Great. So happy to have you all here and welcome to Vertiseit Capital Markets Day 2024. My name is Johan Lind. I'm CEO and one of the founders of the company. With me today I have.
I'm Jonas Lagerqvist. I'm Deputy CEO and CFO of Vertiseit.
Almost three years ago we actually had the last Capital Markets Day. Today we will review the goal fulfillment, of course, for the previous period. Most important is that we will present new goals going forward, and also we will dig into our strategies on how to get there. Jonas, will you guide us through the agenda of the day?
Yes. We will start with an introduction and review of our goal fulfillment since the period that we've been a public company. Then we will have a presentation from Ann Hjelte, CEO of Grassfish, and Sebastian Kryh, CEO of DISE. We will have a short lunch break. And after that we will present our updated strategies. Damian Schärli from our partner JLS is here. We will host the presentation after lunch. And then we will introduce and present our new long-term goals. And after that we will finish off with Q&A, which will be hosted by Charlotte Stjerngren, who's with us here today. There she is. Everyone is more than welcome to ask questions along the presentations. And if you would like to save them for later, you can always ask them in connection with the Q&A.
We are also streaming this event so that people watching live can also submit their questions for the Q&A sessions. If you have questions, send an email to investor@vertiseit.com.
Great. Sorry. So at Vertiseit, we have a vision to connect the world of retail. We want to become the number one platform company for in-store experience management. Then you need to think about why. What's the purpose of having an in-store experience management platform? What is the demand? There are a lot of challenges that global brands, leading retailers face to bridge the gap between meeting a customer online and meeting them in person in a retail setting throughout the customer journey. What we try to solve is really how we bridge the gap between those channels. So how can we facilitate a seamless brand experience, a seamless customer journey? The core of our offering is the in-store experience management platform to enable this.
So if you go into a modern retail concept, there might be a lot of digital touchpoints that are even hard to notice. In this picture, for example, it's the Volvo showroom in Kungsträdgården in Sweden. And there might be like 20 different digital touchpoints with specific purposes. It's digital price tags next to the car that are fully data-driven. It's brand walls where they launch the latest campaigns and create the right ambiance and atmosphere. Even the ceiling actually changes throughout the day. And there are a lot of handheld devices to facilitate sales support for the customer journey that often starts in the sofa at home. And there are touch displays where you can explore and deep dive into the service offering, for example. To be able to orchestrate this in one place, but also on a global scale, you need a professional platform.
And it's also that the industry started what we called digital signage. It was more of like a siloed experience where you scheduled content into displays. But now, as digital in-store becomes so much more integrated into both the digital ecosystem of the customer and facilitates everything from brand to transaction, then it's a completely different game. And that's the position we want to have. So we want to be the global number one platform company for in-store experience management. And the group now has two platform offerings. And we will hear more and learn more today from Ann, from Sebastian that run those companies. So it's Grassfish, which is an enterprise-grade platform for global brands, leading retailers, where we offer platform and consultancy services. It's an offering where we work together with partners. It's highly customizable, but also requires a lot of consultancy expertise to implement.
It's DISE that, on the other hand, is a pure SaaS offering sold through well-selected partners. We want to have one of the top full-service providers on each market. And it's a really intuitive, easy-to-use platform with a lot of capabilities where the partner can use the API to adapt and build stuff on top of the platform. And just to give you a little bit of an understanding of how it actually works behind the scenes before we start off. So both platforms are in-store experience management platforms. In DISE's case, the partner takes care of everything from building the strategy, designing the concept, integrating it into data capabilities of the customer, designing the experiences, and also, of course, deploying the digital in-store equipment that is needed. And with Grassfish, we offer the platform.
But in complex, in many times global projects, we also offer expertise to fill the gaps where many parties are involved. So let's say if BMW is a customer of ours, there might be 5 different partners involved in a global project. And those partners work side by side. So that's basically one of the core differentiators between the offerings. And as you're all aware, we don't only work in traditional retail. We work in all verticals where there is a customer meeting to facilitate. So everything from retail banking, electronics, automotive, grocery, convenience, there are a lot of verticals that actually can leverage from using digital in-store. We have more than 1,500 brands on our customer list. We operate 150,000+ units. And we have 150 employees and have been in the business for many years now. Jonas, would you give us a dive into the financials performance so far?
Yes. So Vertiseit has had strong ARR growth for many, many years. And the growth has come both from organic growth and also through selected acquisitions. So for more than 10 years, we've had a double-digit growth on an annual basis. And we've been able to perform this constantly during profitability. So if we just take a quick look into 2023, and I will also mention some highlights from the first quarter. So from an operational point of view, we ticked quite some boxes during the year. Both Grassfish and DISE signed a couple of new partners, which Ann and Sebastian will tell you a bit more about later.
We invested heavily and made a real effort when it comes to internal structure and platform for future growth, meaning that we invested in a joint IT infrastructure all the way from accounting and marketing and customer relations and license management and so on, which will facilitate our growth for many years to come. We also made a successful divestment in September of the ITS business, which is Intelligent Transport Solutions, that we got through our MultiQ acquisition, but did not fit our strategy. So we sold that to a British-listed company called Journeo, who is now instead our partner when it comes to ITS business.
In the third quarter, we managed to implement several measures for increased efficiency, which basically came from the fact that we did finalize our joint IT infrastructure and being able to realize many of the synergies from the recent acquisitions, which did increase both our profitability, our cash flow, and overall efficiency going forward. For the year, we did grow our ARR with 17% from year to year. Also managed to accelerate that growth during the fourth quarter. Isolated in the fourth quarter, we had an annual growth rate of 24% when it comes to ARR, annual recurring revenue. We managed to increase our profitability all through the year, ending in 24% in Q4, which is in line and on the path towards our 30%, which we aim to reach at the end of this year.
The increased profitability and cash flow also led us to a stronger financial position, ending the year with a net debt of SEK 114 million, which is a leverage of 1.9 in relation to EBITDA. The net revenue retention was 109% during the year. For those who are not fully familiar with that term, it basically means that we did manage to grow on our existing customers. A majority of the growth actually comes from existing customers, which is a very strong sign of us being able to take care of the customers, keeping them happy, and creating value for them. With today's report for the first quarter of 2024, we're now summarizing 49 quarters of straight ARR growth sequentially, quarter by quarter. We've never managed to decrease a single quarter during this period, which is a tradition that we will cling on to going forward.
In this picture, we can see that even in the challenging years during the pandemic, we actually managed to grow our ARR every quarter. To achieve this, of course, this is a sign that we do have a solid business model, that we do manage to deliver value to our customers, and we do manage to keep them happy in order to stay with us for a long time.
Jonas?
Do you have a question here? Yeah?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fredrik?
You mentioned EBITDA margin of 30%. Is that for the fourth quarter isolated or for the full year of 2024?
Fredrik, you didn't have a microphone, so I will repeat the question. The question was the goal of 30% EBITDA margin, if that is for the full year or for the fourth quarter. So in our current goals, which stretches until the end of this year, we shall reach an EBITDA margin of 30% no later than the last quarter. So it's not for the full year. And looking at this, we've had a strong ARR growth, a compound annual growth rate exceeding 50% over this long period. But today, we're happy to report for the first quarter.
From our point of view, we're quite satisfied with the outcome of the quarter, where we basically keep delivering in line with how we ended last year, summarizing the ARR to SEK 170 million at the end of the quarter, which is a growth rate year-over-year in fixed currencies of 18%. Profitability was also somewhat strengthened compared to the fourth quarter, meaning that we're on a profitability level of 25% during the quarter. The increased profitability also gave a positive effect when it comes to cash flow. Free cash flow amounted to SEK 22 million in the quarter, also resulting in that strengthened financial position. We're now on a leverage of 1.3 and a net debt of around SEK 95 million. The revenue retention, which is also part of our financial goals, we're also exceeding 100%, meaning that we keep growing on our existing customers.
So evaluating the SaaS metrics can, of course, be a little bit tricky if you're not very, very interested. But the important thing here is compared to the full year 2023, I can say that the growth rate is somewhat strengthened. The net revenue retention indicates that we keep growing on our existing customers. The churn rate, meaning in which pace do customers discontinue with us, is on quite low levels. And the average revenue per brand is increasing, which is important due to the fact that in order to increase our scalability, we do that by growing on our larger customers. So overall, we're really happy to report a good quarter where we are satisfied with at this moment. And we repeat the fact that we feel a strong momentum, which makes us maintain our positive outlook.
Great, Jonas. Thanks so much. And now it's time to see, have we lived up to the goals that we have communicated before. And so I think we walk through them and take a quick review.
Yes.
Yeah, we actually decided to start it off even with the IPO because many of you that are here have been with us and have been investors even since we IPOed in 2019. When we decided to go public to get resources to actually perform on our acquisition agenda, we had SEK 25 million in ARR. And we said that the goal is to go from SEK 25 million to SEK 50 million. And it was like a straight line, basically, from where we were and from the history. And we managed to achieve that 18 months ahead of schedule due to the acquisition of Grassfish. And at the same time, we also, of course, got some of the global customers, which was the second goal, to actually get global customers where we also had global rollouts and BMW, for example, or Porsche was some of those.
And then we go to the Capital Markets Day almost three years ago.
Yeah. So as a result of the fulfillment of the IPO goals, we invited to a Capital Markets Day in 2021, where we communicated the updated goals that we are currently running under. So then we stated that by the end of 2024, we shall have an ARR exceeding SEK 200 million at the end of the period. During the period, we should have a growth rate of 25%. We should reach a profitability level of an EBITDA of 30% by the end of the period. And we shall always, during this period, have a net revenue retention exceeding 100%. So where are we now, Johan?
Yeah. So we're on track. So you could see the dotted line, we're actually just above track when it comes to the ARR development. If we continue in the direction, we will meet the goal by the end of the year. That's what we aim for. When it comes to ARR growth, we have always exceeded, right? So the CAGR is...
Yeah, it's around 40% as we include acquisitions in this growth number.
