Gofore Stock

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Gofore's Q2 and First Half Results Presentation. Today, in typical fashion, it will be me, Mikael Nylund, the CEO of Gofore Group; and our fresh-ish CFO, Saara Ukkonen, who will be presenting the results, and we will start by that. Then we'll have a little bit of a special segment in today's program with an update of Gofore's Defense & Space business, where we will be joined by Markus Asikainen and Timo Latvala, who are the responsibles of respective business areas at Gofore. And then we'll round off by looking at targets outlook and some H2 priorities for us. We will have time for questions at the end of the presentation or today's stream. So you can already whenever you feel like it, you can post those questions on the streaming platform. And Emmi from our Investor Relations here will be screening your questions and looking into those, and we'll be taking them at the end.

But without further ado, let's go and let's start with a short overview of what has happened. Profitability-wise, it has been steady at adjusted EBITA at 7.2% in Q2. On the one hand, it's a clear signal that we made an improvement year-on-year. We have successfully implemented a lot of measures, including integrations of our recent company acquisitions, restructuring, our skill profile and also improving the customer delivery that were burdening the result a year ago. On the other hand, it also means that there's still room for improvement. We know we can, we know how to do it. We know that a bit brighter outlook with the market will help us do that, and we can improve the profitability further.

Growth continued two consecutive quarters with organic growth now, very important signal that we can grow, that the market allows for growth, even though it's been a little bit toned down. And our strategic choices have been correct, have been functioning in the market. I mean that we have growth drivers like simulator technology. We have cybersecurity expertise that is especially wanted in the market right now. And today's topic, Defense & Space is, for sure, also one of the growth drivers in the portfolio right now that drives the growth.

We have the stickiness with the customers. We have long-term customer relationships, and that's what, of course, keeps the basis of the business going. Overall growth was over 30%, very strong. This makes us a very different company from a year ago. And what we want to today also point out is that it not only makes us bigger, it makes us stronger and stronger for the better market situation that we are expecting to start hopefully now, but at some point in the future.

Lastly, sentiment looking forward. We, of course, will have net sales growth in the future as well, because of the, and thanks to the company acquisitions that have been made, the investments that have been made in '25 and start of '26. We have also the first divestment that we will be talking about today a little bit more, and that will have effect starting September '26. A solid start to Q3 in all in July and also the start of August. So we feel quite good about this right now.

Some of the highlights for the first half. Net sales, plus 31%. Organic growth for both quarters in '26. We are quite happy with that. And again, it goes to show that we have the ability to grow in a difficult market. We have been making very fundamental and big investments that have changed the company. Synergies support the profitability at 7.3%, so almost doubled from a year ago, 7.3% adjusted EBITA. And at this time, it's quite clear for us that we have needed to spend also to make this growth happen. So short-term growth investments, of course, are visible also in the profitability, but we believe that the growth as such is the most important thing right now and are happy that we can now show that we have been able to grow.

We have a lot of business happening both in Finland and the DACH area with a lot of wins, especially the public sector big wins that are, of course, always the public knowledge. So we can talk about those. We have City of Espoo, Information Technology Center of the German federal government, ITZBund. We have CSC in Finland. We have the Patent and Registration Office and National Land Survey of Finland that we were able to report in June, a very big win for Gofore and an opportunity to grow in those important big customers that are covered by that framework agreement.

We have worked with integration, of course, 400 Huld employees joined the group in autumn '25, and we have now operationally almost completed the integration. So big work, big push from the team making that happen. And in the DACH, they have been focusing on the integration of the, a little bit more recent Esentri acquisition. As mentioned, we will look a little bit more deeply into the first divestment that we have as Gofore made when we sold the Huld-originated product design and technical documentation business to a Finnish buyer, CoE Group.

Growth-wise, this is an important year, of course. It's an investment-driven growth, but it's clear that we are now pulling away from the non-growth years of '24 and '25. And that's super important for us as a company. This is not only about making us bigger, as I said, this is about making us stronger in the key customer segments where we have wanted to develop. And those are especially the Intelligent Industry, Strategic Industry, where we have gained new capabilities via the Huld acquisition, especially and also strengthened the existing ones. But then there's also -- and that's the topic of today, the Defense & Space industry where also Huld acquisition has played a very key part in making that strategic choice that we made in '24, making that a reality, and now we are a player in the Defense & Space industry, which we will, as I said, dig into a little bit more today.

It's been a tough and competitive market. It's been that for some years now. So it's -- these results with our customers with a good customer satisfaction with a growing amount of big customers goes to show that Goforeans have made a good job again with the customers and are appreciated by the customers. It's also about the strategically chosen strong customer relationships, strategic partnerships that we want to be involved with our customers based on the complete offering that we have, the end-to-end offering that Gofore can offer our customers for transformations that are either big or a little bit smaller, which is, of course, a key topic now that all of our customers are talking about how to enter AI, how to make that AI transformation reality in their organizations.

Defense & Security business area and wellbeing business area have been the biggest growers now in H1, not surprising, Defense & Security for obvious reasons, wellbeing being a business area where we have been able to capture some market share in the Finnish market with -- especially with the public sector clients in that customer segment. As said, number of big customers is again up from 45 last year to 53 now, partly driven by the acquisitions that we made, but a development that we have been aiming at very strongly.

People-wise and culture-wise, we've been, of course, focusing quite a lot on acquisitions and the integration of those acquisitions, 400 Huldians, around 100 Esentris in Germany have been joining the organization. So a big push, as said, and thanks to the organization for taking them with open arms and being able to do this integration in a good fashion. The divestment that we have mentioned already several times is reducing the amount of employees from 1st of September, about 110 people that will be transferring to the Finnish buyer, the CoE group.

