Good morning. Welcome to today's conference regarding the financial results of Asseco Group after three first quarters of 2024. We traditionally are going to present you with our presentation regarding the activity and financial results of the group. At the end, we will be answering your questions. Should you have any questions, please send them via the form. We are going to begin our presentation with Marek Panek, Vice President, who is going to present you with the activity of Asseco Group after nine months of 2024. And in the second part, we are going to discuss financial aspects presented by Karolina Rzońca-Bajorek, CFO of Asseco Group. We are going to begin with Marek. Marek, the floor is yours.
Good morning. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Yesterday, Karolina was making jokes that I very often begin the meetings stating that we are in good moods, but so this is why I'm not going to say it today. But we do have reasons to be happy. I guess those of you who have read or at least took a look at our report yesterday share the opinion that the first three quarters of the current year were a very good period for Asseco Group. It is proved by the basic numbers that I'm going to share with you, meaning income of sales at the level of PLN 12.6 billion, increase of non-IFRS operating profit by 5%, and increase of net profit by 4%. It grew, and it's almost PLN 400 million. But the net profit is almost PLN 370 million. This is 7% almost.
We are still paying the loan that we have taken last year, so we need to take into account the financial burden that we have. We should remember about it, looking at the net profit. More to that, if we exclude the currency differences that are significant, we can see that our revenues are up by 6% and the non-IFRS operating profit up by 11%. So this confirms our reasons to be happy. We continue our development strategy based on our own products and services. We also observe quite a lot of interesting business perspectives related to adapting our systems to the new regulations. Here, we are happy to see the activity of regulating bodies. You can notice new topics such as DORA, NIS2, and CSIRE, and others. This is giving us a good opportunity for the next years, despite the activities that we are going to continue.
We are also happy that we are expanding our group by new companies. Up till today, we have implemented 11 acquisitions. Those are our new companies which joined in different parts of the globe. But I'm going to elaborate on that later. I'm going to begin, as always, with the slide that presents what's happening in the basic geographic segments where Asseco Group is active. We have changed the slide slightly, so I want to comment on it briefly. Maybe you remember the previous circle-like graph, but we have decided to present it differently this time because of the observed in the previous quarters huge result of differences in currencies. So here you can see first two graphs as of the left side. Those are the reported sales revenues for the first three quarters of 2024.
You can see that in the whole group, the sales are more or less on the same level. Looking from top segment, Asseco Poland grew by 5%, Asseco International by 2%, and Formula Systems noted a 2% decrease. It looks completely different if we exclude the differences in currencies and the effect it has on the revenue. This is the right way of looking at our results of the group. The situation as realistic situation is as in the two graphs on the right-hand side. Asseco Poland grew by 5%, Asseco International 8%, and Formula Systems grew by 6%. The sales would equal around PLN 13 billion, PLN 300 million-PLN
400 million. This is the right way to look at it, an important piece of information.
Right now, to comment briefly on the business affairs in separate segments, what we want to list in Poland are three things. First of all, the finances, financial area. This year, it grew significantly when it comes to sales. Same thing was with public administration. This is a consequence of many projects that we have signed previously and we are implementing now. And we are happy about new projects in the energy sector. Maybe they are not reflected yet in the numbers, but those are the forecasts for the next year and for the upcoming years. Those are related to inter alia adapting our projects, our systems to regulations and to see the DORA topic. Asseco International, traditionally, it's been continuously very good situation in the previous quarters.
We have very good situation in ERP solutions that is a holding which is active in several states and Southeastern Europe. Asseco here, especially the payment area which is developing very dynamically, then when it comes to Formula, well, standard, we can say that today it is a group that consists of many companies. The revenue growth of 6% after excluding the effect of exchange rate differences, so if we take a look at this scale, this is a significant and very important growth. If I would list a particular company, then I would mention Matrix, which had an outstanding period in the three quarters, and this business is really developing very well. Traditionally, Formula Systems are also most active in our group when it comes to new acquisitions. Here we can see revenues by product groups, revenues from sales.
This is the new division of products that we've implemented as of the beginning of this year. We've modified slightly the slide, and we can see a different graph than usually. This shows how the growth of sales in separate groups of products looked like, of course, in comparison to the same period last year. So this is what I want to focus on. Looking from the bottom, solutions for finance, we can see 4% increase. Then solutions for public institutions, 7% increase of revenue. ERP solutions, 3% growth. And those are the three most important segments to us. Those constitute over 60% of the revenue of the whole of the group. The rest, as you see, noted decrease, other IT solutions and infrastructure and other sales. Those are things that we are, of course, implementing.