Yeah. And when it comes to profitability, when we started, when we started this period, our EBITDA levels were like 14%. So to go from 14% to aiming for the 30%, we have delivered like two-thirds on that goal. And I think the biggest improvement has been the last six months, more or less. And it's also when we have started to realize synergies throughout the group. So I think we are in a strong position there as well. And the revenue retention is, of course, the quality mark for our company that always a big portion of our growth is on existing customer base. And we have not even been close to that. So we have always been way better than 100% on annual revenue retention. And I think that's something that is important.
I think if you look at it from an investor perspective as well, how sticky is the SaaS revenue? If you have 50% churn in a company compared to where we actually deliver, 50% of our growth is from existing customer base. So the type of revenue that we generate is really sticky, and we will get back to that, right?
Yeah. So overall, we are trending in the right direction and are in line towards fulfilling the goals for this goal period. I would also like to emphasize that these goals will remain in force for the rest of the year. The new goals that are presented will come into play starting 2025.
Yeah. And you see the big gain that we actually had in ARR in the chart is, of course, the acquisition of MultiQ. And we haven't actually talked so much about the outcome of was it a good, was it a bad investment? And I think now we are in a position where we actually can at least give you some key features to look into. We have them here, Jonas. What's your take on this?
Yes. As we now have fully integrated the acquisition, we've divested the parts that did not align with our strategy. We can make a first evaluation of it. So we did acquire SEK 50 million in ARR. And if we summarize the ARR that we have from the customer accounts that actually was acquired at that time and also, of course, reduced with the ones that we've divested, we can today summarize that we have an ARR from the same customers of SEK 59 million, meaning that we've managed to have a quite substantial growth on that customer base. And for the people who did follow the company before we acquired them, that growth rate was not really there during that period.
When we do a calculation of what we did pay in relation to the ARR that we have from that acquisition today, we have a net acquisition multiple of about 3x ARR, which we find very, very decent.
It's also due to the divestment of ITS, of course, but that's included in the whole calculation. When we made the decision, the multiple was actually four. But the multiple now already is three. Of course, the potential to continue to grow on this customer is still there. It looks promising. Great. We come into our building a strong foundation and platform for growth going forward. I think it has been a theme now for the last year because there has also been a lot of questions about heavy investments that we actually have done into ERP shifts and so on. But I think it's important to actually state and talk a little bit about what is it that we actually build and why do we build it.
So starting from the why, we see that if we should continue this journey for tens and tens of years to come, we need a solid foundation that we can grow with on a global scale. And part of that is that we build a strong group culture. So on a group level, we work a lot with harmonizing on both the culture core values, but also on guiding principles on how we do business. So that's part of the foundation. We also work really hard on a joint management system, including everything from how we organize ourselves, roles, responsibilities, harmonized throughout the group. We work now with the certification on a group level that actually finished yesterday, where we have been ISO certified on different entities throughout the group. It's now on the group level. So we now comply with ISO 9001, ISO 14001 for environmental.
And also for information security management, it will be a requirement in more and more of the big deals. So that's also in place. And of course, that supports the whole group. And it also relieves a lot of the work so that Grassfish and DISE can focus on making the best customer experiences for their customers and partners. And then we have invested into platforms. So we now, for example, invested in Salesforce, which we use for market automation, for CRM, CPQ, for support. And we have a unified licensing system that manages all licenses that enables the SaaS metrics that you now get in every report that facilitate automatic invoicing of that, of course. And then, Jonas, on accounting and BI, you also...
Yeah. I mean, from acquisitions, of course, we're in a situation with quite some ERP systems. Now everything is harmonized around Microsoft Business Central in all legal entities, making it really smooth and easy to have a full internal control and easy reporting. On top of that, we have our BI platforms, which allows us to instantly and every day be able to analyze and follow up on our KPIs and also serves as the foundation for all our reporting needs, both internally and externally.
Great. So with that, we have the platform in place to continue to grow both on other existing brands. This is also the blueprint when we will bring in new acquisitions. We will get back to that a little bit further down the road. But now we will get to know both Grassfish and DISE and really look forward to having Ann on stage that will present Grassfish. She's the CEO. Sebastian will come after, the CEO of DISE. But I think before that, we take just a five-minute break and maybe grab a coffee or water and back here in five minutes. Perfect.
Okay. My name is Ann Hjelte. I joined Vertiseit two years ago. I've been the CEO of Grassfish since January 2023. My background comes from finance. I used to be the CFO at a large retailer. I've also been the CFO at a tech company. Now I get to combine those two worlds with retail and tech and also with good finances, which is good. Grassfish was founded in 2005 by Roland Grassberger who just arrived from Vienna. He had the vision to digitalize retail. It was acquired by Vertiseit in 2021, as Johan and Jonas told you previously. Today we're the number one digital in-store platform in Europe. We have long experience. There are more than 500 brands that trust Grassfish to build in-store experiences. We are more than 100 people serving the customers every day.
It's a merger from employees from MultiQ, Grassfish, and Vertiseit. Our offering is both the IXM platform and together with expertise. So the IXM platform unlocks endless possibilities to create in-store experiences. The people bring the expertise that we can do together with the customers to really enhance the customer experiences. What we do is that we work in the digital in-store experience area. We do enhance brand experience with big video walls, as you can see there. We also work with personalized communications that we meet the customer with relevant information at the right time. We enhance the seamless customer journey so that the customer who are used to finalizing a purchase in the sofa can do that in-store as well. That's our game. With the expertise, you get your own squad. So we have a team with cross-functional roles.
It could be concept specialists, designers, developers, and UX/UI people, and strategists that work closely with the customer for a long time. That's how we evolve on our existing customers. What we do, we always start with the full customer journey. We always want to have a clear purpose for every touchpoint. We work together with all the stakeholders at the customer or together with partners with the customers. In that way, we can continuously evolve in an agile way on all the solutions that we create. So we always set a channel strategy where the purpose is most important. We go through the situation where they see the touchpoint and describe in what context do the customer face this touchpoint. We go through what communication is needed in exactly that touchpoint and what kind of display is needed. Should it be large?
Where should it be fitted? And what orientation should it be? And then we always set a goal for each touchpoint so that we can follow up and evolve and learn from what we've done so that we continuously evolve the solution together with the customer. In that way, we create the in-store experiences. With the platform, we can control everything. Maybe we start when the customer comes to us. Maybe we start with a digital price sign or maybe a brand wall. But then when we continue working with the customer, we can move on and add more touchpoints. Like Johan said before, that it could be a configurator where you, together with the customer, go through and configure a car. Or it could be an entrance sign so that you really attract the people to come into the store. This one you've seen before.
But we are really proud about the global brands that are working with us. As you can see, it's lots of automotive. BMW and Porsche came with the Grassfish acquisition. For Porsche, for example, we have installed more than 10,000 systems in 800 locations and in more than 40 countries. So it's really global in that way. We also work in other verticals like fashion or sports. We do grocery with Lidl. We work with banks. We work with cruises like Stena Line and Viking Line and other. When it comes to the IXM platform, that's where the magic happens. It has to be integrated with the full digital ecosystem that the retailers have already. So it needs to be integrated with the CRM, the e-com platform, the PIM, and the DAM.
With the data from these systems, when that's integrated, then you can create the relevant timing and really present the right content at the right time because you have lots of data from the CRM system about the customer. In the PIM system, you have information about the product, the prices, campaigns. And then with the pictures from the DAM system, you can create data-driven content at the right time for the right customer. The platform has a toolset for dynamic experiences. It has to be part of the ecosystem. It's an enterprise-grade solution that we have and, of course, open architecture with APIs so that you can integrate to all the other systems. We can give the customer or the retailer lots of insights. After they have integrated everything, they get more insights about their customers and how they perform in-store.
It's a broad feature set. It's also extremely customizable. That's how we work closely with the customer to make the perfect solution with them. The value we create for our customers is, of course, stronger brand experience in the physical spaces, relevance in every situation, a seamless customer journey, and empowerment of the people in store. It's not easy to be a salesperson today when all the customers research everything online before they come to the store. That's where we help them. They can also expand the in-store offering and bring all the assortment from the online into the store and present it there as well. When the customer makes a purchase where they've really gone through it all and know exactly what they're buying, we believe that we create more sustainable retail.
We reduce all the returns that you create if you only are an e-com player. When we look at our business model, you can see that long-term customer value is key. We need to focus on, with the existing customers, evolve and expand the solution and roll it out on more locations. Then we create, with our consulting revenue that we create by working together with the customers, that's just a foundation to then create more SaaS revenue. For every touchpoint we do in more locations, that's how we generate the growth in the SaaS. We can't do this alone. We work with partners as well. To be scalable and to become even more global, we evolve our partner ecosystem as well. We work with lots of different partners like advertising agencies, integrators that roll out the hardware.
It could be shop fitters that do the design of the store or digital agencies that have been working on their e-com. Together with the partners, we drive the industry forward. It's so much potential in this business because lots of retailers haven't entered this area yet. There's lots more to do. Together with the partners, we, of course, increase the scalability. When we work with the partners, we always want to work side by side. We want to be fronting the customer together with the partners. We all bring our expertise in different parts of the value chain. Then our outlook for 2024, we will, of course, continue to grow and expand and evolve on our existing customer base. We are landing new brands in Europe. We are expanding our partner ecosystem.
We just landed a partner in Dubai that brought in the Dubai Metro, which will be exciting. We are exploring new markets in North America. So that's where we're heading next. We are really enjoying the momentum. As you could see in the Q1 report, it's going well. We are just keeping up that speed and look forward to a bright future. That was all from Grassfish. Now, Sebastian, do you want to come on and present DISE?
Oh, I'm sorry. Right. Thank you for the introduction. So, Sebastian Kryh. Let's go for the correct color also, the DISE green. Sebastian Kryh. I've been working with the Vertiseit group for almost five years and CEO for DISE for just over two and a half years. I have an engineering background, worked with everything from recycling to construction to retail banking, but always with change management and business development as the common denominator. So that's a little bit about me. But what about DISE? DISE stands for Digital In-Store Experience. And we offer the market a software. We're a pure software product company. We deliver the intuitive UI and CMS to the market, yet intuitive and simple at start, but yet powerful. That's something you can grow with and personalize your communication. The go-to-market strategy that we will follow up in a few slides also is pure partner strategy.
