Vitec Software Group AB Class B

Vitec Software Group AB Class B

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Feb 10Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 6, 2026

Operator

Welcome to Vitec Software Group Q4 earnings call 2025. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode.

During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to CEO Olle Backman and IR Patrik Fransson.

Please go ahead.

Patrik Fransson

Thank you and a warm welcome to everyone attending this conference call today. My name is Patrik Fransson, Head of Investor Relations.

In the room with me is our CEO Olle Backman. As always, we first give you a short overview and then some comments on our year-end report released earlier this morning.

Again, as we've done every time before, we will open up for questions after that. With that, I will hand over to you, Olle.

Olle Backman

Thank you, Patrik, and welcome everyone to this presentation. As Patrik said, we will with a brief overview of the group as such.

This picture many of you have seen before, but it keeps on evolving all the time. Now we're serving 26,500 customers.

All these numbers are per year-end. By then, we had 47 business units, but as of now, as you've seen from the press releases, we have added another two companies to the group.

We're up to 49 BUs at the moment, still 13 countries because they were both in existing countries. The pro forma sales is roughly 3.7 billion, and you can see the sales distribution there per market quite evenly distributed through our sort of more dominant home markets.

During Q4, we had another home market, Poland, which we're very happy about. As the definition of a home market is a country where one of our subsidiaries or business units has its origin.

We have, of course, the four Nordic countries, we have the Netherlands, we have Belgium, and as of Q4 last year also Poland to that. Continuing on the diversification of sales here, it looks pretty much like it has for quite some time.

It of course varies a little bit in the sales per market, but the point of this picture is that we have a great risk distribution throughout, we're not dependent on any single country, segment, or customer for that matter. This is a picture showing us on what we call the responsible growth, which is one of our four key areas for sustainability as well.

This is kind of the dual engine of growth. We work with our business units with the business model, which is, of course, striving to have a high degree of recurring revenues, and we develop them through our decentralized organization and really pushing the organic growth on one side.

Then we like to add acquisitions as we go along if we are lucky to succeed with that. Speaking of acquisitions, this is a picture for last year and the first court up till yesterday or so.

We made the two major acquisitions during 2025, Enticontrol in the early parts of the year is a nice Dutch company added in January, and then in October during Q4, we added Polish NMG. Then with a strong start of this year, of course, we finished here in January and early February with Dutch Autonet and Swedish Infometric.

Of course, these two acquisitions we have worked a lot and hard with during 2025, but we just wanted to wait in the full-year numbers, as you usually do when you start on closing up until the year-end, they slipped over into 2026. All four of them really nice additions, and they fit our criteria very well.

Looking at the sales per vertical, as I mentioned, we now have 49 different business units, but we're roughly active in some 22 different verticals. You can see, of course, the larger ones where we have more presence, more business units, and active in more markets, that is energy, property management, healthcare, finance, and the auto and also real estate.

They are the five, six biggest industries that we operate in. As you can see, we're quite agnostic when it comes to new verticals, as long as the companies meet our criteria, we can add another vertical to the picture.

Sorry. This is a picture of the various business units as we've shown before, this is on a full-year basis, or when we present it during the quarters, it's on a rolling 12-months basis for you to get a sense of both the size and the distribution.

As we've also said a lot of times, this is pretty much what the M&A pipeline looks like in terms of sizes. The average size of the nice VMS company is still there around €4 million to €5 million.

Then you can see on the latest four acquisitions, I think that also shows roughly that average. Then growing into some of what I call our little superpower within Vitec, and that's sharing knowledge, which keeps on getting better and better with size, of course, and also with our own resources that we can accommodate this and facilitate it.

We have 49 different companies, but they are not competing in any sense, it is full transparency internally where we can share knowledge, experiences, and also failures, of course. This really fosters both a mentality of innovation, and hopefully we can move a bit faster ahead because someone in the group has most likely already tried what you are thinking about back home.

We can share, like I said, really good examples from everything from development to tools we're using, pricing models, or whatever it may be. It is a very appreciated part of being part of a big group as opposed to being just run as an individual company.

