Earnings call transcript: Qt Group Q4 2024 sees 15.5% sales growth, stock surges

Qt Group Oyj reported robust financial results for the fourth quarter of 2024, with net sales growing by 15.5% to €68.5 million. This performance, alongside a strong EBITDA margin of 45.8%, fueled a significant stock price increase of 11.42%, with shares reaching €87.8. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains excellent financial health with a score of 3.37 (rated as "GREAT"), supported by strong profitability metrics including a 36% return on equity. The company’s focus on expanding its Quality Assurance business and new product launches in AI and information security contributed to its positive outlook.

Key Takeaways

• Qt Group’s Q4 net sales increased by 15.5% to €68.5 million.
• The company’s stock surged by 11.42% following the earnings announcement.
• EBITDA margin rose to 45.8%, a 21% increase year-over-year.
• Developer license sales grew by 16%, while distribution license sales saw a modest 2% increase.
• The company projects 2025 revenue growth between 15% and 25%.

Company Performance

Qt Group demonstrated solid growth in Q4 2024, driven by a 15.5% increase in net sales to €68.5 million. The company’s full-year net sales also expanded by 15.7%, reflecting strong demand across its product lines. InvestingPro analysis reveals the company trades at a premium valuation with a P/E ratio of 47.7, though this is supported by its strong operational metrics including a healthy current ratio of 2.65. The EBITDA margin for the quarter was 45.8%, a significant improvement from the previous year, indicating efficient cost management and operational effectiveness. While distribution license sales grew modestly by 2%, developer license sales increased by 16%, highlighting the company’s strength in software development tools.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: €68.5 million, up 15.5% year-over-year
• Earnings per share: €2.26
• Full-year net profit: €57.3 million, representing 27% of sales
• Full-year EBITDA: 34.1%

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, Qt Group is optimistic about its growth prospects, projecting revenue growth of 15% to 25% for 2025. The company aims to maintain an EBITDA target of 30% to 40% and expects distribution license revenue to grow beyond 2%. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 14 additional investment tips and comprehensive financial analysis for Qt Group, including detailed growth projections and valuation metrics. Qt Group is also exploring potential expansion into web and mobile environments, with a long-term goal to double or triple its current revenue of €222.5 million.

Executive Commentary

Juha Varalius, CEO of Qt Group, expressed confidence in the company’s future, stating, "We can easily double the Qt revenues still going forward in the coming years." He also emphasized the importance of AI in software development, noting, "AI is definitely gonna be doing simpler software, and more complex software still needs human touch."

Risks and Challenges

• The consumer electronics and industrial automation sectors are experiencing a slowdown, which could impact sales.
• Uncertainty in the market is causing deal postponements, potentially affecting revenue growth.
• The company’s expansion into new markets, such as web and mobile, may present integration and competition challenges.

Qt Group’s strong Q4 performance and positive outlook have positioned it well for continued growth in 2025, despite facing some industry headwinds.

Full transcript - Qt Group Oyj (QTCOM) Q4 2024:

Hirtan Narmanen, Communications Lead, QT Group: Everybody, and welcome to QT Group’s Q4 and Full Year twenty twenty four Results Presentation. My name is Hirtan Narmanen. I’m the Communications Lead at QT Group. And I’m here today with our CEO, Juha Varalius, and our CFO, Jooni Lindonen, who will be sharing the results. After the presentation, we have some time for questions.

First, starting from the room and if time permits, then from the conference line. But let’s dive right into it. Juha, please go ahead.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Thank you. Thank you and good day to everyone. My name is Juha Aurelius and I’m going to go through the business highlights and the only financials and then I’m going to talk about the outlook and guidance for 2025. So the our net sales on Q4 grew 15.5% and reached the 68,500,000.0 and our growth was the 14.2% on comparable currencies. EBITDA margin was 45,800,000.0 and 31,400,000.0, which is an increase of 21%.

So this obviously highlights the fact that the our business is very scalable and the it is very profitable business. Although, of course, we are not very happy about the growth rate, we would have liked to have a faster growth for the Q4 and for the whole year. The well, what we actually can see for the whole year is that the our revenue was mostly impacted on the distribution license sales. Our distribution license sales grew only about 2% on the overall year. A year ago when I was here, I said that the distribution license revenue is going to be growing not as fast as the year before.

The 2023 growth was very fast growth. We had clients launching big projects. So the comparable figure was big, but yet we were expecting for the whole year a faster growth on distribution licenses. Also, we saw that our consultancy revenue was pretty much stable. So the we have quite we had a quite a large chunk of revenue that was basically flat during the year and that, of course, impacted our overall growth.

So the if I look on the developer licenses, developer licenses were doing significantly better of course because the whole company was doing 16% and on a whole year. And if I look at the QA business, it was growing on a healthy rate. So I’ve said before that the QA business is like QT two point zero and that it basically is if we look on the state where it is, the rate it’s growing and its EBITDA contribution, obviously, that’s the area where we are investing the most at the moment. Our profitability was on a very high level. We had, well, close to 900 people December 31, increase of 11 people on the Q4.

