Welcome, everyone, to Ranplan's presentation for the second half of 2024, and hence also the full-year results communicate. Here we have another person joining, so I will repeat myself. Joyce, can we record this presentation?
Yes. Okay. Yeah.
Thank you. Welcome, everyone. This is Per Lindberg. I'm the CEO of Ranplan. We are pleased to take you through our financial results and operational achievements in the second half of 2024, and also then by extension for the full year, and shedding also some light on where we are heading in the coming years, our priorities, not least. I'm pleased to introduce to you also our CFO, George Wells. George, a few words before we start.
Yes. Good morning. Those of you who don't know me, I've worked for Ranplan for over six years now, and this is not my first annual statement. At the moment, yes, we've just produced the annual statement. The annual report is coming out in a month and a half. Yes.
No, no. Very good. George will assist in going through some of the financial details here. Unusually then, and favorably, I do not think you see this from any companies on planet Earth. Our Chairwoman, Joyce Wu, is also in attendance. Joyce, and she is the founder together with her husband of Ranplan back in 2006. She is also the Chief Operating Officer, and she is the Global Head of HR. So a truly multitasker. Joyce.
Thank you, Per. Good morning, everyone. Yes, as I said, I am the co-founder of Ranplan as well, and I am also in charge of the operations. Thank you.
Thank you. Okay.
Thank you.
Let's go through some of the slides that we have prepared. As you have noticed, whilst we report on a half-year basis only, we are very ambitious whenever we report. Today, you can digest at your leisure a 32-page report from First North listed company. We are meticulous, and we clearly abide by all the rules and the requirements on First North. That will show here as well. The summary bulletin looks like this. I don't think we should dwell so much on every single line here. The graphics soon to follow will help guide your eyes and also your trend observations here. What we can say is that whilst total income was down slightly year- on- year, we will explain largely why soon, the operating income improved insofar that the reported operating loss fell materially. I mean, it's more than a 50% decline year on year.
That has a similar impact then on the net income as well as earnings per share. Cash is or was at a healthy level end of 2024. We will now look at the full-year trends as well as the half-year contributions graphically. We start with total income. Total income covers three elements: commercial products and services, what we sell to operators, equipment makers, enterprises, public safety organizations. That's one item. Research projects is another. Here we receive money mainly from Brussels, European Union Horizon projects, as well as the counterparties in England, the United Kingdom. This is not free money. No way. I mean, we here undertake research projects. We have to deliver something. This has to be at the absolute frontier. This is something that we think over time will also strengthen our commercial product portfolio and general capabilities.
Then the third leg there is what we perhaps somewhat strangely call, from a financial point of view, other operating income. That you can say is a form of subsidy, but it's a subsidy that allows us to capitalize on losses carried forward earlier than otherwise would be the case. It's clearly dependent also on what money we generate and how we spend that money. This is not for general research. It's clearly pinpointing certain activities, again, that need to be very much advanced in the world. Okay. Leaving that aside, here you see the green bars. They should be red on the left-hand side. That's the half-year contribution. Green, green, green. You can see that it undulates a bit.
In order to see then more of the trend, the gray curve, also undulating, moving up and down a little, but less dramatically so, is the 12-month rolling average, i.e., as if you look back one year at each moment in time you look back, what has been achieved in the last 12 months. That should be red on the right-hand scale. It is easy to see that in the last three or actually four years, we have been holding relatively steady. There are elements here, which we will show you soon, that have changed, but overall, it has been more or less a sideway trajectory. George, anything you want to add to this first?
On the last point about R&D tax credits, I mean, we'll also get to it, but it's important to bear in mind that the rules have moved against us and companies like us. That this year, the contribution from R&D tax credits is lower than it was last year. Next year, again, because of rule changes that are kicking in, we expect a further slight reduction, not as large as this year, but a slight reduction. Although we're holding steady here, we've offset the decline in contribution from the R&D tax credits.