Just a short note on AI. I think maybe we mentioned this last time as well.

It's basically within this three sort of initiatives. We of course work with improving our own working environment and our own efficiency, and also the kind of business development side of it, and then of course on the growth side where we implement AI into our features and our applications.

These are sort of the three streams that we are working on, and there are just some examples at the bottom there from some of the business units, but a lot of things are cooking, and a lot of these forums, which I mentioned earlier, are full of great examples of both tools that we use, but also applications and how to sell them and how to bundle them together with our software. Then moving over to the sort of main topic for the day, of course, the report.

These are the highlights. Like I said, I'm especially proud of that we are able to grow net sales on a total of 6% for the quarter, 9% for the full year.

We will get into more on the distribution there where most or absolute ballpark of that growth comes from the subscription-based revenues. The EBITA level was flat compared to last year, but as you remember, we also guided it a bit on the Q3 call.

Q4 last year was exceptionally strong with a few large hospital projects in Finland running through the books. Really Q4 2024 is exceptionally strong.

With that said, I'm quite pleased that we're able to basically match that for this quarter as well. As you can see on the full year total growth of 9% and roughly 2% in operational margin, 6% on the net profit increase, it's okay, it's not bad, but as I also wrote in my comments here on the Q4 report, I'm really pleased with the growth, but we have a tradition and also an objective to of course grow our profits faster than we grow our top line, and that has not been the case for 2025.

In terms of efficiency, there's more to do for sure, and we are working on that a lot. Other than that, when you dive into the numbers, perhaps it's shown on this page particularly, but one of the big items in the profit and loss statements are the reversal of earn-outs roughly 200 million or so for the full year.

Just a short comment, it doesn't affect the net profit, it doesn't affect the cash flow. It's two-line items that are identical.

It's just the accounting rules that makes that we have to put it like that instead of having it as a net. It is a proof that our sort of pricing model when it comes to acquisitions really work.

We're prudent and we say that, okay, fantastic if the acquired company has a really promising future, and then the sellers want to have a part of that, we say, "Fine, I'll pay for it when I see it." All these sort of subsequent payments of earn-outs is connected to growth in profits.

If that sort of really high targets aren't met, then of course we're not paying it. In this case, expectations were from the sellers' side that we will really reach overperforming.

In this case, they haven't overperformed, they have performed well. It's going according to plan.

You can see that in the numbers. It's just a way of gapping the bridge between a buyer and a seller, but also sharing the risk.

In this case, we have been able to then reverse that risk in the sense that, okay, profit is okay, but it's not overperformed, hence we don't pay the earn-outs. I think that's a good point to just highlight.

Top of that, of course, you can see that in the numbers. We had a bit of a currency headwind throughout the year, nearly 2% on the full year and then 3% on the quarter, and given that we have 75% of both sales and profits in other than Swedish krona, of course it hits both the profit and the net sales.

Currencies go up and down, not much we can do about that. Another strong thing for the quarter was the cash flow both for the quarter and for the full year.

Cash conversion was good, and we really worked with the working capital there, and cash collection has been a sort of priority throughout the year. We're very pleased about that.

Cash flow for Vitec, as you should really look at that full 12-months because we have Q1 being our absolute strongest cash flow quarter where we collect most of our prepayments. You really need to look at this on a 12-months basis.

If we look at the full 2025, if we take the operational cash flow and then we adjust it for the activations, of course, and the leasing payments, which I think is the prudent way, it's still an 85% cash conversion to EBIT or operating profit, which is a fairly good number. Just moving over to the sales per quarter.

As you can see, it's a bit up and down, but overall according to plan. We will get into the details the split of organic and acquired in the pages to come.

The EBITDA profit same there, strong finish, but here you can really see the exceptionally strong Q4 from last year in that sense. Then cash EBIT, which is our internal sort of metric, which is basically the operating profit, but netted away from any activations and amortization and depreciation on the intangibles, this is really the cash close to the cash-generating.