So we never integrate and work with the retailers itself, even though they are the end customers and users of the system. We work with partners. A few of the features that fly by in the background here are things like campaign planning and the data-driven content for both efficiency and also for on-point content and marketing messages, focusing, of course, on retail and the in-store experience. Retail, for us, is the conjunction and the meeting of the physical world and between individuals and the businesses where there's transaction happening between companies and individuals. So it's a broad definition of retail. Here is also a nice slide. Digital In-Store Experience Management Platform. It's the pure offering. A little bit about DISE. Founded in 2003 in Karlstad in Sweden. We are now trusted by a little over 1,000 end customers or brands globally.
We have installations in over 40 countries, which is then carried out by our partners, more than 20 partners, even though most of the business comes from roughly 10. We'll present one of them later at this stage. Slightly smaller than Grassfish, roughly 30 employees that's employed by DISE and mainly developers as we are a product software company. Also wanted to have a logo soup of some of the proud users that have selected and used the DISE system. We have automotive from Ducati, Lamborghini, and high street fashion like L'Oréal, Harvey Nichols, and also retail banking like UBS and Swedbank. So we cover most verticals within the retail space. Right. Powerful software out of the box. What does that mean?
That means that we're focusing on building a product and offering to the market, which is then easy to use and easy to get started with from the retailer's perspective, from the end user. So they can start with minimal training and minimal setup. They can get going and creating their in-store experiences, but yet powerful enough so that our partners can build on, deliver, and upsell and create more intricate and more immersive experiences, mainly using our developer tools and our APIs that we expose for them. Yeah, exactly. So powerful out of the box, easy to use, but yet powerful to grow with. Shortly also about the global partner community.
As I said, we offer our services, our software through a pure partner strategy, meaning that we, as an outbound model, find partners globally that work with our software and full-service providers that bring, like Grassfish, bring the concept, the content creation, and those things to the mix. The offering is the pure SaaS model. 90% of our licenses are recurring every month, even though there are a few that buy licenses for longer periods to secure a specific price. 90% comes from recurring revenue each month, which we're really proud of. Simple competitive pricing. We got one product, one price. And as a partner, the benefit of growing with DISE is that you'll get an increasing discount or rebate on the license volume you have. So the stronger the partnership is, the more money you should make.
When the partners make money, we want a piece of the pie, basically. So we grow together. We're focusing on the long-term partnerships. Business-critical mindset. So even though the product we sell, it is the core of what our partners build their product and their offering on. So from our partners, what we deliver to them must work and must be secure. And it also ties into what Johan talked about, the ISO 27001 information security audits that we've just gone through. So pure partner. We work with the partners too and the resellers. Pure SaaS offering, simple pricing structure, no add-ons, no extras. And where are our partners then? Here's a highlight of a world map where we can see where our partners are at this moment.
Of course, being a European company, having a large footprint in Europe and in the Nordics, historically also been strong in Southeast Asia, being Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and also Australia. Focus going forward is North America, with business already happening in Canada and the US. How do we work with our partners? We do have a, we call it, certified training program, meaning that when we sign a partner and start working with a partner, there are different modules and setups for them to feel comfortable, start using the product, and understanding how to utilize it in their business model, in their offering to their market. There are six separate modules based on the needs from anything from technology, developers, support, and also sales. This is a requirement for on-site support and the access to the partner success team, which helps with large tenders and special projects.
But then we want, if we invest in the partners, we want the partners to invest in us also and go through this training and work with us. And from time to time, we also embed our developers in larger projects with our partners to make sure that they use the product in the most efficient way. This is also a great feedback loop for us when we do these trainings. And also when we do the joint projects where we support the partners, we'll get good market feedback on how the product is used and get good feature requests. And it's a good way for us to continue building the product. Some highlighted partners. JLS, our Swiss partner, market leader. We have Damian here with us. He'll be talking after lunch, so I won't go into much details there.
But it's been a partner with DISE, joined with them, came to the DISE group with the MultiQ acquisition. It's been a partner since 2003 using the software. We have Scientific Games, a global player in the lottery and gaming business, uses our software to enhance their offering to the markets and then digitizing the offering to the lottery and retail customers. That's also something that came from the MultiQ merger. There we have also leveraged the opportunities. The Scientific Games contract and business would mainly focus on hardware as MultiQ also had a hardware concept. Now we've pivoted that into being a pure software play. So now it's focused on license and ARR and SaaS growth, which happened last year.
Pixel Inspiration, proud partner in the UK, our main partner there, has been working with us since 2020 and award-winning partner, creating great concepts and rollouts, responsible for, for example, Tesco, which we saw in the logo soup. Partner in Italy, Var Group, has been working with Lamborghini and Ducati for many years, working with us since 2015, and have the global rollouts for both Lamborghini and Ducati. One of our latest additions is First Impression out of Holland, Netherlands, which is focused on experiences. Comes from an event background and an experience background. So they do really cool concepts and has just chosen to replace their existing platform supplier with DISE. So we're enabling and doing the first larger rollouts in April this year. Right. Jumping into the business platform. So in more detail, what's the offering do we give to the partners?
Of course, we have the powerful software. That's the main thing, right? And we deliver the APIs, the CX Portal, which is the CMS, which is the user interface, and also Composer to create templates and dynamic content. We offer third-line technology support. So we expect our partners to do first line and then also have a second line of specialists. And then if they're not able to support, then we can jump in or if there's anything about the product. We shower our partners with education and training. We've never said no. We want them to feel confident. We want them to use the service as efficient and as best as possible. We do updates every month, and we want them to feel updated and on point.
We also have, as I mentioned, access to the partner success team, which is for onboarding new partners to get them up to speed with the certified training and also for larger key projects, might be tender supports and such. Right. And working in partnership. We've heard Johan talk about it. We heard Ann talk about it too. There are different components in making an in-store experience project a success. Then here we've illustrated six different parts, and we deliver one of those parts, which is the software, the tools, and the APIs to make this happen. The other parts, of course, is the content creation, concept creation, hardware supply, support and operations for first line, hardware installation, and then end user consultancy.
And these are things that we look at when we add and find new partners that they can fulfill these responsibilities, either themselves or through them having partners themselves. But it's their responsibility. And we've been really focusing on that the last couple of years on cleaning that up, making sure that it's crystal clear. Right. Last slide. Priorities going forward. Short-term focus, 12 months. Majority of the growth will come from existing partners. We offer continued support and work with them building their pipelines and to grow existing and also support them in onboarding new brands. This creates the base for the long-term growth and the long-term relationship with our partners. And we do that through the partner certification, the partner sales support, and also partner services.
For this to grow faster and get some leverage on it, that's when we work in the more long-term, 12 months and on; it's adding new partners. We run a strictly outbound account-based model where we find the partners and look in each market and each territory. We want to focus on the leaders and try and win them over. It's getting easier and easier as many of our partners today are award winners. So we get a lot of traction, a lot of help from them in marketing them using and talking about their projects than people figuring out that they're using our software to enable it. But what we're looking for is full-service providers, full-service partners that have digital in-store as their main focus, their primary business.
They should have more than 50% of their business coming from this vertical, should be one of the top five vendors in that given market, and have a minimum install base of 2,500 licenses. That's not a lot in our world, but that shows them that they know what they're doing. They've started. We do not have to train them from day one so we can come in and grow with them and get them the right tools to deliver future growth, basically. Right. That was the slides in the background for DISE. So I'll hand over to Jonas again.
So thank you very much, Sebastian. Thank you very much, Ann. Both of them will be here for the rest of the day, of course, and they will also be part of the Q&A at the end of this session. So please keep submitting questions to the email address investor@vertiseit.com in order to have them answered during the Q&A session by the end. But now we will take a short break for lunch. And there are a lot of Vertiseit, DISE, and Grassfish representatives here today. So feel free to grab anyone for questions or for an office tour or anything like that. And we will be back here at 1:15 P.M. So please enjoy yourselves during this hour.
Ready? Perfect. Seems like most of you are back. We will now start the second part of this Capital Markets Day for Vertiseit. We will start off with looking into our strategies going forward. First up is a big initiative that we take that's called IXM Grid. It's our platform strategy that we will look into. We have Lisa Spjut, who is product owner for IXM Grid. We have Roland Grassberger, founder of Grassfish and Chief Innovation Officer in the group. So welcome up.
Thank you, Johan, for the introduction. So my name is Roland Grassberger. I'm from Vienna, from Austria. And yeah, I'm responsible for innovations in the group, for product innovations, and leading the development of the IXM platform. And I'm together here with Lisa.
Yeah. Sorry. Hi. I'm Lisa Spjut, and I joined very recently here at Vertiseit.
Yeah. We are talking about an interesting project, I think the most important development project that we did in the last decade. My presentation, our presentation, will have no nice pictures, only dry stuff. Yeah, but interesting, at least for me as a technician. We are talking about the retail space. What changed in the retail space is that retailers build up knowledge coming from the online space. Years ago, this online knowledge was not there at the traditional retailers, only at online retailers. They built up the teams. They gained knowledge. This transformed the whole way how they communicate with customers. We started then with multichannel and omnichannel. But what we are talking about now is Unified Commerce. Unified Commerce means that the customer has the same experience, a seamless experience over all touchpoints. It can be online.
It can be social media. It can be in the store. It should be the same experience. It should be personalized. He should have the same products, the same messages. It should be a homogeneous flow of communication towards him. What does this mean? This does not mean that there is one platform that can do everything because everything what has to do with digital elements in the store is a completely different technology. IXM is a completely different technology than an online or social media platform. What they have to do, they have to work together very closely. It is important that all these different platforms exchange data, are all integrated into processes to communicate to the customers. It's also important that the people who work with all these tools also are facing the same processes.
