Thank you very much for the introduction, and welcome everybody. Good afternoon and good morning to you, for those of you who are at the US, or at the time a little bit ahead of us, or yeah, and the ones who are in Europe.

Thank you very much for spending the time and the interest in Serviceware. We will talk about the figures of the last year today and also give some outlook for the next year, and we have put a little bit of a ex-course into slides today because you might have seen that, yeah, software companies are a little bit under pressure because of artificial intelligence.

I will elaborate a little bit on that because I think it's important, and I think that there are some hopefully some news for you which makes you more confident, especially in the stock of Serviceware. As it's announced here, we will discuss with preliminary numbers.

The final ones will be published at the 27th of March, yes, 2026. There will be I do not expect very material changes from from today's figures, therefore, we can talk about the the the things today, and there will be I do not expect any any changes or material changes for the final figures.

Yeah. We don't want to go, or we will not go in too much the equity story, as I know that you are all very deep into the equity story.

I will more elaborate on the the the the the the figures and the plan for next year, but there might be some points where I do have to explain some more things, then I will go into our business more model more deeply. I will talk about hopefully not more than 30 minutes.

This morning we had a German call. It took about 35 minutes, and then you have the rest of the hour to to place the questions via the chat as introduced.

This morning we were very proud having a record participate rate, which really doubled from last year, the interest in in Serviceware is going up, and hopefully this will somehow will be reflected in the enterprise value the the following weeks, days, and and months. Thank you very much.

We go directly into the presentation. You might know this slide, and it's very it's very important that we always remind us what Serviceware is doing.

Serviceware enables people to achieve their ambitions in the service economy, and why I always repeat this is because of the addition revolutionized by AI. You all know that in the early 2023, the public release of ChatGPT disrupted our industry and modified, of course, our vision because everything we do today is with AI, and it helps a lot, and to take it in advance, we do think that we are well-prepared, and we do think that we will profit from AI.

Our software gets even as our expectation more valuable with AI. I will elaborate on that further on.

We will see the following slides how this is impacted our work at Serviceware because, AI is a disruption, and you have to distinguish, is it do companies profit or not profit from, and I think we at Serviceware, we will profit from the artificial intelligence disruption. What was the last year?

The last year, before we we we discuss the KPI figures, we believe it's important to identify the main drivers of our ESM business and explain how these drivers make us optimistic for the coming fiscal year. First, we did grow in a double-digit way, turning the €113 million.

It was in the upper third of the of the guidance. We increased significantly our EBIT and EBITDA, and since the IPO, it was the first year with a positive EBIT.

If we go down further the line, it's even more than the EBIT, and I come to some influences of this later on, but I think this is a very positive thing that we not only grew, but turning into to black numbers again, which we expect going to see going forward. Then, of course, we strengthen the international footprint, but to take it in advance, you might see that the figures for internationalization did not reflect it fully in the P&L account, but we did win important customers in Asia, in in US, even also the US customer is about to update and cross-grade this installation, therefore we expect more international revenue this year, and, of course, we expand our regions in in the Italian market.

Also, this is something for the future, we do expect from the, yeah, circumstances we see right now, yeah, the the the politics helps us not in the US, of course not, because they are the strange mandate Buy American, but it helps us in the rest of the world where a lot of CIOs I spoke in the last weeks internationally and nationally think about how did how can they decoupling from American software. These thoughts or this discussion going on in the in the enterprises, and I think this will help us in the future.

Of course, our AI-first execution, which we went to the market on the 1st December 2024, helps us because we have now an AI-native core of the Serviceware platform. We won a lot of customers there with our new AI process engine released, again, in 1st December 2024, we have it on the market now for nearly 15 months.

What helps also a lot, and this is a result of our thoughts since back to since 2019, we get a recognition from Forrester in The Wave and and were the a strong performer and and one of the less European software companies. We were in this Wave, and I think this is also combined with this political, yeah, thing going on right now in the world.

It helps us a lot that customers and also partners worldwide were, yeah, seeing that the Serviceware is offering solution that will help the their their business, and therefore we are very, yeah, optimistic that will help us to go forward and and not only strengthens our international footprint, but also bringing it to growth and and revenue growth. I have to look, yeah, okay.

