Anton Bondesen
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's Q4 and second half of 2025 investor update from Codelab Capital. My name is Anton Bondesen, and I'm the CEO.
Today, presenters will be me and Christoffer Mathiesen, our CFO. After the presentation, we'll do a Q&A session.
If you have any questions, for the people joining us online, please look at the bottom right. You see nine dots.
In that, if you press there, you should be able to put in questions, and then we'll address them after the presentations. For the people here in the room, just save your questions till we're done.
Let's go to our first slide and look at Codelab Capital from the top down. Our primary goal is to create shareholder value.
We do that by pursuing opportunistic M&A deals and putting our infrastructure capital to work. We target profitable growth by supporting the right people and companies.
Today, we're serving more than 2,000 customers across service, SaaS, and reseller business deliveries. By year-end '25, we had a recurring ARR base of 34 million Norwegian crowns.
Yes, and I'll let Christoffer take a brief overview of the numbers so far. Then I'll get back.
Christoffer Mathiesen
Thank you, Anton. Just on the high level, on the revenue side, our reported numbers showed around 9 million of revenue in the fourth quarter.
The numbers you see basically includes 6 months of Qba and 2 months of Claudia unaudited. More importantly, or more like-for-like, is the pro forma revenues in the middle of this slide, showing good growth from 2.8 million to 9 million, meaning over 200% organic growth in the period.
What do we mean by pro forma? Pro forma is as if we had owned Qba and Claudia also in the fourth quarter '24 and the quarters in between.
We are quite optimistic about the future, especially looking at our recurring revenue base going into 2026, whereas Anton said, we have 34 million in the fourth quarter. We had sold not invoiced, meaning contracted recurring revenue of over 20 million in addition, meaning that we're entering 2026 with 54 million in visibility on revenue.
I'll revert back to more numbers later, but Anton can elaborate a bit more about the story and where we come from.
Anton Bondesen
Thank you, Christoffer. This is our current legal structure.
At the top, that's why we're here today, we have Codelab Capital, a listed investment company on Euronext Growth. I'll present the team on the next slide.
Consists of four people. We have three subsidiaries: Qba Norge, which we own 100%; Uniscale, which some of you might know from before; and then we have a 50-some percent ownership of Claudia.
Both Qba and Claudia we acquired last year. Yes, let's look at the Codelab Capital team.
Leading Codelab Capital, I'm the CEO, and nice to meet you all. I'm glad to see so many people actually have joined, both online and here in this meeting room.
Besides next to me, I have Christoffer Mathiesen, our CFO. He brings in super important commercial background and some valuable insights into how to structure the deals, making sure that we actually can execute on our strategy.
I'm very happy to work alongside Christoffer and been doing so for almost a year. Of course, Lasse [Berntsen?]
, our head of business development. I've been working alongside Lasse for more than 10 years.
I feel super privileged that he's chosen to join this Codelab adventure and try to create some value once more. He's the head of business development, and he's a big part of our infrastructure capital.
Last, but not least, we have Tatjana [Brajovic?] , head of accounting.
It's been a part of the journey we've been on in 2025. I'll get back to that in the next slide.
Tatjana is a very important brick in our infrastructure capital, making sure that we have accounting competencies in-house and that we can support both Codelab Capital and our portfolio companies. If you look at the right side, it's what our infrastructure capital basically consists of, and it's a very important aspect for us.
It's how we can help the companies we work with, and when we identify and have discussions with targets, we can put our capabilities into play. Me myself, I tend to focus a lot on sales and marketing, of course, Christoffer on the whole finance side and business modeling.
Now with Tatjana and Lasse in place as well, we offer a full set of competencies that we can really put into play. I'll get back to how we do that with both Qba and Claudia later on.
I think we will go to 2025 headlines. Yeah, '25, a transformative year for Codelab.
We started out with basically stabilization and a great reset. We had some cleaning up to do.
We got a new majority owner. Lots of practicalities in that.
Immediately thereafter, we managed to secure a deal with Qba, did capital raise, making sure that we could deliver on the opportunities we've identified. Not long thereafter, we acquired our majority stake in Claudia.