Indeed. Indeed. Yes. We have had some headwind there. We are clearly becoming much, much more efficient in terms of how we operate. We have made certain priority changes, not least within the product development apparatus. That shows here in the operating expenditures. Again, the gray curve, to be read on the right-hand axis, has been falling and fell slightly more moderately in the second half compared with the first half of 2024. Importantly, though, as we stress in the financial document and the report today, we do not expect this trend to continue. We now see opportunities generating, hopefully, positive returns on investments to add more to our operating expenditures. Gradually, not dramatically, but especially within sales and marketing. We are absolutely confident that we have the best product in the marketplace. Absolutely confident. We have great insight into our competitors' situation.
We want to convince increasingly more of our existing and would-be customers that they should take us on board, purchase more of our tools, products, and services. George, anything you would like to say to this?
In later slides, we can look at the split of what's happened in operating expenses between the categories we have of R&D, sales, and admin.
Indeed. Indeed. Yes. You will get more granularity, more detail soon. The last slide of these types refers to operating cash flow before working capital. Bear in mind, and this is unusual, I do not think it is easy to find any other company that has a perfect match between reported operating income and operating cash flow before working capital. You will see soon why that is the case. Zooming in on the major conclusion from this graph, it shows a very, very significant improvement in the operating cash flow, again, before working capital. It actually improved even more after working capital, but I think before working capital gives you a better sense of what is happening. Again, this is the same, identical to operating income.
It's exactly the same number here, the green bars and the gray curve, if we were to instead entitle this operating income. Rolling 12 months, we have reduced the cash consumption, you can say the net cash consumption per annum by, I think it was 58%, almost 60% reduction here. George?
No comment.
Okay. Good. We move then more to the specifics, some other angles. Total revenue here, this is defined as the combination of net sales, again, commercial products and services, and other income, and other income are related or is related to research projects that we undertake. Again, at the absolute frontier of this industry, the fanciest of things and much now in the lead-up to 6G is carried out by Ranplan. Here, more clearly than before, here you also see that research project was really the bumper performer in 2024 this the prior period. It is really the dark green here, research product that has expanded in a magnificent fashion, leading to record high revenues, research product revenues in 2024, with a second half slightly above the first six months of 2024. It's hard for us to predict what 2025 has in store.
Some of these projects will expire, but we could also, in the meantime, in parallel, be successful in winning new. There are some risks involved in some of these research projects, for instance, related to immigration issues. We shouldn't dwell on that. It is a tall order for us to keep this level, the research product level. It can happen depending on certain outcomes. The upside now, as has been the case in the past, is really research, sorry, is net sales related to commercial products and services. This is where we know that we can catapult ourselves, i.e., become much, much larger in scope and scale. George?
Yes. On the research projects, most are multi-year projects. Although we need to add new projects to sustain the level of income that we have from research projects, it also, I mean, it's not possible that it falls to the level of H1 2022, as you see there, immediately, because we have projects which continue. Historically, we always get cash for projects. Although it's not always exactly the amount that we expect, sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less. I would say the chance of, I mean, it's almost inconceivable that it falls back to 2022 levels in 2025.
Indeed. Indeed. It is also important to mention, is it not, that research projects come with additional costs. Costs for extra travel, tuition, we send people to various events, etc. It is associated also with costs and, of course, also how we use our existing resources. This is not at all free money. Had we not had the green bar there, we would have had lower costs, especially for R&D. Equally, we would be able to use our preeminent people for other activities. This is important to stress. Thank you. This is for you then, operating profit and net income. George, do you want to explain the difference between the two and the trends here?
The trend is pretty clear. The difference is cost of sales in each half. That depends on the kind of sales that we make. When we have services, planning services, then we often use other parties to do that work for us.
The difference between operating profit and net income is the financial net, right? Here, it's the loan that is.
