower stress on our valuations. On the right side, a comment on the current receivables. Our cash flow for the quarter was a little bit lower than maybe expected, but this is related partly to the currency effect, but also related to a buildup of working capital in accounts receivable and accrued revenue. This relates to the new products we have started off this quarter and the previous quarters.
With improved processes and focus, we will improve these accounts receivable and accrued revenue going forward. This both effects on currency and working capital results in a cash flow from operations at SEK 18.6 million, compared to last year, where we had a really good cash flow for that quarter. In total, net cash flow for the quarter was -SEK 27 million, compared to +SEK 50 million last year, and the net debt for the quarter is SEK 170 million, compared to SEK 146.7 million last year. Equity ratio at 66.5%, and the net debt to EBITDA 0.58. For the quarter, we have continued with the buyback program, and we have purchased 204,584 shares to a total consideration of SEK 7.3 million.
And this program continues in Q4.
Thank you so much, Ulf. Let me then walk you through our view at our business going forward, and let me start with this. We had 3% organic growth in the quarter. We had 6% organic growth in our focus areas in the quarter, and we have 11% growth in our focus areas for the first nine months. Growth is key to Enea and key to our future success, and we're working hard every day to achieve growth. We look at it from three different perspectives. To begin with, we call the day-to-day work in our R&D organization, in our sales and marketing organization with our today's customer, Enhance.
That means that we're trying to improve or also improving the existing offering with new features based on customer feedback, market feedback, and our own views on how to enhance the products we have today. That's the bread and butter; that's the basis for our growth operation. On top of that, we call the next step Expand, and that, with that, we mean to try to move into adjacent areas with a broadening the addressable market by adding features to the product, sometimes adding new products based on the existing portfolio that we have. You can look at the SDK product that we launched in the end of 2023 , that has created new logos, new wins for us this year.
You can look at the DPI functionality we're adding to our traffic management offering that has generated two new deals for us in Q3, so that's a very important area to our growth strategy, Evolve means take our portfolio and add new offerings to it, and here, we're looking quite intensively at the moment at the new disruptive technologies like AI. AI is not something that we're only adding to our product portfolio and to our offering. We're also adding it to how we develop the offering and how we run our operation, but the Evolve stage for us is actually adding new disruptive capabilities to our offering, but to fuel growth, we're also working in the discussion on how to improve things like the global fight on cyber threats. Here, we are active in very many places around the world.
During the quarter, we've been at 10 events talking about this. We've been in Paris, Geneva, Indonesia, Brazil, and many more. We talked about things like how RCS, Rich Communication Services, now adopted also by Apple, even if no one at this point in time know how long it will take until it's fully implemented, but how that will impact cybersecurity threats. We talked about voice security, and we talked about security in the ever-growing Internet of Things. We've also, during the last three months, been acknowledged by three reports from tier one industry analysts, and also this on cybersecurity, but also on how to make the networks more efficient. But cybersecurity is very interesting. This slide we can certainly view from two different perspectives.
The most obvious perspective is the threat and the cost of cybercrime to society. On the left side of this screen here, you have a report from FBI showing the types of crimes that are sent into the complaints center, and the cybersecurity-related crime, so phishing or spoofing, so voice and messaging type of crimes, it's a multiple higher than the number two crime, so it's an enormous rate that the cybercrimes has been growing over the last couple of years. If you look at the right side of the screen, you see something that was presented at the World Economic Forum beginning of this year, and if you look at the cost to society, here we're talking trillion US dollars.
The growth from the $7 trillion cost in 2022 is expected to double until 2028, and the cost in 2028 is almost $14 trillion. So that's obviously the first approach, and the first thought when you look at this slide. The flip side is, of course, from an Enea perspective, that this opens enormous market opportunities for us. Both the operators, which is our prime customers, but also the pressure on our customers from individuals, the subscribers, and from government and society to improve the network and make it more difficult to commit these cybercrimes. From an Enea perspective, this is a huge market opportunity. This is also why we can be comfortable in, again, reiterating our long-term ambition to generate double-digit growth in our focus business areas.
We have for the first nine months what is sometimes referred as the Rule of 40. We're well above that Rule of 40, with 33% EBITDA margin and 11% growth. But we're still working in a challenging market from a macro perspective, and we are therefore reiterating the same guidance for 2024 as we've had throughout the year, and that is that we will achieve an EBITDA margin above 30%, and we will do that with strong cash flows. I would like to end this presentation by inviting the professional investors to a Capital Markets Day in Stockholm, December 4th, in the afternoon.
Here, we will discuss all the things that we've talked about today and more, and more importantly, maybe in more detail than we've been able to do during this 30-minute call. So with that, I would like to thank you for listening and invite any questions that might be out there.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions from the telephones, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.
Thank you for that. We have one written question in front of us here, and that is, if we could comment on the service potential on the contract announced recently. And I assume it's, you mentioned the, you're referring to the contract on our UDR product. And that contract is actually already framing the services business on that software during the coming three years. So it's a recurrent license business, and it's a committed software services volume for the coming three years. That is the contract. So, on top of that, you should not expect any more services. So the $17 million or $18 million with the potential of $21 million, that's the scope of the contract.
What will come on top of this is the support and maintenance, which is obviously a smaller part than this. But as you might imagine, for us, the biggest contract in the history of Enea, or at least in the last decade, is a very good thing for us. Okay, thank you for that. I hope that answered the question. I see no other questions on the screen in front of me, and if there are no other questions from the conference?
There are no more questions from the telephones.
Thank you for that. We just got another question here on the screen, and that is if I could comment on our pipeline, especially in cybersecurity. I've said on many occasions that the pipeline we have in Enea is pretty impressive, and I've been around Enea for more than a decade, and I've been very impressed with the pipeline I've seen during the last 15 months. To the point that I've sometimes said that I think our pipeline is a bit too big. The importance of a pipeline is not only to make it as possible, but to make sure that it is of high quality, and that you win more deals in that pipeline than you lose.
Because the cost of winning and the cost of losing in the software industry is more or less the same, meaning that the margin on winning is an enormous difference to not winning. It's like, you know, 100% difference, almost. So I think that I can answer that question with, I'm very pleased with our pipeline. It's still a hard work to make sure that we can close the deal in the pipeline, and that's coming back a bit to the climate in the industry. In the telecom industry, it's not necessarily a growth market at this point in time, even though the cyber side of it is growing. So that's the caveat. The time it takes to close the deals is the challenge, but the number of deals we're working on is very reassuring.
I hope that answered the question, and with that, I would like to thank everyone for listening and hope to talk to you again, if not before, in ninety days, when we can present our full year numbers. Thank you very much, and goodbye!