Earnings call transcript: Talenom Q3 2025 shows steady growth amid Spain expansion

Talenom Oyj (market cap: €191.73M) reported its Q3 2025 earnings with a modest increase in group net sales and EBITDA, driven by growth in Finland and Spain, despite challenges in Sweden. The company's stock saw a slight rise of 0.56%, reflecting cautious optimism among investors. According to InvestingPro analysis, Talenom appears undervalued based on its Fair Value metrics. Talenom's strategic focus on expanding its Azure software platform and preparing for upcoming e-invoicing legislation in Spain underscores its growth ambitions.

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Key Takeaways

• Group net sales grew by 2.4% to €30 million.
• EBITDA increased by €700,000, reaching €8.6 million.
• Spain showed strong growth with a 17% increase in net sales.
• The Azure software platform now serves over 15,000 clients.
• Stock price increased by 0.56% following the earnings announcement.

Company Performance

Talenom's overall performance in Q3 2025 was marked by a 2.4% increase in net sales, reaching €30 million. The company saw significant growth in Spain, with a 17% increase in net sales, highlighting its successful market entry and expansion efforts. However, the Swedish market presented challenges, with a 13% decline in net sales. Talenom's focus on digital transformation and software innovation, particularly through its Azure platform, continues to drive its competitive edge in the accounting industry.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: €30 million, up 2.4% year-over-year
• EBITDA: €8.6 million, an increase of €700,000
• Cash flow after investments improved by €3.6 million

Outlook & Guidance

Talenom maintains a positive outlook with revenue guidance between €130-140 million and EBITDA guidance of €36-42 million. The company's impressive 5-year revenue CAGR of 17% supports its ambitious targets. The company aims for 10% midterm growth, focusing on organic growth and selective acquisitions. The expansion of the Azure software platform across markets is a key strategic initiative.

Executive Commentary

CEO Otto-Pekka Huhtala emphasized the company's mission to support entrepreneurs, stating, "We want entrepreneurs to succeed by taking care of their paperwork." Deputy CEO Juho Ahosala echoed this sentiment, highlighting the company's dedication to helping entrepreneurs thrive. Anxo Barreiro, Azure Spain Director, noted the importance of the upcoming Verifactu legislation, stating, "The window of opportunity is next year with Verifactu."

Risks and Challenges

• Market challenges in Sweden with declining sales.
• Potential delays in digital transformation adoption in Spain.
• Regulatory changes and compliance costs associated with e-invoicing in Spain.
• Competition from other digital accounting platforms.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Talenom's strategy for monetizing the Azure software platform and the challenges faced in the Swedish market. The company detailed its approach to expanding in Spain and the potential for an IPO versus a strategic sale of the Azure business.

Full transcript - Talenom Oyj (TNOM) Q3 2025:

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: My name is Otto-Pekka Huhtala. I'm a CEO, and today here are some other people who are explaining our things. Matti Eilonen, our Chief Financial Officer, will open up our financial figures, and after that, Juho Ahosala, our new Deputy CEO, will tell more about the accounting business strategy. He has just been nominated for this role. This means that I can, as a CEO, focus more on separating our software business and leading that one. Lourdes Sandisteban, who is our Accounting Director here in Spain, will open up more about accounting business opportunities. After that, Anxo Barreiro will speak about our software business opportunities here in the Spain market. Some highlights from Q3. Our comparable net sales increased 2.4%, and our cash flow improved significantly to improve EBITDA and lower investment level. Matti will open more about this later on. Customer base in the software business increased 4.7% annually.

As we have told, a strategic review of the potential separation of the Azure software business into an independent public listed company was initiated. Here you can see also figures and how this really cash flow after investments has improved. Matti will open more about that later on. Some strategic review we released one year ago in October that we are going to start selling our software also for other accounting firms. At the beginning of this year, we started to separate the software business as own business, and we started to invoice our own clients directly. In February, we separated our management team. Juho's led the accounting business management team, and I have led this software business after that. Of course, we have the group management team. We had a co-pilot sales project in Finland in the spring.

At the end of the spring, we launched our brand Azure, and our board made the decision in summer of finalized strategy for both businesses. In September, Talenom Otto-Pekka Huhtala initiated a strategy review of the potential separation of the Azure software business in an independent publicly listed company. This is short strategy review, and now I will give Juho, it's your time to go. Thank you.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Thanks, Otto, and good morning everyone, also from my behalf. My name is Juho Ahosala. As Otto said, I'm the one who's leading this Talenom's accounting business, and I'm going to now give a short presentation overview of this accounting business. When I'm talking about Talenom, I mean this accounting business to be specific. Our agenda for this short overview, let's start, look at Talenom in general. After that, a couple of points of strategy, how strengths after this potential carve out. After that, let's cover this market, what kind of market potential do we see, and what kind of sources of growth we have identified. After that, as a last section, a couple of points of accounting business, our accounting business as an investment. Let's move on. About Talenom, who we are, what we do.

Talenom is an accounting company and long-term partner for our clients, which are mostly SMEs. We have the same customer segment basically in all our countries, operating countries, and we help our customers with accounting services, payroll services, and different kinds of advisory services as well, including, for example, HR services. We have been operating in Finland, as we know, for quite some time, since 1972, more than 50 years history from this industry. In Sweden, we started our operations in 2019, and here in Spain, 2021. Our mission in the accounting business side is to help entrepreneurs succeed. Quite simple, but powerful mission. That's why we exist. As a vision, what we want to be, we want to be the most recommended financial partner by the people we serve and the people we work with.

