Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Välkommen till LeadDesk halvårs presentation live from Stockholm. Welcome everybody to LeadDesk half a year report presentation live from Stockholm.
Today we are hosting for the first time outside of Finland in Stockholm, which is of course, as a vibrant capital markets city, and as well as that, of course, it was our first market outside of Finland, and now after the recent signing of Ace acquisition, it's going to be our largest market then by the end of the year as well. I'm happy, happy also to be here as we see that the Swedish market has performed well, and for example, European sovereignty has been a big topic here for quite a few years already, while other European countries are picking up on that trend.
Today we are looking at the growth journey we've been taking and the latest steps there, and of course, then focusing on our first half year this year. On the agenda, we have many topics, but before that, I would also of course like to introduce my CFO, Teemu Rautiainen, who's here together with me.
Teemu Rautiainen
Hello.
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
With him, we're going to be presenting, firstly, of course, the first half a year takeaways. I'm going to be presenting LeadDesk in brief, looking at the things that we've been doing on the first half, as well as then, of course, deep diving on the Ace acquisition and opening up the logic behind that, and then giving off to Teemu to present the financials, and then looking at the outlook for the rest of the year.
As typical for our release casts, we'll be having a fireside chat together with Lotta Backlund then at the end of the session, you have the chance to ask your questions at the end then and post them on the Q&A section in the meeting. Then moving along first to a short executive summary and the key takeaways of our first year.
Looking at firstly, profitability, this has been a big topic we've been discussing, and on the profitability, we're happy to say that we're improving quarter over quarter our LTM. We are steadily on the track to our target of 20% of EBITDA.
Our overall revenue declined a bit, but on the other hand, looking at the Nordic own software side, we were growing, which I'm super happy about. As we've said, we are doing portfolio management and we're looking at our portfolio, and we have been downscaling on resell revenue that we've had previously to a smaller extent, but we're downscaling on that at the moment, focusing on our own software, our own AIPR, where, of course, we have the best business and the happiest customers.
Lastly, then, of course, as I said earlier, the Ace acquisition, Telia Ace acquisition, that we announced after the period, that's a big topic. It has a big, big strategic meaning for us, and I'll be happy to share a little bit more later on on that.
In general, the two large numbers I would like you to remember is we grew by 5% with our own software in the Nordics, which is our home market, and on the other hand, we've been growing LTM EBITDA quarter over quarter, now reaching 18%, just two percentage points away from our target of 20. With those words, I would then like to jump on to presenting LeadDesk, and some of the great things that we've been doing firstly on the vision side.
On the vision side, AI is naturally a big topic and the positioning needs to evolve by that, and I'm just going to jump into that now. For some reason, the view didn't flip there, sorry about that.
On this, on the vision, we are working towards becoming Europe's most trusted AI-driven, voice-first customer interaction platform. That's the target.
What we want to achieve is that we want to be Europe's most trusted AI-driven customer interaction platform. Just want to pause here for a sec, I'll explain what this means now.
On this, if we look at what it means to be Europe's most trusted AI-driven, voice-first customer interaction platform, what it means is that firstly, as we all know, European sovereignty has become a huge topic across Europe. As I said earlier, for example, in the Swedish public sector, this has already been a big topic for quite a few years, but we have been built in Europe for Europeans and we've always relied heavily on European suppliers and been very much European.
This now is something that is brought also to the vision level. We want to be European by heart.
Then, on the other hand, what we are doing, and especially now looking at the acquisition of Telia Ace, this takes us even further there. We are working with mission-critical organizations and with very, very high demands on the quality of service that we must provide.
This has always been the case, but is just now underlined by the fact that we are serving Nordic customers on all sectors, public sector, enterprises, and so on, and we need to have that trust. On the other hand, then, AI is something that's transforming the world and it's transforming how organizations communicate with their customers.
At this, we are AI-driven. We're not hoping to be a fundamental AI bedrock, such as the OpenAIs and so on.
We utilize the big tech technology here, also trying to be sovereign European, and then bring that benefit and help our customers in their AI transformations. We see this as a huge topic.