Here I'm pleased with the sequential increasing. If you can see throughout all of 2025, like I said, we had an exceptional 2024, and then we started up on a bit lower scale, but then we gradually Q2, Q3, now Q4, almost linear sort of increased the profits, which is what we aim to do.

Then moving over to the split here of the recurring revenues. Here you can see the bulk and the basis for everything, that's subscription-based revenues.

It grew incredibly well, 8% on the quarter, and you can see on the other quarters it's been 6%, 6%, 6% and then 8%. It is a bit of a Q4 effect where we have some of the reconciliations of our subscriptions take part in the later part of the year, it's always a little boost there.

If you look at in the full year, it's just over 6%, which is a really good number. Then in the bottom there, you can see the transaction-based, which has of course varied a lot throughout the year, and we have commented that in all of the other quarterly calls.

Basically no change from that, there's nothing sort of exceptional for the Q4 compared to the others throughout the year. Then just finishing off before the Q&A session here.

I think it was a really good cash EBIT margin expansion, consecutive improvements throughout the year, a really strong cash flow, and of course we're very pleased that we were able to finish off three acquisitions in the last 4 months now, one during Q4, NMG in Poland, and the two with the start of this year. A lot of work has been put into that and it finally sort of materialized.

With that, I think we will move over to questions.

Operator

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad.

The next question comes from Predrag Savinovic from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Predrag Savinovic

Thank you very much, and good morning, guys. Could you start by elaborating on the transaction revenues, which show much more of stabilization now in the fourth quarter?

Discuss maybe around the differences in year-over-year growth this quarter compared to the past, and if you can discuss these comparables going into the first quarter if we can expect further stabilization for the start of this year.

Olle Backman

Yet again, sort of half of the transaction-based revenues are spread out through almost all of the other business units, and that is a very stable number. Then there is another half which comes from Enova, which is of course, like we've discussed many times, the grid balancing market.

The grid balancing market has been more stable, but will it stay stable? It's very hard to predict.

We have now 1 month into this year, and we see that it is still roughly more stable than during 2024. If that is going to continue, like I said, I can't predict the weather, and in the Netherlands unfortunately.

For now, it looks more stable than last year, yes.

Predrag Savinovic

That's very good. Then Q4 is generally renewal season for you, and we're already in February, you should have quite some good visibility on the growth pace in the recurring revenues for '26.

Given the uncertain times we're in now, would you consider giving us some indication of how the recurring revenue growth organically is progressing for Q1, maybe without saying numbers, but maybe you can add in line with '25 or in line with the fourth quarter, and so on?

Olle Backman

What I can say is, of course, that the pricing mechanism within the growth is roughly 1% lower than last year, just given that the indexes that fuel that is roughly 1% lower. Churns are roughly the same as last year, around 1%.

We don't put specific guidance, but with that in mind, we are expecting so 1% less from pricing, but still a few percentage is up. I think the KPIs will sort of come in at roughly between 2% and 3%.

Last year they were between 3%

Predrag Savinovic

and 4%. That's very good.

Then in total, maybe some upsell from volume?

Olle Backman

That has been the case.

Predrag Savinovic

Slightly lower than the pace for.

Olle Backman

Yeah. All things equal, perhaps 1 percentage down just from the pricing if we can keep up the upsell.

Predrag Savinovic

That's very clear. Then, Olle, you state that you were not satisfied with the EBIT margin for the full year and gradually expect it to reach at least 20%.

What is the time frame, and what kind of margin phasing do you expect for the coming year?

Olle Backman

We actually hit the 20% mark, which is an operating profit, but it's also part of that goal is to increase. Continuous improvements, that's what Vitec is all about, grinding, grinding, and gradually improving.

In that case, we didn't succeed during last year, what I'm looking forward to and then what we are pushing our business units towards, that's both through, of course, organic growth, but also through efficiencies to gradually improve. No big numbers, but take a few steps every quarter to improve margins.

That's what we aim for.

Predrag Savinovic

Super. Thank you very much for taking my questions.