Upskilling AI, big topics during the first half of the year. Priorities is always upskilling, making sure that the skills of Goforeans are up to date and are answering to the demands of the customers. But there's also a little bit in first half and probably will be like restructuring component in the attrition graph that you see here on the right-hand side on the below chart.

So a little bit over 10% attrition for the first half, which is kind of also taking into account the restructuring measures that we, in this difficult transformation time have been doing. Last year, it was much higher. You might remember that, that was around spring last year, we had a big restructuring operation with change negotiations and laying off 80 people from Gofore. So that's, of course, even a bigger one. But the transformation we expect will be visible in attrition numbers for the foreseeable future. But right now, we are quite happy, especially with the unexpected leavers, a percentage of 8%. So that's a good place to be in. And also the restructuring measures that have been taken that Saara will be talking about a little bit more also are visible in the profitability adjustments that have been made during the -- especially the second quarter.

Lastly, before Saara takes over, some words about the divestment that we have made. In June, we announced the sale of the product design and technical documentation business to CoE Group, a business that was acquired with the Huld acquisition. This is about strategy. This is about strategic focus. Gofore's core is about digital technology, and that's what we want to focus on. We have been looking for a buyer that we feel is good from a customer point of view, but also, of course, from the transferring employees' point of view. And for us, we have a strong feeling that CoE now is that buyer for this business and a good home for this business.

Our customers are continuing to get the full service of Gofore because we have also entered into a cooperation agreement with CoE and we'll be serving them with the full service portfolio as we have up until now. So that's important for us that customers will get the same service portfolio also in the future. September 1, around 110 employees will be then transferring to a new employer, and this is about EUR 8 million in net sales, the effect at that point.

But now Saara, a little bit of a deep dive into the financial highlights.

Yes. Thank you, Mikael. Good afternoon from my behalf as well. So let's start with the key figures for Q2. Net sales increased by 32% to EUR 58.5 million, and organic growth was 1.8%. The adjusted EBITA margin improved to 7.2%, up to 4.6 percentage points year-on-year. And the increase was resulted by higher sales, acquisition synergies and better management of fixed-price projects. EPS increased to EUR 0.11, and that's an improvement of EUR 0.17 year-on-year. Then the headcount was around 1,900, up to around 500 people, and this is largely reflecting the acquisitions. And the adjustments, what Mikael also mentioned, mainly relate to restructuring, then the integration and the M&A activities, so meaning Esentri and the sale of product design and technical documentation business. And overall, this is clearly a step in the right direction, but we are not fully satisfied yet. So our focus remains on closing the gap to our profitability target.

Then on moving to the sales mix. The share of international sales increased during H1 due to the Esentri acquisition. Then you can see in the graph that the split between public and private sector customers also moved to -- closer to an even balance. Not visible in the chart, but the product sales grew as well. And at the same time, the share of own work increased. And overall, the conclusion is that the sales mix is gradually becoming more diversified.

Then a little bit more about the profitability. So the profitability clearly improved compared to the comparison period, then remained stable compared with the beginning of the year results. The year-on-year improvement was supported by higher net sales and integration synergies and better control of fixed price projects. Then about the comparison period that was impacted by some projects exceeding their estimated workloads and the write-down on one fixed-price project. Then when we look at the profitability in the short term, the margin was impacted by targeted growth investments in sales and marketing and in the DACH region, which we expect then to result in also revenue growth.

Customer prices increased by 1.7%, and the average salary change was minus 1.3%, which also supported the overall cost balance. The increase in other operating expenses, there you can also see the investments to M&As. Then there are targeted investments also in OpEx and obviously, the business growth also impacts other operating expenses. So the direction is positive year-on-year, but then the near-term growth investments kept the profitability roughly at the same level as earlier in the year.

Then our liquidity and balance sheet, those remain in excellent shape. So equity ratio was 50%. Cash was around EUR 27 million and interest-bearing net debt was EUR 21.5 million. So what this basically means that this gives us flexibility to continue investing in growth through further M&A and investments. Then still our cash flow. So what you can see from this chart is that the cash flow from operations was positive. At the same time, we continued investing in growth and returned capital also to shareholders. And the total net change was minus EUR 15.5 million. But basically, the decline in cash reflects acquisition activity, debt repayments and then profit distribution. And that was everything from my side.

Thank you, Saara. And as I said, Saara is a little bit fresh with us, fresh-ish, started in, I think, in March this year, and we have had a good cooperation so far. So looking forward to working with you also in the future, of course.

But now as I promised, the next topic, like, let's say, a quick deep dive, maybe not that super deep, but some dive at least to Defense & Space business at Gofore. And to do that, I will be joined here by Markus Asikainen, who is responsible for our Defense & Security business; and Timo Latvala, who is responsible for the Space business. So welcome, Markus and Timo.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm going to lead a little bit into this topic by giving a short introduction, and that will start by showing this, which is the strategic industries that Gofore is focused on. And since 2025, Defense & Space has been the third strategic industry that we have been focusing on alongside the more mature Digital Society and Intelligent Industry businesses that have been there for a longer time. And for individual customer segments that we count into the Defense & Space part, we talk about national security. So mostly public sector customers that work with internal and to some extent, external security topics. We have the defense part with Defense industry, defense players in the public sector, and we have space players, which Timo will talk about in more detail afterwards.

And the decision to make this strategic focus was taken during the strategy process of 2024. And back in 2024, it was clear for us that we needed more growth drivers. And when we looked at the world, we looked at the external forces driving change in the world. Of course, we saw that there was a increased volatility of the geopolitical landscape and there were full-scale war in Ukraine. There were demands for European strategic autonomy and Finland joining also NATO back then. And these are, of course, forces that continue and acceleratingly influence our operating environment.