Then we coming to our performance to the key indicator indicator figures. Before we come to this, we see the figures here.

We grew by 11.7%, as I said, the upper quarter. Then we since two years we published our service revenue beside the SaaS revenue.

The line, as the last seven years is the service SaaS revenue line. This increased nearly 30% from last year, but if you look into deeper the two lines, then is separated by nearly 7 77 million of SaaS revenue and only nearly 13 million in service revenue, and you could see that the service revenue went down again another time since 2022.

It's going down repeatedly repeatedly every year. That is due to the business the SaaS business to the SaaS revenue we do.

We do not need so much service anymore, and that is also our expectation that we do not go to zero with the service revenue, not at all, but, of course, it will go further down, and therefore the SaaS growth, you see here was the last year 36%, which was also a record high number in terms of relative growth, and coming to the contract liabilities, you will see that there is more to expect in the following years. When we look to the EBITDA and EBIT line, then we have to keep two things in mind which are very important because last year, the fiscal year 2020 or the year after last before last year, the fiscal year '22, '23/'24, was supported in the EBIT line by a 1.7 [capitali-?]

capitalization of R&D costs. This is a must you have to do if you develop software which is not on the market.

In this year, we developed the AI process engine, but did not sell it or didn't did not offer it on the market, we had to capitalize our R&D costs for that part, what we usually do not do. Other software vendors are doing it.

We don't do it. We we rather put it in the in the cost.

This means that this number, 3.2, the year or the not the last year, the fiscal year '23/'24, was 1.7 million higher lower compared to this year, the five €5 million of EBITDA. You have to compare the €5 million to nearly €1.5 million the year before, because the through 3.2 million was supported by a 1.7 capitalization of R&D costs.

That makes the growth even better concerning this 57.8% growth, which was really significantly. When you when it comes to the EBIT line, we have the contradiction effect this year because, of course, if you put something to the balance sheet, in the following years you have to depreciate it a year after year, and that happened the first time this year.

The €980,000 in EBIT means that around €800,000 were deducted before. If we don't look to this effect we did the past years because we had to because the rule by IFRS, the figure would be much higher this year, the EBIT, €7- or €800,000.

In all, that means that our EBIT would have been additional €2.5 million higher than the previous year if we wouldn't have done the the the the capitalization of R&D costs. We will not do it in the future if we don't have to, but now we can compare the figures in the future very good, and that is is to be expected that we do another better step towards software profitability this year.

You see that the ratio of recurring revenues went up to 82%. I think it's not the end.

It will be, in my impression, goes over over 90%, we can say, because we still have a lot of one-time revenues concerning services, but also licenses, and therefore this recurring revenue will increase, but also increased last year from 78. to 80.3%.

The operating cash flow went down a little bit due to some pre-finan- pre-financing deals, but in that time, we we also secured the bigger the bigger chunks because to to avoid some some cash losing when companies go bankruptcy. We have a very strict reputation how to say, reputation check before we do bigger deals with customers, but, of course, you never know what the future brings, and especially in our core market, Germany, you see that the circumstances for making business are not the best right now.

We getting better, I think, but we have to watch at the fact that we look that that our customers do not go out of business, and therefore we are very conservative in this matter. If the chunk is is higher, we we finance, then, of course, we make insurance that we get the money back if there is some some, yeah, going out of business of our customers.

A second side of our KPI is that the cash increased a little bit due to the same fact I explained the the slide before. The equity arises again.

I think it's also the first time after a long time that our equity is rising again. Of course, the equity ratio went down due to the fact that the balance sheet total went up by 10%, 10.2%, and that is due to the fact that the contract liabilities, you see, went up another time in a row by 21%, nearly 21%, to nearly €100, and I do expect that this will going up this actual year again.

Then you will see that we have put some cash to the side in in in government bonds and and really secure assets to to try to have also a conservative cash policy to not lose any cash because we might need it for future activities like a cash buyba- a cash buyback, no, not cash buyback, a share buyback or some acquisitions. I come to that later on, especially at acquisitions, because there's a window of opportunity right now, but I will come to that when we talk about opportunities concerning artificial intelligence.

Here you see again the numbers. We have still a very strong SaaS momentum with a growth of 36.1%.