We are in the right place to carry out this exercise with our customers. We have the data and the conversations flow through our platform, we are the natural partner for our customers to implement AI in their customer interactions.
Then moving along to voice-first. This is one of the superpowers that we have.
Our history is from voice. We have a lot of investments into voice.
We can provide mission-critical level voice services to enterprise and public sector. This is really something that sets us apart from many of the competitors as well.
We, for example, have a very strong CPaaS platform of our own. We don't fully rely on others, but we have that inside the portfolio.
This also a big differentiator towards many of the competitors. Customer interactions, that's where we thrive and that's where we are best.
We help organizations with their customer interactions, and that's where we want to succeed and we want to prosper. Lastly, then we are a platform where utilizing other technologies naturally, and we're helping out partners provide services to our customers.
We are gaining the scale where other companies now integrate to us to be able to provide services to our customers. Europe's most trusted AI-driven, voice-first customer interaction platform, that's our vision 2030.
Then looking at LeadDesk in brief for the ones of you who haven't participated earlier, firstly, what does LeadDesk do? We provide a cloud-based communication platform for customer service and sales enablement.
The use cases being, for example, customer service and sales organizations across enterprises or public sector. We service the most demanding organizations, like, for example, banking, finance, insurance, also the public sector and especially the healthcare sector.
These are in the fundamental core of our offering. We operate across Europe, our home market is Finland, Sweden, and Norway.
That's our home market. Then we span across the Continental Europe, reaching down to Mediterranean and Spain.
As said, we aspire to be the most trusted AI-driven, voice-first customer interaction platform for European companies to trust on and have their customer operations run on. Then looking at a bit of the numbers, not stealing the thunder from Teemu, but if we look at our growth journey, we've been growing heavily since 2014, 22% CAGR.
Since we listed in 2019, we've been also focusing quite a bit on our profitability, and as said, happy to say that we've been able to increase it quarter over quarter and now reaching 18% LTM for the first half. As earlier communicated, this is a bit of repetition of course, but what we are focusing on now is the profitability part.
That's our core focus. We want to focus more.
We do portfolio focusing, operational focusing, focus, focus, focus to gain better profitability, and then by having that better focus and the alignment, we can reach then to the higher growth phase and investments into growth while maintaining that profitability. SaaS business is all about scale, of course, scale matters here, and we believe that we can then profitably grow also in the future.
That's briefly about LeadDesk, and then I want to move on to the Telia Ace acquisition, which significantly strengthens our Nordic position and enables then a larger market for our AI offering. On this, I just want to give a bit of a background to our previous acquisitions as well before diving into the logic behind Ace.
If we look at what we've been building throughout the years, we have a repeatable M&A model here, where we gain scale and can create value. That's the idea.
Firstly, we have been consolidating the market. That's the first pillar.
We have vertical solutions that we've been consolidating the market on. Now these vertical solutions sit on top of our foundation, which is our cloud operations and CPaaS.
What this means is that in a mission-critical communication platform, the SLAs are 20 minutes, and that's not 20 minutes for replying to an inquiry, that's 20 minutes from problem to resolution. That's something where really operational excellence matters, and that we've built, and that we can utilize across all vertical solutions.
On the other hand, we have our CPaaS platform, as I said, we're really happy about being voice-first and about our voice platform. Here, we can, of course, provide the same guarantees on the availability and quality, but also this is the fundamental layer that connects our verticals to help our customers achieve.
That's done by expanding the LeadDesk offering across all these vertical solutions. A great example of one of the acquisitions here was, for example, Fluentic, which we did at the beginning of the year, providing the capabilities of multilingual customer service and sales to all our platforms.
That's a great example. For example, providing multilingual live translation to all the platforms that we can then offer independent of the underlying vertical solution.
This is a big, big opportunity for us going forward. Then moving on to actually then Telia Ace.
What is Telia Ace? Telia Ace is a trusted platform for mission-critical customers.
It's a communication platform for mission-critical customers. It's built for sovereign European, it's a sovereign European, and it can also utilize together with us, it can utilize our AI functionality, for example, the Fluentic live translations then in the future.