So that if you work with digital elements in the store, that it's not completely different than social media or online. It should be the same for the staff that's working with it. It should be a homogeneous experience for the people in the stores or the customers, to say it like this. This is something that we are working on for a longer time now. We are going now to the next stage.
Yeah. You can keep that one.
Yeah.
So hi again. As I said, I recently joined here as the product owner for this IXM Grid. I previously worked with software development in various roles at Polestar, Klarna, and iZettle. Now I moved back to Varberg and got the chance to work here instead, which is really great. With our products, and especially with this new initiative, we do not replicate what is already on the market. We rethink how we can support our customers to deliver the best results with less effort. The ambition with IXM Grid is to push the industry forward. There's a clear objective for scalability, supporting millions of devices, also to meet the highest security demands and performance to be able to leverage the cloud and AI technologies. Our new platform will also be highly modular. There is a specific need to fulfill both market and customer-specific needs.
This will be supported by our new architecture. Also very important, of course, for our future growth. This will enable us to do fast integrations of the platforms that we will acquire in the future. After a very thorough pre-study, we are now in the early development phase of this. I think it goes without saying that it's very, very exciting to be part of building this from the ground up. Thank you.
Thank you. And so what we are talking about is a completely new platform. So what we did is that we don't or didn't want to redevelop the same that we have and that others have. So we have a lot of knowledge. So we have people in the company that are working in this field for decades. We have Daniel Bloch, who started at Scala years ago when I was a child. And then no, Daniel is actually younger than I am. Oskar Edespong. And so we have a lot of knowledge. And we met and we said, what can we do better? So we understand our customers. We understand the business. We understand the technical challenges. If we now start with a new product, how should it look like? And the greenfield approach, that's what we did.
We started with the development of a new product and not taking care of how the existing products look like. We also started with a new technology, a cloud-native technology. So it will be a purely cloud-based product. We use all these cloud technologies that are so excellent, like IoT hubs and queuing and communication and databases like the Cosmos database where you can really do a lot. It also enables us to scale more quickly, more easily. Be also cost-efficient because cloud-native means that you only need hosting and servers when you need them. You don't have to pay for them the whole time. You pay for what you need. You can also really deploy something globally.
So if we have a customer in the future in Asia, he will have Asia access to the cloud or an Asian instance, and the U.S. customer, U.S. instance. And yeah, it provides a lot of possibilities. And we will use a microservice approach. That means that the whole software is not one big block, one monolith. These are small services that are working independently of each other. They speak to each other with interfaces. And it enables us to develop the whole product further and further, not by developing, always innovating the whole product, but only each service. So we will be faster, more efficient, and more stable in the future development because what we build now should be the technical basis for our product for the next maybe 15 years or maybe longer. We will see.
So what we are doing is that we say we have different products. We have the DISE product. We have the Grassfish product. Maybe in the future, we will have more products, more products for specific markets. Or there will be other companies be acquired that bring in a product already. And this has also to be integrated in the whole system. We take the same approach that car manufacturers have. So we say we have something under the hood that's the same for all brands. So it's a unified backend and a unified player technology that is the same for all the products. But what the customers see, they see only the products up there. So they see the user interface. They see it's a Grassfish product or it's a DISE product or it's this product.
The product uses the same things under the hood, but they look differently. They are focused on specific targets, target markets, yeah, customer segments, and so on. This will dramatically increase also the effort because this one is one joint development. Then we have different products on top. We will have the possibility to develop more and more products if needed or to integrate products from newly acquired companies. To give you some examples of capabilities that we will introduce is that we have a hypermodular approach. That means that not only the functional modules will be there. So for example, if we have to add something for retail media, that we create a retail media module.
But it goes down, for example, that if you, for example, want to have a new content type or a specific customer wants or needs a new content type, for example, a special streaming application or something like this, this will be a new content type that will be placed in the system via modules. So you don't have to change the system to enhance the capabilities. If you want to have new content types, new playout strategies, new workflows, that's all modular. And modular means not only that it's extendable for a customer or over time, but these modules can also be exchanged between products. So if, for example, the Grassfish team develops a product that can be then also used by or is needed by DISE customers, this module can be exchanged. So it allows us to grow together faster and better.
This is the, I think, most important thing. But we will also introduce new content publishing philosophies. So we will also support the traditional way or the way how people that are already working with digital signage systems work with digital signage systems. But we will also introduce, yeah, ways to work with the system so that it resembles social media publishing tools or online content publishing tools so that people that are working in a big organization that are used to social media, that they can also switch to our product and work in the same way that they worked before. So we are thinking about how can we adapt to the way the people work in organizations. And these organizations have different sizes. These are different people.
So there will be different ways how to work in the system, not one way, how to work it different ways. And yeah, and what we will also introduce because we have a lot of experience now with large organizations, for example, BMW is, I don't know, working in 70 countries with the system. And they have 2,000 or 3,000 people that are working with our system on different levels in the headquarters, in the country organization, in the dealership, in agency. And it's tough to manage a system like this because the Swedish people only are allowed to access the Swedish content and the Austrian content. And then we have the dealers. And then there are some people that can manage users and some that can create content and some that approve content.
Now in a big system like this, everyone has so everyone, I mean, every competitor and also we, we have maybe hundreds of user groups. So we have a user group for content editors in Germany, for example. In the future, so we created a model together that allows us to set these things up much more easily, that you don't need hundreds of user groups. You have 10 roles. And then you have your organizational structure, which will play an important role in the future. And it will be much easier to set all these things up in big organizations. So that will be a huge step for us to move on with this new approach. And what's also important is that we will integrate or we open it for AI technologies. So we are not an AI developer. We will use AI technologies.
This can be used not only to create images because that's something that maybe Adobe does. But for example, if there's content coming in, what is always important is that the editors tag the content. They say, this is this product. And this has a red car in it. And it's in the mountains and so on so that the campaigns can be set up easily. And tagging is always manual work. But tagging can also always be supported also by AI, for example, that AI suggests the tags, how you categorize the content. Or if you have another topic, monitoring, you have a large network with 20,000 or 30,000 screens, then there can be irregularities where AI can detect that something is happening somewhere. And maybe you should have an eye on it, look at it more thoroughly so that you can prevent, yeah, some problem somewhere.
And/or what the agencies at least want to have, AI should also be possible to define what should be shown where. Now it's usually a manual process. You say this content should run there for this target group during this time or so. And what they want to have is a system which has all the content and input from cash registers or AI analytics systems. And then the system decides itself what to show when, to which customers, where. So it will be open. It will have the interfaces for AI. And also in the beginning, we will start with some integration of AI. But this will be an important topic in the future. And then what we also will introduce is a user-centric approach. That means that it's not that the user that uses the system is in the center.
So when you open the platform, then it tells you. It gives suggestions. It tells you where you have to look at. It suggests something. For example, there is no new content in this area now for two weeks. Please have a look at it. You will be integrated in a workflow. You have your own personal space where you will work. So it is really focused at the user that's using it, making his life simpler for the user. Yeah, integrate the user in the workflow of the company, the processes, and make this the whole life support his life, his daily work life. Yeah. And maybe the last thing that I want to mention is that because we have this unified commerce approach, we need all these interfaces to different systems. So the whole system is approached through APIs because it has this unified backend.
So we have a very big or large API level where also other applications can access the data, can exchange data. So this gives us endless possibilities in our projects in the future. So this will be, yeah, will be the basis for the future DISE and Grassfish product. So we are working on the unified backend. We are working very closely together. It's a combined DISE and Grassfish development. So developers from DISE working together with developers from Grassfish. So we're working here as a team. And yeah, we bring all this knowledge in. And we expect that we will have the first product based on the new IXM Grid out next year, somewhere when next year. And maybe, yeah, one product first like DISE and then the other product a little bit later. And yeah.
At this time, there will be two products, for example, two Grassfish products, the existing IXM platform and then the new IXM Grid-based product for a time. Then over time, yeah, the old product will be used by less and less people. And the new product will be the product of the future. And that's what we're working on. I hope you enjoyed it. But I hope you enjoy it much more in the future.
Thank you so much, Roland.
Welcome.
Thanks.
Thank you very much, Roland. Thank you very much, Lisa. So this was a little more detailed view on how we work with our strategy for our platform. Apart from this, we would also like to deep dive a little bit more into our growth strategy and also our acquisition strategy. In our growth strategy, we have two major bearing principles, which are scalability and global reach. So Johan, would you like to start elaborating on this a bit?
Of course. So of course, scaling from a position where we are today, where it's a small number of partners, a big number of direct customers, especially to Grassfish, how can we keep up with the pace that we had in organic growth? I think focus on scalability in every detail is key. And we will look into three examples. One is, of course, partnerships. Because if you aim to become the biggest ERP platform company on Earth, then it's really hard if you are responsible to implement that ERP system at every customer, right? So we need to work with the best that actually can bring our product to market and also actually create the concepts that create value for the customer on a day-to-day basis. So what we do now is with DISE, we're there. With DISE, we have the best partner for each market.
It's just that we don't cover so many markets yet. We need to go step into new markets. But it's kind of an easy play from a strategic perspective. With Grassfish, we now want to establish partnerships that are not in place, that there is a lot of consulting firms, digital agencies that use to implement a lot of those product solutions that you recognize in the digital customer experience online. And we want to onboard them into this industry. So there is a lot of work that needs to be done. But also, we know that it's key to scalability. And in the largest rollouts that we have, it's already in place working together with partners. It wouldn't have been possible for Ann to tell us that we have 10,000 units at Porsche, for example, if we were to install every unit. So partnership is key.
Next thing is IXM Grid. And you now heard. We haven't talked so much about Grid because we don't want to have thousands of questions from investors. When is it ready? When is it ready? But now we are at the stage after 1.5 years of investigation and also that we ramp up development now that we tell about the Grid project here today. And what does it mean? It means that, of course, for Grassfish and DISE, it means that we don't build the same thing twice. But from a scalability and growth perspective, it's even more important, as you say, because now we actually build a foundation where we can bring in new platforms that we acquire. We can build new industry-specific modules on top of it. But it's still one unified platform at the core.