And we are going to continue on the on our investment plan. So we’re not slowing down on our recruitment this year either and they are mainly going to go they are more going on the QA side than they are going into QT side. So the overall was $2.00 9,000,000, 15 point 7 million comparable currencies and EBITDA was 34%. And like I said, the distribution license and consultancy sales was the where we had struggles. As that now you can see from the financials that represents like one third of the revenue.

Obviously, that slows down the overall overall performance of a company and whereas that means that the developer license sales has been doing favorably. If I look on the regions, APAC is doing good and Europe was pretty much flat and U. S. Is also on a slow side. If I look on the distribution license sales, where we see the biggest challenges in our customers, that’s basically on the consumer electronics side.

And then we see automotive fluctuations in certain regions, and certain regions are doing pretty well. And well, that’s kind of our self evident that we can see where that is coming. If I look the well, I’m going to talk about the future outlook after IONA goes through the financials. We continue our growth investments. We actually we haven’t we have a longer term plan where we’re going, what we’re going to be investing, and we are of course, QA, like I said, it’s like a Q2.0.

So in its 30 something million revenue, we’re still heavily investing on R and D and product and so on and so forward. The QA portfolio development, we are adding more products all the time. And the question about M and A, we are looking actively to do M and A. We didn’t do last year. We just weren’t able to finalize anything, but that lookout still continues.

So we’re looking for new products to add in our portfolio. And then we’ve done some launches on AI, information security and so on. The strengthening our ecosystem, well, we have a great partnership with Infineon (OTC:IFNNY). That’s the latest one where we cooperate on sales on a global space. That’s basically that concentrates around the MCU.

We’ve been very happy about it, and we see that it’ll strengthen our sales efforts going forward. And we’ve seen a great developments, for example, in APAC on that. Then there is Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) LT. LT is a long time customer of ours and strategic partner. We are expanding our educational license base.

So for us, the it’s not only revenue, it’s also growing the ecosystem. We have quite a lot of activities on that and we’re doing we’re trying to work, we’re not trying, we’re working very hard to get the community growing and having it bigger. And then strong growth in Qt Academy users, which is our effort to educate people how to use Qt. So that all goes into the fact that we are also growing the Qt ecosystem. So overall, if we look where Qt is today on embedded market, we can we see as that on the segment where we are, we have a very solid and robust environment.

So if I look in the earlier days when we started on Qt, we had quite a lot of smaller competition. And if I look where we are now and where they are today, we’ve really we have a really solid foundation in embedded space where we operate. And now we are expanding that space using QA into a testing market. So overall, if I think the last year well, of course, I mean, it’s fair to say we’re not happy about it, right? We were expecting a higher growth.

If I look on a big scheme that the which on a yearly level that the where we were behind our targets, that’s the that’s pretty much mainly on the distribution license sales. So that is the segment where we thought that we would be doing better. So people are still investing. Our customers are still investing. They are buying developer licenses and they are continuing their projects.

I’m going to talk about a bit more about the future outlook after the financials, obviously, with the situation. Even though we think that the 2024 was not that great and now we have 2025. Well, I don’t think that the market has gone a whole lot better just because the calendar year changed, but more about that in a while. So over to you, Joonen.

Jooni Lindonen, CFO, QT Group: Thank you, and welcome from my behalf as well to the acute results presentation. You have pretty well covered already the net sales part. Just a couple of words of repetition though. We grew by 15.5 in Q4 in net sales and the FX impact, namely USD, was positive 700,000 this time. And coming from the fact that last year in 2020 or in 2023 USD was devaluating at the same time and this year we saw strengthening.

Well, no news that the license sales and consulting was the driver of the growth and specifically the license sales because there is an ongoing softness because of the market in the consulting side. For the full year there was no impact from FX pretty much and the net sales grew by 15.7% and same kind of story continues that it’s coming from the developer licenses with where we saw the kind of consistent development. In distribution licenses, we saw 1.9% increase in net sales and that’s reflecting the or mirroring the kind of uncertainty at the customer markets. We do see maintenance revenue going up after a couple of years of decline and that reflects the kind of a conclusion of the subscription license conversions and then it will be trending with the kind of aligned with the license sales. We expect to see going forward as well big impact from the FX.

More than 50% of our sales are in USD and also timing of the large deals. Even though the overall volume has gone up, the timing of large deals still makes differences between the quarters and even calendar years. What comes to the P and L. We see the first line there in the spend side the material services it’s reflecting mirroring the consulting softness and that’s one way as well to kind of compensate or mitigate the risks from consulting volume changes. So we level up our kind of resources by using external consultants when need be.

Our personal expenses went up on annual level 12% which reflects the overall headcount increase in Q4. Our headcount went up by pretty much same ratio 12%. However, the personal expenses were up by 8% which is a sign that there were some reverses of bonus accruals than done in Q4. No major changes in depreciation. It’s not any capital extensive business we are at, so roughly 3,500,000.0 annual level also expected going forward.

And the slight increase in other operating expenses is coming from customer facing activities and like putting efforts into new market entries as well at the same time. Q4 EBITDA was up by 21% to SEK 31,400,000.0 and the full year EBITDA is 34.1% compared to SEK 30,600,000.0 last year. And the amortization of intangible assets coming from the acquisitions, its run rate is $8,000,000 a year and that leads us to full year EBIT operating profit of $63,200,000 or 30.2%. Our financial items are positive. There was a reduction of the earn out liability from Axivian of 6,700,000.0 roughly.