We also considered like Gofore's existing strengths. And looking at the right-hand side, you can see that what we found there is that, of course, we have the comprehensive offering and skill portfolio, which we felt that is applicable to a lot of different customer scenarios, including the Defense & Space part. We have experience in delivering mission-critical systems, software, projects on a national level, and that's something that is directly applicable also to the Defense & Space business. And we have, of course, a strong track record of supporting new growth with M&A -- with successful M&A. So what we saw as a combination of these external and internal factors is that we have the means to be successful in the Defense & Space industry.

We also did quite an extensive discussion internally about the ethics of going into this kind of business and secured kind of the support of the Gofore community by that way. So conclusion was that we will be able to break into the Defense business, and that's what we set out to do. We released this new strategy at the end of '24 and then moved quite swiftly to the acquisition of Huld, which happened in summer of '25 and was actually executed then in, I think, 1st of September in '25. And that was, of course, something that further strengthened the capabilities, introduced the space capabilities that we will look into now and, of course, also took a big step in, let's say, delivery processes about how you deliver software and solutions in very security-sensitive context. And that's something that I think took us forward a couple of years with one blow, so very important in that sense.

With that background, let's go into the more detailed discussion here, and let's start by looking at the market position and the individual markets that we work in. And we talk about the unique market position. I don't think we use that word very lightly. So I think there is a certain level of uniqueness here. But let's start with Markus, can you a little bit explain about the Defense & Security business area? What are we actually doing? What are we working on?

Of course, thank you, Mikael, and good afternoon from my behalf also. Our Defense & Security business is going towards our strategy, as you mentioned, and it has been quite a journey so far, really interesting times we are living. We are serving customers on both sectors, as you mentioned, from public sector, those internal and external security authorities. But of course, there is this other side, private sector, mainly Defense & Security industries, industry companies and especially there are a couple of bigger global companies that we are really proud of to work with.

And also, there are a couple of certain amount of smaller technology companies that are kind of more or less start-ups, but building something completely new to the market, and we are part of that development also. So very proud of having this kind of combination of different kind of customers. And what we do actually basically especially in the industry sector, we are mainly involved with development, R&D. And of course, we are doing also some services there. But of course, our kind of core competence areas like cybersecurity, quality assurance, embedded software development and so on, those are the areas that we are working with right now with our customers. Also integrations to mention some of those.

And I think it's quite clear that there aren't any products, there aren't any solutions for the Defense industry that don't include in some way the digital part also. So that, of course, makes the...

Of course.

Position quite good for us.

Yes. And we are also helping our customers to kind of refactor or renewing their ways of developing different kind of capabilities. That's something that we do also a daily basis.

And then Timo, you have been working quite long with the Space industry. You know it, I think, inside and out. So could you kind of give the same insight into that? What do we do there and what's happening?

Sure. Thank you, Mikael, and good afternoon to everyone. So in the Space industry, we have been focusing on three main segments that we've been working very hard on. One segment that we have been working for a long time on is the institutional Space industry where we have a lot of heritage. And this includes customers like the European Space Agency, the big prime contractors and large space integrators like Airbus, Thales and Leonardo. And this is a segment that is really being impacted by the things that you mentioned earlier, the drive for sovereignty, the drive for the geopolitical tensions and so forth. That has had a big impact on this segment.

The second sector that we're working with is the private Space industry, which has been on quite a tear in the last years as we can see. And here, what we've been able to do is take our existing expertise and apply that to our -- both our Finnish customers and also international customers. And we think that this is going forward that this is a significant growth opportunity for us.

The third segment that we are working on is end users of space data. This is still sort of an application area, which is still maturing. There are -- all of our customers are not sort of experts in how they can use space data in their daily operations. But we think that we are already sort of helping different kind of companies here in terms of delivering space data. So there are good Finnish examples of that, but we're also working with sort of other companies and authorities that are sort of trying to understand how to navigate this complex world of applying space data.

Good. Thank you. And I think especially in this time, it's good to be a Finnish company with this expertise because the Space industry is so blooming also here in Finland with good examples of companies that have burst into the scene in the last years. But when we talk about uniqueness, especially in the market position, I think what really makes this unique is when these areas, when defense, security and space technology, which you already a little bit alluded to start to like combine and the needs start to combine. And what we see in the world right now, of course, already supports this quite a lot. How do you see this, Markus, the convergence part?

There's a quite big change at the moment, meaning that space data has become more or less kind of available for different kind of actors in the Defense & Security industry also. And I see that it's a crucial part of modern digital battlefield that's coming from the defense forces and kind of being able to combine on making some kind of modern integrations and also fusion of data. So meaning that enriching your kind of existing situational awareness data or other operational data with space data, that's something that you will kind of get to the next level by combining these different kind of data sources.

And that's what we are doing at the moment, especially together with Timo's team. So we are collaborating quite tightly together on a daily basis. So trying to find those agile ways to make different kind of integrations and also serve customers in a new way. And I see that when we talk about AI in this area, it's a huge opportunity to also enhance the decision-making. And of course, at the end of the day, it is quite obvious that the human is making the decisions. But still, we can go a little bit further with assistant decision-making by AI and using this space data as a little part of that big process.

Yes. Just let me add to that. So from a space point of view, of course, space data, there's always been an aspect of defense when it has come to the space environment. I mean it has always -- this dual use aspect has always, to some extent, been there. But of course, this has really exploded now in the last year. And I think we're really well positioned to benefit from this. We can both work with the companies that sort of are in the business of both providing and selling space data and we are also sort of well positioned to help the customers who are taking space data into use in both in terms of understanding the data, how to apply it and how to integrate it into their systems.

And what we, of course, maybe sadly see is that if we have learned to think of this as a superpower capability to use space as one part of, let's say, warfare and defense. It's now available for others as well and that the sovereignty push is driving that, of course.

Exactly.