But when it comes to infrastructure, especially, this is something that we are paying less attention to because this is lower instability. So the decrease of sales does not worry us much. At the bottom of the slide, you can see a confirmation of good diversification when it comes to share of customers in our sales. 10% of the whole of the group are the 10 biggest customers, and 2% is share of largest customer in the group's revenues. So we can see that we are not dependent on separate individual clients. Now, traditionally, I want to tell you about what's happening in separate groups of products. The solutions for finance, it's what I want to begin with. Here in the whole of the group, we've had over PLN 4.1 billion sales, and this was a 4% growth.
The biggest contributor was Formula, over PLN 2.5 billion, exceeded even and noted 2% growth. If we take into account the changes in currencies, then the growth would be even more dynamic. Now, Asseco segment, and here I want to comment on Formula because here the main player is Sapiens that is doing very well and Matrix too, which is implementing plenty of projects for the financial sector in Israel. When it comes to Asseco International segment, here we can see exceeded PLN 1.1 billion and 7% growth. This is a very dynamic growth, and we underline here what I already mentioned previously, the payment scope of Asseco South Eastern Europe and solutions for banking sector. Here, this part of Asseco also contains a company in Portugal that is managing very well, so the whole picture looks fairly well.
When it comes to Poland, this segment is growing most dynamically. Here we have a 12% increase of sales. We've exceeded PLN 440 million in the first three quarters of 2024. Here we want to underline all those things that you can see in the screen, meaning a healthy, stable stream of revenue from maintaining and development of our systems. Also, big projects of implementing core systems that we are implementing in the reported period. We have finalized a big project in Bank of Polish Cooperatives, and they've noted a pretty big growth. The next slide are solutions for public institutions. Here we have PLN 2.5 billion sales in the whole of the group, 7% growth that is very dynamic too, especially as we did not resign from including the current difference in currencies.
Exchange in Poland, we have 9% growth, and those are, of course, projects for public institutions that you know fairly well. Adding to that sector of healthcare, in Asseco International, we have PLN 280 million and 19% growth. This is partially accompanied by one of the acquisitions that we've accomplished in Southeastern Europe, Asseco. We are also rebuilding slowly what's happening in Slovakia and Czech Republic when it comes to public sector. You do remember that we've had more challenging quarters in the past related to problems with the choices and the geopolitical situations. We are slowly rebuilding it. Formula Systems, that is the biggest contributor, PLN 2.5 billion of income, 4% growth. Here, the biggest players are Matrix and Magic. Solutions of ERP.
This part of Asseco is very international based, especially on, especially in the international part, it's based especially on Asseco holding Asseco Enterprise Solutions with very good performance. Just to remind you, it's active in Poland, Germany, Slovakia, and Czech Republic and in Italy, so we are very happy that it's growing so dynamically and well. Formula Systems, here the main player is Matrix that is selling not only own Tafnit system, but also is implementing solutions of third companies and noted 2% of growth with sales of around ILS 380 million, and Poland here doesn't require a comment because the scale is fairly small, PLN 40 million only. This is our DahliaMatic company, which has different periods. Sometimes it sells more, sometimes it sells less. It's also related to licenses of third companies programming, so we are not worried about that.
The remaining IT solutions, let me remind you that we offer systems for the telecom sector. In Poland, we mainly cooperate with Polsat Plus Group. PLN 45 million, I think most of that money comes from that, PLN 145. Apart from that, there are also Asseco Data Systems services included because we could not classify them elsewhere. Now, when it comes to Asseco International, a situation is quite similar to Poland, meaning the scale is quite negligible. And yet we can see a drop. This decline is related with one-off event. Last year, we had a very tricky project where we had to reverse certain income or certain revenue that was booked, but that was a one-off event. And looking at the whole group, in fact, Formula Systems makes a largest contribution, most over PLN 1 billion, PLN 800 million, and then Matrix and Magic Software.
Just to remind you, this group involves a solution which is dedicated to companies, bespoke solutions, and outsourcing of software at Magic. It's especially important. It's a big part of our business. Hence, the contribution of Formula is so significant. The final slide that I will be presenting, this is our acquisitions I mentioned before. The group has been joined by 11 additional companies. You can see all of them presented on the slide. As you can see, we purchased them on different markets in Israel, in the U.S., also Asseco South Eastern Europe, India, United Arab Emirates, Portugal, a small one also in the Ukrainian market. All this goes to confirm that we continue our acquisition policy. We are always on the lookout for some interesting companies that could be included into our group because they have great competence, great markets, or great products. That's it from me.