And that is coming from the fact that the, that acquisition in a way in short run didn’t meet the set targets and that was kind of agreed on the at the time of the acquisition. And then the effective tax rate is roughly 19% and we expect that to be at 20% around that level going forward as well. Full year net profit 57,300,000.0 or 27% and the EPS for the year is at €2.26. What comes to the balance sheet side, there’s no major fluctuation on over there. First of all, the operating cash flow was pretty good actually in $24,000,000 50 4 million dollars And then if you look at the assets in more detail, you see that the ending cash was up by like 31,000,000 to 65,000,000 despite the fact that we repaid the 60,000,000 loan as well earlier in Q1.

Our receivables is up roughly 7,000,000, 6 7 million and that’s very much in line with the volume development of the last quarter of the year. And as a positive note there as well, there’s a 3,200,000.0 reduction in the contract assets bucket as well year on year. Liabilities are down somewhat driven by the repayment of the loan and also the reduction of the earn out liability that we booked now in second half of twenty twenty four. That’s probably the main topics from the numbers. So I will hand it over back to Juha, who will talk about the outlook and guidance for the year.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Thank you. So if we look the long term as we discussed the a bit of the last year, my expectation well, on the long term, obviously, nothing has changed. People are still buying developer licenses. Graphical user interfaces are coming more and more devices. We see more and more, kind of, our subsegments that are getting into graphical user interface phases.

We see the existing customers doing next iterations and so on. So we see on a market perspective, we see that the market is still growing many, many years to come. And also the software is coming increasingly complex, needs more and more testing, and we see quite a lot of customers doing manual testing. So again, we see quite a bit of the we see quite a bit similarities to Qt because when we started Qt, the one of the main competitors was the fact that people didn’t the the customers weren’t using any tools. They were doing it by themselves, and then they changed into our tools and were much more productive.

On testing, we see quite a bit of manual testing in the market. So that’s kind of the outlook. If I look into a bit more detail, if I look on the consultancy business, I don’t expect the consultancy business to grow substantially from last year. And the reason for that is that we our consultancy is mainly helping people on our customers, new customers, getting started, making sure that the Qt really works, and then we also solve difficult performance issues and thoughts. So we don’t aim to do just the kind of a body subbing in consultancy.

So if our customers just need if they just need more hands, we do have lots of partners that we usually direct our customers to go to. And the amount of consultancy people we have now, I think the we can sufficiently say that we can supply that support that our product sales needs. So that’s going to be pretty much flat or very small growth, I would say, this coming year. If I look on the distribution licenses as of now, I think the view now is that they’re going to grow. They’re going to grow from last year.

And when I say to grow, I’m expecting them to grow more than 2%. Do I expect them to grow on the we have a new guidance of 15 to 25%. So do I expect them to be they are they are probably lower than that 20%, but they are above of 10%, I would say, on a roughly. And when saying this, now comes the disclaimer. And the disclaimer is that if we look at the market environment now, I’ve said before that our Automotive segment is like 15% to 20% of the revenue.

And if we look at the market situation now, well, we have in the works, we have in the air that there might be tariffs coming to Western automakers to U. S. And The U. S. Automakers are obviously having trouble in selling in China.

That’s basically the I think that that’s a one slowing factor. If I look last year that what where our in automotive, obviously, we are also working in APAC and on that part of the world, our Automotive segment is doing very well. If I look into other industries,

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank (CSE:DANSKE): I

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: would say that last year, the consumer electronics was the one that was slowing down. If I look this year, well, the expectation, of course, is, as you know, that in Europe and in States, the consumer spending will start going, inflation is coming down and the interest rates are coming down. But the of course, there is a certain risk in the market. So when I said that the where do we expect the distribution license revenue to grow, we have taken into consideration that this market environment that we are currently, so that’s our estimation that the things will stay fairly challenging as they are at the moment. If that changes to a positive outlook, obviously, then it’s a more positive outlook.

But when we say that it’s going to grow more than last year, but it’s not going to go skyrocket means that the we’re looking this is the outlook we are having now in the market. If I look on the developer license sales, I do expect it to continue as last year and the year before. So it’s on a healthy way going forward. So I don’t expect any slowdowns over there. And this is the fact that we’ve very often talked about that we do have Fortune 500 companies and they do have long term plans to for their product development and product launches and we don’t see any slowdown on that.

That’s a they need to be going because the otherwise, there wouldn’t be any new products coming into the market. If I look the then to QA, the combination that we can offer software development tool and testing together, that’s that works very well. That’s a strategically, that’s a good combination. If I look the our product portfolio that we have if we have in the middle, we have cute, open source and commercial use. It’s on embedded.

Then on the front, we have the we can think that Axivion is actually for, well, it’s architecture verification, but it’s also static code testing so the developers can test the code while they are already building something. It’s a very good tool for the architecture verification, one of the kind, And that is actually needed when you build something and you add all the time all kinds of stuff, all kinds of features on your software. You need to be able to control your architecture. Otherwise, at some point, you lose the control and then everything is going to get very slow. Static code, the developers can test while they are building the code and making sure that they don’t have box works very well.

