Welcome to today's presentation where we are joined by Inderes. Today's topic, of course, full-year '25 results released yesterday and the '26 guidance, and a kind of a look into financial market also, I guess.

You are a good indicator on what is going on there. If you're not an investor, maybe still worth to follow this presentation.

We're joined by Mikael Rautanen, CEO of Inderes. As always, it's possible to ask questions down in the box down below during the presentation.

We'll take the main part in the end, and also for full disclosure, we of course need to say that HCA and Inderes have a partnership and Inderes has a 20% stake in HC Andersen. I think with that, I will hand the call over to you, Mikael.

Thank you, Michael, and welcome everyone watching the webcast. Financial statements, we released it yesterday.

Let's go through the full year, the fourth quarter, a bit of deep dive into each of our businesses and and strategy update. The year, we ended on a like positive note, I would say.

Growth picked up to 12% in the last quarter, and EBITDA improved 6% from 1% last year. Not great, but significant improvement year-over-year.

At the same time, like last quarter picked up, we had some good momentum, now also in Sweden, in the events business. Like the market sentiment, we feel is getting better, especially we're seeing more and more concrete signs of recovery in the in the IPO activity, which is a which is a significant driver for our target market growth.

Overall, there's like positive positive sentiment in the in the air going going to 2026. Looking at full year last year, full-year growth 4%, we're not happy with that; profitability, adjusted EBITA 11%, the combination fell short of our long-term targets, we're not where we want to be.

On one side, in Finland, our business is in very strong condition. Record result, even though it's been a very tough market in Finland, we're growing and doing extremely strong profitability.

Then on the other hand, we have been investing in international expansion, and those costs have affected the result, and we haven't achieved the growth level that we are aiming for in the international part at the same time. That's that's what what what's been affecting there.

Why haven't we succeed in achieving the level of international revenue growth we are aiming for? One thing is that the previous strategy that we had, we kind of like turned it around because the first strategy we started off the international expansion wasn't successful.

We updated our strategy last year, now focusing on the three different business units, each of them with their individual international expansion strategy. This change has brought in a lot of focus in in in the in the operations, and and and we're feeling that that this this this was the right right choice to do so.

I also have a positive positive feeling about of that that change. That's on the on the full year on high level.

We'll dive a bit deeper later on into the individual numbers. First going through each business unit, on the research business, on high level, this continues to be extremely resilient business, strong profitability, strong cash flow, sticky customer base in a declining market, but new customer acquisition has has been challenging.

Here, the business in Finland is doing very strong profitability, and at the same time, we've been investing aggressively in two things: first one, developing the the Inderes platform and the AI tools related to that operation to improve our international scalability; and the second investment area has been Sweden Sweden market entry where, looking back the past few years when we've been we've been going into that market, we haven't achieved the the the volume that we have been aiming for and the and the growth we have been aiming for. I want to be honest here.

We are still working on finding the recipe for international scalability of the equity research business. We will not increase our investments from current level until we find the recipe.

We we still need to work on work on finding the finding the go-to-market recipe to scale this business. It's extremely strong and resilient in our home market, but we need to find a recipe to scale it scale it internationally, and no doubt, we're going to find it eventually.

On the Inderes platform numbers, that also continues to be resilient, some pickup in the in the platform platform reach. We're having 66,000 active logged-in users annually, 21 million site visits per year.

That's kind of like demonstrating the the strength and and and reach of the of the Inderes platform. That number doesn't calculate our distribution channels through which we we reach even even bigger groups of investors.

Going to events business, low single-digit growth here, margin at previous year's level. This is a bit two-sided.

On on one hand, in Finland, this business did an excellent excellent result, strong profitability, good growth. This is because, after COVID, we made a strategic choice to push into hybrid events.

That strategic choice is now paying off. When COVID came, everyone went online.

When COVID went away, everyone went back to like physical events, there was a bit of a pullback in the market, and and we believed that it's going to be hybrid more and more in the future. Especially in the investor relations segment, hybrid is the future.

This strategic choice is is now starting to We're seeing it from the customer feedback. We're seeing it in the demand.

This strategic choice is now starting to pay off. Building the capabilities to do also not only the online events, but but hybrid events is is is starting to pay off.

On the other hand, in Sweden, we had a tough first half of the year in this business. That was mainly because of our internal changings.

We we did a structural adjustments to this this operating model in Sweden, and the good news is that in the second half, development stabilized, and we we won some quite quite good deals also on the on the event side in Sweden towards the end of the year, for example, big Capital Markets Day productions of of of some major companies. Good traction there as well going to to this year.

In this business, the development projects we're working on, we're also improving the scalability of this this business in many areas, implementing AI to our processes. One one big change this year, we're we're bringing in automation and remotely controlled studios that will enable this this business to better scale internationally.