Luckily also, for example, Ukraine has these capabilities to use that data. But more importantly, I think for the future, what we hope is happening is that also civilian applications would be more commonplace because there are so many for that. But if we continue then to looking at some, let's say, more concrete things that happen in the industry. We already talked about the convergence, how the blending of sectors happens. But if you look at the middle box on this slide and on the phenomenon and the trends that we see, how would you, Markus, start by talking about the dual use part?

Yes, it's a really interesting topic. We see that the need is rising for sensor data from civil sources. So meaning that this kind of sector barriers are blurring. And we can see that even defense force type of actors or other security actors need more data from those quite isolated environments that are existing in the civil side. So there is a huge potential for being integrator between these different kind of, I might say, silos in a way.

So at the same time, we see that there is lots of data that can give benefit also to creating kind of national awareness of resilience and so on. So we are now developing also our own concept for dual use, meaning that we work quite closely with different kind of companies for finding solutions for, for example, having the crucial data out of the intelligent machines or devices. That's one example. So we have kind of taken the bold to create something new in the market and be one of those first ones who will take the kind of a step forward how to integrate agile different kind of actors and different kind of technical environments.

Yes. And that's, of course, something that also our understanding of the intelligent devices of the machinery, intelligent machinery helps us in doing it.

Exactly. And this is in general, this is really huge potential for us because this enlarges our potential customer portfolio. We are not talking about anymore kind of only defense or security customers. We are talking about, for example, Intelligent Industry customers. We are talking about retail and services customers and so on.

Yes. So next, Timo, expanding core expertise. I guess, with core expertise, I think we can talk about the 15-plus year experience in software and space, which is a very specific area. So how would you?

Yes. I think this is sort of -- it's important to understand that why we are able to do all of these things is that we really have deep expertise in certain areas related to development of space systems and understanding of space data. And in order so that we can continue growing and expanding into new domain areas, we do need to deepen that knowledge in certain specific areas, perhaps in things like, for instance, analysis of synthetic aperture radar data, which is very fashionable these days. But it's also, of course, about making sure that the strategic asset that we have in this deep expertise area remains relevant and fresh.

Yes. And the third one, we already talked about a little, but the space data part, we have seen that the kind of available data is exploding and what you can use for different applications is the opportunities are there. What do we see here?

So just like you said, the amount of data is really growing quickly, and we can see it from the number of launches and the number of announced launches in terms of different sensors and satellites that are being launched. So there's really going to be a lot of opportunities for data there. And in terms of sort of being able to really help our customers here, what it sort of requires, of course, is that we, first of all, have deep understanding of our customers and their domains because that is a key prerequisite for applying that data. Then, of course, we need data analysis expertise and AI expertise so that the data can be fused with different sources. And we can get the best out of that data, the most value, if you will.

And then finally, we also need to make sure that we understand the space-specific dimensions of the data. So we need to be have a good understanding of Earth Observation technology so that we understand the instruments, et cetera, and sensors that are actually producing the raw data that we are then using in these different applications.

Good. I think that's the understanding of the like nature of the data and that it's not just any data is really important also and something that we have a strong experience in, I'm happy to say.

Thanks at this point, Markus and Timo, about the insights there. And lastly, we can look at the right-hand side box here about the situation right now. So as of now, we have around EUR 18 million in net sales with the Defense & Space, Strategic Industry. That's growing as we have, of course, communicated earlier with a very strong organic growth, but of course, even stronger total growth due to the -- and thanks to the Huld acquisition. Over 100 full-time equivalents of experts working these projects. So even a bigger number of experts that have the experience required for these kinds of projects and hopefully, many more in the future. There's need for that. There's projects. So we also, of course, have a bottleneck in being able to recruit the necessary people.

We will be coming back to these topics in the Q&A session. I see that we already have some questions from this area, but let's take all of the questions at the end of the show, and we'll continue with the last topic of targets and '26 outlook. I just want to remind all of you about the cornerstones of Gofore strategy. We've talked about this quite a lot today already, especially on the left-hand side, the areas for growth. We have a strong focus on chosen Strategic Industries, which are Digital Society, Defense & Space and Intelligent Industry.

So we have a deep understanding of the customer-specific challenges and how to solve them. Our geographical focus is in Finland and DACH and how we create value is by having the best people in the industry by focusing on strategic customers, building long-term strategic relationship with customers, being their prime transformation partner and how we are able to become that is the exceptional offering that we built along the years with an end-to-end transformational offering.

Our long-term financial targets are EUR 500 million of net sales by 2030, 15% of profitability in adjusted EBITA. And what you see from the numbers today, of course, shows that we have some way to go, and we also are aware that we require some tailwind from the market to be able to reach that. But in terms of net sales, of course, also the investments that we have made in '25, '26 have helped us along the journey. So we are not that far away, and we are confident that these targets that we have set out for ourselves are achievable.

If you look at the short-term view for Q3 performance drivers, we have some clear growth drivers with the acquisitions clearly driving net sales also in Q3. The sale of the product design and technical documentation will have some negative impact on growth starting September, so starting to show in Q3 and then further into Q4. We do think that the market here is now, especially here in Finland, is starting to gain traction. We see that Finland's economy is recovering, and that will help, especially with the export-heavy manufacturing industry. So Intelligent Industry customers will gain some -- the market demand on that side will be visible with the economy picking up.

And in the DACH region, we are also expecting moderate growth improvements in the second half of the year, but of course, still uncertainty there. We have seen that the German economy is struggling, and we are also impacted by that. Profitability-wise, the growth part will help us. We want to be able to uphold the organic growth, accelerate the organic growth that will help us also on the profitability side. For Product Design and Technical Documentation business, short term, it will have a slight negative impact on profitability. We will be transferring volume of business, but not so much overhead costs. In the longer term, it's a positive effect on profitability because of the lower gross margins of business compared to Gofore's other business.