The dynamic of the growth of contract liabilities slowed down last year, yes, you can see it if you look at the figures, but you also have always to take in account which is the duration of a of a contract liability, and it was it it's getting more dynamic, I think, in the future again, and we saw the same effect in the past. 2020, 2021 was a little bit slower growth, and then it went up, and it is nothing it's one effect, of course, is the migration to SaaS, but also what kind of business you do today and put it to the profit and loss account, and that you will see the first quarter showed a lot of of activity, which, unfortunately, will not appear in the first quarter in the in the in the profit and loss account, or in the revenues, but will appear in the contract liabilities.

Therefore, I'm pretty, yeah, sure, confident, not sure, I'm confident that we will accelerate this growth again. Also the the duration went down, that means, how long will this contract liability fill up or last in the profit and loss account?

That shortens, the higher the relative higher share of the 97 million will appear this year in the profit and loss account. In the last year, it was less, therefore, this is a good sustainability of revenue and a good forecast for our for our this year's revenue forecast.

Here in the left chart, you see how the lines develop. Keep in mind that the the the strongest line, SaaS and services, is divided.

I showed already the figures, but it's still overall a 23% SaaS services CAGR, this year was over this over this average CAGR, I think we will see it, of course, also in the future. What you also see, and that is something I have you focus on, not because it's very nice, to better understand our guidance for the for the next year, you see that there was €6 million nearly which the licenses went down.

If we also take some other one-time revenues, then it sums up really at at at €10 million, and €10 million less in revenues has to be replaced by recurring revenue. As recurring revenue is not acquired today and released in profit and profit and loss account today, that means that there could be some unlikely event that that our revenue next year does not grow with 20%, but I will come to this on this later on, but I will just highlight this to keep in mind when we come to the guidance for the next year.

The middle chart shows that our main cost driver remains stable, where revenue is growing. That comes by leveraging AI internally and putting work to our artificial colleagues, which supported us doing the work.

Compared to last year, we are a 28 natural persons less, but we are three artificial colleagues more, and I expect this trend going forward. Not that we lose so much human employees, but that we raise a lot of artificial persons who work for us.

We integrated some, as I said, some new AI colleagues in the back office, and, of course, in the R&D. R&D department is working with artificial intelligence nearly since 2023 or before, but what is new now that you really can get or put the work from a nature natural person to a AI person.

For example, we have one person called Fridolin. He is in charge of reading contracts and and putting red flags to our contracts so that we learn.

He costs €35 a month, €400 a euro a month a an average salary is about nearly 100k a year for human for human a colleague. Therefore you could see that there's a lot of of efficiency lying ahead of us when it comes to the cost.

That does not mean that we see next year €30 million in HR costs, but as the biggest cost driver, we are happy in raising our revenue, but meanwhile we still we keep the HR costs stable. With AI, this is one effect.

In on a cost side, we can keep that stable and also can do more because with less money, we can do the same output or even more output, and this is very important to to to keep in mind. You might send that there's a big cost efficiency potential ahead of us if we leverage AI consequently, and that is our main job in in managing the company, that we keep this AI disruption aware and that everybody knows either he uses AI or he's getting out of business because AI will stay.

It will not go away, and we better adapt it very early than than too late. Therefore, we also bought some some bang bunch of of AI agent which we now, step-by-step, will will harvest.

My personal opinion is that in in in two to three years, we had a lot more artificial colleagues doing the work, and that will be steered and controlled by human beings, and also that means that human beings need more another qualification to to do so. Employees who will not adapt this will having difficulties in the in the future.

The chart on the right side is the is the result of that. If you raise the revenues and keep the costs stable, then of course you will do a better EBIT EBIT or EBITDA in the future.

Here are some other KPIs, and if I turn your eyes on the on the left-hand chart, then you see that is a recurring revenue growth, and it's stronger than overall growth, means that the same reliable recurring revenue is growing, and this is, of course, good for the future. More security, resilient business model, of course, and that is very important.

If that grows, you know that our forecast and our stability in revenues for the future is is very good, especially if you combine it with our churn rate, which is still very low. Of course, the little upgoing trend from 3.1 to now 3.5 is due to this migration we went through going from, yeah, non-AI architectural software to a to a AI-native software, and I I come to this point with very, very important point later on.