That covers both our employees, which are super important to us, and our clients as well. There on the right-hand side, you can see the main figures in terms of revenue and in terms of number of personnel right now after Q3. That's Talenom in brief. Let's then have a look at our strengths after this potential carve out. First of all, we have a long history as an accounting company, as an accounting firm. We were established in 1972. We have operated in this industry more than 50 years, and that means that we have quite some knowledge, basic knowledge about how to run an accounting office, how to run an accounting business. This is basically not anything that's new to us. Something I would like to point out, what's important and not already mentioned, we have established management teams in all countries.

We have management structures in place, and in addition to that, we have now this global management team in the accounting business, which I'm leading. The second point is super crucial when it comes to our strategy. During a couple of last years, we have clarified our operating model, which we call OneTalenom, and it covers our main processes, practices, ways of doing things. As an example, our leadership promise to our employees. Of course, we have also tested how this concept works and does it make sense. There on the right-hand side, you can see correlations between OneTalenom index, as we call it, and customer experience, employee experience, and profitability as well.

One dot represents one team, and it means that when we apply these processes, these practices, we follow this OneTalenom thing, so to say, our employee experience is higher, our customer experience is higher, and we are also more profitable. This concept truly works. We also can see from this visualization that we have a lot of work to do, and we are working super hard in all countries with these processes and practices. The third point I would like to talk about is the strong commercial capabilities. We have been doing new customer acquisition quite a long time in Talenom. We have a lot of knowledge in terms of sales, in terms of marketing, how to acquire and attract new clients. This is not that common in this industry, and we strongly believe in this and are willing also to further develop it.

To summarize, long experience from this industry, we have a concept that truly works, and then these strong commercial capabilities. These are strengths that we are seeing. Of course, in addition to this, we have many other things as well, but these are the ones that I would like to point out. Let's move on to market potential. The accounting market, as we have previously explained, is sort of fragmented. We can also recognize that trend of consolidation in this industry. Let's look at different markets that we are currently operating. In Finland, market size is roughly €1.4 billion, and we have a relatively strong market share, almost 5%. That's quite natural since we have been operating in Finland for quite some time. In Sweden, the market is a bit bigger, €2 billion, and our market share is roughly 1%.

Here in Spain, as we can see, the market is quite massive, €12 billion, and our market share is super small. A lot of potential here. I would like to say that we have a lot of room for growth in basically all our countries, and we definitely want to grow in Finland, in Sweden over time, and in Spain as well. How we are planning to leverage this market potential and how we are planning to grow, we have identified three sources of growth. First of all, organic growth. As I explained, we have a long history in selling new clients in this industry, and that's what we are going to do in the future as well, focusing on new customer acquisition in all countries. It's the hardest way of growth, but it's super important to us. The second point, acquisitions.

As we know, we have conducted multiple acquisitions during the last years in all of our operating countries, and in the future, we are going to do selective acquisitions as well. I also would like to say that we have learned a lot during past years, and we have good learnings on how to identify good companies where our values are aligned and what truly works with us. Acquisitions, selective acquisitions, play a crucial role in our strategy indeed. Last but not least, we have a strong customer base, our current customers, and we want to grow with them as well, different kinds of services, upselling, cross-selling, helping our clients in different kinds of situations that they are facing. That's important and sure for growth for us as well. To summarize, organic growth, selective acquisitions, and also our current clients. Last slide from my behalf.

Talenom accounting business as an investment. A couple of points on how this accounting business could look from an investor perspective. First of all, our business model, it's quite defensive. Revenues are largely recurring, and these services, payroll services, accounting services are mandatory in a way to our clients. Our business is quite defensive. Also, our profitability in this business is solid. We have a good cash flow, positive cash flow, and in the future, that enables both dividend and investments in growth as well. When thinking about the investment, this is my last point, is something I would like to point out, is that when we are investing, we're investing especially in growth, so sales, organic growth, and these M&A activities as well. The important thing is that these investments generate quite rapidly new cash flow to us, and this might be an important thing from an investor perspective.

Our target midterm goal is plus 10% growth by those elements that we covered in previous slides. That was all from my behalf. Thank you very much, and next, Lourdes.

Lourdes Sandisteban, Country Director for Spain, Talenom: Good morning. Thank you. I'm Lourdes Sandisteban, the Country Director of Spain since 2022, so three years for now. I'm really happy to have this presentation from Spain today. As we have seen already, there are huge opportunities in the market, and I'm going to talk a bit about market size, accounting market, digital maturity level that we are here now in as a country, and also the M&A opportunities and Talenom in Spain as a summary. First of all, let's start with the market size. Here we can see the number of companies that are in the country and also the distribution of the size of the companies around Spain. Also aligned with our strategy, as you mentioned before, our target market is the mid-sized customers, and we can see that it's almost 70% of the market already.