And now over to my colleague, Karolina.
Right. In a nutshell, let me present you with finances. When it comes to sales revenues, this was discussed by Marek. Just one piece of information is that we are trying to make sure that we stick to our five-year CAGR, 10% growth rate, PLN 12.5 million from sales revenues. Over PLN 10 billion comes from software, proprietary software and services, which is great. Non-IFRS EBITDA is PLN 1.522 billion and non-IFRS net profits over PLN 400 million after Q3. And when it comes to net sales, it's 7% non-IFRS. For CAGR, it's PLN 400 million following the last three quarters, 400 according to non-IFRS methodology. Now, in a macro scale, what impacted our revenues? I would say here the following. Marek mentioned foreign exchange rate. You can see here a waterfall graph presenting that starting from revenues for the same period last year.
You can see clearly that the negative impact of foreign exchange rates this time amounts to almost PLN 850 million. Now, organic results, it's additional PLN 650 million onto the top line, and acquisitions, it's plus PLN 160 million. Hence, in the end, we have PLN 12.5 billion. In terms of non-IFRS operating profit, PLN 1.4 billion, this is last year. Again, negative impact of foreign exchange rates, PLN 86 million. Also, we sold real estate property in previous quarters. This gave us plus PLN 14 million. PLN 919 million is organic results by companies, and PLN 23 million, this accounts for acquisitions. In the end, we end up with PLN 1.52 billion following three first quarters. Now, on the net level, Marek mentioned the credit facility, and indeed nine months, 2024 versus last year, the same period. The difference is that this year we need to incur the cost of that credit facility.
These costs for the parent company amount to almost PLN 41 million. Now, sale of real estate property in Wrocław, including taxes, plus PLN 11 million. Organic results achieved by companies, all of them, in fact, it's both acquired and the previous ones, PLN 44 million. This is non-IFRS results. Now, let's have a look at our income statement, the revenues and operating profit. Please pay attention to improved efficiency. Profitability, non-IFRS EBITDA amounts to an increase of 1.4 percentage points, 12.1% at the level of the whole company, 0.6 percentage points of growth in profitability. You can see here these results presented in detail. Indeed, we achieved much better operating results in quarter three as compared to the same quarter last year. You can see here a double-digit growth, plus 15%. This is operating profit, non-IFRS, and plus 24% when it comes to EBIT.
On the right-hand side in the column, you will see the same numbers following three quarters and singled out just for quarter three. This is the dynamic excluding the result of foreign exchange rates. I think these figures are quite satisfactory. Now, what is happening below this level of profit from operating profit is that we have higher costs regarding interests, and I think my colleague commented on that, also negative impact of foreign exchange transactions and M&A transactions with some overvalue or discount, so these are quite natural results on liabilities, plus hyperinflation. It's Turkey, Asseco Group, and a bit higher effective tax. It's plus 22%, and I guess this effective tax rate is what we will observe for the whole group due to an important impact, which is generated by general international tax like CFC next week and in upcoming years, plus the so-called second pillar.
Another important amount is when it comes to subsidiaries. We mentioned that TSG was listed on the stock exchange. This company is co-controlled by Formula Systems, and the package of shares held by Formula was overvalued. Hence, this impacted the operating profit. For the parent company net, it's about PLN 6 million. That's the impact rate. Now, in terms of what's going on in individual companies, I think we can be quite optimistic looking at Asseco Poland, our parent company, because we can see here very clear growth rates in terms of operating non-IFRS profit after three quarters compared to previous three quarters. After three quarters, we crossed the line of PLN 200 million in operating profit non-IFRS. In terms of contribution, well, here we have the impact of interests, so we can't catch up with last year, but we are very close to it.
The situation is a bit less optimistic for Asseco Data Systems. That's the second biggest company in Poland. So here, I think I would comment on the operating profit. It's poorer than in the same period, in the previous period. And the reasons are as follows. First of all, it's one of the businesses of the companies that is now in a stage of poorer development. And the second one is the impact of projects that have generated a loss this year. And yet we count that the results will be compensated in upcoming years. Plus investments, ADS investments in other countries, especially United Arab Emirates. And you could have read about this in our report, in our statement. Other companies in Asseco Poland have generated very decent results comparable to the previous higher results. I guess the whole year will be quite similar.