We've been strengthening the team and building an M&A pipeline going ahead. At this point, where we are now, we're ready to really tap into the value-creation pocket.
Today marks the first day where we do a quarterly update and at least inviting people in with me as the CEO. We mentioned it late last year that we would start to pick up quarterly presentations and invest a little more into the investor relations side of things.
Today basically marks that. We will revert back to quarterly presentations, and yeah, welcome.
I really look forward to take on 2026. Let's look at Qba.
Qba, located in Tønsberg, delivers occupational health services and software. It's a really great combination of both a software and a service.
The service side of the delivery is required by law for many of the SMBs in Norway and is a very good opener to get a chance to present the software solutions as well. By year-end, it had ARR base of 13 million Norwegian crowns.
The business model, it's B2B. We really like that.
It's 12 months contracts by default. We have some longer, some shorter.
We see a great potential in upselling add-ons, and we have strengthened the commercial team a lot. I will show you the numbers later, or Christoffer will.
The company is being led by Lars [Aalborg?] , the original founder.
I think Lars's story goes back 20 years. When it's in its current setup, it's been, yeah, since 2011.
Lars was offered acquisition, and he also became a big shareholder in Codelab. I'm really pleased to have Lars on board still and the whole Qba team, which is starting to grow and delivering on the business plans we set up.
Super, super cool and very glad to have Qba as our first platform investment, where it's possible to do add-ons later on. Yes, and let's look a bit on Claudia as well.
Claudia, they sit right next to us here in our offices in Askekroken 11 in Oslo. They are a certified partner and reseller of Amazon Web Services.
By year-end 2025, they had an ARR base of 21 million Norwegian crowns. The company is being led by Geir Hoffnæs, who is also the founder.
He founded the company in 2024. He's a super experienced sales executive.
The results he's been able to deliver since inception is astonishing. I'm super amazed by what he's managed to do being a one-man show, basically, up until we entered as majority shareholder.
Let's just look at what we look for and how we add value for Qba and Claudia and potential new targets. Yes, of course, for us, it's super important to identify the value-creation potential.
We like to put our infrastructure capital into play alongside capital, if needed. We're really into growth equity.
We want to fuel businesses, and our aim is to remove bottlenecks and making sure that the companies we work with really can fulfill their commercial potential. If we just look briefly on Qba, so, in essence, the only thing Qba needed was new impulses and a clear direction.
The core team is still the same. We've shifted the focus into investing more in the commercial side of things.
I really look forward to show you the results on that already. We have very nice partners working alongside Qba.
For us, it's like we are building a very strong distribution team of the different companies we work with. Yeah.
Claudia, up until we arrived, Geir was basically a one-man shop. We've been assisting with the strategic and operational support in making sure that he can actually scale and handle the growth that's ahead of him because it's quite big numbers already.
We've assisted in setting up the structure, helping Geir lessen the administrative burden, which he will face and he is facing right now, and that's where we come into play. I think that was it for me right now, Christoffer.
I'll let Christoffer dive into the numbers. Good to see you all.
Christoffer Mathiesen
Thank you, Anton. Before we go into numbers, just elaborate a bit about the M&A pipeline we're seeing.
What's interesting is that the infrastructure capital approach that we have apparently is something that several of the candidates that we talk to find really interesting. Since we set out basically this summer doing M&A and building the pipeline, we've had discussions with around a couple of handful of companies, potentially as acquisition candidates, some more relevant than others, but nevertheless, a combined revenue of around 100 million on those discussions.
Right now, we are working really hard on two opportunities, one being an add-on to one of our portfolio companies, where we basically buy a company that is larger in terms of revenue than what we already have with very interesting and, potentially, significant revenue synergies. The other route we're following is a new platform investment into a vertical that we know quite well and that we're eager to get exposure to.
They have already secured an add-on on their side, which reduce time to market for their international journey, which they are planning on entering into right now. From a risk perspective, both of these companies already has positive margins.
It's all about closing the deals. If we want to grow that even further, put into growth equity, as Anton said.