When we see also the figures and the numbers of the total addressable market that we have in Spain, we can see these huge opportunities we have been mentioning up to now. Together with the number of customers, the potential customers we have, and we are constantly analyzing the accounting business itself. We can see with these numbers in the screen that it is really automated nowadays, and there is still a lot of concentration in the companies with really low revenue. It means headcounts from one to three people, more or less, and it's starting to be a concentration in the market, but slowly.

There is a large number of companies addressing this market, but huge opportunities, especially because with the changes that the country is addressing with the digital changes also, and these groups as Talenom come into the country to change the industry, the opportunities are more on the bigger and higher accounting firms, especially for searching for good quality services. Digitalization, the level of investment of smaller companies is really limited, and we will see a change in the tendency here soon. Together with this, we would like just to have a few comments on the digital maturity of the customers. This is one of the reasons that Talenom decided four years ago to come to the country, knowing that the digitalization of the customers is still really low, as we can see from a barometer from the industry.

The level of digitalization of these companies is still in the medium or even low side, and only 6% of the customers consider to be on a high level of digitalization. There are opportunities here also from our point of view because we can gain efficiency once the customers start to apply and use many often the tools that they will find in the market. Regarding the Talenom Spain timelines, just a short recap of our short history here in Spain. It's just four years that Talenom decided to come, as mentioned. It was in 2021 that we had the first acquisition, August, in fact, and it was one year later that we started to grow inorganically, as we are mentioning here. Also, our strategy here as a part of the learning of Talenom of going abroad was starting by establishing the pillars, the core pillars of the company.

It was in 2022 that we created the areas regarding HR, for example, IT, product, marketing, sales. With these pillars, we the following year in 2023 started to spread around the country and put layers of services on top of that because we were prepared to handle this fast growth, in fact, in a year. In 2024, it was our year of consolidation, as we mentioned here. We needed to consolidate the integration of this amount of companies and also starting to organize the whole Spanish organization in the Talenom way, also appointing the managers, training the managers, focusing on maintaining.

It was very important for us to focus on maintaining the organic growth that these companies that we had selected to join Talenom were having before, and our goal was to keep that level and also to strengthen the organic growth through establishing a potent marketing and sales team in Spain. In 2025, it's aligned with the strategy of Talenom of the OneTalenom concept, meaning to implement in our offices the way of working together with the culture of the company, also for the engagement of our employees and pushing in the same direction, all of us. Organic growth as a main driven always for us, and inorganic growth that it's still continuing in Spain and it's planned to continue as the country, as we have seen, and we will see also now it's really big and there are many opportunities.

These are the numbers for Spain up to now, so we can see the speed of the country in terms of revenue and in terms of number of employees. In 2025, the figures here are up to Q3, so that's why the revenue line is still not there. Where are we now in Talenom in Spain? As a summary, we have presence in seven out of 17 regions, so still a lot of place for us in the country. 16 acquisitions up to now, 330 people, 307 FITs, 6.5 thousand customers, and the local management, as commented in the history timeline, are structured and established. There is a strong organization already in place in Spain. This is a map of Spain to see the potentiality also and a small summary of where we are with our offices.

As we can see, there are still many spaces for Talenom to be present in the main cities and main provinces of the country. The last point of my presentation is about the OneTalenom in Spain, aligned with Juho's presentation or a short summary of what it does mean for us in Spain, the OneTalenom concept. We summarize that in like three, four points, the way of working. As mentioned, how we are as a company, what is important for us for this integration concept that we have in Talenom, which is really important and different in the market, I have to say. We have clear objectives for the organization through the whole organization, a culture which is present in the teamwork, in the everyday of our accountants and our specialists. Of course, we put a lot of focus in the excellent customer experience.

It's basic for us always not to forget that it is through our customers that we grow, and it's the best way of growing, demonstrating that we have strong capacities on the customer experience and quality of our services. Processes and practices, we have a lot of experience as a company, 50 years of experience in making efficiency processes and working constantly on how to do our work best. Finally, but not least important, the strong commercial capabilities, as mentioned before, we have focused our growth in organic growth also on these companies that were growth-driven already, and we are here to maintain that. This is our focus. Now we have Otto again from the Azure side.

Matti Eilonen, CFO, Talenom: Yes, thank you, Juho and Lourdes. Yes. I will go through the Azure software business strategy. Azure, in brief, what is it? It's a platform management company, and we have now over 15,000 end clients, and our annual recurring revenue is over €20 million, and we have over 60,000 end users. We handle over 10 million transactions annually. We have more than 140 full-time employees, and there's around 200,000 logins in a month. It's very mature software. Today we have over 65 partner offices in Finland and Spain. Here is the one-pager, and by that way, I want to explain how the Azure business model really works. We are a financial management platform. In the left-down corner, you see the entrepreneur. They will face many challenges in their businesses, like how to handle this paperwork, where can I find an advisor to help me.

In the right corner, opposite of that, you see the service providers who will face some challenges, how to find new clients, how to handle all compliance issues, how to make this work more efficiently, how to earn more money, and so on. Both of them are happy around in the middle of the picture, around the Azure. We connect them. We offer for entrepreneurs easy-to-use management tools for their daily businesses. On the other hand, we help them to find new advisors for them. For accountants, we offer, of course, the most efficient tools in the world to handle their daily businesses from the professional accounting side. We help our accounting partner offices to grow even faster. Our values are the same as Talenom has been because we have the same history. Left up corner is our purpose.