Now, historically, Matrix IT generated high results, but this is in Israeli currency. If you convert it into Polish zloty, these results are lost to some extent. Yet Matrix IT, as I'd like to emphasize, has very good foundations, especially in Israel. Their operations really achieve very solid results. Magic Software, they are trying to catch up with previous year's results. There is still some room for improvement here. Maybe you recall that in Q3 2023, the company lost an important customer in the U.S. Very good results in this company are generated, in fact, by all segments located in Israel. At the same time, their projects in the U.S. still have some room for improvement. In terms of Sapiens International, the situation has been quite stable. We see one-digit growth, but still, their situation in the U.S. is quite optimistic. Growth rate is less dynamic.
However, it's a bit poorer in Europe. Now, when it comes to the remaining companies, their figures are quite comparable year on year. Now, segment Asseco International. Marek mentioned that in Central European market, we see a certain recovery in Slovakia and in Czechia, especially in the segment of public institutions. But in fact, that applies to all segments of the Asseco Group. They have been able to stabilize or even improve their results. I'm sure one of the reasons is that we finalized big contracts, which generated losses in 2023. Hence, the difference in operating profit is really quite significant. Right now, we also consolidate our ERPs, and Marek told you a lot about ERPs. Here, the situation is very stable and safe. Now, Southeastern European market, it's ASEE Group.
I think it is worthwhile mentioning that we see a growing payment solution segment, a stable situation in the banking sector, and when it comes to dedicated solutions, unfortunately, this year was a bit poorer. We mentioned before that we had to come up with some reserves to cover the losses. The situation is quite clear. We know what should be improved. In terms of Western European market, this is about our companies in Spain. We see a drop in their revenues. The company that deals with infrastructure and trade, as well as hardware, has noted both worse revenues and operating results. That's not our core activity, however, so we will be figuring out whether we could undertake some restructuring measures in that part of the group. When it comes to the cash generated, I would say that the cash flow of the group goes in line with the predictions.
109% cash conversion rate, this is for the whole group, 108%, this is for Formula Systems segment. 93% accounts for Asseco International segment. Asseco Poland segment has a different situation, but they commented, I guess this is just a one-off point result that can be compensated, and when it comes to Asseco Poland segment, the situation is really quite satisfactory. 138%, this is the cash conversion ratio. I would add on top of it that an important contributor to this cash conversion ratio was quarter four last year. You can see here the results for the last 12 months. Q4 this year should also be quite decent.
However, in Asseco Poland segment, I believe we may have a situation where CRs ordered, that these are additional orders, would probably mean that the MSR results will recognize that, but the cash conversion will take place in Q1 or Q2 next year. This is why I expect that we are going to be somewhere in the benchmark when it comes to this indicator. But it is likely that this is going to decrease slightly after the fourth quarter. When it comes to the balance picture and our situation of liquidity, we can see that the situation is stable. In the report, we have described the loan payments in the Asseco Poland segment. It seems that here there is not much to comment in the slide. Those numbers are comparable not only from one quarter to another, but overall, you can compare it from one year to another too.
We want to share with you also proportional recognition when it comes to our revenues and operating profit. It's worth noting that in the third quarter only, dynamics in the proportional comparison are even better than in the consolidated comparison. This is because of the fact that it is relatively quicker that the efficiency of Asseco Poland is improving. Also in the segment that is almost 100% consolidated. We are also managing with a bigger percent in Asseco International. Here a balanced picture for those who need to build models, you can note that segment Asseco Poland is burdened with the loan and therefore there is the negative net cash. This is a standard situation for Formula that we've been facing for years. This is manageable. What makes me happy is the growth of backlog.
We have dynamics in the order of 10% in the fixed rates. And we are very happy that those are comparable dynamics. 10% in Asseco Poland, 12% in Asseco International, and now 9% in Formula Systems. When we are speaking in the fixed rates, the dynamics of building backlog, it's a picture till the end of this year. So we can say that we already have contracted in the variable rates around PLN 13.2 billion of income. So this dynamic makes me happy because this is forecast for the future. This is all I wanted to convey to you.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Karolina. Thank you, Marek, for showing our financial aspects and our activity. There is plenty of reasons to be happy, as you see. Now we are going to continue with the part of your questions. Please keep on sending the questions on our chat.
I will begin with the first question. Whether Asseco Poland doesn't exclude an option of taking over Comarch business if it is on sale? Who takes the floor now?
We both want to take the floor. For sure, we will be taking a close look at it. We've read something in the media. It seems that there is nothing specific yet. If there will be something precise, we will analyze it and take a close look at it case by case. We don't exclude such an option. Responding directly to the question.