In the middle chart, you see how the international or non-German revenues develop, and to be honest, I'm not very satisfied, or I'm I'm I yeah, it's not good what we see here because the the revenue turned down, and as I said, not only today, but all the time, our destiny and our success lies in the inter- international business because it's more profitable, and, of course, it gives us more strengths. The good answer is that we see a bigger closed contract rate in 2025, the base from where we are is better.

We see some churn in Switzerland, and that is the main reason why we turned the figure down. When we look to international business going forward in the rest of the world, not Europe, but in Asia and the US, we will see that there was a growth and there will be a growth further on.

Also, the gra- cash increased again due to to the operating cash flow which was was increased. We know have no bank bank loans anymore, we do think that we can do better also in the in the future.

This is what the analysts think about us, the the the price target was actualized by Montega on February 10th, and you see it's €25, and also Quirin has a good good stable growing price target, and that means from a personal opinion, it's a good good frame window right now or window of opportunity if you get more shares or if you want to step in Serviceware, then I think it's a good opportunity because, over a time, the the, how to say, the attitude in how AI will react with software companies will differentiate. There will be software companies who really suffer from the AI disruption, and there will be software companies who really profiting from, and then you you separate these two companies, and these companies who will profit it from will be still having a good business model with with good margins.

At minimum upside now when you concerning these analyst quotes or relying on that, it's it's more than 70%. I think it's a good opportunity, and you also see that Dirk Martin and me did not change any of our our shares.

We are still at 31.4% each, which gives the company a stable background to to go to the future. Before we come to the to the outlook, I want to elaborate, as I said, a little bit about this debate going on, is AI destructing or or really bring down business model of software companies?

To say it in advance, I don't think so at all, because there are two layers we have to differentiate. If we have the business software, then we talk about the infrastructure layer of a company's value creation.

This will not disappear, and it will not disappear if AI getting stronger, because AI is intelligence layer intertwined with the infrastructure. Infrastructure doesn't appear when intelligence improve.

It becomes more critical. Here we come to the point that AI, if you use it without a software, becomes a little bit risky if it comes to governance, to data integrity, to trust, reliability.

This is something which is more important than ever when we talk about software and AI. Of course, you see these articles about OpenClaw or some some some agents which do everything on its own.

They write software, they uses software, and so on and so forth. You have to give the the the data the the the keywords, the credentials.

You have to give them data. If not, they take some data which is not sure.

They has hallucinate. There's a lot of risk leaving AI on its own.

Implementing it in your software leverages the software, and that's what we did with our AI process engine, and that is why enterprise software remains essential to the value creation. It will not disappear.

The debate is traditional software versus AI-native software. While we think that traditional software, if they do not change, will suffer over time, also the business model, we do think that AI-native software as AI process engine will profit from the AI disruption.

AI versus software is not the right debate we we see so far, and therefore, we we are very confident and optimistic about our business model. If we come to this debate, then AI agents are integral players in business operations.

As I said, we use them today as colleagues. We use them today in in in steering our software.

We use them today in developing our software. That is all true, but they're integral players, and only if you integrate them in your business operations, they give you the value.

Otherwise, they give you a value, but with a with a very high risk, and you are not aware of the of the of the results. For example, if you do not have a certified database which you send the AI AI agents on, then you get a get in trouble.

Also, traditional software was built for human users, not for controlling and being used by AI agents. It's vice versa.

With our software, AI agents can work with our software, and we use AI agents to to leverage our software. It's both direction.

This is only possible if you have the right architecture. As, for example, Mr.

Andreessen in the Silicon Valley said, he's a very good investor, he invented Netscape, and and he knows what's going, but he said, "You have to do a AI-first version of nearly everything, especially software." That's what we did since 2023.

We did this step. Traditional software manufacturers are sometimes about to do this step, and I can tell you, as you could see the last 3-2 years, it's very heavy and painful because, of course, you have to deal with customers, you have to deal with the technologies, but today we have on the market AI-native software, and AI agent will maximize the output of the AI-native software like the alternative Serviceware platform, hence drive demand for the platform.

We do think that AI will drive the demand for our software. As I said, you might remember that last summer a big a big software company, an American software company, laid off 5,000 people in the in the in the support department.

We all know that they did not do it because the work were getting less or they have some problems in their in their profit and loss account. They did it because they could do the work with AI, but not AI alone.