Olle Backman

Thanks, Predrag.

Operator

The next question comes from Erik Larsson from SEB. Please go ahead.

Erik Larsson

Hello. I had a question on sentiment.

Obviously looking at public markets, it's been a clearly negative sentiment here over the past quarters, and especially recently here. At the same time, I have the impression that the general interest to acquire companies in your space in the private market has remained at a high level.

For you and your competitors being more operationally active, it doesn't really appear you see the same risks as maybe public investors do. Just wanted to hear your thoughts about that sort of disparity in perception.

Olle Backman

No, it's true that it's not necessarily true that we don't see any risk. We probably see parts of it, but we haven't seen it operationally.

We can't see that our markets are sort of fading away, that we are increasing the competition. We have always competition, for sure.

We're not worse off than anyone else. We using the same tools, we have the same talented people, we can work with all of that as well.

On top of that, we have the infrastructure, we have the knowledge of the industries, we have the support staff which know our customers, we have their confidence since many years, it's all down to the brand promise to be able to rely on today and tomorrow. If you sum all of that, you can do the math.

We can count on these cash flows, we can make a fair assumption of the predictions. Where the risks or the fears that are out there, we can't really see them yet.

Hence the private market is still there. It doesn't move up as fast as the public market either, and it certainly hasn't moved down.

Of course over time, if there is a huge downturn, which has been here, we would expect it to materialize also in the private market, because of course for some of these companies, it is a potential sort of next step to go public. Of course we're looking forward to seeing some slight sort of more modest pricings or what we could call it in the private market, but for now the interest is still there.

All these acquisitions we have done have been highly competitive, there's lots of people that are still very interested in these companies and see a great potential in them.

Erik Larsson

Great, thanks for that color. I just had another question on your most recent acquisition here of Infometric.

Could you just give any indication in terms of the revenue split, subscription, transaction, services, etc.?

Olle Backman

I can do that a bit. Like you see, it's roughly 45%, 40% to 45% is the recurring revenue rate as we go on, and they have a highly interesting model, which we really like.

It is a SaaS company, they have their own software, which looks like all the other companies, but what they have is they also sell in a projects or they sell products. These are third-party components products, not of our own, we're just buying them on the open market, and we bundle it together either in projects or in product sales.

The conversion ratio from selling the products over to SaaS on software is close to 100%. For every piece of hardware that gets installed, because you need the meters out there.

This is IMD, individual metering data, for electricity and heating and water. Of course you need infrastructure out there, currently I think the conversion or the installed base is just over 20% in the market, for foreseeable future, we can sort of fuel our recurring revenues with doing these projects and converting them over and having the long-term relationship that you have with your subscription customers.

Roughly 45% is recurring revenue today on the software, and then the rest is I think it's two thirds are our own projects and one third is pure product sales where, typically other electrical contractors are buying the products from us.

Erik Larsson

That's very helpful. That's all from me as well, thank you.

Olle Backman

Thanks, Erik.

Operator

The next question comes from Daniel Thorsson from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.

Daniel Thorsson

Yes, thank you very much. I follow up on Predrag's last question there on the margin journey ahead.

How do you view your organic net recruitment pace going forward, given increased productivity among software engineers? I guess you can become more efficient with AI, as you showed in the graph as well, or in the slide as well, and need less developers.

Is that the way we should see it, or?

Olle Backman

Like I said, I haven't heard from anyone in the industry, and certainly not for ourselves, that this has yet led to any sort of reduction in staff. What we have been is a lot more cautious about recruiting, when you have people going to retirement or people leave for any other reasons, we really question, "Okay, can we shift around staff?

Can we do things more with that efficiency?" We're hoping for that.

We've seen some of it, but it hasn't materialized super high yet. For sure, we are sort of expecting, like any other technological shift that we have been through for our last 40 years, that we will become more efficient.

In software also the decades and decades of improvement, most of that improvements end up with the customer. They get more bang for the buck, they get better software, they get more services, they get better features.

A lot of the productivity ends up at the customer's side, but for sure, we are expecting productivity gains, yes.