We are expecting the DACH region's profitability to also start positively impacting the group profitability. And overall, these profitability drivers, we see that as a sum will be positive for us in Q3. And to round this off with the priorities for our second half. Of course, as we've talked about, the organic growth trend, which we have managed now to uphold for two consecutive quarters. We think that's a trend already. We need to accelerate that, and that will have a lot of positive effects also concerning profitability and other parts of the business.

How we can do this? We have the higher growth opportunities in the portfolio with especially like growth-driving parts. We talked about Defense & Security. We expect that to able to drive growth. We have simulator technology. We have cybersecurity expertise that both have grown quite significantly in the last 12 months, and we have very, very strong growth in those areas that in themselves drive growth, but also help other parts to achieve growth for Gofore.

Especially Intelligent Industry, when the market picks up, when the, let's say, uncertainties in the market become a little bit less visible, we expect that to be a big opportunity. We see that there's a certain level of investment debt with these kinds of customers that have accumulated and when that starts to be paid back, then there's opportunities for Gofore in that customer segment. We want to continue renewing the offering and the skill portfolio. It's, of course, important because the AI-driven market transformation challenges us all the time. So in order for us to be long-term competitive, we need to make sure that the offering and skill portfolio matches that AI market.

And I think we are doing well there, both continuing to invest in upskilling, of course, improve delivery practices, but also make sure that we have a healthy renewal of the skill structure, which we talked about from the point of view of churn also that it is healthy in times like this to have a certain level of churn of attrition of employees. We will continue the M&A activity and try to take advantage of the good opportunities in this active market and of course, continue the profitability improvements that especially Saara talked about today.

To conclude, once more, I'm very happy that Gofore is a different kind of company today than it was a year ago at the same time. And as I said, not only are we over 30% bigger, we are much stronger and that strength will come in handy when the market pickups.

So now for some Q&A, and we will have both Saara and Markus and Timo here answering your questions. And let's see what we have in terms of questions and try to start a little bit with Defense & Space-related questions.

We have a question here that is quite clear, but I think it goes to, especially to Timo, a wide question, but clear. Could you give some examples of civilian use of space data?

So there are several uses of civilian space data. So the obvious ones are obviously weather-related that are, of course, actively in use already. But if you think about sort of where are there new applications developing, examples, for instance, include monitoring of critical infrastructure like bridges, road, railways is a good example. Use of sort of flood modeling sort of in order to predict flooding and similar. And then there are also examples of soil monitoring and agricultural sort of applications. So these are some examples of where space data can use in new and innovative ways. And there are more applications.

And already is used.

And there are sort of -- concrete examples of this, to some extent, in Finland, but especially more if you go sort of, let's say, wider in the world.

Yes. Maybe Markus can try to answer this other question a little bit. I will start a little bit though. But the question is that are you a market leader with defense among Finnish consultants? And what are your main competitors? I will start by saying that this is not an area where we exactly know what everybody is doing because of the nature of the business. So I don't think we can say or say that we are not the market leader and maybe not comment directly on that. But could you kind of give some color on what kind of competitors we have there?

Yes. Of course, there are this kind of established players, especially in the Finnish market. So companies that have done defense, especially for decades. They have certain strengths at the moment. Of course, they are developing their portfolios constantly. So are we. But as you mentioned, Mikael earlier, I would like to point out that we try to be also the different one in the market. So we are a company that brings something new on the table. So we want to be the company that be proud of giving some kind of new thinking for new defense or especially in the defense sector in general. So in that sense, I would say that we are at least challenger, but I'm not putting us online or to certain position at the moment.

And I think what we hear from the customers is clear that there's a need for challengers.

Exactly.

So kind of new thinking. And of course, it's important that some competitors have worked quite a long time with the defense industry, and that's a strength as well, but it kind of makes the perspectives a little bit limited when you work with the same companies and other suppliers for a long time.

Exactly. And I would continue that it's good to keep in mind that in certain cases, there are companies that might be competitors. But at the same day, we might make collaboration together.

Very important.

So it's good to keep in mind that this is actually an ecosystem that will work efficiently as it runs forward.

Another question for Timo, I think, is that is your space offering purely for the EO, so Earth Observation players? Or are you able to benefit from the communications and broadband satellites as well?

So traditionally, we have a very long heritage in working with what is so-called upstream, meaning sort of solutions for satellites and also the early data processing. And this is applicable both to SATCOM players and also Earth Observation satellites and so forth. So we have the capability to work with both. But we are -- we have worked more with, let's say, with Earth Observation-related projects than in the SATCOM area.

Then maybe both for Timo and Markus to comment. What are the key barrier entries to your current position within the Defense & Space, so barriers of entry. How is it to gain new expertise? Can you find competence from the markets? Or are you internally training staff?

Would you start?

Well, if you look at it from our perspective, the barriers to entry are quite significant because they are sort of -- there's the -- having the customer relationships is, of course, one. Then having the expertise of running the projects and understanding the technology. And in order so that we are able to grow what we need to do, yes, we do hire sort of European-wide in terms of space experts, but we also place quite a lot of significant effort into sort of training people who come with, let's say, relevant skills, but don't have the absolute domain knowledge. And that is something that is -- we've been working on for a long time already. So that -- because otherwise, this will really become a growth constraint. So this is something that we have put quite a lot of emphasis on.

I think Timo put it quite well. But to continue, of course, we are doing both. We are training our people, especially the AI is something that is kind of refactoring almost everything in consulting and so on. So that's something that we do on a daily basis at the moment. But of course, when the market is getting higher or rising, it's quite obvious that we are -- in some places, we are kind of trying to kind of compete about the same experts. So it's not so easy to get the kind of professionalism that we are looking.