On top of that, we see that our voice platform is well-developed and integration to our CPaaS platform will benefit the existing customer base and enable also future customers. Ace in itself fits very well with our core industry focus as well, as much of its customer base is in public sector, healthcare, and financial services.
That's a very good add-on to the mix. On the actual acquisition deal that we signed in July, in July, we signed deal to acquire, subject to, of course, regulatory approvals and the normal things, to acquire the Telia Ace platform, the IPR, and the engineering department and the everything that's needed to really handle Ace.
Through that, then of course, we gain a fantastic platform and a great opportunity, but at the same time, of course, there are commitments and revenue involved. By this then, Sweden becomes our largest market, our single largest market then in the group, surpassing Norway that was previously the largest.
It also enhances our reseller network as then Telia will become our reseller in the markets it operates in. On Ace itself, some numbers: over 100,000 users across the Nordics, and over 90 really committed communication professionals primarily in Sweden, Lithuania, and Finland.
Lastly, but not least, then if we look at the pro forma revenue for the combination of LeadDesk once this deal is concluded, then on the pro forma side, we will reach over $50 million in revenues, thereby giving the scale that's fundamental to any SaaS business that I also mentioned earlier. Here, if we look at the other strengths that the scale then brings, on that side, at the moment, of course, we have good offering, but with this team and the added capabilities, basically, what we foresee is that we can now start competing in even the most complex tenders across the Nordics and Europe in the future.
Of course, then there's also economics of scale to be gained here, and I believe that this, in the mid-term, this would also be very beneficial for our profitability and revenue growth going forward. Lastly, but not leastly, the opportunity to provide our AI solutions to these customers, to the existing Telia Ace customers.
I'm really enthusiastic about going and meeting with those customers as well, hopefully then later on, and really providing then opportunities for upgrading on the AI path and really getting, for example, the multilingual capabilities from our offering or AI-based chatbots, AI insights, analytics, and so on. Super excited about being able to bring AI into the mix.
As and you've seen from our releases as well, here, we are really excited about being now able to work together with Telia to continue the success of Ace, and also at the same time, it's very important for us to be able to bring these other functionalities to the market together with them. On the other side, then we are getting over 90 great professionals developing the product platform, and that's something we need to also pick up on and we need to constantly develop and make it even better in the future.
Naturally, on the other side, we do have an existing partner network also across the Nordics, and we are remaining committed to an open partner model, and we do foresee that the open partner network works in our favor, and we've been able to have some great successes, for example, in Norway there. Lastly, but not least, we've done quite a few acquisitions in our past, the one learning from those to share is that it's all about the people.
Nothing works without the people. I have a saying that companies, they are just VAT numbers.
Synonym for a company is fellowship in English, and a fellowship is what we are. We need to be on this journey together.
We need to get one team together. We are going to be about 300 customer interaction professionals, we need to work as a fellowship to really bring that sovereign European AI-driven trusted platform to our customers.
That's what we now need to do, and that's the number one thing also on my agenda. It's all about the people, and we need to now succeed together after the transaction is concluded.
We need to build one team and work on one target and one goal. Super excited about getting so many long-time professionals in the communication space on board.
Here, I'll conclude my first session, and give it off to Teemu for some of the financials to share with you.
Teemu Rautiainen
Thank you, Olli, and nice to be presenting here in Stockholm, also on my behalf. I'll start my presentation discussing on our top-line performance and the revenue mix.
Then I will discuss the increased profitability and end the presentation with the balance sheet structure. Let's start with the top line.
As you have read from the release, while our aggregate revenue came slightly down in the first half of the year, our own revenue, our own software revenue in the Nordics grew in this period, and we are happy about that because that's the core of our business. In H1, our revenue declined by 3% to $19 million, and then in the LTM period that we like to look at, the revenue was $38.8 million and the decline was 1%.
The decline was due to the fact that we, that we announced already earlier in our outlook for '26 that we are reviewing our portfolio, and we are reviewing the, some unprofitable customers and products. Now we have indicated that that is roughly 8% and, and the impact will last until mid or until the end of '28, and we estimate that maximum half of that will impact this year.