Another even more interesting question. Taking over and taking apart Comarch, how would it impact competitiveness of a company on a national market?
Let me comment on that. First of all, we've commented it at the very beginning. Always we've been appreciating Comarch as a competitor.
But taking Comarch over by CVC causes different concentrations on different markets, especially on international development. And it seems to us that such competition will be healthy and will focus rather on projects that will be aiming at higher margin and revenue. But when it comes to the taking apart activities of Comarch, those are speculations of media that we are witnesses of. We will assess it when something really happens. First and foremost, what we've been observing in a positive light, and we have a positive feedback on taking Comarch over because it shows the realistic value of companies that have similar activities and similar products as ours. So the prices are much higher. So from the feedback that we've been receiving on the meetings with investors abroad, they perceive it in a positive light because even more they pay attention to such companies as Asseco.
The next question, how a potential decrease of percentage interest rates would impact the situation in a positive light.
In Poland, the biggest loan is the loan in the mother company. When we've been writing the financial report in the note regarding loans, we are showing which positions of debt are threatened by the risk of interest rates. So you can simulate it. When it comes to the loan, it is, of course, taken on the basis of WIBOR. And lowering the interest rates by one percentage point is a saving on the whole of the loan that amounts around PLN 20-something million . And similar savings we've generated thanks to paying down more loan than we needed to. So PLN 100 million that we've overpaid up till now, out of it PLN 60 million
is already reported in Q3. And in November, we will have additional PLN 40 million .
So this is a similar scale of savings.
So here another question which relates to the topic, meaning whether the overpayment of the loan will impact the dividend in the next year.
Well, in general, taking a loan, we've been stating that when it comes to dividend policies, we said that we'll not change the policy significantly. We try to manage our liquidity in such a way that it wouldn't impact on our future decisions. Therefore, we are overpaying the loan in such a manner. Those are smaller amounts. So once 30, another time 30, then 40. We are trying to look at it on an ongoing basis, how it looks like in generating operational cash. Not to block any decisions for the future, any decisions on the dividend.
We are going to take them after consulting you as the stakeholders after we close the whole year when we will know how the situation looks like. But the overpayments should not have an impact on those decisions.
Another question. How AI influences your branch and your business? To which extent AI increases efficiency of programmers? You are specialized from AI. How does it impact our branch and our business?
Significantly, for sure, it's positive. We see an enormous potential. We already have several solutions that we offer on the basis of AI. And we see that it helps us to create new products, new solutions that we are able to offer to our clients. Additionally, when we take a look at the part, we always look at the two sides of AI. First is tool and possibilities of offering additional products and services for our clients.
Second side is to increase efficiency of functioning of our organization and preparing software or even speeding up the process of creating different solutions. We see it very positively. There are several situations where we see that we are speeding up with testing or with the process of creating. We are not willing to give particular percentage of savings or stating that introducing such artificial intelligence is going to make us fire people. We feel it's contrary. Introducing such tools is only going to speed up the efficiency of creating our programs. With the same resources, we will be able to deliver even more, prepare more projects and prepare faster the software. This is perceived by me in a very positive light. We are very happy with the trend.
Just as it has been up till now, during the development of our company, every single trend like this is an additional possibility to us to increase the business, to create new products, to create new solutions. We have a wonderful leader in the scope, Jarosław Bryl. He is in charge of those topics in the framework of Asseco Poland, both in Poland and in a group. He is preparing very interesting summaries and meetings where he shows how our companies are able to use those tools. And this is going to soon be transposed to additional either savings or increase of capacities and increasing margins on our solutions.
Another question. What are the biggest threats and chances that you observe for the years to come?
Let me begin with the chances. You should reflect on the threats, all right?
So the chances, that's something related to the European funds that we for sure are going to discuss even further. This is something that we've been looking at very closely. We've been obtaining questions from our investors whether we see such products, when it will be transposed to our projects. It is a huge chance when we take a look at the Western, Central, and Eastern Europe. Those are in huge funds that are available from the European Union. In Poland, we are a pretty big focus on innovations, but we don't have spectacular projects that would be launched yet. We do observe offers and interesting summaries that show our clients how to approach the use of such funds and potential preparation of hospitals and solutions for, for instance, the health sector. So we are looking in a very optimistic manner to the next two years, 2025, 2026.