But of course, we have been quite successful for getting that people. And of course, that's something that we also think when we are considering different kind of acquisitions and so on, what might be the kind of good combination of different kind of capabilities from different kind of approaches. So yes. And at last, I would say that, of course, there is something to work to do with how customers are, especially in the public sector, they are procuring. So that's kind of a known fact that we should kind of improve and get the innovation cycle shorter and also get more efficient tendering processes.

Yes. And as has been clear today, I think it's a specific expertise to work in these areas, but there are overlapping things that overlap with expertise that Gofore already for a long time has had, for example, the big projects, delivering big projects for the public sector customers, the public sector knowledge as such is important for the national security customers, as we discussed also the industry, manufacturing industry, intelligent devices, also the defense industry is about intelligent devices. So things that kind of overlap.

And we have quite good understanding internally of different kind of people who are kind of -- they want to work with this area. And we have a certain amount of people in pool that they are kind of waiting to get here just when I will get the first project and so on. So that's a good way to also kind of enhance the capabilities.

Yes. Then we have something that maybe you will -- you want to contribute to also, Saara. Maybe I will start. But the question is that do you see these organic growth investments materially still impacting profitability on H2? They will have an impact on profitability in H2. So what we're talking about is like, for example, a big push in sales work, and that's something that doesn't go away in just overnight. So that's important for us that we still push for the organic growth, and we want to invest in that. So yes, they will have some impact also on profitability in H2. Do you want to add something there?

Yes, I think you concluded it quite well. Obviously, there is some uncertainty in the DACH region, what we mentioned already earlier. But yes, we expect obviously those investments to bring growth.

Good. Then we have a three-part question, and maybe we take that in three parts then. It's about AI. Given that AI enables more efficient development, have you seen smaller competitors appearing in tenders, which in the past would have been out of their scale?

I think it's a little bit early days to answer definitely this kind of question. I think it's clear already from evidence, and I think it's also rational that the new players will come into the market. And that, for sure, will happen. How strongly they can compete with purely AI-based solutions to kind of -- to what has traditionally been seen as bigger companies, transformational projects, that remains to be seen. I don't think we have evidence of this kind of development at least materially impacting things yet. But of course, it is early days considering the AI effects.

Have you seen customers' willingness or readiness to start larger-scale AI transformations picking up? Or are the AI projects still smaller and experimental?

I think we are not the only ones that have come with the message that, yes, gradually, these programs become like investments of some significance. So yes, I would say that gradually, that is picking up. It's not going to probably change kind of overnight that we wake up tomorrow and see everything change and AI transformations being the kind of biggest part of the market. And on the other hand, of course, AI transformation will be some part -- playing some part in basically every project from now on. So it's a little bit of both. But yes, I think there's a clear shift towards that, but it's not something that just happens overnight. It's a shift that takes time.

And then the third part, with the support of AI, some of your peers have been transforming towards own IP software. Do you have initiatives or projects where you would aim to create scalable own IP products or delivery methods?

I think for us, this is not only and not just an AI question as such. We have already before this AI transformation, we've said that we want to do this. We want to support the consultancy business by having our own IPRs, of which the simulator technology is a prime example. We have a product that is based on own IPR that supports the consultancy work, primarily in the Intelligent Industry, Strategic Industry.

So yes, we don't see that so much as an AI question. Of course, that transforms also the simulator business, we can use AI for faster development for simulator software, and that's important, but it's not like primarily an AI question. And for us, whenever we want to build something that is own IP and own solution, we want to not be kind of offering generic solutions where we know that there are players out there that are better at that -- better suited to that. We want to provide solutions that are customer segment-specific or otherwise like more niche-level type of solutions.

Do you want to try this, Saara? You have now two sequential quarters of positive delta between customer prices and salaries. What do you expect going forward?

Obviously, we expect it to develop positively also moving forward. So I think the direction has been right.

And on the other hand, it's clear that we will have tough competition price-wise also going forward. So it's not going to be easy. But a healthy business is characterized by a kind of positive balance between customer prices and salaries for sure. So it's a big priority for us.

Do you expect organic net recruitment going forward?

Yes. And that's -- if we look at just consultancy force, that's what we've had also for this year, for example. So hopefully, that will accelerate, but at least be on the same level as now.

I think with that, we have handled all questions and Emmi is nodding and I look at the time, it's 2:00 P.M. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us for this results presentation and see you in the Q3 results presentation.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Gofore's Q4 and Full Year Results Presentation. Intention today is to, of course, give you an idea of how we did in Q4 and last year in '25, but also to give you an idea of, in what shape Gofore currently is to face the challenges of the future because we expect there to be a lot of challenges also for the future.

Presenting today is me, I'm Mikael Nylund, the CEO of Gofore Group, and I will have some guests during the presentation with me. How we're going to do this is that we're going to start with Q4 and full year results and highlights from that. Then we're going to look at the financial highlights, then some outlook.

And to round this presentation off, we will talk about AI, the topic that, of course, a lot of investors are pondering about right now. So we'll have a few expert guests today here talking about what AI means for the consultancy business for digital consultancies.

But as I said, let's start with how we did in Q4. Q4 was rather good, I'm happy to say. Profitability-wise, we improved much from a weaker '25 and especially a weaker first half of the year. The year '25 was very much a tale of 2 halves, with a weak first half and then going into the second half after some corrective measures, a much stronger performance. And that was well rounded off in Q4 with a healthy profit margin.

Growth-wise, there's 2 important highlights, I think. First one is that we've had negative organic growth since the start of '24 and now versus in Q4, the first quarter where that negative development stopped. So organic sales pretty much at a plus/minus 0 situation. But also that the investments that we made because '25 was very much a year of big investments for us, have started to pay dividends. And overall, net sales growth was up 20%. So a significant growth from the Q4 before.