Sorry. Of course. Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Good. Operating expenditures then. The three elements here are well-established terms here, research and development. This is product management, software development, testing, including testing, sales and marketing, as the name suggests, our people in sales and marketing, as well as discretionary expenditures, events, travel, and so on. Finally, we have general and admin. Also, I think we call that in the financials administration costs. Whilst R&D has fallen quite noticeably in the last two years, as you see here, it has begun to stabilize second half compared with the first half. If anything, we would probably expect this to, if anything, I say, if anything now to start to increase modestly. Sales and marketing, materially lower, similar pattern there compared with the full year 2022 and full year 2023.
Here, as we now sense interesting business opportunities, and as I just alluded to, we want more would-be customers to know what we can do. We are going to invest more, spend more in terms of events, marketing campaigns, and perhaps also in adding more people in order to increase our presence and visibility in the marketplace. General and admin, here benefited from a one-time reversal that you need to be aware of. We do stress that in the financial report. George, tell the audience a little bit about this and what is most reflective of the future here or our underlying cost base.
Yes. On the general and admin line, as Per says, that was a provisional expense we expected, which was reversed in H2. Without that effect, then the underlying expense would have been more like that in H1 for 2024. A little down on 2023, but not as much as shown here.
True. True. It is worth mentioning, isn't it, also that we also had, this was a positive reversal, i.e., reversal of a provision. We also had, albeit a smaller reversal, that negatively affected us research income in the last period.
Yes. Yes. That is up in the income of R&D, not in the expenses.
No, no. True. True.
Yes. That's quite unusual that we had a negative impact from a project. Often, mostly, it's very small if there's a difference. Generally, they're positive. We've also had positive ones in the period. On research projects, generally, we've really switched from E.U. funding to U.K. funding. Although there is some E.U. funding still, the large majority is U.K. funding. That has a smoother cash payment model where we're paid every three months for projects rather than the old system of you'd have a full, generally a four-year project and a large payment at the beginning, a payment in the middle, and a payment at the end, but spread out over these four years, so year zero, year two, and year four. Now we're getting more regular chunks of these projects, which obviously reduces the risk of something going wrong in them.
Here we have a comparison between operating profit, the first column, and operating cash flow, first before working capital and then after working capital. As you easily now detect, operating profit and operating cash flow, the first two bars here, are identical. They are identical for a reason we will come back to. Unlike other companies, we do not have any tangible assets or intangible assets on our balance sheet. Hence, we do not consume any money on so-called investments, nor do we charge the income statement with any so-called depreciation or amortization expenses, which is an accounting item. George, here, both in the first half and in the second half, operating cash flow after working capital was better than before working capital and hence better than operating profit. What happened there?
Yes. Generally, in the first half, we've always historically got the R&D tax credit payment. That was the third line on the income. That payment is a single lump sum payment that comes in H1 in April normally. The H1, we normally have a better cash flow after working capital. Yes, in H2 here, we also managed to collect on some debts a little faster than our sales. A good result for H2 in 2024.
Yes. As an alternative measure, then, given importantly that we have chosen, and I emphasize choice here, we have chosen to not capitalize any of our R&D expenditures. It's a choice again. Almost all companies of our type would capitalize. If you capitalize at an early stage without any depreciation, amortization of the associated cost capitalization, then clearly your reported income will look better. We have, again, chosen to expense everything immediately as the cash expense is incurred. That incidentally applies also to computers that we purchase, furniture, and so on. This, of course, does not mean that in absolute terms that we are performing better. I mean, ultimately, it is really the cash metrics that is the fundamental parameter here. In the event that you want to compare us with other IT companies, for instance, software companies, etc., you may want to take note of this.
Our operating profit before R&D has been positive, I think, in the last cumulatively, definitely in the last five years. We reached quite a decent level in 2024, as you can see from the last bar here. Again, this is just a way of taking a different perspective. Finally, we have the balance sheet measures. I leave this to George for a brief commentary.
Yes. We see first line is cash. Now, cash is always offset against the debt, the second line. The growth of the debt in the second line is reflected in the overall negative cash position. That is obviously to do with losses in the period. Current assets coming down really reflects cash collection. On balance, yes, on balance, the net assets are now slightly positive. Of course, the bottom line is the shareholders' equity, and that is reflective of losses over the time shown. That is at the group level that there is negative equity. The Swedish parent company has positive equity.