Now we saw part of that impact in the H1 and, and there will be some impact also in H2. Additionally, also what we have communicated earlier, in the Spanish, the Spanish telemarketing regulation has intensified, and that's impacted on our CPaaS communication platform as a service revenues in Spain.
Then on the other hand, and positively, like said, our own software revenues grew by 2% globally and by 5% in the Nordics, and this was driven by the positive Nordic momentum, especially in the customer service software, for example, in our Doma products, and also the recent acquisitions we have done. Then looking at our ARR, we changed our ARR KPI or metric from the beginning of the year.
Currently, we report the revenue-based ARR instead of the ARR contract-based, and that is because we, that is more comparable to our peers and we believe that that also is a better indicator of our performance in the period. The impacts in the ARR obviously are same as with the revenue, but since ARR measures the last three months of the period, the impact was slightly higher because, because they, well they happened in the middle of the quarter, measured at the end, slightly higher impact.
Positively, and what we have discussed earlier, we have been focusing on our net revenue retention, NRR, and that improved in the first half of '26. We haven't disclosed that number, but, but we can say that that, that number improved, meaning that we have been able to grow with our existing customers.
Then Olli already highlighted, but I also want to highlight the Telia Ace acquisition, so that is taking us, when, when closed the end of the year, to above $50 million revenue, so that is a step up in our revenue and, and taking us to a new scale. That is important and taking, making Sweden as our largest single market, making us even stronger in our Nordic home markets and increasing the momentum in the Nordics.
It's also increasing our revenue in customer service software, which is also important and core of our business. Looking at the revenue mix, LeadDesk has three businesses: LeadDesk has software business, LeadDesk has the CPaaS business, communication platform as a service, and a services business.
Our software represents 76% of the total revenue, while CPaaS is roughly 20 and services couple of percentages. Then our software further breaks down into our own software, which is the blue part in the graph, and, and our, some third-party resell software revenue that, that we are, well, reselling to our customers.
That's the, the grey part. That's roughly the also the part 8% that we are, we are reviewing currently.
If when looking then more, more in more details the our own software revenues, it comprises of customer service and AI revenue and sales enablement software revenue. LeadDesk started with the sales enablement focus, software to sales improve the productivity and efficiency of sales processes.
Then LeadDesk started building customer service software in-house, and through the acquisitions has increased the share of the customer service revenue to, to higher, and the and AI to higher than the sales enablement. The most recently, the Doma acquisition took that, that revenue higher than the sales enablement.
Now the announced Telia Ace acquisition will make the customer service and AI revenue more than half of the total revenue of LeadDesk and roughly 2/3 of our ARR, so that's a significant step-up in the customer service revenue. Why is it important?
It's important because customer service software is usually bought by bigger companies, bigger customers, meaning that net revenue retention dynamics are better. Usually retention is higher.
We have more upsell opportunities, we can build we have better growth opportunities and we can build a scalable business based on that. It's also an area where we have we have built our own AI especially for the customer service, and as Olli outlined, we have now a bigger customer base and we have opportunities to take our own AI software products now to this bigger customer base, so that's gives us growth opportunities going forward.
Then thirdly, also the regulation is more stable in the customer service, so, so that's enables us to build, or gives us better growth opportunities and enables us to build a more scalable business, which also then drives our revenue revenue and profitability up through the scalability. Then moving into the profitability.
As Olli also said, our profitability improved in the first half of the year, and in the LTM period, the profitability EBITDA was 18%, while in the H1, it was 15%, roughly one percentage point higher than last year and at the lower end of our guidance. Then looking at the last year, we increased throughout the H2 because of seasonality, so that's what we believe that will happen also this year.
How did the profitability improve? It improved through our systematic work on increasing our productivity, efficiency.
We have a lower headcount at the moment than a year ago. We did lot of work with Doma on the integration and synergies, and then also the portfolio refocus, better revenue mix, which also contributed to the increased profitability.
In H1, the one-time items impacted roughly 1.5 percentage points on the EBITDA margin, mainly coming from the first quarter of the year. Then looking at the operating cash flow, EBITDA converted to to operating cash flow and before working capital change, that increased by 2% from last year.