For example, they do need a software like ours that they can leverage their AI agent and that AI agents are doing the job with our software and not alone or just the software with human beings. That is a mixed setup for the future where we are, we do think, are well prepared for it.

We think that AI is accelerator and a match margin differentiator for Serviceware. Why do we think this?

It's a trusted platform for AI adoption, more as more AI agent are deployed, and I'm pretty sure we will see this development that AI agents are taking over the work of human beings. They are controlled by human beings, and you have to take care about governance, trust, reliability, data protection, compliance.

That is not provided by AI, and therefore you need software which is leveraging this AI. Only software with AI-native architecture can handle this job.

Again, software companies who are not turning into this AI age will will suffer, we do think, but companies who do the painful step to do everything from scratch in AI architecture will profit will profit from from the AI development and the disruption. Also, I know I had a lot of talks to to investors the the last weeks, and they do think, "Well, the the time of the very profitable business model is over.

We They do think that the margin we saw in the past will not appear in the in the in the future." I do think we are on a very low profitable margin, I think there's a lot potential, but this is not my my my reasoning.

My reasoning is different. AI will lower cost, as I showed, for development of software, for service delivery, and for internal processes.

That was the 20 last 25 years always the same, software pricing was not determined by customer value by it was determined by customer value and not by cost structure, and that is very important to keep in mind if we talk about business model of software. You have to have a modern architecture, and then you can price your software about the value the customer gets, and that is more important than looking who is working with the software.

The future for us is the AI-native platform. We expect revenue and margin growth while some of our customers and not pros- or prospect customers will suffer because with their current provider, they will facing some legacy vendors not delivering the AI format, and additional monetization of AI through value-based pricing.

I think this is also one important fact. We turned the value-based pricing on last autumn.

We reported about in a press release in in in January, and I think it's important now that even if people or less natural human beings are working with software, you can also get a better price because you get your pricing from the value of the software and not by seat or by budget. We did this with the first customer last year, and in our pipeline there are more customers who will adapt this value-based pricing because it shows that the risk for the customer is less, and we can calculate this risk and hopefully get more revenues in the future for that.

Increasing the revenue potential through demand for controlled use of AI agents. Also this window opportunity I announce is there that a lot of software vendors do not have the power to do this step into the AI age.

They cannot build they are not able to build their software from scratch again with the same functionality because it's costs, it's customer handling, it's so many things you have to deal with, and it's a painful valley, and not everybody has the power. Then the opportunity for us is, with having cash on our side, looking especially international markets where we can harvest, for example, software vendors not for the technology buy, but for a sales channel buy, that we see some customer who ask their vendor questions in one or two years how they can participate in the AI age.

Because today our customers want to do AI, but mostly they do not know how they approach this thing because it's so complex. With the AI-native an AI-native platform, they can really easily leverage AI in their service management, and this is some also something which makes us confident and optimistic.

What are the growth driver for the this year? Contract liabilities, as last year as as well, a lot of this €100 million contract liabilities, nearly 70%, I think, will be released this year.

The ratio last year was 60%, something like this. Then, of course, we have a AI-native value creation.

AI agent will drive the value creation with AI-native software and so the demand for the Serviceware platform. Of course, we do better in the internationalization, but we see some footsteps, as I already reported, not only with our pipeline, but also The Forrester Wave report initiated a lot of inquiries all over the world.

Also, we do think the the the trouble or the the, how to say, the the resistance we see in the US because of the politics Buy American, and we lost some deals last year because of this politics. Our customers, when we met them after decision, told us we were the better solution, but they were pressured to do to decide for the American solution.

This vice versa comes in the rest of the world that I see CIOs discussing the decoupling of American software and talking about alternatives outside the US, and that gives us also some some some backwind. Of course, you might have seen it in in in Instagram or some other social media, we do some Serviceware rebranding, and we do some performance marketing.

You will see a lot more communication over social media because we, from October last year, we have a new marketing leader who is really in the case and really put us brought us in social media to the next level because it's important. It's not the trade for anymore.

Of course, it's also for physical meetings important, but more important will get the social media. With these growth drivers, we come to a guidance which will is is similar to the last year, 5% to 15%.