We want entrepreneurs to succeed by taking care of their paperwork so they can focus on what they must. Our strategic focus areas are in the right up corner. The first one is Azure offers the easiest ways to be an entrepreneur. Our growth target is over a 30% growth rate. The third one is the most attractive ecosystem for providing business-to-business services. As we have our partners offer banking services, reconciliation, collection services, funding services. We have more than 400 ERP systems connected to our systems and so on. This is roughly our one-pager, what does Azure really mean? Okay, what is the offering today? Left-hand side, you will see the entrepreneur, and we offer them easy routines, easy-to-use Azure app for their daily businesses, and a broad selection of accountants.

We have two marketplaces where they can find good account offices for them, additional services, integration, and support for them. The right-hand side is from the account office point of view; we offer efficient business for them. We have a very good track record of that in our own service business in Finland, and you can see this later on when you look at the figures. Compared to the market, we have double size, higher comparable EBIT than other accounting offices. We want to offer these kinds of efficient tools for the other partner offices as well. One big thing is also that we have the channels to boost our partner offices' businesses. We acquire new customers for them today, and the speed is in Finland around 30 to 50 clients where we are helping them to find new clients. We have very good support and education and community systems.

We really help them to onboard clients, to onboard them to help using our systems, and help them to fill all requirements which come from the compliance and so on, and other additional services we offer for them. This is today offering what we have. Of course, it has started from Finland. Now we have just launched our brand also in Spain. Anxo will tell more about the Spain situation. In Sweden, we are going to start selling our services to partner offices next year, and in Italy, we are localizing phase just now. Our growth will come from new customer acquisition. In the left picture, you can see the dark pillar is the customer base, what we are charging today directly from Azure side.

This light pillar means that those are the clients who are also as Talenom service clients who are using our systems, but we don't invoice those clients separately. Those clients come from Spain and Sweden, mostly from Spain. We are going to start charging most of them beginning of next year. One note is that the price level is totally different in different markets. The highest price annual revenue per user is in Finland, then Sweden, and Spain. Let's see later on what this does really mean. In the right-hand side, you can see our amount of partner offices. We are ahead of our target, and this is increasing very fast just now. We launched our brand one week ago in Spain, so this will be so much faster in the future. What are our growth drivers in our businesses?

The first one is the legislation and market trends which are driving digitalization, especially e-invoicing directive. PSD2, PSD3 is coming. The second one is customer behavior is changing to our digital platform. Enterprises are more and more ready to buy via a digital way. The third one is digitalization is happening just now. A good example comes from the next presentation when Anxo is explaining the Spain situation. Why invest in Azure as a software business? The first one, we are front-running in financial management digitalization. We have a very good track record in Nordic, how we have implemented new technology in our businesses. We have like over 20 years experience to develop our softwares, and these are some maturity. We also see that we have very high automated systems.

We see that the same kind of history, the same kind of future, what we have seen in future history in Finland is going to happen. The second one is readiness for scalable growth. We have businesses in four countries today, and big investments and architectural renewal are behind. We are ready. Third one, high recurring revenue creates stable cash flow, reduces the risk level of the business. Targeting for fun, we aim to have over 20% annual revenue growth rate. Thank you, and now it's Anxo time.

Anxo Barreiro, Country Director for Azure in Spain, Talenom: Thank you, Otto. I'm Anxo Barreiro. I have been working in Talenom for two years and a half, and I have been recently appointed as Country Director for Azure in Spain. I would like to explain and to highlight how bright the future for Azure looks in Spain in the next few slides. The market size in Spain, following what my colleagues have said, is huge, and it's highly fragmented. More than 95% of the companies, of the SMEs and the freelancers that we have in Spain, have less than 10 employees. This is, even though we can target higher companies or more mature companies, our sweetest spot. It's where our Azure software works perfectly for the routines of these companies.

There is an important detail to explain regarding Spain: these kinds of companies are not used yet to pay for software, especially for accounting software or for bureaucracy on their own. They are used to rely upon the accounting offices for all of their financial routines and the tax affairs. The number of accounting offices is key in our strategy in Spain, Azure strategy in Spain, because we are aiming to sell our software from the accountants and from the routines that their clients and their accountants will automate from that perspective. That makes sense from the point of view of the size and structure that the accounting offices have in Spain. The sector is highly fragmented, and only a handful of accounting offices have a medium size right now.

The average, as my colleague Lourdes was explaining, on the sector is that only two accountants per accounting office are working there. More than 80% of the accounting offices have less than 10 accountants. That explains why it's very difficult to work on digitalization, on processes, on automation. It's very difficult for an accounting office with such a structure to invest and to think from the perspective of changing the routines and the softwares, especially without the perspective of a broader view of a bigger company. That's where Azure can help, because that transformation is not only based on digitalization, it takes much more. According to the latest studies, only 30% of the accounting offices use some cloud-based applications, cloud-based software. Mostly they rely on on-premise accounting softwares. That makes it very difficult to work on automations and on new routines.

Only 4% of those accounting offices have any kind of reporting tools or business intelligence reports. The opportunity is huge to go to that market. Digitalization is not enough. Changing from the perspective of old-fashioned business and old way of working to a modern tool, to new routines, it takes also education and trainings. It takes education and trainings not only for the accountant, but also for the end client. They need to understand how to work on the new environment, what value can their advisor, their accountant take from the service, from the fee that they are paying. It's a change of mindset. The software, the change of software is not enough, and we can help there. Once we have the trainings and the education for both of the sides, we can move on to the integrations and to the partnerships.