Now in H1, due to the negative working capital impact, actual operating cash flow was lower than, than last year. The negative working capital impact, $0.9 million compared to last year, was due to the timing of payments both in and out of the company, and, and something we are working on constantly to, to improve, and it is, of course, crucial for us to to improve that also.
Then after the operating cash flow, we invested in product development roughly the same amount as last year, and, and and also paid back our loans. Loan repayments lightened our balance sheet.
Moving on this slide, our balance sheet was, total assets were $3 million lower than at the year-end, and half of that is coming from the liabilities side, loan repayments and also the working capital impact is, is visible there, and then half of that coming from the equity side, and that's because of the mainly the goodwill amortizations contributing to to negative net profit in the FAS accounting. Our indebtedness, net debt to EBITDA in LTM basis was stable, and, and that gives us a good basis to to continue executing our strategy, continuing when, when approved, continuing the integration of the Telia Ace platform to our organization and, and continuing the plans we have outlined earlier.
Overall, we are well positioned and to go towards the future, and I'll now let Olli to talk more about our outlook.
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Thank you, Teemu. Then looking into the future.
Of course, what we're doing now is we're building Europe's most trusted AI-driven, voice-first customer interaction platform. That's the vision and mission we're on, and how we achieve that is by following our strategy.
We're now halfway to our target of $100 million in revenues with the Ace acquisition. At $50 million, we're halfway to our target there of $100 million for this strategy period, and of course, there's a huge AI opportunity that also lies ahead.
As already communicated on the call quite a few times, we are now in the strategy phase of strengthening profitability. We want to get to the 20%, which we see is in sight.
We had the LTM of 18% now, and we are then preparing and are already starting to prepare for the next phase of focusing more on growth. Our guidance for this year remains unchanged, and as said, we are doing portfolio management, and that's why we've given the guidance on the profitability, and that remains unchanged.
Here, we foresee that in the long term, there's opportunities to grow organically both in the Nordics and Continental Europe. As we saw also from the first half, the Nordic own software, not the resell software, which is declining by design now, but own software is growing, especially in the Nordics, which we are very happy about.
Then just concluding on the summary. LTM EBITDA improved quarter over quarter up to 18% now.
The overall growth was a little bit put down because of the discontinuation of certain resell products, which we've outlined in the release as well, as well as then the telemarketing regulation in Spain pressing down on the telecoms revenue there. Own software revenue in the Nordics grew by 5%, which we are super happy about.
Then lastly, of course, we signed the acquisition of Telia Ace in July, which we are really looking forward to and are working towards closing right as we speak. That's a short summary of the release.
Next up, we'll have a fireside chat together with Lotta Backlund, and we'll get great questions from her and hopefully from you as well. See you in a small bit.
Operator
Hello, and welcome to the LeadDesk H1 results webcast fireside chat. My name is Lotta Backlund.
I'm joined here by Olli Nokso-Koivisto and Teemu Rautiainen, and we're going to get started in just a moment. I do want to remind you that in the chat, you can post your questions, and let me tell you, the viewers of this webcast have done their homework.
They posted a bunch of questions immediately, we have a lot to get through. We're going to get through all of your questions and some of mine.
Obviously, I do want to note that we are here in Stockholm, which is great. We're going to talk about the Ace acquisition, which has now made Sweden one of your biggest markets, if not the biggest market, which is why we're also here at Nasdaq in Stockholm.
We're going to try to aim for 20 minutes or so, but gentlemen said that they're ready to answer all the questions, if we go a little bit over, then that might be the case. All right, but let's begin with the big picture.
If we were sitting here again three years from now, what would have to have happened so that you would say that 2026 was a defining year for LeadDesk?
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Yes, in three years, I think what has happened and what I believe will happen is that we'll really be able to transform our customers' customer communication into the age of AI, bring the joy of our software to a really large, broad audience and be the de facto standard for being the most trusted European provider for AI-driven services in customer care and sales. Then
Teemu Rautiainen
from the revenue point of view, I would like to add that then, given the AI opportunity on the customer base, that then obviously our revenue is much higher than currently.