I'll revert back to what this means totally for the group. If you look at numbers first, the pro forma revenue and cash EBITDA development over the last quarters is shown on this slide.
We have gone from 2.8 to 9 million, and the cash EBITDA for fourth quarter ended at -2.3. That includes, obviously, all the companies in the structure, including Codelab, which is a cost center for now.
Cash EBITDA, for us, means basically EBITDA where we add back the cost that has been capitalized on the balance sheet, we treat that as ordinary opex. That's closer to cash flow than what the accounting rules would imply.
Out of those numbers, around 1 million have been removed, which is one-off costs related to the M&A activities that we have done in second half. Even more interestingly, out of those 2.3, 1.3 million is what we would consider investment in growth in sales and marketing.
The underlying profitability, if we want to reduce the growth targets that we have, is better than what the numbers is showing on this slide. If we deep dive a bit more into the revenues, as alluded to, we have a high share of recurring revenues.
For fourth quarter, it was 94%, even higher in the third quarter. More interestingly is what we see per company level.
We can see that Qba in 1 year has grown their recurring revenue base with 45%. We still are doing a lot on the sales side and growth side, both on churn, but also adding additional new sales to that company.
Claudia, basically being started in fourth quarter '24, has been able, with one man, to generate 5 million in recurring revenue in the fourth quarter. Bear in mind, we've just recently added a dedicated seller in that team in December, which should cater for even further and, potentially, also higher growth into 2026.
If we look at the cost side, it's a bit of a more of a mixed picture. We have taken some investments in Codelab in order to be able to deliver high-quality and good infrastructure capital.
That team is now set, and that cost base is ready to scale on. We have increased our efforts into sales and marketing quite significantly.
If we look at the total costs in here, that's a combination of the opex we have and of the personnel expenses, it's a combined costs. It has gone from around 180% a year ago to 70% in the fourth quarter and ended at 6.3 million in the last quarter.
If we just look at exactly the same numbers and focus more on the operational companies, where we take out Codelab, because all the operational companies carry their own costs in terms of sales and marketing, for instance. The opex to sales is much more attractive, where it's gone from 155 to less than 50%.
If you exclude the investments in growth, it's 1/3. Bear in mind that we have increased the relative share of sales and marketing in this from less than 20% to over 30% in the same period.
We have two operational companies basically yielding our revenues today. That's Qba and Claudia.
If we look at Qba more closely, basically, we acquired it on the back of it being a great company with a great product, a great organization. They only needed some help with sales.
Obviously, the new sales numbers are probably the first and most important KPIs that we have started to look at. Bear in mind that we closed this transaction in July into the summer holidays.
August was basically the first month that we were able to start testing and implementing some of our ideas. What's really good to see is that the first real, full quarter under our ownership, and also thanks to the team, of course, but it's basically a doubling of the new sales speed from the similar period in 2024.
Furthermore, just to elaborate a bit on the unit economics, since we are so focused on growth, we are willing to have a negative margin on new sales the first year. We are investing in marketing, and we are also giving out quite handsome provisions to our sellers.
That means also, from year two, three, and onwards, we will get the super profit from each of those sales. We're very optimistic about profit expansion going forward.
We can also see signs of that already if we look at the cash EBITDA year-over-year. You see an improvement of 1.6 million.
If you add back sales and marketing just for the last quarter we had, you can see that Qba is almost generating 1 million in underlying cash EBITDA. Claudia is a bit of the same story.
It's about growth and margin expansion, obviously. Claudia is a reseller with quite small margins, it's more of a gross margin/gross profit play.
It's starting on the revenue side, entering the year with 40 million in secured annual recurring revenue, and they're working on a very big pipeline. If you just add in 10% weight of that pipeline, you're talking about 56 million in recurring revenues, which, at the current consumption margin that Claudia has, covers all their costs.
Basically, Claudia is a self-funded business. That is before we take into account any growth in 2026, which are now doubled the resources on.
Even more importantly, on the gross margin side, I think Amazon themselves has realized that they've been a bit late to the partner-driven program, and they have come to the conclusion that they need to give better terms to partners like Claudia in order to get the volume and the growth they need because they're years behind Microsoft on that market approach. That, combined with what Claudia is doing on the competencies themselves, which also potentially triggers increased margins, we have a very tangible visibility that the margins will increase substantially within just a few months.