And then comes Swiss at the end where you can do testing of the actual user interface and see that everything works. So and when you do changes on your software, you can do that testing. And we’d be very happy. Squeeze has been gaining attraction, so we can sell Squeeze to our commercial customers, to open source users, and then we can sell Squeeze to outside of Qtech mainly Java and Windows users. And there we see quite a lot of manual testing.

So our competition is manual testing to convince people to use automation. And when we all the time talk about the lack of engineers, So of course, it’s a very compelling thing that if you can do something automatically and put the engineers working on something more productive. On Axivion, we bought that like a year and a half later. The I think that what we’ve seen on that is that the of course, it comes a bit it follows Squeeze, but the there is that like it’s a bit behind. What we’ve seen on Axivion is that the first deal usually is a fairly small one.

It’s like a 50,000 deal. And then the expansion deal is like a 500,000.0 deal when people expand. We also the churn on Axivion product has been very, very small. So the people that started using Axivion are actually very happy about it and then they expand the usage. This year, main focus for us is to get those small deals in The United States and in APAC, on Axivio and on Squis, we are expanding, like I said, outside of Qt ecosystem and concentrating on selling to Qt customers whether they are open source or commercial customers.

Over there on our penetration on the open source is still relatively it’s a low double digit number. So there is a substantial room to grow in that segment going forward. So not only the QA actually expands our addressable market, but at the same time, the we can sell it to our QTec ecosystem, and we’re still on early phases on that. So we do have a target that the QA business will hit 100,000,000 revenue in a few years. I’ve not given a time line this time.

I have not given a year, but it’s not that far. And it’s very profitable. So we’re very happy with our our testing business, and we’re very happy of this product portfolio and how it fits together. So all in all, there is a growing market. There is a market need for our products.

And what I see is that the on a short term, obviously, there is a as we all know, there is a lot of uncertainty. The how the European economy is going to be developing, I think the that’s where we see the biggest challenge. We see that the APAC economy is going to be growing. I mean, of course, there is China growing 5% or 6% or is that disappointment? I think that if we were growing in Europe 6 Percent, everybody would be happy.

But the economy over there is growing. The industries where we operate in APAC, in Japan, China, Korea and India, they are growing. So we see that the that’s going to be good. Europe is a bit of a question mark. We think that the one way or the other, U.

S. Will be growing. In The U. S, I think that we can be also more efficient if I see our execution order. We have a bit of a room to improve in that particular market.

And then we have this uncertainty that the what’s going to happen with tariffs and whatnot. So it’s all this talk and if you would if you want to put it in a very one sentence, this year, the biggest risk on is on distribution licenses, right? I don’t expect that the we’re going to see any big fluctuations, how our developer licenses are growing and going forward. So that’s basically the big picture. And if I look on the distribution licenses, it relates very much how the our how the economy is going in those target markets or how the economy is going in the target markets where our customers are selling their products.

So in automotive, obviously, it’s a global play for our customers. And now what we see is that the there is a very strong supply of electric vehicles from China. There is a oversupply on what they build over there and that’s going to one way or the other, it’s going to be floating into Western markets. And yet on the China market, the it’s going to be very first of all, it’s going to be very difficult to sell the traditional power line vehicles, which is diesel and engine engines. I mean, it’s going to be more electric play.

And many of the Western manufacturers are behind on that race in as we can see. So the for our Western companies, it’s going to be a challenge to sell in China and there comes oversupply towards Western countries. So that’s basically it. And on Automotive, obviously, we work on all three continents. So it’s kind of a mixed bag for us in that sense.

Guidance for 2025. Well, we’ve set our guidance to 15.25. We’ve changed that from the ’20 to 30. And well, there is this uncertainty. The run times are not at this time growing that fast.

So I think that the well, that’s pretty much where we’ve been operating now in the recent years. And the EBITDA percent will be 30%, forty %, which means that the we do see that we will continue this very, very profitable growth. So all in all, I see that the looking into if we look few years ahead, I actually think that, well, this at some time at some day, the economy will start picking up also in Europe and it will start picking up globally. And then we are in a very good position. But even in this, if things stay like this, we will be able to deliver a very strong growth with a very high profitability.

And strategically, if I look our products and the competition where we are, we see that we are in a very strong position. Our product and the feedback from the customers is very, very good and on both products. So the our product portfolio, the strategic fit to that product portfolio to our target customers is pretty much superior. And the so all depends on that how can we deliver that message, how can we sell, how can we get new customers. Oh, that’s one thing.

We very often look on the revenue and what’s happened on the revenue. And then we know that the new customers, they usually, when a new customer comes in, whether it’s QA or testing or acute customer, the first deal is always fairly small. So the, of course, we do want to accelerate the new customer acquisition, but the last year that was on a good level. So that didn’t slow down at all. It was a good level and I think that we’re going to continue.