Operator
The Ace acquisition, obviously that was a big part of the report and the topic today, and let me tell you, it's also a topic of many of the questions that we've gotten here. You've described the Ace acquisition as a major step in building a Nordic home market.
What do you think is the biggest opportunity that this deal creates that maybe not all investors see yet?
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
I think the opportunity for transforming the customer interactions with AI. This enables us to address now an even more larger audience with our native AI solutions.
I think that's something that's maybe hard to grasp that how big actually that opportunity is.
Operator
There are some very specific questions, and actually they came in very early on, some of these questions sort of already got answered in your presentation, but one question is, "Ace has a pro forma revenue of $13.1 million. What is its current EBITDA level and what EBITDA margin do you believe the business can achieve once it has been integrated into LeadDesk?"
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
That's something we haven't disclosed yet because the Telia Ace acquisition will be a carve-out acquisition, it's not the business unit, but it's a carve-out of operations. Then there are no historical numbers.
Then also how we do accounting also differs a bit. Then we communicated that it's a quite low profitability SaaS, but that's excluding then the R&D capitalizations, which are then in this kind of business quite big.
Then obviously the synergies and the economies of scale and things. We haven't disclosed and we will come back to that later.
Operator
All right. For our regular viewers, you'll remember we've been talking about the Doma acquisition for many webcasts or many results calls before.
How does the Ace integration compared to your previous major acquisitions, such as Doma?
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Yes, what we've been doing is that we've been building on these vertical vertical solutions and we've been focusing also on the markets. Historically, the markets have had different solutions built for those purposes and those needs.
Here, I think it makes very much sense. On the Doma platform, really strong platform for certain use cases, and then on the other hand, Ace is a great platform then for certain other verticals.
This all boils down to having the right solution in the right market. Like, for example, good example is our one of the first acquisitions, Capricode, now called LeadDesk Collabox.
It's a solution for for the Finnish healthcare industry that is also quite useful now in Sweden, but basically that the focus because of the requirements in the market, it fits well there. We have these vertical solutions which fit well together and can work together.
Now we have one more in the family, which I'm super happy about, and then we can utilize AI across all these, for example, the Fluentic multilingual system as well as then of course our cloud operations and CPaaS, which bring them all together.
Operator
There's actually specifically sort of connected to that another question, which is, "The Ace platform, are you planning to convert the existing Telia customers to your call center as a service or should we expect the synergies mainly to come from the AI offering upsells? Telia Ace has 100,000 users.
How are you planning to commercialize and price the AI offering?"
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Yes, we're committed to the Telia Ace platform, servicing the existing customer base and new customers on that platform, and it's a really strong platform. The synergies come more from the fact that we have the know-how on how to do this.
We have our cloud ops, our CPaaS, which we can utilize to bring benefits to customers, upsell opportunities. AI is a big topic.
There's a big transformation happening, existing functionality being maybe deprecated then through upsell then converted into AI, and so on. It's all a mix of, of course, there's scale benefits naturally, as we know the business, we have know-how here, but it's mostly then about how can we help those customers in their AI transformation journey going forward, how can we bring that multilingual capability, how can we bring better chat capabilities, automatic email routing.
There's so much AI in the customer interaction space.
Operator
All right, let's stop here in Sweden for a moment. With this acquisition, Sweden will become your largest market.
What growth opportunities do you see in the Swedish market going forward? The question asker also says, "Historically, your competitive position has appeared relatively stronger in Finland and Norway than in Sweden."
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Yes, that is true, we've been much stronger in Finland and Norway, and those have been the markets also where we've been focusing. Looking at the Swedish market, I think there's a great opportunity there.
We have existing customer base here. It's now at the moment it's our third largest market, and then it's going to be our largest.
The amount of investments into the market that we can put is of course going to be on a totally different level, thereby then of course bring the growth opportunities also higher. I think that on the Swedish market, if we just look purely on the meta level, there's 10 million people in Sweden, 5 million in Norway, 5 million in Finland.