Shortly looking at that sentiment for Q1. We are cautiously optimistic, I would say. So expecting a little bit of tailwinds from the improving demand, and of course, especially expecting a positive development from the investments that we made with business in Finland being supported by a big acquisition in Huld and the business in DACH being supported by also a very big acquisition compared to the size of the business there in the Esentri. We will look a little bit more on these acquisitions also today.

We are in the midst of integration, so that will be a little bit of a strain on Q1 and on the customer hours that we can book for that period.

A little bit more on the Q4. As said, profitability was high, by far the highest profitability of the year at adjusted EBITA, 14%. Utilization rates were at a good level, highest level of the year, which is often the case in Q4 with a lot of kind of a busy calendar there.

As said, net sales increased by almost 20%. This is really important for us, and ended up at EUR 59.6 million.

We have also in Q4 made measures to support future profitability. So cost synergies from the Huld acquisition, which was closed in September -- beginning of September, have been implemented in Q4. The results will be more visible during '26 gradually from those decisions.

A one-off item basically was the compensation of EUR 3 million we got from an arbitration award for a dispute that we've had. And from this, most of it is as one-off items that affect previous years from '25 have been adjusted, but some of the arbitration award affects also the adjusted EBITA in '25.

We are still struggling a bit as is the industry as a whole with the customer price level. So pretty much level for the Q4 at minus 0.2% customer prices. Average salary change was plus 1.9% in Q4, but this mainly includes out of the ordinary one-off items. So I would look more on the full year development there being plus 0.9%. So pretty much balanced with the customer price situation, but not the situation that we would like. So customer price development is a major issue for Gofore, for the industry as a whole.

If we look at the full year situation, as I said, very much a tale of 2 halves, very different halves in H1 and H2, H2 being pretty decent half for us and goes more to show in which shape Gofore is for the started year, for the future years, and for the future challenges.

What happened in spring of '25 was that we made a major restructuring operation, and that has meant that our skill structure is better aligned with customer needs now in H2.

We've managed to reduce costs and we've maybe had a little bit better market situation as well with a little bit stronger customer demand in H2. Especially this is relevant for the private sector and manufacturing industry clients there and also based on our decision -- strategic decision to go into a new industry of Defense and Space, and security-related customers, also the demand in that area is quite healthy.

As said, we did investments in '25, and that's already visible in the numbers for '25, will be so in the future. But looking at the last 12 months pro forma revenue at the end of December, we see that we are at the level of EUR 250 million, which, of course, is due to and thanks to the acquisition of Huld and is an important milestone or important step on our growth journey.

Huld was the biggest acquisition we've done to date, and that's something that reflects also, of course, on the integration work. And as I said, we are expecting that to have a little bit of an effect on the beginning of this year when we are in the midst of the biggest operational integrations with Huldeans joining the Gofore organization now at the turn of January, February.

In December, we also announced the other investment in the DACH region by acquiring Esentri. And as promised, I will come back to a little bit more about the acquisitions next -- almost next in the presentation.

The Board of Directors has proposed a dividend of EUR 0.49 per share, a slight increase from last year, which is, of course, reflecting on the Board's also confidence that the weaker H1 was just a one-off situation, not the normal state of affairs for Gofore, and that we can improve for the future. And we are well positioned as we will go a little bit deeper into in the financial highlights also to use the balance sheet for further investments if we find suitable targets.

Again, '25 was very much a tale of 2 different halves. H1 was the most difficult half year for Gofore pretty much ever, and that was due to weak customer demand resulting in a big free capacity in a big bench.

We also, to add on top of that, we had some profitability challenges in certain projects, which were then handled in H1. And that we ended up in change negotiations in restructurings where we effectively made a layoff of 80 people, and that brought a EUR 2.4 million of savings and going forward from that. So that's the big reason why H2 was very much different from the first one. We had a better alignment of skills and expertise of our consulting force with the customer needs.

We had the cost reductions supporting the profitability. And we also improved on the delivery situation. So no big profitability challenges from projects in H2, although some tales affected H2 still. And as we see here, H2 is, again, in a more healthy double-digit profitability margin even though, of course, H2 includes the seasonally weakest quarter of the year in Q3. So that's a good sign for us.

For growth, the investments, I want to highlight once more the investments that we made during '25. In summer, we acquired Huld. And in December, we announced the acquisition of Esentri in the DACH region. And if you look at the situation in terms of like real growth in terms of last 12 months, pro forma net sales at the end of January, we are at EUR 228 million. So marked growth from what we've seen during '23, '24, '25, and that's important for the Gofore growth story.

Acquisitions. First, Huld, as said, the biggest acquisition to date, 400 experts added. That's a big amount of additional expertise to the Gofore crew at an enterprise value of EUR 54.5 million. A very strategic acquisition in the sense that this is something that we did to implement our strategy of going into the Defense and Space industry.

And Huld has a very long history of very niche expertise in the space area with satellite software, downstream data handling, situational awareness, and this is something that we see as such as a strong growth area, but also in terms of on converging needs from defense, security like national security, and then space technologies and industries. And space will be supporting the growth of our whole strategic industry of Defense and Space.

It's also a complementary investment into the, what we call the intelligent industry customer segment, a significant complementary investment there with almost doubling the number of experts there and especially bringing specific know-how of industrial cybersecurity, which is something that is a very growing area with these customers.

For cost synergies in Q4, we implemented the decisions that will ultimately result in around EUR 1.3 million in cost synergies during '26. So also important in that sense.

The other acquisition is Esentri, a German company supporting our DACH business, a German company based in Baden-Wurttemberg, and having operations as well in Switzerland and also Liechtenstein, with the Liechtenstein state, being a public sector customer there.

This is also, as I said in the beginning, a very significant addition relative to the DACH operation size, so doubles also that roughly. And we start the year of '26 now with 200-plus experts, and also a target of growing our business there in double-digit numbers.