If you look, there are examples in this industry where you have tried to run a buy-and-build scenario where you end up having tens of platforms. Then you are at the stage where it's really, really tough to harmonize. So this is a very, very important topic. Just for Roland and Lisa, now promised that it should be possible to run millions of devices. That's good. And also that it's scalable. It has global scalability capabilities. And of course, that it increases speed. And it's more cost-effective when you can use already existing cloud-based technologies. And the third topic under scalability is that we now have the platform, the one ERP, in place. So it means that we basically have the two blueprints. So if we bring someone into the group now, we have the blueprint when it comes to culture, processes, management system, sales, marketing, support.
We also have the blueprint for how they should operate the IXM platform, meaning that the first task for someone that we could bring in would be to replace their existing layout and backend technology. Stepping into the next one, Jonas, global reach.
But I think I could just because I had this discussion with a couple of people during lunch on the ERP topic, because it's basically the similar principles as when it comes to the IXM Grid, but on a more organizational, administrative level. So that bringing in other companies or scaling globally will be able to be done on this unified ERP platform, meaning that these investments that we've done in this will not be needed for many years to come. So yeah. So when it comes to global reach, could you tell us a little bit more about the different partners that we are looking for and working together with?
Yeah. So we have the full-service partners that are best on each concentrated market for DISE. But in Grassfish, we have three categories. So we want to have the agency consultancy partners that actually map out the customer journey for a customer in all touchpoints. And we want to be able to connect from there to the digital agencies that implement solutions. Then you have the integrators that actually are responsible for the operations and for implementing digital in-store solutions touchpoints. And of course, you also have the technology partners like Samsung and so on. But I think we want to flip. If you look at the traditional company in this industry, they usually have a strong connection into the technology providers. They come from the AV landscape. And they end up serving retailers. But we want to flip the strategy.
We should have the strongest relationship with those that are closest to how digital in-store can create value. But of course, from a technology perspective, from an IXM Grid perspective, we also need to be very tight, work really tight with the Samsung, the LGs, the Philips, and all other players that actually provide technology, sensors, so on into this space. The second one is working with customers and brands that can expand. We work with three tiers. We work with tier one customers that are global brands, basically. Tier two customers that are national leaders. They should be one, two, three in their vertical segment, in their specific market. Tier three is tomorrow's next cases, well-funded companies like Polestar used to be, because they will be tomorrow's winners. Why is that key to scalability? When you have a concept in place, it's quite simple.
You just multiply the number of locations with the number of touchpoints and, of course, the price for the license and modules. But that's basically the formula for your growth. And the larger the brand, the more scalable it is, basically.
That's one of the reasons why we avoid one-off projects and basically projects that do not meet the scalability criteria.
Yeah. We now do World of Volvo. And it's really fun to do. But basically, it's much better to do all the dealerships, right? And then it comes to acquisitions. And acquisitions have contributed with 50% of our growth so far. And we will dig a little bit into that because, like some years ago, it was very popular, Jonas. Now it's not so popular with acquisitions anymore. But we will dig a little bit deeper in why we think it's relevant for us going forward. You can change slide, right? I think it's there. Yes, it was.
So yeah. So acquisitions, to start with, I mean, acquisitions, they are not value-creating from a perspective of just acquiring other businesses. What matters and what creates value is what you do once you have acquired them. So that's a little bit what we would like to talk about. But OK, so why do we want to keep making acquisitions?
We could see from our historic figures that the performed acquisitions we have done, 8 of them, have been really successful. We have grown on every single acquisition from the ARR at the point of acquisition to where we are today. We have a proven track record, basically. We also talked about our net revenue retention, that we are able to keep and grow an existing customer base. It's not only due to that we perform well in the operations. It's also due to the stickiness and barriers in this industry. Once you have an installed base of 10,000 devices, physical devices for the countries, the cost to replace is really, really high. But it also means that it also costs you a lot when you scale. It's long sales cycles.
It's a lot of work to actually sell, implement, get all the decision-makers on board, integrate into all platforms that are in place. So actually, when you look at it, what is the effort to sell from the first meeting with the Volvo, with the Volkswagen Group, to actually have 1,000 units in operation? And if you compare it to acquire that customer, it's actually more efficient to acquire them. That's the fact. And we also think the global reach, we think it's too much risk involved in just opening up an office in San Francisco with 15 people and starting from scratch in a new market. And we can see that with how well we perform now in the DACH region, for example, in Germany and so on. And I think that wouldn't have been possible if we joined forces with Roland and the team in Vienna, for example.
Actually, to get global reach, I think acquisition is key. Then it comes to the how, right?
Yeah. And I mean, when we do acquisitions, of course, when they are performed, that's when the real work starts. And in order to create value from that, we, of course, need to realize the synergies. We need to apply our processes and sales philosophies and so on. Of course, use the knowledge in the organizations that we do acquire and the people that come with it. But we need to apply our processes. We need to onboard them on our platforms, in our license management systems, in our IXM Grid, and so on, making operations even more effective. And of course, making sure that we apply at least the same growth numbers as we have in our operations. And then, of course, the ERP investment that we have done is, of course, a key part in this, making acquisitions way more effective from our perspective.
Great. Then what we are looking for is the last one. As you say, emphasize that it's called buy and build. It's just that many think they just focus on the buy and not the build. But I think when you create value is when you build. And that's what Jonas just mentioned in the how. Then with the what are we looking for? So of course, we look for acquisitions that can bring in partners, that can bring in customers. And in territories where we already have our operations in place, it could be companies that don't 100% fit the strategy. They could lose money. But it could be low multiples to acquire. And we have the resources in place to make them work and to be profitable and to gain traction on the accounts.
The further away, the more strict, the more aligned the companies need to be with our current strategy. We don't want to buy a full-service provider in San Francisco. It wouldn't be easy to align that with our strategy. So when we go for market reach, we also look for pure platform place, where they already have a partner strategy in place, already have a profitable business, hopefully, or close to, where we just can put our framework and give them access to the IXM Grid, et cetera. So that's what we look for. And we believe it's the right path to continue to have acquisition as addition to our organic growth going forward.
Yeah. I think it's important to emphasize that our acquisition strategy has not changed, even though maybe the market appreciation of acquisition has changed. That is, of course, also due to the fact that we must not do acquisitions in order to perform our growth. We do have healthy profitability and healthy growth numbers without acquisitions, which means that this is what we can add and fuel our own growth and profitability with.
And now, next on stage is Damian from JLS. Damian will tell us more. But JLS is one of our most appreciated partners. Really look forward to getting to know more about JLS and the journey they are at. Welcome.
Thank you. So thank you for having me here today. I'm really glad I could make it finally to Varberg and see the whole company a bit more in detail. My name is Damian Schärli. I'm a CEO from JLS Digital. It's a Swiss-based full-service integrator. And I'm going to try to explain as much as possible in 20-25 minutes what we are actually doing and how we work together, especially with DISE, on the software business and how we are on the way. So what's probably a little bit special and the most important thing to know is reconnecting brands with people. It's our vision. It's our mission. And it's exactly how we approach our customers as well. We don't see ourselves as a technology provider or a simple digital agency. We are looking for brands where we can help them to connect with their customers.
That's the basis for everything that we do in Switzerland and only in Switzerland. So we're really only a Swiss-based company. Maybe one more thing, which I almost forgot now. We are, since 2021, a full subsidiary of Swisscom. It's the biggest Swiss telco provider in Switzerland. It has acquired. You could ask yourself, why would they do it? Because it's mostly an ICT provider. But exactly the story about being at the customer journey of our people is the reason why a telco has the interest to go further into this topic inside. So when we approach our customers, that's basically how we see the brand seen from a customer perspective. So in the beginning, and of course, it has a few German words, but below, it's also the English words available.
The whole customer journey to interact with a brand is always starting with awareness and consideration. So you're thinking about the brand and everything. So helping with digital signage, with motion design, and content solutions, we can help our customer to connect with his customer in a different way. And then if you go further, and we're not doing everything, that has to be clear here as well. We're not doing everything ourselves. That would be kind of like trying, as you mentioned before, building the biggest ERP system in the world and making the integration everywhere yourself. But we have the capabilities of supporting our brands on the whole journey, from the consideration back to the loyalty elements. And when we then go further, we usually talk about the customer experience with an impact. So we address our people with different offerings. Digital signage, of course.
I will go a little bit deeper into that as well. Motion design. But we also build mobile applications and progressive web apps, top modern solutions, where you don't need a physical installation on a device, even though. Back to sales and advisory tools, where we help the customer in the store or wherever they want to interact with the customer. And in order to exceed my time limit not too much, I'm going to reduce a little bit to focus a little bit on the topics that we actually work since many, many years together with DISE as a technology provider, which helps us to realize all that customer effect on the markets.
Of course, the most obvious one and probably also the oldest one is digital signage, one-way communication in shopping windows, in-store, where we have more than 10,000 display points in Switzerland, where we serve as a full-service provider for the customer. So we have even customers which don't even know how many displays they have, basically just out of the invoicing part. But in the end, they don't have to do anything with it. So it's not only the installation and the conceptual phase that we do for the customer, but moreover, the maintaining and the content production in the sales process whenever they have it installed. Because usually, the systems run for many years. And usually, big brands don't want to have to do too much with the digital signage systems themselves.
So on the other hand, and that's really one of the core beliefs we have at JLS, technically implementing a digital signage system is only one part of the system. The most important part is using the channel in the right way to communicate to the right audience in the right way at the right time. And JLS has, since almost the beginning, an internal communication agency. So we have more than 15 people working in 3D, 2D, motion design, whatever, and consultant services in order to support the use of the channels. So when I say we are a full-service provider, I mean really, he can come to us. We talk with him about what kind of digital signage installation he can make. And then we can even help him to use the right content at the right time, in the right message, on the right channel.