Then on the software business, this business reached the level of €3 million revenue last year, growth of 22%. We're growing in all products, extremely sticky customer base, good growth.

Growth is mainly coming from Finland, but we've been building the capabilities to grow internationally as well, and and that's that's also starting to kick in. Here, a big milestone for us was the partnership with Euronext Corporate Services where where they have taken our Videosync platform as part of their events business, they're running running their events business on our our technology platform.

We have also strengthened that partnership, we're partnering in Sweden with Euronext Corporate Services on the on the investor relations software offering. That's one example of the strategy we have chosen to expand through partner partner channel.

Euronext Corporate Services as a they're kind of like a vast ecosystem integrated in in in the in the European capital market, it's a it's a very very good, good and strong partner for for player like Inderes to be in. Our offerings, like they're super strong in in in governance and compliance offering, so their part their offering is also very very good, complementing to to Inderes offering.

The IR suite we launched last year, we're kind of like bringing the whole software portfolio of Inderes together to one platform, and and we've been migrating our customers to this platform, and and, of course, the feedback has been has been excellent. Very very good very good feedback and feeling about about the choice we have made in this business to to bring the product portfolio together not only like bundle the offering in sales, but also bundle the offering technically because that will bring a lot of efficiencies for the investor relations of of the of the listed companies.

Then one one thing to highlight from last year, we did the ISO 27K certification, so that's also improving our our capability to serve even larger and larger demanding enterprise-grade clients. Good good momentum here and and also positive vibes going going to this year given given like how fast our product portfolio is is is developing in this this area.

Next, if we dive deeper into into the profit and loss statements, January-December, €19.1 million revenue, growth of 4%; recurring revenue up by 4%, and recurring revenue accounting 61% of of revenue; and international revenue 23% of of all revenues at previous year level. In the cost structure, no major changes.

The only significant item affecting the cost, the non-recurring costs related to restructuring of the Swedish operations we did in the first half of the year. Adjusted EBITA 11.1 4% compared to 11.6 last year, fell slightly below last year, and and reported EBITA 1.6, so there you can see the impact of the of the non-recurring items.

Here, I would like to always remind that we are operating under the Finnish accounting standards, which means that we are amortizing the goodwill from acquisitions in the history every year. This accounting item is is affecting our our our profit and loss statement last year, €0.9 million.

That's purely an accounting item, so that's why why we're encouraging investors to look at the adjusted EPS and EBITA to to follow our operating performance. Last quarter, revenue growth 12%, international revenue picking up slightly, so there are some positive positive signs in in in Sweden, and margin improving to 6% from 1% last year.

Minor changes in the in the cost structure given given our given the balance on on how much we're using external resources versus our own staff in the in the event productions. Balance sheet remains strong.

No major things to highlight on on on this one. We did €1.9 million cash flow from operating activities.

Investments were slightly up last year. That's mainly given given the seasonality in in in capex that we have.

Some years we're we're we're investing a bit more than than than others to to update the gear gear and studios and offices, no nothing dramatic there. Cash at the end of year, €1.8 million.

Given that we're a company still doing strong operating cash flow, we have a strong balance sheet, we have a strategy that we can execute with the operating cash flow the business is generating, we are sticking to our payout policy of annually increasing payout. That calculates dividends and share buybacks.

Now here, this year, the big change is that while we continue to increase the annual payout, we're giving a significantly higher weight on share buybacks over dividends. We're roughly halving the dividend compared to last year, and then we have announced a share buyback program worth of €0.9 million, targeting maximum of 4% of our of our outstanding shares.

I think that's that's signaling the the confidence of the board in the in the chosen strategy. Looking at the outlook for this year, we're guiding revenue to increase from last year and relative profitability in terms of adjusted EBITA to be in the range of 10 to 13%.

In the background of this guidance, we're expecting our market to pick up slightly this year. Profitability will continue to be affected, namely given the investments we are doing in the in the software business.

Also good to know that we're expecting the full-year earnings to be weighted towards the second half of the year. Financial targets, now 2024, 2025, we fell short of of our target of of combined revenue growth and profitability of 30%.

Looking at how strong our business is in in Finland and what kind of profitability and growth levels we can achieve in areas where we are in in more mature stage, we can easily stick to this this this target level and and and see that it is it is achievable. All right.

Any questions, Michael, at this stage?

No, let's take them in the end if you have something here. I think nothing really.

I think they are broad, let's take them in the end, and then we finalize the presentation.

Yeah. All right.

Let's zoom out a bit on where this company is going. In terms of evolution, basically Inderes was a Finland-only story until 2022.

Very successful scaling first the research business and then expanding the product portfolio to cover the events and software business. Very successful execution of that strategy.