Yes. Yes. Those who may harbor concerns about the negative shareholders' equity at the group level may take solace in our history. We have undertaken debt for equity swaps, three of them in the last four years. We have also sold additional shares through a directed one in September 2021. We have the means to handle this situation very elegantly and very rapidly should we so wish, i.e., should all the debt, the gross debt here that is outstanding to me, incidentally, should that be converted into debt, you can easily deduce within the stroke of a pen, as they say, not least these days with all these discussions about the future of Ukraine. With our stroke of a pen, we could immediately convert all the debt into equity. As you can deduce, we would have positive equity.
Even though, of course, we at the group level, even though, of course, we over time want to build equity through profits from our operations. The situation is under control, and we have a healthy cushion at the parent level, equity, parent equity of about SEK 152 million, mirroring the investments that we have made, the parent company has made in the operating subsidiaries. This is something we validate through cash flow metrics, future cash flow metrics, carrying value. Okay. Good. Perspectives on 2025. As usual, we refrain from providing any financial guidance for the next 12 months or for that matter beyond. The reason for that is that we do not have that visibility, that clarity. This should not come as a surprise given that we are very, very small.
Our revenue base is very, very small compared with the type of contracts, additional incremental contracts that we may be able to capture. I don't think it's appropriate to provide any guidance unless you have a fundamental basis for that. This said, our ambition, our aspiration is to become healthily profitable and grow our revenues. As I said initially, we are absolutely certain, 100%, that we have a very, very good product, best in class for today and for future needs. We also see very interesting opportunities in expanding our design services operations, i.e., whereby we also can say become the architects. We also do the wireless design, the craft of wireless design on behalf of our customers.
I'm sure we may come back to this in the Q&A session, which will start in about 10 minutes, I think, if I keep a good track on the last few slides, four slides, I think I have. We also believe much in Wi-Fi now. The reason is that Wi-Fi is becoming much more like 4G and 5G and 6G, etc. We believe, we have good reason to believe that this community Wi-Fi will need the high quality, the high caliber software that we are famous for. This is a very, very big market. Shareholder structure, nothing or hardly anything has happened there since the public bid came to an end in the spring of last year. I am the single largest shareholder.
The founding family, Professor Jie Zhang and Joyce, second in line, Sancti Petri, number three to private investors in Sweden, Frederick and Wilhelm, slightly shy of 2% each, Swedbank, also related to the same group in Denmark, as well as Ernst and Eric Sørensen's family foundation, if I make a half translation into English. This is how it looks. We understand that there's little trading in the market. This doesn't mean that there cannot be trades made in the market. Nasdaq provides now five slots of auctions every day. I don't know the exact times, but I think there's one at noon, etc., when you more easily can actually transact when buyers and sellers know that this is the time to strike and so on.
We are aware of this, and we will explore opportunities if they materialize to improve the trading activities in the market without being too explicit here. Income statement, perhaps before we actually, I have seven, eight more slides in total now, but we can do this relatively quickly. We should perhaps help you understand also some of the important ingredients in the income statement. George, if you can explain, we see gross profit being in the second half being on a par with the first six months, which in turn is on a par equal to more or less the second half of 2023, while total income fell, etc., and the impact of cost of sales. Explain that, George.
Yes. The cost of sales here is mostly due to us subcontracting service work, so our software being used by other people, but us collecting the sales. That happened particularly, that was particularly in the second half of 2023 and to not such a large extent in the second half of 2024. That, by coincidence, has smoothed out the gross profit line, whereas the total income has moved more.