Our focus is not only on the software, that it's mandatory for sure and it's needed, but also for the distribution and how the partnerships may work in the future in Spain. We rely mostly on on-premise accounting software. Integration is not common in Spain yet. It's not widely demanded. The shift is coming, and we are seeing that the clients start demanding it more and more every day. We are prepared for the upcoming shift. When the clients demand more integrations, we will be there before the rest of the market, especially, obviously, depending on the accounting firms that are depending on on-premise accounting software. This connects with the delivery channels that we have created.

We have sales processes and sales teams, we have marketing, and we have support teams to help on all of this that we need to change for succeeding in the future of the accounting software and on the upcoming shift of the accounting firms. We need this to capitalize on the tailwind that we have, because there is something very huge in Spain right now that it's the momentum that we have in front of us. The structural shifts are creating this momentum, and the government is helping with the change of laws and the mandatory digitalization for the companies. The first important moment that we had in Spain was TicketBuy. TicketBuy was implemented in 2022 in Basque Country, that it's a region in the north of Spain.

It requires freelancers and companies to include a QR code in their invoices and at the same time submit them to the tax office. This simplifies tax filing, and it had a very strong adoption. More than 80% of the SMEs and the freelancers from the Basque Country complied within the first year because they didn't want to wait any longer. Right now, we have Verifactu in front of us. Verifactu is the nationwide evolution of TicketBuy. It's starting in 2026 for SMEs and freelancers, but actually the early adoption happened in 2025 for software companies. All of our clients, all of Azure users in Spain are already complying with Verifactu. The current studies show that over 70% of SMEs will need to adapt. In order to explain, paper invoices will remain valid, but they must be generated. The invoices must be generated through authorized platforms such as Azure.

After that, we will have the electronic invoice. We don't have an exact date yet, but it's expected in 2027. It's the evolution of Verifactu, and it will eliminate paper invoices entirely. It streamlines tax filing and inspections and helps with the payment control and the reconciliation between the payments in the payments between SMEs. It will boost our automation and help us sell Azure in the near future. Just to finalize what's Azure situation in Spain and to explain our history until today, in 2021, Talenom enters in Spain. In 2022, Talenom buys an invoicing software from Banco Sabadell. In 2023, Talenom evolves this invoicing software to do pre-accounting for SMEs to go to bigger companies. In 2024, we already have more than 2,500 Talenom clients using the software to create their invoices and control their businesses. Right now, in 2025, we have more than 4,000 Talenom active clients.

In addition to those clients, we have more than 400 end clients that are using the software on their own without Talenom service. One of the things that we will do in the next few weeks is to go over the accounting offices of these 400 clients for those accounting offices to use the software for all of their clients. The Azure brand launch happened a couple of weeks ago, and in these couple of weeks, we already have five partner offices in piloting phase where they are testing their environment with real clients. We have more than 2,000 expected paying customers in the first quarter of 2026 only from these five accounting offices that have already piloted our software.

Matti Eilonen, CFO, Talenom: Hello everybody. Welcome to follow this Q3 review from my behalf also. My name is Matti Eilonen. I'm CFO of Talenom. Let's start with the group figures. Our growth was 2.4%, ending up to €30 million on the last quarter. It came mainly from the successful sales in new customers in Finland and in Spain. Also, we made a small acquisition in Spain in April, and that boosted a little bit this growth. On the other hand, the development in Sweden in net sales has slowed down our growth pace. EBITDA ended up to €8.6 million, and the EBITDA growth was €700,000. The EBITDA growth came this time mainly from Finland and Sweden, while Spain was remaining on the comparison level. Operating profit EBIT went up a little bit, but the increase was slowed down because of increased depreciation.

That comes from the past when we had a higher investment level, and now we have lowered down our investment level by €2.7 million from January to September, and that will have an impact on our depreciation level in the future, but not for this year. Moving to country-specific figures, Finland grew by 3.5%, and it came from the new sales, getting new customers, and so on. Finland has suffered quite a bit about the recession, and the customers' transactions volumes have been declining. Now this declining has stopped and stabilized on the certain level. We think that in Finland, this growth, even though it was quite low, but anyway, it was a strong performance in a very challenging accounting market. According to the latest research, the accounting market hasn't grown in Finland lately. Finland EBITDA level was really high, €8.7 million, and relative profitability really high.

It grows by €400,000. Moving to Sweden, Sweden net sales declined by 13% on the last quarter, and that came mainly from the customer churn. We continue our hard work to avoid the churn in the future and also to get new clients. That's our main focus area right now. We are focusing on really basic things in Sweden so that we can keep our revenue there. On the profitability side, we went up in EBITDA by €200,000. That's a good direction. Also, on the relative profitability, it went up. We were scaling down our costs in Sweden, but we didn't want to do it too fast because our aim is a long-term growth and long-term opportunities on growth. We don't want to scale the costs too heavily down in order to achieve a short-term profitability. To Spain, Spain grew by 17%, and the organic growth strengthened in Spain.