I think that after this acquisition, they are proportionally now correct. We are on a equal footing in each of the markets, and now we can really excel and bring those new customers in each of the markets.
There's a lot of market there still to be taken. It's just the first steps now.
Operator
That's what it means for LeadDesk, but we actually have a question what this means for Sweden, which is, "How are you seeing your significantly larger size in Sweden impacting the local market dynamics? Does the transaction imply now that there is one competitor less in your tenders since you've acquired Ace?"
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
I would not say so, because if you look at the amount of this on the tenders we see, there's many competitors there, there's a huge amount of competitors there still. It's some local smaller ones, and then of course there's larger ones like Genesys, for example, which we are happy that we can, for example, compete on a equal setting with in the Nordics.
There's a lot of competition out there, I don't see any. No.
Operator
No worries that you're monopolizing the Swedish market. All right.
A couple more questions related to Ace. You've said there's a bunch of stuff you can't disclose yet, but there's a question, "On what timeline do you expect Telia Ace to reach a profitability level similar to LeadDesk today?"
Is that a question you can answer?
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
I guess the thing there is that it's going to be one of the business units, of course on that side going forward, the first part is of course in a carve-out acquisition, it's super important, even more important than in a share deal, that we really are there with the people, building a one team. Carve-out is always a lot more problematic because of the internal system carve-outs and process carve-out.
There's so much things going on in this kind of processes that I think the next six to nine months, we really need to concentrate on securing that happens well, and of course then we need to always look at the whole. Of course we need to look at the profitability on the LeadDesk level.
It's not about this or that, but it's rather the whole. Of course, on that, we continue striving for the 20%.
As said, we are doing work on the portfolio management, which you see now, for example, letting go of the resell revenue where we see that it's not worth investing in, but rather investing in our own software, and now this is just a new own software.
Teemu Rautiainen
Just want to add that we have now signed the deal, we haven't closed it, we need to go by the process, get the regulatory approvals, and then do the integration planning together, and so on. Even we would like to, we need to come back to that later.
Operator
Okay. There's a question, and the question asker hasn't actually specified what this is connected to, but I'm assuming it's to the Ace acquisition.
"Could you shed more light on the earn-out parameters? What kind of revenue development is required for the earn-out to materialize?"
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
They are very realistic. Of course, we are reaching for growth, naturally that's typically what in a typical setup you would see, and they are those elements here as well.
On the specifics, I can't go into specifics.
Operator
All right. Connected to this a little bit, you've done a lot of M&As, we saw your M&A model in the presentation.
How would you describe your M&A capacity after the Ace acquisition?
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Firstly, operationally, this is the largest acquisition, and we're super happy to be able to welcome over 90 new colleagues, taking our headcount to nearly 300. I think there's quite a bit of work to be done.
That's of course something that restrains in the short term, but in the long term, I see that the market is still consolidating, it's consolidating also in Europe. We see that what's happening in the Nordics happens a few years later in Continental, there's been consolidation happening there and it's picking up as well.
Let's see then what the future brings, but for now, I think that we need to really focus on welcoming our new colleagues.
Operator
Right. Moving on from the Ace acquisition, "H1 investments amounted to $2.55 million compared with EBITDA of $2.87 million.
What do you consider to be a normalized annual investment level and what level of EBITDA to free cash flow conversion do you target over the long term?"
Teemu Rautiainen
A lot of details, but we have earlier said that we are roughly on the previous year's investment level, because last year, we invested in our ERP process and tools, and now that's done, we are not doing that anymore. On the R&D capitalizations, investments are roughly on the same level.
Now need to remember that the Doma is contributing a bit to the increase, but overall, I would say that it's the same level. Then cash flow-wise, we have been on the positive free cash flow, we are targeting positive total cash flow, meaning that we can finance the loan repayments from our cash flow.
That's our goal. We are not there yet.
We need to increase our EBITDA, we need to increase our conversion to get there, but that's where we want to be at some point.
Operator
Right. Continuing, there's another question not related to this, but related to CFO duties.
"One-offs had some 1.5 percentage point impact on your H1 profitability. Should we expect still some one-offs for the second half?"