Indeed. Indeed. Our cost of sales for software is next to nothing. If we are reselling third-party products or services, sometimes we resell maps, digital maps, and increasingly often we also now use third parties for big design services undertakings, then you will see a rather substantial cost of sales impact. Yes. Good. Cash flow, I do not think there is so much to add here beyond what we already said. Investing, this is zero. I do not think you find many companies with such a cash flow statement where investment activities are zeroed across the line. This also means that we have zero adjustment for depreciation. Clearly, they kind of correlate over time. If you invest a lot today, then over time, you should also start to see later on depreciation and amortization affecting your operating results, albeit the latter is not impacting cash.
Certainly, investments is definitely something that is impacting cash. In my definition of operating cash flow, investments is an integral part of operating cash flow because investments is something that you do for your operations. Anyway, that is more the semantics on the financial industry. George, on working capital, could you dig deeper into what happened here? Not necessarily every detail here, but the reason why cash flow after working capital was better than before.
Yes, there are collections, and you can see the effect of the R&D tax credit. That is in current liabilities. That is not a trade receivable. There is no invoice. Yes, trade receivables, I mean, that is the big story. The collection is getting better in 2024, faster.
Exactly. Good. The balance sheet is not revealing any information that we have not dwelled upon already. Assets, zero fixed, current assets in excess of current liabilities, negative equity, even though importantly, this we need to stress. Again, we have chosen to not capitalize what is the most valuable part of Ranplan, namely our product portfolio, our R&D investments. There is no capitalization of our patents either, patents as they say in America, and so on. I think total equity is more an accounting metric here. Finally, this has now completed our financial rundown. Let me end this with four or five slides on operations, which we always invariably showcase in our financial reports. I think this in the end is why shareholders and other stakeholders want to be involved. I mean, what does Ranplan generate in terms of genuine value here?
What's its role in society? Here comes. We take great pride in this, by the way. We are the champion, literally the champion of open file formats, contrary to our main competitor, by the way, which takes great pride in locking customers in. It comes from a monopoly and certainly behaves like a monopolist. We do not. Look here. Revit is Autodesk, one of Autodesk's most popular design tools for computer-aided design and manufacturing. According to reports, there are 4 million engineers using Revit on a weekly basis. 4 million. This is a gigantic market. Revit allows, contrary to our main competitor, by the way, Autodesk through Revit, they allow conversion of this file into an open file format known as IFC, Industry Foundation Classes. Through that, with some cleansing, we can import, we can reuse this inside Ranplan.
We can add one more dimension that does not exist, namely the wireless propagation, the wireless performance analytics there, perfectly aligned with the original file, as you can see here. The color is then showing graphically how well the signal-to-noise ratio of, in this case, I think it should be Wi-Fi. I think this is a Wi-Fi, or it could be Tetra. It is either Tetra or Wi-Fi. Tetra is public safety, etc. Here you can see A, where the wireless base stations are deployed. The color schematics here show the relative performance. Blue is bad. The more reddish it is, the better. Green, you can say, is okay. Here we have actually also added certain objects here. These cylinders, these canisters, we have added and integrated perfectly with open file format.
Importantly, and we do not think our competitors will ever venture there, we will allow our customers, whoever they are, to reuse our files, our network diagrams, because we allow them to become open file formats. This is a workflow cycle that we are embracing and making available. Here, the economic gains for customers, they measure in millions of dollars per annum for big companies easily. Because a building like this, you cannot, A, you cannot redraw in our competitors' systems. You cannot. It is impossible. Even if you were to try, it would take months to do anything with this granularity. On this note, we should stress that we see that we provide very, very material advantages compared with our competitors in respect of productivity, the ease with which you are modeling, understanding the environment in which wireless networks will perform.
We can provide manual modeling. You can redraw in Ranplan. You can import traditional CAD files. You can also use so-called 3D mesh objects. For instance, in a tunnel, we can add wagons and trains there because they will have a profound impact on the natural propagation of radio waves. It's not enough with the tunnel per se, of course. As just flagged, we are now making great strides forward in terms of open support for open file formats in the spirit of BIM here. LiDAR is also an ingredient, an element that we use for customers who so want. LiDAR, which is laser technology for easy and automated scanning of environments, that's something we know that our tools can read, digest, and reuse. Finally, lots of people talk about AI these days.