Of course, to to take in advance the question about this, I do expect personally that we will end up between 10% to 15% rather than to 5% to 10%, but as I said before, the one-time revenues are still at a level where we can lose more than €10 million in a year. Then you first have to compensate this €10 million, and then additionally you have to grow.

Looking to our contract liabilities, there is a possibility, and if everything goes the right way, we will definitely grow over 10%, but what we have to avoid is really bad messages concerning adoption of of guidance in the near market in the in the market this year because our share, is is kind of illiquid, and if we do if we do bad messages in in in capital market communication, that will hurt us a lot. Therefore, we are on the very conservative side with this guidance.

What we raised compared to last year's guidance is that we do not improve our EBIT or EBITDA and EBIT, we will significantly improve it because we can see, as I said, elaborated on, that the cost base is constantly constant and and the revenue is going up. Therefore, in a good case, we make over €130 million this year.

In a bad case, we are about €120, more than €120 million coming from €115, my expectation is that we go between 10% and 15%, but to try to avoid to adopt the guidance in a very unlikely can in unlikely event, we took this 5% with us, and you have seen how it worked on the last two years. We all we always adapted our guidance or strengthens our guidance by the second half of the year, and I expect this to do so this year, but this is my personal opinion.

This is official guidance we work on this year, and I'm pretty sure that we can deliver this guidance for this year. I over-stretched a little bit the time.

I'm I'm sorry for that, but it really happens that English is not my mother tongue, and therefore something I have to say in more words than do it in English. I'm sorry for that.

We still have 20 minutes time for your question and answers, and thank you very much so far for your attendance and your time you spent with Serviceware, and therefore I will want to give back to the moderator. Thank you very much for your interest.

Okay. All of you have listed our opportunities.

As you might have mentioned, last year in May, we did some changes to our company documentation. I cannot say it in English, but that means that we are not able to buy back shares not only from the cash reason, but also for the legal part.

We can do since February, I think, 26, in three days, we are able to announce a share buyback. That was not possible because you have to wait half a year after putting it to the register, and this was done in August last year.

We are now able to buy back shares, and we are also to pay a dividend. It's rather unlikely to pay dividends.

If we do a share buyback, then we do a tender, offering the shareholders to give back the shares to the company by a little uplift of the current share price. This is something we discussed, and as time goes by, this discussion go more and more precise.

M&A a long time was no topic, but it becomes on our agenda a higher priority. I already elaborated on that because we see in especially the foreign market, also in Germany, but Germany is not interesting for that kind of opportunity because we have a good standing, we have a good reputation, we get customers who are asking us and not vice versa.

In the foreign markets, internationalization, the way to the go-to-market rather than buying, for example, a company with an product which has not the power to do the next AI step, as I talked about, and therefore their customers will ask for a solution. What will they do?

Before they really go to the market and look anywhere else where they get a good solution, we think about looking to companies who do not have this power and have to sell theirself, and then we are here to really go buy it not as a technology buy, but as a go-to-market. That is something which is on our list right now, and there might be a success this year, but nothing very precise that I can say, well, we are in talks or something like this.

We found out that this strategy might help us to get a bigger footprint, especially more revenue and profit international side. Yes, we do hire salespeople.

That is the only growth path. Of course, we do some international marketing activities to put some money there.

As I said, I do not expect that we put cash in that in terms of that we put more cash in it than rather getting cash back or cost back from using or leveraging AI internally. With the savings we do in using AI, and there's still a lot of potential, as I said, we today have three AI colleagues.

I expect this more than 100 in a few years, there's a lot of leverage or potential going up. With this savings we do, I expect we can invest into marketing and sales activities internationally because, as I said, this is really a big issue we have to solve.

Yeah. It's difficult for me to tell you something about ServiceNow.

I'm concentrated on Serviceware and like to see that Serviceware is going well and and will have success in the future. Of course, this there are some US players who did not do the step to be AI-native because it demands that they do their software from scratch.

Of course, you can read from some of the US competitors that they offer artificial intelligence features, but it's not about artificial intelligence features, it's about the architecture. In the German call today, I was questioned, are you able that customers bring their own large language model with it?