Daniel Thorsson

Following up on that one again. On that slide, you showed both growth levers from AI and cost reductions.

Do you think you will see greater effect from AI use cases mainly on costs or on revenues a few years out?

Olle Backman

I think for now we are mostly seeing it in actually products and in increased sort of pace when it comes to transforming legacy software, for instance, and things like that. In that case, we're still seeing more on the revenue side than on the cost side, because the difference between Vitec or any other VMS company and the horizontal is that we have 49 development departments, I have 49 of everything, because that's the decentralized model and that is working super well for us.

I think VMS companies, yes, we will have some efficiency in the sense that we will become more productive, and that should more be on the revenue side actually than on the cost side.

Daniel Thorsson

I see. That's helpful.

Then finally, which company or companies was the reversed earn-out here in Q4 linked to?

Olle Backman

It's actually five companies in that sort of bucket, because we do that it's based on the year-end numbers. We have basically if you take the recent acquisitions.

Not the absolute latest one because that's too early, but acquisitions from the last 2, 3 years.

Daniel Thorsson

I see. No, that's very clear.

That's all. Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Fredrik Nilsson from Redeye. Please go ahead.

Fredrik Nilsson

Thank you. Hi, Olle and Patrik.

I want to continue a bit on the discussion of AI from another perspective, perhaps. You have exposure to a lot of different industries, obviously, but if we focus on the most tech-savvy ones, what's the feedback you currently get from those regarding your product offering?

Are they eager for new AI features, for example?

Olle Backman

A lot of our customers, or nearly all of them, wants to discuss, and yet again here it is that they should be able to rely on us that they can benefit from the AI functionality. That's the beauty when you have a standardized software, because we develop features which is based on the industry's total need.

They might say, "Okay, I have this need." Then we say, "Yeah, but this and this is in our pipeline."

Like, "Oh, great." It's a benefit of the standardized software.

At the same time, they really want to hear that, okay, we're on it, we're working on it, and we have it in the pipeline, and we can also show them at present with some really nice features. A lot of them are super conservative.

They say, "Yeah, we want all of that, but please don't change anything." It's sort of the next sentence.

They are really sort of more or less reluctant to do any big bang changes, because this is one of the moats around vertical market software is that it is so embedded into the customer's processes. It's a very slow-moving animal here.

Yes, they want to benefit, but they don't want to change anything at the same time. You will have to do this very gradually.

The important thing is that they feel that they can benefit from these improvements over time. A lot of them are not in a hurry.

Fredrik Nilsson

Great. That's interesting.

Regarding other external costs, they were up almost 20% compared to the same quarter last year, which already was at quite high level. Is that due to a different cost mix in acquired companies, perhaps, or am I missing something else?

Olle Backman

No, you're right about that. For instance, NMG in Poland where it is sort of a bit market practice and market standard that a lot of the what we call employees, but they are still on contractors, it is a bit different mix in that sense, yes, from the acquired companies.

Fredrik Nilsson

Great. Thank you very much.

That's all for me.

Operator

The next question comes from Thomas Nilsson from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Thomas Nilsson

Thank you for taking my question, and congratulations on a strong report. I just want to ask some of these obvious questions that I get from investors all the time.

Do you at Vitec see any risk of seat compression going forward due to AI? That is, customers are becoming more efficient and they may also hold back on recruiting, resulting in fewer hires and fewer software seat subscriptions.

What do you answer when investors ask you that?

Olle Backman

In the long run, yes, that is a possible development. That is why we have been working for the past 3 years, I think, in the sectors where we see that.

It's not across the line for sure. Like I mentioned, we have a less than 1% churn still this year, it's not something that we see, but it is a potential future development.

We have been working with pricing models, more sort of value-based pricing, because if our customers become more efficient through the software that we are providing, we are adding a great value for them. Really good if they can benefit from being more efficient, but we shouldn't get punished for it.

We must sort of work with the business models and the pricing models, and this is yet again not exclusively for Vitec, that is across every software company. We're not seeing it as of yet, seat compression, no, but it has been on our radar for many years because it is a potential development going forward.