A lot of people talk about AI without knowing what they mean with AI, by the way. We know what we mean with AI, and we have since long used cognitive computing to read patterns. This means through our machine learning tool known as the Intelligent Floor Recognizer, we can automate 80%-90% of the patterns with regard to a floor plan. Is this a wall? Is this a door? Is this a ceiling, etc.? What are the materials? Finally, before I open up for Q&As, we are also very much involved in green technology now. Without naming the end customer here, this is in the Baltic Sea. This is an offshore wind farm. Lots of them coming online now, depending on the regulatory regime and so on. This is a very elegant example of the value we provide.
This is a tribute to the versatility of our tool. The platform itself here is in the middle. Here we use our tool to understand how the wireless network will perform inside and on that platform itself. Also, unlike our competitors, the same tool, the same line of logic can be used also to cover the whole area of great, if not utmost importance, because you see this platform does not have any telecom network. There is no PTT providing them. There could be some satellites here and there, but we help them ascertain that if they send engineers to fix something on these wind farms or wind turbines, then they will have connectivity. We do this through both Tetra and Wi-Fi, as well as some other technologies. Again, a great tribute to the type of products that we make available.
You may have seen this before, a great example of the level of granularity that we provide with full three-dimensional analytics. This is from a major hotel, I think, in San Francisco. With that, we have consumed 50 minutes, and that gives room for questions and answers. Anyone, please?
Yes, maybe if I could start, it would be interesting to hear about your new version and especially how it's taken up in Barcelona. I think it's also just a question relating to you mentioned in the annual report that there were some orders postponed into 2025 and maybe beyond. I was just thinking about if you could explain a little bit about the reasons and to what degree that maybe people were waiting for the new version or how we should think about your product and the take-up by the market at the moment.
Yes, indeed. Thanks . The reason postponements, delays are more common than not, I would say, is the type of customers that we traditionally try to address. Telecommunication operators and their ecosystem partners, they tend to have many decision-makers involved. There are lots of checks and balances, long procurement processes. I would say that's the general reason, which I would categorize as structural. When we deal with enterprise customers, they make decisions much more quickly. Big telecom operators, it's typically multi-years. If it's a multi-year, why not another year? And so on. After another year, then perhaps a new technology or there has been a management change, and then they start a new, etc. Which may, I say may now be related to the turbulence, geopolitical turbulence, and interest rates movements of late portion related to budgets, cash flow optimization.
I think, and we know that this is something that has more of a cyclical characteristics. To your question again, I think we have said, or at least implied, that we have been affected by the same factor every year. I mean, we had expected customers to make a decision much faster than they did. This continued in 2024. In 2024, we did not have any big deals, nothing above $60,000-$70,000. These were the largest. It tends to be the case that the bigger the considerations, the longer it also takes for a would-be customer to make a decision in our favor or not in our favor. It is kind of just the decision-making process. Will that change? I think that will change if competition intensifies. There is more competition now between the Wi-Fi community and the cellular 4G, 5G, you can say.
I think that is coming. Satellites are also being embraced to a larger extent. Starlink and AST are good examples of that. Most importantly, private wireless, i.e., to use 4G, 5G, and the Wi-Fi equivalents more to optimize processes within a mine, within a factory, within a warehouse, etc. We are working hard on that, on establishing case studies, validated points. Ranplan can do this. Why don't you do the same? I think we also need to build the confidence that you can do this wirelessly. You do not need any wired networks any longer. I think the stampede will begin to roll.
Yeah. Can I ask you, Per, because it seems to me also the example you gave with Autodesk, that may be the main, also from a sales perspective, that maybe Autodesk would be the right partner to sell your product because they will more and more need the telecommunication part of what they do because you will get more robots, you will get more optimization, you will get more. It becomes a more and more important part of the design phase. Rather than do it themselves, partnering with you, it could also be Hexagon on mines or whatever. Could that be an avenue to sales that they will sell your products and you do indirect sales that way?