And that's exactly what we build in Switzerland together. And of course, I took the content automation part, automating things nowadays, especially in retailers, weekly offers, weekly actions, sales topics. You don't want to do all the contents every week for yourself. You need automating solutions. And that's where we actually especially also use the DISE platform as well in order to automate things through feeds or direct API connections to retailers, that the effort that you have to do every week can reduce to a maximum. And then when we go away and a little bit into the direction, what else can you do? Interactive is a more and more common topic. It had quite a huge spike in 2020 and then 2019. And then Corona dumped it a little bit down again.
But now I think, especially in Switzerland, it's coming up again, that you use the space as well for interactive solutions. So having the capabilities, on the one hand, to communicate video format, templating through a standardized platform, but on the same hand, implement solutions yourself. Is it a catalog of all the product, so-called endless aisle solutions, which enables that you don't have to store everything in store anymore, but rather have a digital solution. And whenever they want to have it, then you send it directly to the customer at home. And that's basically, if I'm summarizing it, how we address the customer. That's exactly what we believe works together with the customer best. We call it the experience platform. And it's not from a technological perspective. Our customer all know with which platform we work together.
But it's going around a little bit further to open it up. So basically, helping the customer, is it with audio? Is it with interactive, with VR experience, everything, to really support him in a technical and on a communicating way in-store with all its possible solutions? And what I mean with an open platform, what we're working together with DISE for so long, that's actually slides that I use for presenting our solution to customers. And you don't see a differentiation what technology part is behind. But basically, obviously, content management, network operation, and the interactive capabilities of DISE is the core fundamental element for our solution. At the same time, through API and openness, we can build, and we built over the past years, different solutions around it that gives us the chance to support the customer on this whole journey I mentioned in the beginning.
So we built, for example, an own analytics platform, which is directly coupled to the DISE platform, which helps us to analyze how the people see the content, how long they're looking at the content, not for a real-time changing contents and everything, but rather to think about in the future, what kind of people do I have in front from a screen or anything to use it in planning for the next iteration or something. And that's the capability that we currently use from a DISE perspective. And I mentioned quite a lot of different things that we currently build. We have motion designers, 3D experts. We have field supporters. We have currently 103 people in three cities in Switzerland and act with this background really as a full agency. So to be honest, there is not every customer using every possible field that we have.
It's probably never going to be. But that's okay. The possibility for us as an agency to support the customer with specific needs and taking the experts in the same company together to form a really good team to help exactly what the customer needs. And that's the capabilities we have built over the last year. And of course, everyone has done it today. So I'm going to do it as well, showing a little bit a few logos. But I'd rather not go. I will show two dedicated cases shortly afterwards. But I think, Johan, you mentioned it before in the call, in the previous session. I think the most important thing is we don't support our customers as a one-time project. That's never the goal and will never be. Because building one project is a really cool thing for the next couple of six months.
But what we are really proud of, most of these customers are way over seven years customers of JLS. And we keep on intending to keep them all for the next seven years as well. And I think that's the main part where we can really say we support the customer on this customer journey with his customers. It's a little bit confusing. But that's what we basically do and think, believe, that's the most value topic. And what you, of course, see in regards to verticals, you see a lot of banks, typical Switzerland banking infrastructure vertical. Also a little bit the background that a few banks have joined us really early in the process. And then it was also kind of like an easy entry point for other banks.
Since 2018 in retail with Migros, the second biggest retailer in Switzerland that we can fully support in all different ways. Good. That was all nice sales presentation. I shortly want to show you the Swisscom store concept, which we started in 2020. It's quite important to say 2020. It was before we have been acquired by Swisscom. We started the conversation. Swisscom has kind of like renewed the whole store concept. Before, there was one or two screens in every store. The new store concept considered 38-40 screens per shop. They have more than 108 shops. So you can calculate yourself how much potential we have there. We started migrating it. Furthermore, or even more important is, it was not only a digital signage integration, but we, in the same way, directly took over the whole motion design.
So we produce every content, every sales, every that has been produced for every week in all the different elements, which I will show you a few things afterwards shortly, to make it as a one-stop shop, JLS supporting Swisscom as basically as a full agency. So just two elements taken out, of course, classical elements like accessory walls, which support the upsale of accessory for iPhones or Samsung device or whatever. But on the middle side, it's an interactive touch application. They call it a mixed reality table.
It's an interactive template built into the DISE platform, which has a physical device on top of it, but around, depending on which device is lying on top, you have the appropriate accessory display, the pricing, the colors that you currently have available in store, and even can enable, if, for example, a device is not available, to order it directly to your home or whatever. And then going in the customer journey further, a nice element in front of the stores.
Swisscom used to have really old chalkboards, physical chalkboards that you have to write with chalk on it in every store. And since E Ink has taken quite the way up, we managed to roll out a set of chalkboards for each shop in the last year, which is directly connected to the CMS platform. And we can, in the same look and feel, it's basically not chalk there.
It looks only like chalk. Display weekly offers, weekly content, and everything. On the right side, probably the newest thing that we have currently deployed is kind of like boxes, consulting boxes. Basically, the topic is you're not always having the experts on site for helping you in a certain topic. Basically, we connected also through the CMS platform to the first-level support and the expert sales call team of Swisscom. Whenever you come in and have a certain topic, you can sit in here or basically being guided into that box. You are directly connected to an expert, which is sitting somewhere, wherever he likes to sit. He can give you the proper expertise to help you.
And of course, last thing, in certain flagship stores, we usually also try to implement a little bit the fancy elements of marketing and really making awareness with big LED screens. And if we go further, that's the store itself. That's so basically, the retail store. But the platform enables us also kind of like for short-term solutions then to enhance even further. And we built an interactive gaming game for an event that Swisscom held and was directly played on a screen device with a mobile device. And I will shortly show you the video, if the sound... Good. And the second case I have taken with me is a case, a customer that we already can serve since 2012 in various different ways. And it's UBS Switzerland.
Basically, classically, we have over 900 installations in Switzerland in the shopping window and in-store, in the customer communication zone where they have the cash top sellings and stuff and ATM 24 moments. The critical point on UBS Switzerland is that it's a full-managed service that we do as a full-service integrator. So from kind of like all installations, all maintenance, all operations, proactive monitoring the solution, everything, it's all done by JLS. And it goes even further than into the communication part. So whenever you see and whenever you travel to Switzerland and walk by a UBS bank and the content being played there, it's always scheduled through our creative advisory consultants, which supports the customer in the whole management of the system. So UBS doesn't even do anything in the system themselves. They don't want to do it. They obviously could. It's not a complexity thing.
But it's something they explicitly wanted to shift outside. We, as a full-service provider, can support them. If you have ever been to Switzerland, of course, that's kind of like the flagship we always show is the big, and it's a little bit hard to see on these screens. It looks like really old iPads. It's a big case that we have built many, many years ago. Daniel will know probably best that it was even before my time. Currently renewing that one as well on a Swiss-based rollout. Therefore, we really have the complexity and can do sync solutions and everything. Even more interesting and coming up more and more is the possibility of using that content automation I mentioned before, the possibility of kind of like through the system produce contents that normally is approved only a few hours before it goes live.
So it means a lot of content production. We have obviously four languages in Switzerland. So every content has to be in four languages in all the different formats being produced. So with content automation, we made it possible that over 900 videos could have been produced within one and a half hours because we just got two hours Samsung To Go that the campaign can be worked like that. And there, the technology helps us really to speed up things and being on site at the right moment. And before I start, we are a digital agency. So visual elements, experience videos is basically also one of our key elements that we usually show. And what we do with UBS as well is using this vast amount of digital signage screens that we have also in different ways.
Since two years, we work really intense together also with DISE on making that work. How can you interact with the screens, which is usually a one-way device to play out video content? But with WebSocket technology and mobile development from our side, we joined forces and have been able to kind of like use the screen in different ways. It's a game, and you will see yourself. What you see is emotion. That's exactly what the brand wanted to create. The game itself is not super fancy or anything, but it used the technology to use the movement of the mobile device, which is directly then represented on flagship screens of 75 inches big. This is already an impression because you stand in front of the screen, which is behind a secure glass door. You can take over the control of the screen.
That's the interaction that we have the capabilities of do so. Or one last example, and then I'm done with experience videos, is to go into another dimension. We used audio besides digital signage combined to make another promotion in Switzerland.
[Foreign language] .
To hear in an ATM store suddenly sound may be really confusing. They kind of give a few responses to the situation that suddenly, if you walk into a bank, you hear a pulse. And really loud is not kind of like the usual thing. But that's what I exactly want to say with this, going beyond the classical digital signage and being able to extend to new ways of communicating through the system. That's basically also what we, in the end, like to work with DISE together because it's basically we work really together on cases.
We make them together happen. We can build our own things if necessary, adapted and close to the system. Of course, and Daniel knows that probably best, we have a lot of requirements that are coming from our customers, which we can really on eye-to-eye level discuss and prioritize and work together ways of how to move forward and bring the platform forward. Also for us, how we can work with the customers together. I think that's exactly the last point that we really can talk on an eye-to-eye level. I think that's the key message for being a partner. I'm looking forward to the next upcoming years and especially looking forward to the presentation before the IXM Grid and see where we go from there. Thank you very much. Thanks.
Thank you so much, Damian.
Thank you, Damian. Yeah.
So what we are going to do now is to present and elaborate on the new updated long-term goals and financial targets that were presented via press release last night. And after that, we will take a short break for coffee. And we will sit down all the presenters from today in this corner for a Q&A session, which will be hosted by Charlotte. And if you could wave your hand there, Charlotte, you can go to her if you have questions that you would like to get answered during the Q&A. Great.
And then we are finished.
And then we are finished. Yeah. Right.
We're very grateful that you invest this day in Varberg and in Vertiseit.
So great. So where do you start? We really wanted to have goals now that reflect our long-term ambition.