It was about 5%. The organic growth and the rest came from the acquisitions. We believe that we have good capabilities to grow in Spain as we have very good function in getting new customers and also what Anxo and others told about the e-invoicing possibilities. We have the tools and we have the products for that, and it's a good growing possibility. The EBITDA in Spain was pretty much on the same level, and relative profitability declined a little bit. There were some items, non-recurring expenses, and a little bit different seasonality, which affected on EBITDA level in Spain. Overall, in the big picture, it is steadily growing, the profitability in Spain. We are focusing on our processes and, of course, that we are investing or we are trying to get only profitable customers and so on.

A little bit about our cash flow, even that we don't report cash flow on Q3. I would like to point out a few things because this is something that really matters. First thing is our EBITDA growth on comparable EBITDA. It was almost €1 million better, and also that we don't have to invest so much anymore. We lowered our investment level by €2.7 million. If we add these together, our cash flow after investments grew by €3.6 million, which is 45% more than last year. This is really a significant part. Of course, there are some other items in the cash flow as well, but they are pretty much on the same level as last year, and these are the things that really, really matter. This is really super good when we are developing ahead this company.

The business areas, net sales in software business was €5.2 million, and in accounting business, it was €24.5 million. The EBITDA level was €3.8 million in software and €5 million in accounting business. There is not so much seasonal variation in software business, but some during the summertime. The last slide, about our guidance. The guidance remains the same. We are expecting to have revenue between €130 million and €140 million, and EBITDA between €36 million and €42 million. Thank you. That was all, and now we can move to questions.

Hello. Now it's your time to ask. Is Jan there in line?

Speaker 1: We will start with audio questions. Please use the raise hand function if you wish to ask a question.

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The next question comes from Juha Kinnunen from Inderes. Please unmute your microphone.

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Hi, this is Juho from Indiers.

Hello.

Anxo Barreiro, Country Director for Azure in Spain, Talenom: Hello.

Question from Spain. Could you just begin with the current studies, kind of various ERP systems or software currently used? How many, what % of your clients are currently using it, and how do you see this developing before we go to the future and talk about sales?

Yeah, Anxo again. Sure. Thank you for the question. Right now, we have closed that 70% of our customer base using the Azure software.

Excellent. Maybe you can continue also. How many are actually already invoiced? They're paying for it.

Azure in Spain doesn't exist yet as an independent company, so it's not invoiced separately. It will happen next year.

Does this mean that the revenue will grow directly because you will add the software invoice, or does it mean that you will also lose some revenue from services where it's currently included?

Yeah, today it's included in service prices.

All right. Basically, the clients are paying for it, just not separately.

Yes, that's true.

Excellent. If I understood your go-to-market strategy correctly, you are aiming for the 52,000 accounting offices in Spain, and these are very small on average. Could you just tell how you can reach these offices and what is your advantage to get them on board?

The advantage is that a software like Azure is mandatory for the clients, so they need to find a solution. The way of selling right now is, let's say, easy because it's mandatory. We have to test the distribution. We will start with a two-tier distribution where the accounting offices sell our software to their clients, and then we can move on after a few months. Let's see how it evolves to a three-tier distribution with a strategy where the distributors of software that are already established in Spain and are big sell our software to accounting offices, and then those accounting offices sell to their clients.

Yes, understood. Of course, it's a huge market opportunity, and normally you need to have a really sharp focus when you try to enter this kind of market. Could you just elaborate a little bit? What are you looking for? Are the biggest offices the main clients, or how are you aiming to reach your goals?

The idea of how to start is to look for accounting offices, not such a small as one or two accountants, more close to eight or ten, because obviously the number of clients is higher in those accounting offices, and to reach them directly and sell our software to them. The thing that we are looking for in those accounting offices is to have alignment with their goals. To start, it shouldn't be something that it's mandatory, but they don't see the benefit in using Azure. The alignment should be that they see clearly the benefits in the automation and where we help them. Let's say that it's not as easy as it seems, but we have a way of reaching those through accounting groups in groups such as LinkedIn and so on, where they are aiming for automation features.

We will reach those and analyze if the alignment between Azure and the local accounting offices is good enough to implement our software there.

Fair enough. Maybe you could also open up a competitive situation currently. Who are the main competitors who are aiming for this market currently?

We have several competitors, but also the aiming and the features are different. Each one has their own way of reaching the clients. For instance, we have competitors that go after the complete routines, meaning that you don't need anything else in your accounting offices. From our point of view, we have been talking about this largely, and we think that the way of selling those is much difficult. Right now, we are aiming for specific accounting offices where our pre-accounting software, where Azure connects to their regular software that they have been using for, let's say, 20 years or so. The challenge for them, it's not as big as to change everything and that your day-to-day operations rely on a new company that you don't know about or you didn't know till a few weeks ago. After that, we can start upselling inside the accounting office.

We have another kind of competitors that go after only one or two features. Our aiming is invoicing, expense management, and financial analytic reporting. It's not to change completely from scratch the routines from the accounting offices, but it's not also to aim for only invoicing because that's where most of our competitors go after. Only change the invoicing and not additional features that actually... The invoicing is all very factful, but doesn't help in the automation of the accounting office.

All right. I think I understood most of it. Just one last question about sales, and it's about resources. I'm just wondering, like how many people do you have going after this? How many millions are you going to invest in marketing and creating a brand and everything else like this?