I very much believe that there is a lot to gain there, definitely. I mean, the whole digital twin and digital twin concept, etc., and the additional integration with regard to wireless tools of our kinds, definitely. We are reaching out to those like Autodesk. There are lots of companies of that nature. We believe that they will like what they see from us, not least that we embrace support openness, etc.
Yeah, exactly.
What we also can see here is that we can provide plug-in modules for Autodesk and Dassault and Solaris, etc., to adapt to within their software pack.
Yeah. Okay. Just another question just from my side also just to understand because I guess with these things, if you have a building like the building you show there, the whole dynamic of the ones because one thing is you design a building and you design the telecom network, but I think also managing and controlling the building in terms of stress tests. I mean, what if you put 10,000 mobile phones into the building or what if electricity is gone and how does this network then these sort of dynamic tests, how are your software related to coping with that?
Yes. I mean, we provide capacity simulation. For instance, in a stadium, take a big football stadium, Parken in Copenhagen, for instance, a customer there can ask us, "Ranplan, how do we build a network where 50,000 spectators can be?" If someone scores, like Laudrup did in the old days, we would expect 20% of the people there in the audience to want to upload a video. How does the network cope with this? This is what we simulate through Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo, we do capacity analysis also. Both for the uplink, by the way, both for the uplink and the downlink, because you see, in the old days of wireless, actually many people thought that the downlink was going to be 10 times bigger than the uplink. These days with social media, sometimes it's the opposite.
We are very, very good in handling the capacity, simulating, predicting both what you need for the uplink, i.e., from the cell phones or tablets to the network or in the opposite direction. We do that. We also do then latency. We can do latency modeling, for instance. For instance, if a network uses wireless to control robots and drones, we can analyze the latency, i.e., the reactivity or the opposite to reactivity, which is important. Is the reactivity going to be 10 milliseconds, which is perhaps what is required there? That will have an impact on where Microsoft and Google and the others install their computers, edge computing, as it's known as.
Yeah, because my point is, Per, to what degree an airport or a big factory would actually also need to have their own Ranplan, even if they're not architects or design engineers, just to run and basically, whenever they change anything in the factory, they will have to do simulations because they change something all the time. Also, in airports, as you know, they are changed all the time. Actually, as the operators would at some point also need a system to make sure that they can plan everyday operations almost.
Indeed, indeed. Definitely. We are involved in some of the world's most sophisticated factory projects. We cannot reveal the details there, but we have customers that are using Ranplan for precisely that purpose, not only for the initial design, but also to be able to remodel and change the network should there be a need for any changes in the physical domain.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you very much, Per.
Thank you . Anyone else? Eric or Victor?
Yes. Hello. Thank you. I have a question. I think that in the past, your competitors had pointed to your ownership structure with major Chinese owners, whether this is true or not. I am just curious, do you see any changes in the discussions with customers from this with your new ownership structure?
I haven't heard anything to that effect, but as we have communicated, and as you can see from both our annual report and annual statement now, 95, I think it's something like 96%-97% of our ownership is now in the U.K., in Sweden, in Denmark. If that previously were a reason to try to stop us, that trick doesn't work any longer.
That's good.
Yes, yeah.
Yeah. One other question also. Do you know approximately your win rate in private wireless? I mean, especially against the proprietary solutions. I mean, the competitors locking in the I think you understand.
I would put it this way, and this is something we know, that our win rate depends critically on the regime in different markets. Where our main competitors are firmly entrenched, especially amongst the operators, we need to get approval from these operators before we can sell even to smaller companies in that part of the world. The more entrenched, established the monopolistic competitor of Ranplan is, the more difficult it is, and the longer it will take. I would put it this way, we are certain we will get there because our product is so much better. Eventually, these operators that are very, very conservative in nature, they will give in. They will give in.