Yes, we can do because of our architecture. I'm doubting that that with our US competitors or other competitors who did not do the step in doing the AI-first or AI architecture, native AI-native architecture, if they can really offer their customers bring their own large language model, because that is something customers will see, especially if you talk about big customers in the future, international customers, they say, "Well, I don't want to use ChatGPT.

I want to use Perplexity or you name it. Therefore, don't can you do that?"

If you say, "No, we cannot do it because our architecture is not delivering," then, of course, you struggle a little bit. We can do it, and therefore I'm optimistic that we can do it.

The first part of your questions, we see, of course, a lot of dynamics, not knowing where they go to, but as I said, US US business is come some kind of hard right now because of politics surroundings. We had really a good chance last year, a very, very big customer, and we lost it not because of feature, not because we were European.

Of course, we were European, that was the case, because they had to Buy American. This, as I said, will be vice versa, lead to the point that the rest of the world is really thinking about what how can we do the decoupling, because everybody is aware of the situation.

What will happen if the US not only raise tariffs, but put another pressure point to the world, saying, "Well, we do not deliver our services anymore"? I guess Microsoft and all these players are not don't like it, but of course politics will do the politics and not companies.

I don't think that is very likely, to to do not misunderstand me, but the threat which comes with this opportunity really make people in the rest of the world think what kind of alternatives do we have. If we appear in the in the in The Forrester Wave, then of course we have the big wind to be one of these players who are taking this business, and also to be very clear and sure, this decoupling does not take this is not something overnight.

I had some some talks to to CIOs last week, as I said, and they do say, "We do just the analysis, and the analysis shows that it will be a hard, painful way to decouple," yeah? Therefore, it comes step-by-step, but we can offer to be a competitor in that way.

Hopefully I get all this question answered. Who are the competitors?

We do not see any right now. We don't know there are competitors, of course, especially AI lead to the fact that there are new kids on the block.

We did build up from scratch our software in in in six quarters. Anybody can else can do it.

The new kids on the block are the main threat to our competitive landscape, but then there is another big advantage for Serviceware. We do service management since 27 years now, therefore we know what we are doing.

It's much easier for us to build the software from scratch for any new kid on the block. Of course, that is a bigger threat than the the bigger software vendors, which are now must do the next step to be AI-native.

For me, I think it's a liquidity, I do think. This is a hard question for me to answer as I'm not a expert in capital markets.

Of course, the 25 in 2024 was, I think, one of the result because I think this is numbers or is it revenues? I don't know.

Of course, the share price developed last year very good, of course, but people who are into the share, and I think there was a little bit of changing in equity, or in investors, a changing in investors that started 2023, and of course, these investors are still like to be in the share because they think it's not all done yet, and therefore they won't sell. It's really, really hard for me to tell you if I see signs if that change.

I was very surprised, but of course this was something which happened to every software vendor, that the share came down, because the big threat was last autumn, and that was the time where we at still a higher level, and it was at the beginning of the year. Our slowdown in the share price came, I think, in the beginning of February, and was very surprised that we did it after all went already through the market.

Therefore, I think with ongoing better revenues and better earnings, we will see, of course, in '26 an uplift, yeah. I really not an expert in this, therefore let's see.

I'm confident in our share price, and I think we are undervalued by far, and therefore with seeing that the market's seeing that and the interest is raising, as I said, we doubled the participant in the German call this morning, and also in the English call this afternoon, we see a lot more people in the call than last year, I do a lot of roadshows physically and non-physically, hopefully we get this story better to the market, and then, of course, the order book will grow.

Yeah. That depends a little bit on the seasonal character of contract liabilities.

I know in the middle of the year it was 100, now it came back to 97. That is depending on the thing that the main invoices are at the December/January.

Therefore, I expect the biggest growth in the contract liabilities in the first quarter because of what? Because the main invoices are now out.

Therefore, the invoices are for recurring revenue, and that is the reason why by the end of February, I'm pretty sure, I don't know the figure yes because we have 23rd of February, but I'm pretty sure that this figure will grow and will grow tremendously. Then it really depends if we do bigger deals over the year, that will grow again, but the dynamics is like this, that from February onwards, the natural power is that they go down on a higher level until end of November, end of December, and then making a jump to the next level.

Therefore, you have to compare the contract liabilities always to a date which was the same date last year, then you really see what happened over the year. There you see it was nearly, or over 20, a little bit over 20%, and I expect this growth rate going further this year.