Those are years of huge potential related to the additional funds from the European Union, from the National Reconstruction Plan. We will inform you how it's advancing and how it's transposed to particular projects, implementation, and our finances. So when it comes to chances that I see immediately, this is the main one. And additional digitization. On Monday, we have obtained an award as a leader of digitization of 30 years of three decades. This is something that all the companies are underlining and all the economists are underlining that digitization is speeding up many companies. And in the scope, people are always saying that Asseco is operating in a very interesting scope because IT is there and it speeds up the development and it will continue to speed up the development of many sectors. So here we look at it in a very optimistic way.
As Marek showed, the regulation changes, which impact the changes of our systems and new things. Also, the new projects and new possibilities related to our solutions, artificial intelligence, those impact the development of sectors and markets where we can deliver our solutions.
So briefly speaking, this is about chances. So many chances. I'm not sure whether it makes any sense to discuss threats. Of course, we've been reflecting on it seriously with Karolina.
Something we can tell you is a variable business environment and geopolitical situation. But on the other hand side, it's something that we are not able to influence. This is something that we've been living with for many years. We've been operating in 60 countries all the time. We've been facing either that someone is about to have elections or just had elections or is doing a campaign or restructuring of a state or something.
So those to us are normal affairs. But you must admit that for at least two years, we've had a pretty untypical and variable geopolitical situation. So this is something that we need to take into account.
So again, let me refer back to the opportunities. It seems that even though there are threats such as uncertainty, geopolitical one, and what is going on beyond our Eastern border. Anyway, we introduced solutions dedicated to critical infrastructure and safeguarding customers' systems. So we do build additional security solutions, and we have an offering for customers so that we can safeguard their data and systems against different types of critical situations. On the other hand, we have the topic of cybersecurity. Again, this is a catchphrase. People say with the advancement of digitization, new threats emerge.
Cybersecurity is another area on which we truly focus because we believe there is a huge potential to be unleashed there. This is how threats can become an opportunity.
Next question. What is the turnover rate in your capital group per year?
In the group, it's really hard to say. We don't have just one single indicator to reflect the turnover of employees. But if you talk about human resources in general, the situation is very stable. In Asseco Poland, even during this IT hype in the market, our turnover rate was still lower than the market rate. At this point, for the parent company, it's about 6%, which is not much. This also includes some turnover that is initiated by us or desired by us. These indicators will differ, naturally, but I haven't heard anywhere in the group about this being a challenge.
No, it's just the opposite, in fact, and if you look at the costs of labor globally and average remuneration in the company, you can see a certain slowdown in this dynamic, so this topic is no longer such a hot potato as it used to be some two or three years ago. Where we do see some pain points where this is a challenge, but globally, from the perspective of the whole group, this is not the case. This is no longer a challenge.
Next question, also to Karolina. How come the margin of EBITDA in Q3 2024 improved so much in Asseco Poland segment?
This is related with parent company's activity. To some extent, this is the effect of the sale of real estate that I mentioned, but also it's because we improved efficiency in individual divisions.
Apart from that, there were some additional transactions like sale of licenses that generate a higher margin. And that was the case in Q3. So summing up, partly, it's the result of our sales mix, which was better in Q3. And partly, this is related to the fact that we can efficiently make sure that we keep our costs under control. Next question. Increased backlog suggests that you will have a strong end of the year. And historically, Q4 has always been the best one in terms of your net result. Do you think this year it will happen again? Well, indeed, we do observe certain seasonality in terms of Q4. It was, however, not always the case. From a longer perspective, this is true. Well, the reason is that customers want to utilize their budgets.
There are more and more the so-called CRs for big projects that come on top of the previous projects. So, well, our expectation vis-à-vis Q4 is quite optimistic because we have a good backlog. So this should be a stable and good Q4. If there are any one-off events that could have an impact on the results, we always inform you about that in advance. So recapitulating, I would say this. I don't expect anything that you wouldn't know about. So looking at the backlog and looking at Q3, I think you can draw some optimistic conclusions.
When will you take a decision on your own stocks?
Well, I can't give you a proper date at this point. So I need to be frank about this. Well, the failure to take a decision is also a decision, isn't it? So all of the time, we keep thinking about different scenarios.
The situation has been quite dynamic if you look on the stock exchange. We like to approach this topic cautiously and prudently because this also has to do with liquidity, with debt service. We are not forced by any factors to take any decision at this point. So I think we will put it on hold before we take any particular decisions.
Digital Polsat informed at a conference that the depreciation rate after IT project finalization will go up. So after finalizing the IT system at Polsat Plus Group, do you expect a drop in the revenues from that particular customer ?