So we do attract new customers at a very good rate and they don’t saw on a revenue so well because like I said, every time even if it’s a big, big company, when they start a new project, they only take like 10 or 20 licenses and the first deal is fairly small. We talk about 50,000 or 100,000 deals. So the new customer acquisition never shows on revenue at first. Then on the following years, they expand the usage, which they usually do. And then the next deals are bigger deals.

They can be hundreds of thousands or million. Some deals are even millions, what we’ve seen. We also see that our churn is very stable and very small. And usually when that happens, it’s the fact that it’s a medium sized customer that has done one project, the project ends and then there is no need for any of the tools. We see quite a lot of quite little churn that people would change from our product to something else.

And of course, Joonie didn’t mention, but our balance sheet is very healthy. So we don’t activate any R and D. We put everything. So this profitability is we book everything as a cost. So R and D expenses, we always book as a cost.

We don’t activate them. So with that, I think that the it’s going to be a challenging year, but we expect it to be a better year than this last one was. And we hope that this uncertainty will go away as quickly as possible because the uncertainty always it usually doesn’t reject the decision making, but it slows it down. So if we’re going to have 20% tariffs, let’s have them right now so we know where to operate. But when things are moving and there is a lot of uncertainty that tends to slow down the decision making in our customers.

Usually, it’s slowed down. It’s very seldom that the projects get shut down completely. It does happen, but it’s very rare. So our product goes into it goes into situation where customers have decided to build something and they have manufacturing, they’ve designed the product, they have manufacturing parts ordered, all that. So shutting down something because there is uncertainty of market is usually not what happens, but delays can happen.

And that is that’s why the uncertainty is never good. So with that, the over the questions. Thank you.

Jaakko Durbinam, Analyst, SEB: Thank you. Jaakko Durbinam from SEB. I’ll start with a bit short term question. We are now in the middle of Q1 and with all the disclaimer that I understand that your sales is always tilted towards the end of the quarter, but you had some postponing deals in Q4. Have you already been landing those deals during the first months of Q1, I.

E. How strong Q1 performance we should expect? Remember, Brend, that Q1 last year was also a bit slow.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Well, yes. Q1 is always slow. I mean, the Q4 is substantially strong quarter for us every time and then everything is closed. And And you have a Christmas and New Year’s over there. And it seems to be a slow start, not with us, but with our customers.

So Q1 is usually a very slow the January is awfully slow month for us. And then it starts picking up. Q2 is a lot better. And on Q2, I must say that the do remember that the comparable on Q2 this year last year, we had a big deal on Q2. So the comparable number is very tough this year.

And then Q3 is slower and Q4 is it’s in its own world. So that’s basically what you can expect. On these bigger deals, some we’ve closed. The biggest ones we haven’t and the far out the biggest one, I think that that’s going to be more like a Q2 or Q3 deal. There is still a negotiation going on that.

Will that be closed? For sure, but the eyes are going to be on Q1.

Jaakko Durbinam, Analyst, SEB: Excellent. Thank you. Then on the softness in distribution licenses, have you analyzed what has been the kind of impact of the inventory cycles, the inventory cycles of the end product itself and on the other hand, customers having inventories of your distribution licenses?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: We haven’t now at this point, we haven’t been able to do that. But the in general, I think that this uncertainty has the effect that people are trying to secure cash flow. So and there is uncertainty. So people are more on distribution licenses like I’ve said is that the some customers, they report afterwards that how many devices they’ve been sending and then they pay us and then some people buy upfront pre buy and then they buy again when they’ve used the pre buy. That we’ve seen that the tendency is away from the pre buy and the afterwards reporting.

But what’s actually the inventory cycle? I don’t know. We do have very many sources of the runtime revenue, so it’s a bit of a time consuming. This is not knowledge now, but the and I don’t see how this is going to be affecting. But I would think that the in this current situation where there is a risk of tariffs in to export to United States, it would make sense to send stuff over there now and build up the inventory.

But is that really happening? I don’t know. But the I mean, if I would be in charge, I would be sending big inventory in The U. S. Right now.

But is that happening? I don’t know. So I mean, don’t take this as a guidance or anything. But the I mean, just when you think about it, I mean, it would make sense. But the of course, there is a cost of inventory as well.

But the yes, so I can’t answer to that. But like I said, that the on industries, medical is going very steady. Defense, unfortunately, is going very steady and it’s doing well. If I look the what’s not going well, the industrial automation is it’s unclear segment in that sense that there is quite a lot of stuff that’s a bit slow. And if I looked at which one is really slow to consumer electronics, in our automotive, it kind of balances, like I said, that APAC is doing well and the rest of the world not so.

Jaakko Durbinam, Analyst, SEB: Okay. Good. Then on the license maturity mix and splits and perhaps looking the renewing three year licenses, which has much higher revenue recognition, and I’m referring to the renewing ones. If you compare ’24 to ’25, are you expecting more three year or more or less three year license fees to be renewed? Well,

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: you only can add flavor, but what we see is that the when we went into the subscription and first time they came into renewal, then we highlighted that there is a risk that we don’t know how people would be renewing. But it seems to be that the people that what they’ve bought, that they renew. So we don’t expect there to be a much fluctuation. So if someone has bought a three year license, they’re gonna they’re gonna renew three year license. That’s how it seems to be working.