Teemu Rautiainen
We haven't indicated or planned others, no. Yes, we haven't indicated anything to come.
The ones now announced are related to we had employment negotiations in the beginning of the year, for example, in Finland, and then some related restructuring costs. We haven't announced and are not planning.
All
Operator
right. Some different questions around growth.
"So excluding the planned face-out of the software resell business and the regulatory impact on CPaaS in Spain, what was the organic ARR growth of the core business in Q2?"
Teemu Rautiainen
I'm talking more about the revenue. Organic growth is a bit challenging for us because Doma is also growing organically.
How do we categorize that? In the Nordics, we were growing organically.
Overall, organic revenue was declining, and that was because of the same drivers obviously. Then
Operator
another question, "Could you shed some light on how your AI revenue developed in Q2?"
Teemu Rautiainen
We didn't disclose in this report. We can say that the trend is similar that we have communicated earlier.
Operator
Right. Talking a little bit more about AI, "What has been the take-up of your AI products within your existing customer base?
That means how many customers are trusting your AI offering and what AI features are the best performers?"
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Yes, if I recall, we've also discussed that over half of our customers are using our AI features, and there's a double-digit number also paying. I think it might be in the previous reports, but this much we have at least disclosed.
This is also something we're working for the future. Now you saw the revenue mix here, which Teemu communicated, and that's something we're going to be focusing on communicating better going forward, how are we doing on the most important transformational points.
Operator
Still coming back to the regulatory changes, "Organic growth and annual returning revenue has been declining due to regulatory changes and the pruning of unprofitable customer accounts. When do you expect this cleanup phase to be behind you and organic growth turn to positive again?"
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
As we said in the report, we gave a timeline. We are, of course, making sure that existing commitments are abided, we want to be the trusted partner, even though we won't be providing those services any longer.
We gave a timeline on that, the largest part of this change. Then, of course, when it comes to regulation, the regulatory changes have happened and are now fully, but then of course like any other regulatory changes, that is something then that is for the regulators.
Teemu Rautiainen
Maybe to add then organic growth, they are a bit unrelated. We can grow organically even with the impact, but then it needs to be greater than the impact.
Of course, we are working on that. For example, further improving the NRR, winning more new customers.
These are the drivers then we can grow our organic revenue.
Operator
You did talk about European sovereignty, how that is sort of changing the outlook or that is becoming increasingly more important to a lot of your clients.
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Yes, yes, and as said in the very beginning, I'm super happy to be here in Sweden. This was our first market outside of Finland, and it's also been the first market where actually sovereign European has been a topic.
Sovereign European systems have been a requirement from the public sector, for example, from our point of view, Sweden has been the front-runner here by far, which now is picking up also in Norway or has picked up. Norway is on the same boat now, and Finland not so much yet.
Sovereign European systems are not really appreciated yet as much in Finland as they are in the other Nordic countries and in some parts of Continental Europe.
Operator
All right. We're running out of time.
We're actually one minute over, but I still have one question I want to ask you. "Your North Star is more than $100 million in revenue and over 20% EBITDA margin.
What gives you confidence that LeadDesk can reach that level while remaining innovative and customer-focused?"
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Yes, I think the last part there is the hardest. Reaching the target, I have full trust there.
When we listed in 2019, we were somewhat over $10 million. I got that question quite a lot, and then it was harder to explain, but now being halfway there, it's maybe the easier question.
Then how do we stay innovative and how do we stay committed to our vision and the AI transformation, that is I think the thing that we really need to work on as a team. As I said, in my head, companies are VAT numbers, instead of a company, we should use the word fellowship.
That's the journey we're on together. If we don't manage to gather up the troops and be a great fellowship together, then that's going to be the breaking point there.
I truly believe that as a fully Nordic company going forward, we can really rock the European market.
Operator
Excellent words to end on. Thank you, Olli.
Thank you, Teemu. Thank you to everyone who stayed with us.
Join us again in 6 months to find out how the fellowship did for the rest of the year, and hope that we come back with that really good news. Thank you.
Olli Nokso-Koivisto
Thank you.
Teemu Rautiainen
Thank you.
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