For now, we are, as I was explaining, we have launched the brand two weeks ago, so we are just starting. We have open positions for the sales team, and we will invest heavily in the next few years as the opportunity is there. The window of opportunity is next year with Verifactu and in a couple of years with the electronic invoice. We have to capitalize on the momentum that we have right now and not wait two, three, or four years to invest.

All right. Thank you very much. I will let someone else have the floor for a while.

Thank you. Thank you for questions, Juan.

Is there some other people in the room?

Speaker 1: There are no questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for chat questions.

Okay, where to start?

Anxo Barreiro, Country Director for Azure in Spain, Talenom: Jani Lepojärvi is asking about, is Azure now sold in Spain as a fully integrated package, not just normal plus interfaced third-party software?

Matti Eilonen, CFO, Talenom: Yeah, the solution is today that it's basic for the normal software. As Anxo said, we have continued to develop it as a pre-accounting software also. There is also commercial software after that. Our solution is the customer interface, I mean the enterprise tools. There is also the accountant panel where our accountant can make the reconciliation work. Most of their time will be joined in our platform, and they move the data to the A3 or Sage or some other commercial solutions and finalize the bookkeeping there. That's the situation just now. Our strategy in the long term is to integrate our Azure accounting solutions step by step to the SaaS platform.

Anxo Barreiro, Country Director for Azure in Spain, Talenom: Okay. Emily's asking about what are the main root causes in the high customer churn in Sweden. How much revenue has been lost in practice so far, and when will the churn turn into net growth?

Matti Eilonen, CFO, Talenom: Yes, we are not happy with the current churn rate, and we are seeing that the situation is stabilizing, and we are working hard to get new clients all the time. We see what is happening, but we trust that we are going to have better solutions all the time. As Matti explained before, we have decreased our personnel costs, and we see, as we have told, that our EBITDA margin is increasing compared to last year. This development will continue as well. Of course, the main focus in the future is also in customer churn and getting new ones.

Anxo Barreiro, Country Director for Azure in Spain, Talenom: All right. Emily continues about Sweden. How far along is the implementation of OneTalenom processes and software in Sweden in terms of customer base and teams? What measurable benefits have you achieved so far?

Matti Eilonen, CFO, Talenom: It takes time to adapt the whole OneTalenom concept because everything starts from the leadership. Leadership promises. After that are the processes, then digitalization, automation, and premium services. This is the story of what we are, where we are working there. It takes some years to achieve all of those goals what we are targeted.

Anxo Barreiro, Country Director for Azure in Spain, Talenom: Emily continues about Spain. What exactly did the one-time cost in Spain consist of? I can answer that. It was related to cost cuttings, which we did in Q3. That was the reason. Emily Immonen asks, how do shareholders in Talenom benefit from the separate listing of ERP systems?

Matti Eilonen, CFO, Talenom: I can take that one. It's totally different to different businesses, like software businesses and service businesses. Now when we are separating the businesses, there is more potential for Azure software for new clients when it has been only in for Talenom service clients. It has limited our growth opportunities in the software side. Today, we can say that if we calculate net cumulative growth in Finland, we see that 70% to 80% of net cumulative customer volumes come from the partner offices and 20% from Talenom offices. We see that there is a huge potential, and we are just starting. It looks very good. On the other hand, in the service business, they can really focus only on the services. If you look at it from the

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: management group point of view, there are not so many issues on the table at the same time, so they didn't need to handle those software business issues. They can focus only on the customer experience and personal experience.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Emil Immonen asks, "Why do you want to separate the software now? Why not wait one year or two to see how well the rollout is going in Spain?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: Why not? I'm thinking so that when we have made the decision, it's time to go forward.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Emil Immonen asks, "What are Talenom's current costs associated with functioning as a listed company? What will they be for Azure? Also, does Azure need new HR, finance, marketing, and other support functions which are not included in Azure's current cost base?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: Yeah, I can answer that. We haven't announced these costs related to the listing or maintaining the listing, but it's relatively small compared to the size of the companies. Also, Azure will need to do some recruitment related to HR, finance, marketing, and other support, but that's relatively small as well. We are going to outsource many things. I personally know one good accounting company where we can outsource, for example, some accounting services.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Yes, then Daniel Lepiste from Danske is asking about, "What do you think about the currently very high software CapEx level compared to the software revenues? How much do you think you can decrease the software investments now that the product is separated?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: I can answer for that. Yeah, that's true that our investment level for current revenue is too high. It should be lower. As we have told, we have decreased our investment level. The reason behind this and why this decrease will continue in next year is there is an architectural renewal. We have made big, big investments for our software platform to export it to other countries, and this is the behind. We are just now slowing down the latest old part of software we are using in Finland. After that, we have not duplicated maintenance issues, etc. In the future, it looks like the investment level will continue to decrease a little bit, but we are going to focus on getting more revenue, invest all or most of the cash flow to getting new clients in software businesses.