Claudia is also receiving revenue shares from projects they do with consulting houses and also incentives from Amazon with 100% margin. Based on that 56 million in ARR, we see visibility on an annual gross profit of 5 million.
That is before, again, growth in 2026. Before I round it up, just a few comments on our balance sheet.
Ended the year with 57 million in total assets, of which 14 million in cash and an equity position of 28 million. We also have close to 11 million in deferred contingent payments basically related to the earn-outs and sellers credits that we've entered into in connection with M&A.
Part of that could be settled with shares. I say that because we're very focused on trying to structure deals with as less amount of cash as possible.
We are right now a bit risk-averse when it comes to leverage. We would like to avoid debt in our group companies before they have proven good cash flow generation over time.
Obviously, if we do more M&A, it could be that the capital markets could come in play at some point in order to raise the capital needed to fund those transactions. What can you expect going forward?
We, hopefully, can announce a couple of deals very shortly, but expect 2 to 5 per year, majority of which will be add-ons. We're working in fragmented markets and see great opportunities there.
We still love the combination of technology and service, which reduces the risk of any AI threat, etc. Organically, we're targeting double-digit recurring revenue growth and positive operational cash flow in all our group companies in the short to medium term.
Today, on the current business plans, we have enough liquidity to realize our plans for over 12 months, including investing heavily in growth. As you said, Anton, just to pick one, I think this date marks a new start for how we communicate with the market.
We will have quarterly presentations, and we will also announce major agreements that our group companies do. Just to sum it up, we are trying to combine operational improvements with accretive M&A, and as such, increase both growth and margins, which, again, will reduce the required liquidity going forward.
The final slide for me just to say why we're so positive ourselves on the future: with the revenue we already have going out of the fourth quarter, the revenue we have contracted already, and the opportunities we're working with, just assuming that we can achieve the same growth in '26 as in '25, which I think could be conservative given that we have increased sales resources both in Qba and Claudia rather significantly, that, combined with acquisitions we're looking at, this company should be able to generate well above 100 million in revenue a year from now, of which most will be recurring, with substantially better margins that we see today. Anton?
Anton Bondesen
Yeah. Final slide for me as well.
Why invest in Codelab Capital? It's super early days in the value-creation process.
It's only just the beginning. Today marks a new day, and we're very proud of what we've been able to do for the last 12 months.
I think Christoffer mentioned most of this. We have demonstrated that we can do successful M&A deals.
We have a very valuable M&A pipeline. You see potential effects of that pipeline in the earlier slides.
I think that's very important to me is aligned incentives. That's both in Codelab Capital, in the subsidiaries, and making sure that we have a high management ownership and a hands-on execution focus.
Of course, we operate with focus on cost control. Even this investor update we're doing on Google Meet and doing it ourselves.
It's how we are right now, but over time, we will, of course, invest even more into this because it's important. We are a listed company, and share represents a way of settling deals.
I really look forward to the next presentation, the 27th of May. Just I think one of the hidden gems in the whole Codelab structure being listed is that we have a set of current investors, and potential new investors.
It brings in some great network effects supporting our portfolio companies. I really do urge everyone to send leads our direction, potential deals, etc., etc., because this is only just the beginning, and I really look forward to continue together with all of you.
I think I will conclude with that and open up for questions, both here and online. Cool.
Any questions in the chat?
Christoffer Mathiesen
Oh.
Anton Bondesen
I know it can be a bit difficult to find the Q&A bottom, but bottom down right, you should be able to put in questions if you have any.
Christoffer Mathiesen
We're also fine with you speaking out if you want that instead.
Anton Bondesen
Please do. If there's no questions, Christoffer, I think we can conclude.
That was today's presentation. Thank you all for listening in.
See you all in May, hopefully. Bring in friends and family for the next meeting as well.
Cool.
Christoffer Mathiesen
Thank you.
Anton Bondesen
Thank you.
Christoffer Mathiesen
Bye. Have a good day.
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