Then from 2023 onwards, we've been on the road to scale this business internationally. Now we started this journey by basically taking the Finnish operating model with the full kind of end-to-end offering and tried to take that to a new country.

That strategy choice did not work. It lacked the kind of spearheads to go into those new markets.

It was kind of you need a sharp edge to go into a new market, and the previous strategy lacked that. Kind of I see 2023, '24 as a time when we were kind of recalibrating our organization, recalibrating ourselves into how should we work and organize to turn a company that has been locally operating for over a decade into an internationally thinking organization and company.

How should we structure? How to organize leadership?

On and so on. After that recalibration and also learning from the failures that we did on the way, we updated our strategy in the first half of 2025.

We split this into three business units: equity research, events, and software. Now, each of these businesses have their own unique characters.

They're somewhat different business models, somewhat different markets, somewhat different competition, and so forth, even though there's also a lot of synergies between them. Now we're going into the international growth with this organization split more clearly into three different units that have their own spearheads and own international strategies.

That has just brought so much better focus into leading this company and finding the recipes to also grow outside Finland. I have a good feeling about this change that we have implemented.

In software, I see the path is quite clear. Also with events, it's pretty clear how we're going to execute the strategy until 2030.

In equity research, as I mentioned, there's a very solid and resilient business that we have, but we still need to work on cracking the code on how to scale that business internationally. In the equity research part, short-term, I wouldn't expect a strong growth.

It's going to be mainly short-term driven by the IPO activity. Going to the IPO activity, we often talk a lot about IPOs, but the other side of the coin is the number of delistings.

That pretty well in Denmark. I don't have Denmark in these graphs, but you've had quite a lot of delistings, and when you have a lot of delistings, it means that the market is declining.

Now going to this year, we're seeing more and more concrete activity, and that's a positive sign for us, especially given that our product offering and the portfolio is much stronger and much more comprehensive compared to the last IPO wave that we had. That's a good sign, and not too many delistings either in Finland and Sweden.

A few words on AI. How we approach this is, well, first of all, you can look at it from the kind of market perspective, what's happening in our industry, because AI is changing how investors find and analyze companies, how they pick stocks.

That is changing how investor relations should be run. That we can approach from the point of view of each of our business units.

For example, with research, if you're using AI tools to go through a company that is under Inderes research coverage, you're probably going to find the AI tools referring to Inderes research. That's because our research is open and accessible for all investors.

You're not going to find the bank research that is behind locks. For companies, it's becoming more and more crucial to make sure that there's accurate and accessible information in the tools that investors use.

Our research is basically solving this problem. In the events business, we're seeing the flood of new content.

What's anymore relevant? There's so much content coming from every channel because it's so easy to generate content.

What's relevant? How can investors pick the signal?

What we're doing here is, this is real time. This is the company CEO speaking with own face.

This is authentic. I would say the relevance of this type of investor communication is only going to be emphasized going forward.

I think live events is a great product for this. Then on the software side, complexity of running your IR is increasing.

The world of investor relations is becoming more and more complex. At the same time, you need to be managing separate system from multiple vendors, and it's becoming difficult.

The importance of getting all the tools for running your IR on a modern, integrated platform is probably going to be the future. That's where we're aiming for.

That's how we see what's happening in the industry. I think the key here is to understand how is investor behavior going to change, because that, in turn, is going to be changing how companies should run their investor relations operations.

Looking inside Inderes, of course, we have a lot of AI experiments and projects going on throughout the organization on all different business units. Goes without saying that we need to start using these tools to improve our productivity significantly.

That won't give us a lasting competitive advantage. That's just something you need to do to stay in the game, I believe.

At the same time, we're all the time bringing in new features, AI-based features, to service that we offer for the investors, namely in the research side. We're bringing in new features to the investor relations products that we're offering.

We're improving our international scalability. For example, in the research business, language barriers have been one of the obstacles for international scalability because local language, especially for the retail investors, has been important.

Basically that obstacle is now going away. We can produce content in multiple languages with a very very low cost, and that's, of course, helps the scalability.

Then, of course, looking into how can we come up with completely new products and business models, I think that's always been the strength of this company and the culture. We've been quite curious about new technologies and tools, and quite agile into coming up with new ways to use them to democratize investor information and build new businesses.

With that conclusion, shall we go to the

Let's jump into it, Mikael. Software is increasingly increasing in importance, but software is pronounced dead due to AI.

What are your thoughts about that potential competition? Have you seen any new players out there?

You of course can extract some synergies, should you come up with new products, but I guess does it open up also a new playing field for competition coming in from the outside, or how do you see that, and how are you protecting yourself from that threat?

We are quite new entrant to the software space, kind of I see us as the new player coming into that market and quite a bit disrupting and renewing that market. That's how I would position Inderes.