We also want to see what is the potential that we actually have identified and what is realistic from a scalability growth perspective. There has been six months back and forth working with the new goals. One key starting point looking at the way ahead, if you have a long perspective, is to look at the market opportunity. Basically, like Damian described, everywhere where it's a physical customer meeting, there is a potential to use digital elements to facilitate the customer journey. Meaning basically that every store on the planet is an addressable market. So how do you actually narrow that down? What we have done now is that we looked at the top 50 brands globally in our five strongest segments, altogether 250 brands retailers. They operate 1.5 million stores. Only those 250.
If you have 10 devices, 10 touchpoints per store, it's directly a core addressable market of 15 million licenses. As we mentioned today, our current rate is that we have 150,000 licenses. So basically, we only scratched the surface of what digital store will be. So that's one component. I think we can go further and say, okay, so what is our ambition? We have talked about it before. Our ambition is to connect the world of retail and to be the number one IXM platform company on a global basis. Then we come into the goals. We also say, how will a market leader look like? If we want to be the market leader, how will an IXM market leader look like? We think that it will at least have SEK 1 billion in ARR.
And it sounds like a big number from where we are today. But if you look at that we have 1% of the core addressable market today, it basically, with SEK 200 million as a basis, hopefully end of the year, right? It's 5x. And then it comes to the point of time. What speed can you have to get there? And as Jonas said, when we met three years ago, we were at SEK 50 million. We said we should have SEK 200 million. It's 4x in three, four years, right? And now it's 5x, but we think it will take eight years. So basically, we will grow slower in percentage but faster in revenue. And so if we look at the full picture, so the yellow one is where we want to be 2032. And the gray target, the financial goals, is what we want to meet all the way to the goal.
And maybe you can elaborate, Jonas, on the goals.
Yes. We have our long-term goals, SEK 1 billion in ARR and a profitability goal, where we would like to end up in 2032. The financial targets, that's how the journey will look like while moving there. The ARR goal is clear. It will require us to have an annual growth rate of approximately 22% to go there mathematically. But of course, there will be acquisitions along the way. How we handle acquisitions is actually covered by one of the financial targets. By the end of 2032, we should also have a profitability of at least 35%.
The profitability measure that we use to evaluate this is EBITDA reduced by CAPEX, which are the investments in our products, and which is the most fair and honest way to actually express profitability because that's what also comes closest to the actual cash flow. So SEK 1 billion in ARR, 35% in profitability in 2032. On the way there, we will have an annual ARR growth of at least 20% per year. While growing at least 20% per year, we should also have profitability growth, a profit growth of 25%. That is calculated per share, meaning that we need to be cautious when it comes to issuing new shares. We need to be very wise while performing acquisitions in order not to dilute shareholders and therefore create as much shareholder value as possible.
So, profit, a profit growth per share of 25%. And also this is expressed in the metric EBITDA reduced by CapEx. And we're also keeping one financial target that is also currently in play. That's the revenue retention because that's a qualitative measure that is really important to us, that we never shall fail on because we always need to have satisfied customers that stays with us for a long time and that we keep growing on. That's it. And maybe I should say something about that. It's really like a long-term period. There are pros and cons with why didn't we take a three-year goal? Why do you take a long-term goal? But I also think that it reflects how we look at the business, our long-term commitment to become number one. That's the goal. We think it will take this time to get there.
With the set of goals that we have, it's also really easy to see if we follow the path. So I think it gives a clear guidance for all investors, like where do we want where do we want to be, how to get there. Well, it's also easy to calculate from a value generation perspective. And it's easy to see when we are above or below the path to get there. And also the time frame, which we look into things, like Roland mentioned, we might add the first new customers to the new IXM Grid by next year. So our investments into the technology to be the market leader in this space is also long-term. So I think it's reflected.
But happy to have your feedback, comments on those goals.
I think now we take a break, five minutes, discuss with each other about the goals and other topics. Then we will have the panel with all people that have been on stage ready for questions.
Fantastic to have.
You really think you can reach them. Of course. Otherwise, we wouldn't put them there because you will come back. Please help yourselves with coffee and so on while we make a little rearrangement here on stage.
Come on. Come and sit, please. This is the fun part. Please come sit down. This is the best part because now we're all allowed to play the devil's advocate and ask all these hard questions about, is this really true? How good can the story actually be? Feel free to raise a hand. There's a microphone for all the questions you might have.
It was fantastic to hear all these presentations. Thank you very much. Where to start? Well, I'll start with a list of questions I've got from one person in the audience. Was it you, Björn? It's about if it's possible to define and quantify your market. You did that a bit. You say you've only scratched the surface. Could you just elaborate a bit more on who's in that market? Who are your competitors? What do you meet out there?
Yeah. So if we define how big the market is, I think you could see spend on the top three integrators per market, for example. You can also see the different penetration that you have in the Nordics compared to most other markets, for example. There are market reports that I could recommend. Invidis is the consultancy firm that actually performs a report where they look at the market.
But I think the most efficient way to look at it ourselves is that we look at all the wanted brands that we want to have. We look at how many stores they have. And we also do assumptions on how many touchpoints do you have in a certain vertical. So with this, as the foundation, we could see that this wanted 50 list had this growth potential. This is where we are today. At which penetration level do we have at a specific brand today in a specific market or on a global scale? But the closest to a number is what we mentioned, that the 250 largest brands and retailers, they operate 1.5 million stores. And it's an addressable market of 15 million licenses, just to take the top brands.
But can you elaborate a bit more on who you meet when you go after those brands?
Are there thousands of companies out there, or do you meet always three competitors? Or what does the landscape look like?
Yeah. So that's a very good question. So the traditional competitors come from the AV industry, and they have a product for digital signage. And just like Damian mentioned, it's more of how do you schedule images, videos, content on a display. So of course, we compete with the traditional digital signage players for more simple, high-volume rollouts. And then to a certain level, you could also argue that you compete with platform products that are used to create content or dynamic content for different channels. But I think we have a unique position, and it's a position which we want to capture. And it's really to be the IXM platform that we focus on in-store experience ranging from brand to tactical communication all the way to transaction.
But to give you a competitor's name, the companies that we usually meet in a large tender is Scala. Actually, when we started off in my apartment in 2008, we worked with Scala. Daniel Bloch, now Chief Product Officer at DISE, he's. What employee number did you have at Scala? Three.
Three.
Yeah. And we also meet Navori, for example, which is a company that is strong outside of Europe. And there are some others.
And can I direct that question to you, Damian? As you work as a partner to DISE, you said you had 80 brands. How many do you use DISE at? And do you use someone else like Scala, or how does it work for y ou?
From a history point of view, we have a really single platform strategy.
What I mentioned in the presentation was we really want to be a full-service provider for our customers. In order to kind of support them in all the ways, from installing, from configuring the system, to maintaining and even helping them to do the right content at the right time, I personally believe you need to focus on as few as possible platforms. Otherwise, you're more into the project business where you basically install a solution and then give it over to the customer. To be just on one, yes, maybe we open up in a certain way. That can be. Cu rrently, when I talked about the 80 brands we have, all running on DISE.
Would you say that that is a trend among companies like you, that you go for just one?
So it would be a trend which would be good for Vertiseit, or is it a choice that you did?
Basically, it's a choice that we did. What I see a little bit trending, but it's not kind of fact-based or anything, is that a few companies try to single out or converge to less platforms yet. But I couldn't tell. I don't have the market insight on the different topics, especially in Switzerland, on how many platforms they in the end effectively work. That's beyond my knowledge, to be honest.
Okay. And Roland, I had a question for you. I think it's interesting. Could you tell us about what happened when you were acquired? Did they find you? Did you find them? And what was your experience?
Well, I can tell you that they found us. So at that time, we were not for sale.
I received an email from Johan.
No reply. No reply. No reply at first.
Yeah. That he would like to set up a call with us because he would like to acquire us. So that's the direct Swedish way how to communicate. And it was true that so we replied. We had the first call. But then, yeah, we thought it's we were not convinced what it really brings us. So then we were a little bit lazy to reply for the next call. But on the next call, they convinced us that a joint strategy could really work. And yeah, and then speed came into it. And it took only a few months until everything was settled. And we became one company. So yeah, it was a strategy. It was a really convincing strategy how to move forward in the future.
Now you are working with getting this platform together so you can bring on other companies. How would you say how much easier would you think an onboarding would be today or when you're finished in the next year compared to when you were onboarded?
The problem, if companies so that's also what we see at competitors or at other companies. If you acquire companies that have their own platform, then in the end, you have a mix of 10 or 15 different platforms. There are no synergies. That's very difficult to operate. Yeah, it provides no way forward. Our vision is that we bring the best capabilities of new platforms or platforms from people or from companies that we acquire to the same platform. So there is some development effort needed, but it's a lot less.
In the end, we have then one platform, so the IXM Grid platform. This is a forward-thinking strategy that provides much more room for the future to grow than with competitors that have then 10 different platforms and no synergies between them. It's the basis, being able to get the most out of acquisitions. Because if you have 10 different platforms, there's no synergy. It's just hassle.
Do we have any questions from the audience? Yes, we have one.
Thank you. I want to get back to the discussion about platforms and partners using multiple platforms in some cases. Some big partner does, like Pixel Inspiration and Trison. How do you ensure that they prefer to work with your platform?
That's a good question. I think from the perspective of the full-service provider and when we started the business, we were one of those.
We worked purely with Scala at that time. I have the same philosophy as Damian. If you are a full-service provider, you should take care of everything, all your processes in your company, all the knowledge. If you can stick to one platform, it's a huge advantage. If you are in a position where you actually can state which platform to use, you will choose one. You could also see other go-to-market strategies which we have, where we have different parties involved. Then the decisions can be made not from one full-service provider. They can be made by the IT department to sign up on the platform. You have digital agencies that work with the marketing teams. You have different integrators that roll out the hardware in different markets.
For the integrator that, of course, also acts as a full-service provider in many cases, they need to work with the platform of choice from the brand. If you look at one of our biggest integrators, like Trison, if you go into their support facilities, there are people that know and can manage 15 platforms.
I had a question for you also, Sebastian. You talked about your growth through partners. You try to grow by signing new partners and partners growing. Could you elaborate on how much that growth is from those two sorts of growth and how you emphasize what is most important for you?