Well, generally speaking, right now, we are finalizing the first stage of the supply of products under the agreement on the transition of Polsat Plus Group. This is a true success story. We've delivered on it. So the assets of Polsat Plus have gone up vis-à-vis depreciation rate.
Right now, we are wondering how we will structure the upcoming stages because this process has not ended yet. We still are the main technological partner for Polsat Plus Group. So it remains to be seen whether the model in the end will be similar or maybe a bit more agile. We are still in discussion with this customer, but there is no discussion on whether it will be continued or not.
What about this year's profit generated in Poland? Is it repetitive?
I'm wondering which profit do you mean, and I will answer it in general. I guess you should deduct this effect of the sale of real estate. I guess what the person asking means is rather our operating business. Right now, we are planning the budget for next year and the situation is stable and quite optimistic about the future prospects.
We can't promise anything at this point because there are many things that could change. But it seems that we have contracts. The work has been contracted. Also, we have some favorable conditions. By that, I mean improved efficiency. So these are our goals that we set for ourselves.
How many employees of Formula Systems have to serve in the army of Israel during this conflict, which is going on in the Middle East?
As far as I know, 160 people serve in the military, so not so many. At the end of the year, that was 500 employees. And at the main point, that was even 1,200 employees that served in the army. So a relatively small number of employees are still there. Also, the fact that the truce has been signed with Lebanon, I guess that part of these people will go back to work.
The geopolitical threat that you mentioned before, does it impact in any way how future investors look at your company? Is that topic considered in conversations?
Well, during our international meetings, when we talk to international investors, they rather perceive Poland as a potential because once the conflict ends, it will be a huge opportunity for Poland, Poland being somewhere between the West and the East. So it could take part in the recovery of Ukraine. So they rather ask how we are planning to take advantage of that by being in Rzeszów, for example, and how we get prepared to that process. And our answer is that we haven't taken any such actions yet. There have been many meetings devoted to the topic of recovery of Ukraine.
The location of Rzeszów, Rzeszów being a true hub these days for any transports which are being delivered to Ukraine, this has reinforced the reputation of Rzeszów as a location where we can take part in these processes. But as I said, no active measures have been taken yet, and investors don't perceive any threats. They don't say, "We will take decisions depending on how the situation develops." Actually, it's just the opposite. We hear signals that Poland is more and more on the radar as a great place for investments, precisely because of the global politics looking at China relocation of production back to Europe or to the US, so that topic is not perceived as a threat, but rather as a chance.
We will see how the situation will develop following the recent elections in the U.S. and in which direction Europe will go and how the conflict will end.
Next question. You mentioned that cybersecurity is perceived by your company as an opportunity. So can you again go back to show the data regarding cybersecurity and your profits from that area? Could that data be presented separately?
Yes, we normally disclose such data. Actually, even today, someone asked about this. Yes, cybersecurity is a huge opportunity. Cybersecurity is seen by something ahead of us. We see a lot of room for development here. Yet, we are quite disappointed right now looking at the spending for cybersecurity in Poland. I mean, people talk about it a lot, and this is not followed by any big projects or any big activities on the part of our competitors.
Of course, the largest projects that make headlines, they are those where Asseco is also present. But clearly, it's a potential for the future. Today, we compared it to the market of insurances in Poland back in the 1990s. The market was there, and yet not all people would purchase insurance policies because they didn't know the products. This, more or less, represents very well the current stance of cybersecurity, meaning people talk a lot, but so long as they haven't been targeted by an attack themselves or they haven't heard about any of their companies who are partners attacked, they don't invest much. They prefer to invest in sales or to generate savings than to protect themselves. But we believe this will change. So this is our potential, and we will be happy to share more information about this in the future.
Now, when it comes to data disclosure, we will take that into account, whether we could disclose these data separately. After Q3, cybersecurity generates about PLN 160 million. And this is a very stable rate in the Formula segment and Asseco International. And as you heard from Artur, there haven't been many tenders announced. So that's why year on year, the revenue from that segment in Asseco Poland dropped.
Next question. Whether the decline in the IT sector in Poland is already over and how dynamic will the recovery be?
Have we had any decline? Well, looking at our results, to be fair, we haven't observed any decline. Looking at the institutions where the IT development was based on EU funds, well, indeed, there has been some slowdown, and we did observe that, for instance, hospitals. But I think slowly but surely this will recover.
After all, the money is out there, not available fully yet, but I think we are prepared.