And there is very little fluctuation on that. When something big happens like when there was COVID, when, well, Ukraine war started, then we saw for short while that the one year or new sales, you can see that fluctuation that one year licenses are more when there is lots of uncertainty. On a longer term, the it seems the fluctuation hasn’t changed. It’s pretty stable now.

Jooni Lindonen, CFO, QT Group: So I may add to the maturity mix on renewals. If you remember, like 2021 was very slow in conversions then sorry, 2020 was low, 2021 high again and 2022 high. And now we saw increase in ’24 from the renewals initially done in 2021. And we will keep on seeing high level of renewals also that ’25 what comes to the renewals from initially from ’22.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Okay. So there was a promise. We will see high. Thank you. Probably

Jooni Lindonen, CFO, QT Group: not a major increase, no, but it’s going to be on high level. Okay.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Yeah. Disclaimer came. Yeah. So they yeah, people seem to be churn is low. It’s very constant constantly low, and people seem to be renewing what they’ve been buying.

So that what we see and that what we do expect. And of course, this is kind of where that’s what makes our business so nice. I mean, okay, first people buy a first project, then we do expansion deals, they expand use it, and then they go into renewal. And they’re going to and many of our customers have been with us, say, a very, very long time. And so the that’s I think it was early days of Q2.

I said 2016, ’20 ’17. I said that this business is it’s not going to be like trash and burn. It’s not going to go down very quickly. I mean, if something really bad would happen would be that our revenue growth goes flat and then the existing users will be there and this would be a very profitable business for a very long, long time. And we don’t see that happening.

We actually see the opposite that the we do get new logos and new customers all the time because we are coming a bit of a reference in this embedded world that the queue dispute.

Jaakko Durbinam, Analyst, SEB: Excellent. That’s not all from me, but I’ll hand over the mic forward.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Okay. Good. Thank you.

Matt Regan, Analyst, Carnegie: It’s Matt Regan in Carnegie. Couple of questions also from my side. Let’s talk about costs. You had roughly 12% headcount increase in 24%. Also fixed cost roughly increased by 12%.

Did you curb your spending last year when you noticed that top line is not going to grow as fast as you expected? Or was that 12 increase in your plans?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Yes. We haven’t stalled any of our investment plans, not at all, because the we still we see lots of growth opportunities. We see a long term growth opportunities. So the we are investing as planned. And on QA, we obviously we are investing the basically, I would say that on QA because we bought two companies.

They had like they didn’t have very many people. They were fairly small. So the I would say that the limiting factor over there has been that if you have 30 people, you can think that how many people they can hire and that’s more of the limiting factor. So we try to accelerate that growth as much as possible. And no, we did not slow down at all.

Matt Regan, Analyst, Carnegie: And going forward to 2025, do you plan to have a similar fixed cost increase for this year as well, taking into account that your top line growth target is now 15% so that there would be kind of room to absorb the extra cost with your low end of top line guidance?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Well, the guidance is 15% to 25%, so not 15%. But would you want to answer to that, Dionne?

Jooni Lindonen, CFO, QT Group: Sure. I mean, we are continuing the investments heavily into the growth areas specifically. And I do not expect to see any kind of descalability in a way. However, I mean, we want to see the kind of increased revenues outperforming in a way that we will see not any decline in our profitability in this regards.

Matt Regan, Analyst, Carnegie: All right. Fair enough. Then a couple of questions about top line growth and the drivers there. You already talked about the distribution license revenue side. And I just want to kind of clarify regarding the contract renewals.

Do you think that the growth contribution from the renewals would be roughly the same as it was in ’twenty four? Or would it be increasing in ’twenty

Jooni Lindonen, CFO, QT Group: five? Well, on these terms, it’s going to be roughly the same. I mean, no major difference.

Matt Regan, Analyst, Carnegie: Right. So in absolute terms, growing, but in relative terms, not a great kind of growth increase as you expect it now.

Jooni Lindonen, CFO, QT Group: Well, it’s part of the our plan for this year altogether.

Matt Regan, Analyst, Carnegie: Sure. Then you talked positively about the Testing and Quality Assurance business. So it has tripled last year since the revenue that you acquired it from. Do you think that it would be too much to expect the CHF 50,000,000 net sales from that business in ’twenty five already? You have talked sometimes about the CHF 50,000,000 target being achieved, of course, earlier than the CHF 100,000,000 but in fairly close proximity.

Is it too much to ask from CHF 25,000,000?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Well, I would say that, well, we don’t give guidance on that specific and the obviously, it’s on its earlier phases. The giving exact guidance at this point of time is or small numbers, it’s a bit difficult. But I would say that the if everything goes really well this year, yes, that is achievable. Yes, but the that would be the top range of it. And then we come to the point that the bigger deals on QA I see on Axivion and on Squis, they can be as high as a 1,500,000.0 or even a slightly bigger.

So if you think that you lose couple of those and then all of a sudden you’re in a 45. And so it’s the timing, right? So the that’s always good to keep in mind that the couple big deals can really swing that day. But if everything goes like on a movies, the then yes, that would be yes, you could expect something like that on a high end, yes. Sure.