Then one thing with this industry is that the buyers are quite conservative, and not often that tech-savvy. It's also kind of a balance between kind of how innovative you can go, or how much you invest in compared to how kind of eager the clients are to switch to new technologies.

It's a balance. You are the one eating their software, if I should understand you correctly.

Then there's, why such a large interval on the margin guidance? You have 10 to 13%.

That was like a large interval. Last year you you were about Is that the uncertainty on how much you're going to invest?

I don't see it as that large, given kind of how uncertain the world is nowadays. Leave some flexibility for that, and also leave some flexibility if we see good investment opportunities that we have the ability to move without needing to issue a profit warning, basically, because if we see investment opportunities, usually it means in our case more costs, because we're running everything through our profit and loss statement.

We're not activating R&D and so forth.

Then there's question, do you see Claude as a threat or opportunity in the equity research model? Claude coming out with this pretty fancy model for, yeah, especially financial analysts.

Do you see that as a threat, or isn't it as always been that financial analysis is also about the name, about having an opinion, having a trustness versus all these, yeah, highly improved AI models helping to model and do financial equity research?

I would more see that's an opportunity to increase the productivity of the research operation significantly, still having the equity analysts, the human, in the driver's seat. I think that's going to stay at least for the foreseeable future, because equity research, there's also what type of information will the investors trust?

Will they trust AI-generated equity research and recommendation? If the supply of this type of equity research and content is going to explode, what's the information that investors, who are humans, will consume?

I believe that the role of having the analysts with their face and the personal brands around the equity analysts is just going to be emphasized, but those equity analysts have to start using more and more AI tools to remain relevant in their profession.

Yeah. I have started talking about how are we going to train up junior equity analysts because that is under pressure with Claude, but it's very very good at doing their job.

As a business, we kind of need to take on a responsibility, because if we don't train anybody, nobody's going to be the senior. Yeah.

Then on the software side, you talked about increasing investments, and you talked about in the international organization. Are you inventing new products, or is it more about integrating with such one as Euronext partners and so on, integrating more into the international business?

Is that where you see the main part of your software investments and satisfied with that part? Is that all satisfied with the product offering you already have, or is it also new product offerings you are looking at investing into this year?

You can never be satisfied with your product portfolio. You need to always invest and improve it.

In software specifically, it's two things. The first one is R&D.

Actually last year, our R&D spending was up by 40%. That's driven by both the investments we're doing in equity research, but also in the software business.

R&D, and the second one is sales and commercialization. Those are the two areas we're putting more investments in.

Then Euronext, that's quite a big partner in Europe. Ramp-up, is that why you're saying second half you're expecting some growth, or is the IPO activity?

How fast is this going to ramp up? I know a partner driven is nice.

It gives you a very very large sales force, a very potential for accelerating growth, but you also not in control of the speed of all of the partners. Any thoughts about how fast is this going to ramp up with them going out and offering your solutions?

There's two things here. The Videosync partnership that we announced in November 2024, they are taking our system to run their events operation.

Kind of once the implementation is completely completed, then it's going to come as a revenue for us, and that has been reflected already in the last year and fourth quarter.

It's just you're starting to see some of that business actually now having been implemented in their systems and starting to run. Is that how we should understand it?

Yes. Then the second part of the partnership that we announced early this year, so that's pretty new, that's focused in Sweden, and that's where we combine our IR software offering into their compliance offering.

That's going into a new market, new sales, usually products that have pretty long sales cycles. They might have some vendor locks with the existing suppliers.

That's a partnership that should be viewed in a quite long term because it starts revenue and it starts accumulating one client by one client. Perhaps that's the color I can give on those two aspects.

Then overall in the big picture, of course, we're super happy with the partnership, and kind of they're a major player in the European capital markets. It's a very very very important partnership for us.

Last, and then I will leave you off the hook,

the questions you asked as an equity analyst, but don't want to answer as a CEO: change from dividends to share buybacks, do you think your share is undervalued? Is that behind that change, or any other thoughts about changing the way?

You still want to distribute more, but now you just do it in a more flexible form.

What we're saying is completely in line with our payout policy that says that it has the flexibility on how much is dividend, how much is buyback. Then the board makes a decision that what type of a split is optimal for long-term shareholder value creation.

Let's just put it that way.

You learned a political answer.

Exactly, yeah. I learned from the best, other CEOs.

Exactly.

They've covered that now in Nokia and a lot of big companies in the old days. Perfect.

I think that was actually the last question, Mikael. Thank you for taking us through your results, taking a look a little bit into it.

Nice to hear a little bit optimism about the IPO market. That's always a sign of financial markets, and yeah, the final comments here.

Thank you, Mikael, and thank you for the audience listening in.

Thanks, Michael. Bye.

Bye.