The answer to that is looking into the pricing model and adding more value to our customers, and of course we should be remunerated for adding value.

Patrik Fransson

Thomas, Patrik here, just short also. I think this is nothing new.

Digitalization has always been about improving and do more with less people, so that's been ongoing for 40, 50 years. That's the whole thing about digitalization, so that's nothing new.

Yes, the pace might increase for sure, but it's not a new thing for us to work on. It's always been there.

Business as usual in that sense, it's always been the case. Will the pace increase?

Probably. Then like Olle said, that's how we're thinking of it and according to pricing models.

Thomas Nilsson

Thank you very much.

Operator

The next question comes from Victor Lindström from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead.

Victor Lindström

Hi all. Hi.

Just one one question for me here. Given the current market dynamics, would you say that you have changed your acquisition criteria once evaluating new M&A targets?

No,

Olle Backman

not changed it. I think that is one of the big things here that we are very consistent in when we look for the criteria.

Of course, pricing, we always try to pay a fair value within what we think is sort of possible. That's why also the pace has been a bit less, we have tried just as hard, we have looked just as many companies, but we have just lost more because we are still quite prudent when it comes to pricing.

Of course, if, like we said initially, the downturn in public valuations, if that should impact on the private market, yes, if it is in the long run because some of them have the public market as sort of potential next step. Yep, we would look forward to that, but as of now, like I mentioned, there are a lot of nice companies out there, there's still high competition for these targets, and as long as we can sort of do our calculations and if it is within our criteria and our valuation models, we will try to continue.

Victor Lindström

Great. Thank you very much.

That was all for me.

Operator

The next question comes from Daniel Lindkvist from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Daniel Lindkvist

Hi, guys. Just a follow-up on Dan and Fredrik's questions earlier on.

Basically with the NMG, is there a seasonality to be taken into account? It seems like they've added quite some in Q4 given the expected size of the acquisition and also what you report if they would have been in the numbers for the full year.

Olle Backman

NMG is growing quite extensively. It is a really gross case, that's what we expected.

The model there, their customers are the grid owners in Poland. There are only seven potential customers, I think we do business with six out of seven.

The way these models work, you sign multi-year contracts where you do a lot of development, there is a high degree of services, and all that services is basically, CapEx for our customers, and then that translates over into recurring revenue. Usually 15%, 20% of that services then fuels next year's recurring revenue.

NMG is growing fast, and they are doing a tremendous job. We're expecting that to continue at least for a few years because they have lots of interesting prospects in the pipeline.

Daniel Lindkvist

Great. Then just now I'm trying to get my model to work here, basically on the cost of goods sold and the other external expenses in relation to the NMG subscription-based recurring revenues, service revenues, and other revenues, is there something to take into account with the gross margins?

Are the subscription-based recurring revenues on lower gross margins than we used to, or are the third-party

Olle Backman

No, the subscription for NMG, that's pure software revenue, it is equivalent to the others. It's 90%-plus gross margin on the subscription part.

Then the services, of course, that's ours that we put in.

Daniel Lindkvist

There's no split of income from them in any way, so that's also a high gross margin bit is. Then it's in other revenue then that the third-party part of their business ends up?

Olle Backman

No, the NMG doesn't have a lot of third party. They either have services or they have recurring revenue.

That's what they sell. They don't sell any hardware, they don't sell any third-party components.

Daniel Lindkvist

Okay. Then just on the other external expenses, should I read that as being that the costs are ending up there instead of in personnel expenses then or instead of that in cost of good Okay, instead of personnel expenses.

Great. Then nothing further from my side.

Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Olle Backman

Thank you all for participating and the questions, and then just summing up. I think we posted a decent quarter.

We were happy with the growth. We could have done better on the margins, although they were okay.

Cash-flow-wise, it was really strong, so that was a positive note. Then of course, we managed to close these acquisitions that we're super happy with.

That would be all for now for us. Thank you for listening, and take care.