When the revenue increases and the investment a little bit decreases, this will be normal in some years.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Okay, then Massimo is asking this. There's quite a lot of questions. I tried to put them in pieces. Question number one is, "Congratulations on the progress with Azure separation. As the board conducts its strategic reviews, could you elaborate on the key criteria you are using to evaluate the different options such as IPO versus a potential sale to ensure the final solution delivers the absolute maximum value of Talenom shareholders?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: I can take this. Of course, the board has evaluated many, many, many things. This progress is ongoing just now. The main focus is there in IPO.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: The M&A market for software companies currently appears exceptionally strong, with the strategic and private equity investors paying premium prices and high-quality profitable companies like Azure. In contrast, the IPO market remains quite selective. How is the board weighting the certainty and the potential valuation premium offered by a strategic sale against the market timing risks and costs associated with the IPO process?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: Of course, this is on the board table, and they have evaluated the prices and the value of the company. The best view today is that via IPO, we can get the best benefits for all shareholders in midterm.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Yep. Massimo continues, "The very fact that legislation in Spain creates a phenomenal and time-sensitive growth opportunity for Azure. A large strategic partner could likely accelerate the market capture significantly. As you prepare Azure for independence, how do you assess the unique strategic value to a potential acquirer aiming to win the Spanish market? How is this strategic premium being factored into your reviews?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: Maybe I would like to reply to many things that we have told, but we see that the market is huge and the potential that the officer is saying that you have to start using some software. We really believe that this will increase demand of these kinds of platforms as easier it is. All software companies are full of hands to job the onboarding the clients that everybody can fill the requirements which come from the officers. Maybe shortly that.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Yep. Massimo's final question is, "The European accounting software market is strongly consolidating phase with large players like Visma actively acquiring local market leaders. Given this clear industry trend, have you received any inquiries regarding Azure, and how does the board view Azure's potential role as a part of a larger strategical ecosystem as a way to accelerate the growth and mitigate future risks?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: I can comment that this is the good potential questions, but this is on the board table, and I can't comment that.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: All right. Daniel Lepiste is asking, "How are you planning to stop the revenue decline in Sweden? Do you need to walk back from the introduction of Azure in the country and opt to use Fortnox?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: The current situation is that we are using both Fortnox and Azure. Because of this high churn, as we have told, we stopped to onboard new clients in Azure systems, but we want to stabilize the current business. After that, we will continue implementing our solutions there.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Daniel Lepiste from Danske continues, "How many other authorized Verifactu platforms or competing software there are in Spain currently?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: We can say that many.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Yeah. Daniel Lepiste, final question, "How much is the software annual recurring revenue in Spain currently?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: We are going to tell this later on.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Yes. Massimo is asking, "Growth in Spain has been strong. How do we plan to maintain this momentum? What are the next steps for expansion in the Spanish market?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: Yes, we have good and strong growth rates just now, and we have ongoing in our M&A funnel. We have ongoing many, many discussions, and we are going to continue those selective acquisitions. We have been many, many, many discussions this year, but Lourdes will take care of the acquisition and is going to hire those offices which have a good fit with Talenom culture, and we can then well implement those acquired offices to our businesses. They are in M&A funnel. We are going to increase the volume what we have been in this year for next year. Also, what comes to the digital phase, so many accounting offices, they face challenges because of the new legislation, and that's why they are ready to jump to our businesses.

One good to know is that in Spain, I don't know why, but many people think about so that when something comes from the Nordic or Finland, it's a happy thing. They see that we can really help them in this digital phase.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Olli Salo is commenting, "Great answers, Anxo. Thank you." Mr is asking, "You have previously mentioned that the potential for organic growth in Sweden is very significant, and you have initiated results that they were positive. What is your view on this matter now?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: Yes, as we told, we are working hard with keeping the current clients and getting new ones. One thing that I will notice is that we got a new Country Director in the beginning of August there who comes from inside of the company, and she has also, Grönberg, she has so good expertise from the practice level, how to do the bookkeeping, how to lead the team, how to lead the units. She has been also an Area Director before being a Country Director. We are very happy of the current situation, and we see now that many, many things which come to the OneTalenom is going to implement it well. Of course, it takes time, but it looks like good just now.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Okay, then Amir is continuing, "You repeatedly use the word distribution when telling about selling Azure software. This sounds rather passive as you are mainly waiting for customers to contact you. What is the level of Talenom's own sale aggressiveness and ambition for Azure in the coming quarters?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: Yeah, we are not only waiting for getting new clients. It would be happy to have this kind of situation, but if I start from Finland, we have one, two guys who are focused only on acquiring new partner offices, and there are two other guys who have focused on getting new end clients to the partner offices. This kind of systems we will have also in Spain. We are just now hiring new people who can focus to acquire new partner offices in Spain. Here we will sell more or less via accounting offices more, and later on we will also help those accounting offices to find new clients. Today the situation is that the problem is to find the invoicing solutions in accounting offices for existing clients. We are resolving that by focusing to hire people to sell for potential partner offices our solutions.

That's the, we are not waiting. We are actively doing.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Yes. The final question from Matti, "What about the second dividend? When can we anticipate a decision regarding it?

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: I can comment it just now, but it's on the board table. There is only some positive feedback left, so we will have a nice weekend here in Costa del Sol. Thank you for everyone for following our report release, and see you soon. Thank you. Bye.

Juho Ahosala, Deputy CEO, Accounting Business Leader, Talenom: Thank you. Bye-bye.

Otto-Pekka Huhtala, CEO, Talenom: And.

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