Matt Regan, Analyst, Carnegie: All right. And then finally, when you think about the distribution license business and the growth in ’twenty five, do you expect any large customer programs going live with net new volumes this year? Or is it more like flat and then the cycle just decides what it

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: does? Well, I mean, it’s a living creature on if you think about on a license sales, the people continue using the licenses. They have their developers. They may start new projects and then they need more licenses on that and that’s very solid. If you think the life cycle of a distribution license, Something is launched and it’s big and then it’s being sold and then it gradually so the it goes down.

So the if we look at the distribution license portfolio, there are things going down and slowing and dying and new ones coming in all the time. So it’s this kind of our bucket of revenue in a sense. So because customers always have old products and eventually they’re going to kill them and then they’re going to launch new products a bit before. So to be able to even stay flat, you need new programs starting all the time, right, and to be able to grow. But the yeah.

Of course, we do have we do have very large number of big and smaller customers over there and we do see new additions all the time.

Matt Regan, Analyst, Carnegie: All right. Thank you. That’s all from me.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: Hi, Walter Ryrosziv from Danske Bank.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Hello.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: Few questions. About the two year licenses and deal slippage you mentioned in Q4, are these two actually connected? And were these slipped deals in fact three year license deals, like to a large extent?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Sorry, Wortek.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: Were there slipped deals, three year license deals?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Three year license deals. Well, yeah, yeah. We have a couple in the works over there. That’s basically the what we see is the uncertainty over there that the some of our customers around the year end, they’ve put kind of a spending on hold and they are reviewing what’s happening on the market and whatnot. And when you think about the product development type of a cycle, you can in the beginning of product development, you can always postpone that development, the launch of a development, obviously.

And so we see that. And then we have a one major big deal that the I think we’re going to we’re definitely going to close that during this year, but what’s going to be the timing of it. And that’s kind of the situation now. Usually, when we have a bigger deal, it’s quite seldom that they would die because they are at the so far end of the process. And at the end of the day, in the project, we represent fairly small part of the cost.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: All right. Thank you. About the developer licenses, how much of the growth is or last year came from price increases and how much from volume increases?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: We didn’t think now I’m we didn’t on developer license. Now I need to ask we didn’t 5% increase. Sorry?

Jooni Lindonen, CFO, QT Group: Like 5% increase.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: 5% increase, yes, okay. Yes, yes. Because yes, I was thinking that not a whole lot, yes.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: And are you expecting to do similar kind of price increases this year as well?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: On some product portfolios, yes. The on developer license well, on developer licenses, the let’s say yes, but let’s see how they go through. Yeah. Well, yeah, you can probably expect something like 5% because on general, if we look our three markets, the that’s you can still see the inflation. In U.

S, the inflation is higher. You’re in a 434% range, right? So over there, yes, in APAC, yes, higher inflation in Europe, really in the ropes. So the yes.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: All right. Then still a few more. You kind of already touched upon this, but did you have any major customer losses during the year regarding developer licenses or cancellations?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: No, no.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. So basically all the churn that you’re seeing is coming from medium sized customers?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Yes, small. So I mean, at the end of the day, we do have also like startup we do have a startup company license even. And we have from start ups small companies and whatnot. So the on these big, big our big important customers, no, not at all. But we do see, of course, on some segments, we do see that the cost control has come to a very strict.

We see that the top management is putting controls on spending on some of our big customers. And then we see segments where that’s not the case. So obviously, on defense, the case is more that how to accelerate faster and how to be able to invest faster. Automotive, you can see that the cost control is there more in place.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: Okay. Just to follow-up on that. If we take automotive, for example, and your large customers there, have they reduced the number of licenses they get from you? Or

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: No. No. It’s more on the it’s more on the fact that do they how do they start new projects at the moment, but are they doing the existing projects? Are they scaling down? Not at all.

And at the end of the day, I mean, they do have their manufacturing facilities and whatnot. So we don’t that we don’t see. But what we see over there, obviously, is that some of our customers haven’t been selling cars as much as used to and some of our customers are actually accelerating.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: All right. Thanks. One last for now. What challenges have you had in The U. S.

Execution? You’ve mentioned that twice.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: I said well, you know, it’s if I this is more like an operational issue. If I looked at the how our sales been performing in other parts of the world, I think that the we can do better with the in overall if we look in internal ratios like number of sales guys, how much they’re selling and whatnot, so these type of things. So I think that we can improve efficiency over there.

Walter Ryrosziv, Analyst, Danske Bank: All right. Thank you.

Antler, Analyst, Endres: Hey, Antler from Endres. A future oriented question. So if you think about the opportunities for QUT in the long term, what are the kind of most exciting ones for you? Obviously, Q and A is now ongoing, but is there another wave you’re sort of looking at then?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Yes.

Antler, Analyst, Endres: Care to elaborate?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Well, if I look the current portfolio, the where we are at now, can we more than double this revenue? Can we more than double the revenue where we are at now with this current portfolio? Yes, we can. And the and even bit beyond, I would say. The well, on a longer term, can it be three times the current revenue?

Yeah, it can. What is and that’s probably where and now we’re talking about long term, so a bit of a disclaimer. But can we double, triple the current? But can we go beyond that? Well, obviously not.