We have actually got a breakthrough in the U.K. through one of our biggest customers and partners there because they have convinced now all the operators in the U.K. to accept Ranplan. After they got that go-ahead, they are shifting quickly. That customer is shifting quickly now from our competitor to Ranplan. They told the operator, "Please, can you allow us to use Ranplan? It's a much better tool than the one that you previously have forced us to use." Eventually, after whatever X months, they got the go-ahead. Now the door is opening for us there. In other markets where our main competitor is not established, it's a level playing field. Here, our win rate is very high.
I mean, here we tend to win hands down against them because you see, if our competitor is not established, there is no cost of transitioning. It's what we call a green field. This is a reason why we put more and more emphasis on private wireless. Aside from private wireless being perfect for us, it's advanced. It's in and outdoor together. It's customers that actually can make a decision within months rather than multiple years. Another reason, importantly, is that private wireless is a green field. It's a completely new network. There is no incumbency. There is no swap-out cost. There is no cost of training people anew, etc. You start from scratch.
Thank you, Per.
It's hard to quantify our win rate, but qualitatively, this is the way I would put it. If you see, if there's no political barrier, we win. This is also why we know that our product is best in class because if there is an objective decision, no bias, we win. In some cases, we have tried four years, five, six years to break into big operators. The engineers say, "Ranplan is best in class," etc. They are stopped at the management layer because the management doesn't want to absorb the personal risks involved in making a change. A bit frustrating, but we know that we will get there. Frustration with telecom operators, you can speak with Ericsson and Nokia and CommScope and others, is nothing new. I think it's well established in the industry that it's a very, very slow-moving community.
Yeah, exactly.
Is so slow-moving that it has to change. I'm pretty adamant about that. The telecom operators, they have to change, very much like Europe, by the way, as we have heard over the weekend here, has to change.
Are there more first movers or trendsetters similar to your example in the U.K.? Is that the way forward?
Yes. I mean, we design services, as you may recall from one of the last slides there, wind farms, oil platforms. By the way, this is a golden example of where we want to be because this is an enterprise. This is an enterprise. There is no telecom network here, so they can make a decision without having to speak with any telecom operator. They make a decision very quickly. When they saw what we could do, they shifted very, very quickly within months to us from existing suppliers because we were so much better. You see here, there is no network. There is no telecom network. First, they need to have connectivity. B, they want to have the best connectivity. Because of that, they want to have the best product. Since they do not have any existing network, it is a green field.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much, Per. Maybe I'll take just one quick last one. I noticed you mentioned increased marketing now during 2025, which sounds very interesting. Are there any specific channels that you're looking at or any changes in the channel model mix or anything?
It's through a multiple approach, more events. Mobile World Congress is only two weeks away. We have been there every year. It has been arrangable. We will be there also this year in Barcelona. In addition, we are going to participate at least in another four or five conferences in calendar 2025, some of which are related to research, but many are smaller than but similar to Mobile World Congress, i.e., towards the commercial community of customers. We are also going to invest or have invested, I should say, more in direct channels and also using third parties. You will be able to find on our website an interview with me through Mobile World Live. That I think is making an impact on our customer and partners. That's available on the website. That's a six-minute interview with me through Mobile World Live.
We will explore similar channels and opportunities as we move into the latter part of this year. Of course, we are not going to make up stories. We are going to strike, as they say, when the iron is hot. When the iron is hot, when we have something useful to say, and when we have a tangible contribution to the value proposition. This is at the heart of what we communicated through Mobile World Live, i.e., that we can now support reuse of open file formats, both the import and the export, etc. This was one of the reasons we pressed on the button for additional visibility in the marketplace through that prominent channel. I think Mobile World Live, they have about 200,000 listeners or watchers.
Not every day, of course, but say over a period of three to four months, they probably have 200,000 people or so opening up Mobile World Live's web page.
Thank you very much, Per. Thank you for the update. Very useful and good information, as always. Thank you.
Thank you. Very good. Eric, do you have anything to ask or anything to remark?
No. Okay. Thank you all. Great session. I am available for additional questions. If you have any, please send me an email or give me a call. Thank you all. Have a good day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah. Bye-bye.