We will definitely grow, that I'm pretty sure, and you will see a big chunk in the first quarter. If it will be the biggest chunk, I expect, but not sure.

It depends if we get in big deals, but the number of deals are also important the higher ticket of recurring revenue, the higher the recurring revenue will grow.

We see this figure so it's one part, but it's a very weak argument. I come to the bigger arguments by the end.

Of course, it's experience. We always see every time that the contract liabilities grew over time, sometimes with a higher gross margin, sometimes with less gross margin.

That is, as I said, a very important KPI here is the duration. If you have a high duration, then, of course, you have a bigger contract liability absolutely, but it doesn't mean that the majority of this contract liability goes in the profit and loss account.

If you lower, for example, the duration from three to one, then it means that you have 1/3 in contract liability, but also means that you have the same amount coming to profit and loss account the following year. The duration has a lot of influence, and I saw this coming down over the years as companies are not willing to go into five years, three years contract.

Of course, the standard contract is three years from the beginning, but then it's returning one year after another. This is something where it gives me confidence on this view, and also seeing what the pipeline is and, yeah.

Of course, if the duration right now is a very low level, and I always saw in the past that this low level is good for getting a better level. If the duration is rising again, then, of course, without any new deal means that the contract liabilities will grow only in the case of higher duration, and therefore I'm confident that it will grow.

Tremendously, yeah, we saw 41, 71% in the peak times, not far away. That could be, of course, a gross goal for the future again, depending on the business and depending how many years the companies log in, but tremendously is more than significantly, meaning 20 20% 20, 30% plus.

I also do think that 20, 30% is a tremendous growth, so as we are at the lowest point now, not lowest, that is wrong, we also had years where we grew by 5% and 4% in the contract liabilities. Growing 20% plus in contract liabilities is a tremendous growth in my point of view, and 41 and 71 in the past year was somehow extraordinary.

If we can hold on this growth even if the duration is stable, then I think we are doing a good job helping to grow the revenues at the same ratio.

A year! A year!

€35 a month. Sorry.

Sorry.

to?" In the moment to Microsoft, ChatGPT.

Our internal model, large language model, is Microsoft, therefore we're paying it. We had to buy a bulk.

We have now one potential of 150 artificial people. We harvest about 40 to 50, but this is much too less.

The minimum bulk you can buy when you do need this functionality we do have, because we want to have a focus on and want to have a insight how our human people are working with artificial intelligence, and it is not possible if you only three if you buy three licenses. Therefore we started with a minimum of 150 artificial intelligence people.

I think over time, we will turn it into high usage, but we need the inside information to see who is using artificial intelligence and who is not.

This is a tough question. If I would have known the answer, I would more narrow the guidance or put it from 5 to 15 to 10 to 20, because I did not expect that high decrease.

The nature of license revenue is that the license revenue can come on the 30th November with a €2 million, €5 million, and then you have €5 million more revenue and nearly high amount of margin. I do not see this in the pipeline right now.

I do see that there's still license revenues in the pipeline, but less than last year. If I deduct this same ratio from last year's, then, of course, we could see a sharp decrease again, but at the end, the more you decrease, the more you give place for recurring revenues and for a more sustainable revenue model.

Therefore, one day you have no license or nearly no license revenue anymore or one-time revenue or at a very low level, that doesn't matter, and reaching that point means you are at the point where you have sustainable revenue business model, which is very good in forecast terms. Hard to say, but I do think, yes, we see a sharp decrease again.

On saying that, I'm also sure, or not sure, but with this decrease, I also expect that we can turn 10% to 15% growth.

Always a pleasure.

Thank you very much. I really appreciate that you took the time for this call today.

I do think we are in a very good position from now on to grow, to do better as our competitors because we are AI-native now, and we do see customers adapting this, and we do see customers coming back, we do see customers coming from the competition. Therefore, I'm confident.

My personal view on the share price is there's a good window of opportunity until the market realize that there are companies who will profit from AI, software companies, and some of them will struggle with AI. We are on the part which we profit, and if this is comes through as opinion in the market, I think we will see a better share price with the same data from today.

Thank you very much. Have a good day, a successful day today, and seeing you on the next one-on-one.

Thank you very much.