And then the big question is that the do we now on embedded, we have this combination that we have a very good development tool and very good testing around it, and it works really well. And we are on a very robust position on embedded, right? So now the question is that do we strengthen our position on embedded even further or would we take steps into web and mobile environment? And web and mobile environment are totally different environments because the there you usually have products come and go, you have lots of free products, you have lots of $20.30 euro monthly payments, not like our embedded in that respect is different on embedded, the licenses are more expensive and whatnot. What would be the entry strategy going in there?

Let’s see. Do we do do we have a long term plan or long term planning and what’s going to be our next step? Yeah. It’s a very acute discussion inside the company. And, yes, of course, we are thinking our steps in a way that we can continue this growth even after these current products, after we’ve doubled or tripled the revenue with these existing products that will still have a way to grow.

And that gives you maybe some idea that how we view this. I think it’s going to be a combination of developing, testing and some other things around it surrounding the security probably. Do I see that the we’re going to go well beyond than doubling or tripling this revenue on longer term? Yes, definitely. That’s absolutely, yes, no doubt.

And then if I look on a longer term, that the is the amount of how AI is gonna be affecting. Well, AI is definitely gonna be doing kind of a simpler AI will be doing simpler software. And and then the more complex software, you still need human touch in that, and there we can help. And then if you think on AI, on simpler software, the all the software needs to be tested, and specifically AI software needs to be tested because you can always you have to always remember that AI can do good things or bad things. So if you put AI doing something, you better have somebody to look over it, what has been done.

And there you need the testing. That’s why I’m so excited about the testing. But don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about Qt. It’s been a great journey with Qt and the I’ve really yeah. It’s it’s so I like Qt very much, but I like the testing.

I well, you know, if you look my career, I’ve usually been in building and growing new initiatives. So that’s kind of the nature. That’s why I talk so much about the QA. But Qt still has a long runway to go. No doubt.

Antler, Analyst, Endres: Yep. Great. Thanks.

Matt Regan, Analyst, Carnegie: I’ll put

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: the call I think we are, like, two minutes over time. But Felix, do you still want to ask some? I’m happy to answer. Yeah. We can go over time.

I mean, if they don’t kick us out here.

Felix, Analyst: Yeah. Thanks for squeezing me in a couple quick ones. I think it sounds like you’re speaking a bit more about focusing on new customer acquisition in 2025. Yeah. Yeah.

So where do you see in terms of the customer verticals, where do you see the biggest potential for landing new customers? And what was the ballpark total number of customers in 2024 end?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: That I don’t have now. Top of my mind, where do I see still growth? Obviously, we do have pretty good representation on the in the automotive market, but there are still few to capture. I think it was two or three years ago I said that we are in China and the place is full of small EV manufacturers and I think that they’re going to consolidate. Well, that’s what we’ve been seeing.

We still have we do have a fairly good position over there, but we can there are still few to go. On medical, on the specific thing where we are, there we have a pretty heavy market share, but we can grow on that a bit. On defense, we have lots of room to grow. And then comes this consumer electronics. And then obviously, we do have these big players, but there is a huge number of smaller players to grow into.

And I would say that that’s basically the ballpark. So we have on each these our strong segments. We do have a fairly strong position on defense. There is more room to grow and then consumer electronics, which means at the same time that some of those are going into kind of smaller companies from these giant companies. And then obviously, we do still have quite a lot of room to grow into in big companies.

So if I look at a big company that how many divisions are using cute and how many are not, we still have room to grow over there too. So we concentrate on to we see internally we talk about new logos and we when we talk about new logo, a big new division in a big company, it’s also considered new logo.

Felix, Analyst: Okay. And then you also mentioned that over time, you’ve taken share of these customers’ in house solutions over time. But if you look at your total addressable market today, how large of a portion is still controlled by in house solutions?

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Well, we see less in house solutions now than we saw in 2016, obviously. But we also see that the we had competition then. And what we see that, that competition is kind of fading away and we are coming in place. So I do see, like I said, I do see easily that the Qute, if we don’t put QA aside, I can see easily that we can double the acute revenues still going forward in the coming years. No doubt on that.

So and we also see that there are this kind of started into automotives. That’s why we talk so much about the automotive because automotive was the first building the IVIs and clusters and whatnot. Then and medical was if you go in a surgery, all is touchscreen and whatnot. I think the originally actually, they started from aviation. It was a class cockpit on airplanes that the which was even before automotive, but it’s a very small segment.

And yet then we’ve been seeing more and more industries coming into this and smaller and smaller devices are having these graphical user interfaces. And there is still a lot of room to go on that. And then obviously, they are doing T next iterations. But we still have big companies that the that we are not in all of their divisions and or not all of their product portfolios and whatnot. I mean, at the end of the day, the biggest benefit you get using Qt when you’re using Qt on all your programs, all your products because then you can shift developers smoothly from one project to another.

And some customers are doing that. A large majority of customers are not there yet.

Felix, Analyst: Okay. Thank you.

Juha Varalius, CEO, QT Group: Thank you very much. And thank you to everyone. Sorry. Six minutes over.

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