The question is what we are speaking about. Maybe this is about a business where it's outsourcing. In this kind of a business, we don't take part in it. So this topic is not relevant to us. But globally, the IT branch was firing people, especially who were working on R&D innovation projects. So when we ran out of funds from different vehicles, and we observed it significantly in Israel, in the U.S., after the group IT sector problems, but we have not experienced this problem as much. What has been appreciated was the stability that the employees appreciated when it comes to projects and our company jobs at our companies. So we've always been repeating it during the meetings with investors and on conferences. Adam Góral spoke about it on different meetings.
He was underlining that our strategy and our approach related to products is something completely different than outsourcing. If you're planning a long-term, well, we've had a very good meeting with an investor in Sweden. He was operating with a subject in the USA that works similarly to us. And he said that they are a perfect business model. This is a model that has proven to work well for many, many years. So this is something that we are happy to see that it's a foreseeable business. And I want to add regarding backlog. Always when we are showing backlog at the beginning of the year and we are showing how it looks like in the new year, it's usually on the level of 60%-70% of our income from the previous year.
This shows our recurring business, which is derived from the business model that we operated, where the contracts and cooperation with clients takes many, many years, and we have a repetitiveness. It is a model that is maybe even stronger than SaaS model because in the case of SaaS, you can quickly change a contract and resign on it. In case of such implementations, implementation or withdrawing from implementation takes more time. So this is a more foreseeable model in the longer term. Of course, we need to take care of constant development of product and technology.
The last question that we have is, can you please elaborate on cybersecurity topic? What should be implemented? What types of projects are those? What spendings are those per project? How long does it take to implement it?
Is it a one-time implementation or rather a SaaS form?
I'm not sure if we are ready to answer the question in so many details. The truth is that taking care of digital security of an organization is a process. This, unfortunately, is a never-ending process because on the other side, we have the attackers who all the time are improving and coming up with new methods of attacking organizations. You have to gain immunity and resistance, and you have to keep on arming up. This is something that takes time. When it comes to values or the order or what to implement, we are not the right people to answer this question precisely.
I would like to add one more thing because Marek, when you've been looking for acquisitions on the market and looking for people who we want to acquire, we are looking at two aspects. In the case of cybersecurity, this is an issue regarding many companies that are resellers of hardware on the market. This is on the first front line in cybersecurity solutions, but this is followed by services. What we are interested in and what is important to us is to build especially our own solutions and services related to cybersecurity and not to be just an intermediary in sales of our solutions, which are related to hardware or related to security. This is a model of business that was there in the '90s with relation to hardware.
We've been doing it because we had to do it in the framework of a larger integration, but it is less interesting. What we are interested in are the solutions based on own products and additionally to that, services, so this is something where the clients are something that clients are choosing most often. The question is whether later there are services that are following it. Quite often, it's both. In the case of software, it's an implementation at the beginning. We've designed such a service for the city of Rzeszów. This is a very good solution that provides security to many companies, many public institutions in the framework of functioning of the city of Rzeszów, and this is followed by additional services and support that is helpful for the team, so here we see a huge potential. We are looking at companies. We are looking at people.
We are acquiring. We want to be a significant player in this scope. And we believe that this is the future, also taking into account the common digitization, and it will be needed. The last question was supposed to be, "Thank you for exhaustive answers." But in the meantime, I see that we have one more question. Why are you not going to buy back your own shares? This should positively impact the value of the company because the current solution doesn't seem to be optimum. Should you be looking for a financial investor for the package? It seems that it should be done in a manner of a public offer rather than to address it to a small selected group. This is what it seems. Of course, we do not say no.
If we were to think of selling part of the whole of the package, then I don't know who wrote the question. Just as someone who wrote it said, we do not discriminate any potential investor. We will do everything in line with the provisions. Whether having the shares for possible takeovers is optimum or not? It seems today that we do not have it. It's not our goal. As I said, not taking a decision is a decision too, so it seems currently, when we take a look at the dynamic surroundings, this is the best decision for now, but we will not do anything that would cause any doubts of our current shareholders. Therefore, I think that you can trust us in this regard. If we take any decision whatsoever, we will immediately inform you about it.
This was the last question.
This is why we are ending the conference for today. Thank you very much for your participation. For all the questions, we invite you to get in touch with our Investor Relations Department. We invite you to the events for investors. The closest is going to be in Prague next week. We will be there, so should you be willing to meet us and talk to us, you feel invited, and we also invite you to the next presentation of the results already in the next year. We will be presenting it for the whole of the year and for the first quarter of 2025. Thank you very much for your kind attention and goodbye.