Yeah. It comes back to what I tried to present also is the time frame of it.
We know that signing a new partner, getting them on board, and getting the first licenses orders takes us somewhere between 12-18 months from initial contact. So it's a long sales cycle, meaning that we have a few of them going on the whole time. But also ensuring growth here and now is working with the existing customers, existing partners, and helping them secure new brands and growth of their existing brands, making sure that Damian's happy so he can evolve and get new channels, new networks going for UBS, for example, which is something we can more control here and now. And then for the future growth and the leverage, we want to add more partners in new territories. As we saw, we're quite well covered in Europe. There's a few more countries that, of course, we can add partners in.
But we're focusing more on the North American market now as that's quite an untapped resource for us at this time.
But do you have—it's the same salespeople? Or do you have new sales and?
As the sales team is quite efficient and small. We're only 30 people in total. We're four people in the sales team. We do kind of there is a difference between who mainly focuses on the retention of partners and a few of us mainly focus on doing the initial meetings and drumming up the business in some sense, so.
You're the first drummer. That's you.
I'm part of the first drummer. Yeah.
And I also want to add something to Fredrik because I figured out when Sebastian answered that we might not even answer the question also, what makes them select you?
So I think one component is, of course, to have the most appreciated products, the most easiest user interfaces that they want to work with, that it's an open architecture, that it's easy to integrate with, and that there is a lot of ready-made integrations and so on that make life easy and efficient. But besides that, it's really important to be strict on the go-to-market strategy. So the DISE partners, for example, they know that as long as Damian delivers on the growth targets that we have, that we don't need any more partner in the market and that we actually only sell through partner in that channel. We are well-selected partners.
And we also have actually a business model that makes the partners loyal, that the more licenses they have, the more they have proved themselves to be able to both roll out and to keep customers happy, the better terms they should have. So if you're a new full-service provider that happens to be a partner in the market, then basically, if you have proven yourself, your chance of winning is higher.
So you have many figures that are impressive. But one of them is this net retention revenue. And you've said it's going to be over 100%. And I think it's never been lower. And of course, if you compare to other businesses, other sectors, or other competitors, it's a high figure. But how high can it be? And what could you be aiming for? Because it seems like you have these recurring.
Yeah.
So right now, it's slightly above 50% of our organic growth is from expanding on existing customer base. And then I include that we obviously also churn customers. And what we can do to improve that is to have larger customers with rollouts in more markets and more brands that we actually deploy the platform on a global scale. Then I think we could ramp up additional 10% growth in long-term perspective. But now, I think what was last quarter, Jonas? It was somewhat like 9% or?
No. 103.
103%. So it means that on a yearly basis, I think we were at 9% or something like that.
Yeah. 109. Yeah.
So it's quite impressive. So if you have 9% organic growth from existing customer base, including churn, then you only need to add 10% new sales to meet the figures that we have.
Any more questions from you guys or anyone else? Yeah. Please, Fredrik.
I'll take another one. Could you elaborate on the process of gaining the new partner and customer in Dubai?
So actually, I've not been really involved. Maybe Roland or Ann? Roland? Yeah.
Yeah. We have a new partner in Dubai. It's called DIGITALL. And they approached us because they are already running a network. It's mainly a DOOH network with over 3,000 screens. And they want to have, yeah, better programmatic features. So they want to have the advertisement more focused than they have it now. Until now, they were working with Broadsign. And they're working now with a Swiss company called Advertima, who's providing the programmatic approach, the targeting, or the detection of the people in front of the screens. And together with Advertima, we also already have successful projects in Switzerland.
For example, SPAR Switzerland is using this combined technology for a longer time now. So we were approached because we can deliver the technology that Broadsign cannot deliver. The start now is with the metro, so the subway there. But if that works properly, it will be expanded to the whole network probably. We are starting now together with this new partner because it's not then the partner for the single project. The partner will deliver other projects with us. We just started with the first retailer with a pilot installation. It's then, yeah, retail media business. We expect a lot out of it because it's a huge market. You have to understand this market. It's different than the DACH market.
And with a partner like this that grew up in this region and has all the contacts and the network and knows how business works there, that's a perfect fit.
And you had a graph describing your customers and the base of consulting and then a triangle on getting the SaaS revenue to increase. Is there sometimes you have customers where you never get them on the SaaS? And what happens in those cases?
Yeah. We always start with a license agreement. We don't do consultancy work before we have a license agreement with the customer.
So they're stuck with you.
But what you can say is that from an historic perspective, many companies in the business, they do consultancy or speculation, basically give it away because they can gain it on SaaS revenue further down the road. But obviously, you never know how our project will scale.
But what we do now is that we are really strict on the principles of consulting. So first, we sign, of course, the that Ann mentioned, the framework agreement for licenses before we start doing consultancy work. And if it scales, good. But if it doesn't, we always cover our costs. So we don't do any consultancy work on speculation.
So Jonas, these new goals you have, you've talked a lot about them today. If you have to prioritize between them, what is most important for you? Is it the growth or is it the profitability?
I should say the question was to me. What? Shoo? Jonas? Good. Good. I hear you. Then, Jonas, maybe give another answer. We'll see.
First, I can answer something that you can see if it was yeah. No.
I mean, we should always be profitable, meaning that we should always be independent and self-sufficient and able to take our own decisions without having to rely on external funding or external investors. So that's the foundation. We need to be above zero. But when it comes to being really profitable or having a high growth, we believe that there is so much potential in this market for so many years to come that we will put if we have to prioritize, we will prioritize growth over profitability, meaning that we will still be profitable.
It seems to be the right answer because Jonas.
100% correct. Flawless.
Nodding. Okay. So you've talked a bit today also about how you build this platform for adding on. And you talked a bit about what type of company you're looking for. But could you be a bit more specific?
What is your dream target? How big should it be? Is it the U.S.? Is it Europe?
Yeah. I think we really need to step into the North American market at some point. And in this game, you don't know. Timing is hard. So you need to play where the puck is or will be. But you don't know when. But if we can decide, next year, for example, will be a great year to enter. And I think before that, we do a lot of initiatives now. I was in Toronto last week together with Ann, for example. And we work with some partners now to get to know the market. But the best, from a scalability and strategic perspective, finding a small platform company but at least in the size of 20 people with an installed customer base, sell through partners, and a pure platform play.
I won't give you any name. But if we can find that, it will be the best possible fit at this stage. And it will be the acquisition that brings us to a really important stage.
Yea h. Will it be expensive? Or how has prices developed in this market for acquisition targets?
It's hard to tell because there were a lot of activity. And we knew the price point before, basically the pandemic. But afterwards, until now, that have been basically zero transactions in the industry. There were a small one just last week. So it's hard to tell. But I think we can see that it's a lot of smaller players that struggles a lot, also some big, more buy-build groups that have a hard time. So I think opportunities will definitely be there.
My last question comes from Björn. He's playing the devil's advocate.
And he's saying, "What threats do you foresee in the future?"
I think there are a lot of threats. And I always get questions, "What is Samsung doing? What is Adobe doing? What is Google doing?" There is obviously we navigate in a space where there is a lot of large players out there. But I can take you full circle because I think this is relevant to see why I think that we are in a good position. So obviously, if you're an LG or a Samsung, you want also recurring revenue. So they have basic digital signage platforms that you could buy from them. Samsung has gone further now with a platform that you can buy online, swipe your credit card. You can download apps. But it's basically for the long-tail business. And it doesn't aim to be sold through Damian or full-service providers.
So that, of course, will capture long-tail. But it doesn't really affect us, at least not short-term. And because you don't want to have a platform that is tied to a specific hardware brand, why would you? If you're a McDonald's, you don't want to be forced to use Samsung displays. And then you can look at, "Why don't Google step into the space?" And obviously, they are already in the space. They try to establish Chrome OS as a standard for media players. And I think it's on that level where they will stay because, of course, it's scalable to sell Chrome OS to all digital signage providers. But it's too small of a business to do niche applications on it at this stage, at least. And so far, they have a really, really small market share with Chrome OS. But it might grow.
It's a good platform, to be honest. And then we go to the Adobe. So we do a lot of integration to the Adobe universe. So they have experience platforms where they are designed to actually create content for all different channels. And they have done historically, they actually had done some small efforts to do applications to run on displays as well and connect it to their platforms. But without success. And there's no big teams, no focus, no investment into that. It's really old-school now, dated products. And I think from a strategic perspective, it's better for them to don't be the actual touchpoint to be at the endpoint. It's better for them to be on a strategic level where they can integrate to other platforms such as ours. So I think we're actually in a sweet spot as how it looks today.
But of course, threats is always if there are changes in technologies or if there are changes in strategies for platforms that are connected to ours.
But it seems you have an opportunity in where you are.
Yeah. So I think it's better we stick there.
So are there any? Yes, we have one. Please. Just wait for the microphone, please. It's coming.
Hello. My name is Thomas Fallenius. And I'm a shareholder. I just want to ask you, has anybody tried to buy you? And if so, what has been your answer?
It's many times. Not so much, though, since we're now publicly listed. And the answer is always no. We want to continue this journey. But from time to time, there is some years, there are many. Some years, there are few.
And perhaps someday, the price is right.
No, no. Okay. Okay.
I'll leave the floor to you, Johan and Jonas, if you want some concluding remarks or just saying thank you to everyone, or.
I think we can summarize with thank you, everyone, for investing a whole day together with us here. And as I said in the beginning, so many people here that have been with us from the point of IPO and are still shareholders and hope that when we summarize this gold period, that you come here again. And hopefully, we meet those targets and can put new one into play. So Jonas, do you have something to add?
Yeah. You don't need to wait until 2032 to be in contact with us. So in case you have questions, want to know more, never hesitate to give me or Johan a call, send us an email, or come by one of our offices for a coffee.
We're always open for discussions and really love meeting investors and analysts and all people interested in the same things we are interested in.
Great. Thank you, everyone. Thank you.