Esentri brings a good customer portfolio and diversifies also the expertise that we have there. As part of Esentri Group, there's also a company called Impact Strategies, that kind of diversifies the expertise that we have in the DACH region into the same direction where we've gone over the years in the Finnish business. So bringing the advisory business, the management consultancy business with a specific focus on sustainability matters, which is something that German customers are very much interested in. So an important growth step on the DACH timeline of growth as well.

What is always important is that how we deal with the customers. And we are, of course, very happy that during '25 also, we managed to improve in that area. Many customers are operating under strict budgets, under kind of economic pressure themselves. So the demands are high. So in that sense, I'm super happy that we managed to improve the NPS score from 65% from the previous year to 68%. And a lot of our customers feel that we can meet or exceed their expectations, which is also, of course, super important.

The amount of returning customers was 93% and the amount of customers that we invoice over EUR 1 million per annum was one bigger than the year before. I think a good result also in the tough market conditions. So it goes to show that the strategic partnerships that we always try to build are ones that also hold up in the tougher market conditions.

And that brings me to the strategy part. No changes here, but important to remember and note that Gofore is focused on chosen strategic industries, those strategic industries being the 3 that I think I mentioned in the presentation already: Digital Society, Defense and Space, and the third one, Intelligent Industry.

We know the customer industries. We have a long history with all of them. We understand the customer industry-specific problems and the challenges, and we can help our customers solving them.

We're still very much committed to our geographical focus in Finland and DACH, and have been investing into the DACH region, as said. And we are working very hard, I think, and getting results out of improving the way we create value to our customers. The expectations are changing. They are quite high at the moment. And we believe that we are in a good place to build on the exceptional offering, and we will come back to that a little bit in the AI theme as well to tell to how Gofore as a whole is tackling the challenge that customers, of course, place on us also in terms of the AI transition.

And as I said, 3 strategic industries: Intelligent Industry, Defense and Space, and Digital Society. We are focused on these customer domains. We are focused on these customer problems in these domains that are domain-specific and different from each other. And that's why we can produce good value to all of our customers in these strategic industries.

Good. That was about Q4 and full year '25, and hopefully, also giving a little bit of an idea that we feel, at least, ourselves that we are in a good shape to tackle the future challenges.

And now for the financial highlights, which usually are given by the Chief Financial Officer. But today, I'm here giving also you the financial part of the presentation.

We are in the midst of a change in CFO. So outgoing CFO, Teppo Talvinko, is not available today, but we will have an opportunity to have a short introduction from our incoming CFO, so shortly to that.

But to start off with the net sales analysis. Big picture, of course, is that growth is driven by the Huld acquisition, which is reported in the numbers since beginning of September. There's an increase in volume, both on own crew sales and subcontractor sales.

Private sector sales was around 8% up year-on-year, again, driven to a large degree by the Huld acquisition. But there are strong areas which are growing and compensating for other areas which are not as strong. So like areas like cybersecurity, many areas of our advisory business are growing.

And here, we wanted to highlight also the simulator product sales, which increased 60% year-on-year. So a sizable increase there. And simulator products are especially for the Intelligent Industry customer segment, and an important part of our offering. So kind of augmenting the consultancy offering that we have for these customers with our own technology in areas which are important for all of the manufacturing industry clients, especially in the mobile work machines area where simulator technology is used in a lot of different scenarios, especially as virtualizing the product development.

So we are very happy that that area is on a growth track, and that also is an indication that the digitalization, the transition to more digitalized products from a very physical world where we've been only recently is ongoing in this customer segment.

Profitability-wise, again, I want to say that the important part here is that first half and the second half are very different from each other. Volume-wise, H2 was much stronger with, of course, Huld acquisition, again, a significant factor in that, but also the higher utilization rate resulting from a better fit between customer demand and capacity that we have.

Employee expenses up a little bit, of course, reflecting both on the restructuring, which was positive for the company and the Huld acquisition, which drives the volumes up and employee expenses are affected that way.

As mentioned earlier, the arbitration award of EUR 3 million, we have EUR 1.2 million of that improving H2 profitability. So the rest of the arbitration award was adjusted for as being affecting years before '25.

Balance sheet-wise, we are in a situation of strong KPIs still. Cash decreased slightly during the year. Maybe you could say that to a more healthy level of cash. And that's, of course, due to the big investments that we've made with the Huld investment being the main one here, Esentri as being -- or affecting January.

Interest-bearing debt increased, same reason behind, of course. And dividends of EUR 0.49 per share will be paid in normal order after the Annual General Meeting, if the meeting decides on these dividends. And this is also a sign or goes to show that we believe in the strong financial position that we have, that we are also able to pay rising dividends and that we consider the first half dip in cash flow and profitability as a kind of not normal situation in any way.

We have still the continued ability to invest when we find good targets during the year. And finally, the cash flow analysis showing strong operational cash flow, especially in H2, and this is something that we expect to continue into the current year as well.

Financing cash flow will be slightly more impactful, of course, in a negative way with the bigger debt position that we have with the changes in '25. And also dividends will be affecting the H1 cash flow and be impactful in that way.

But now, as promised, a presentation from our incoming Chief Financial Officer, welcome, Saara. Saara Ukkonen will be joining us in March. And it's nice to have you here today to present you to the investors. So tell us a little bit who is Saara Ukkonen.

Yes. Thank you, Mikael. And it's really exciting to join such a great company as Gofore. And just to say that my first experiences have been really, really great. So it's an agile company with very proven people, so I'm happy to join.

I have worked in the past couple of years in the IT industry. So I have been a CFO for a company called Witted, and then I also work for a company called Akkodis, which is part of Adecco Group. And I'm experienced in scaling and building the finance functions, improving the processes, enabling and driving profitable growth, and then also executing M&As.

And I have lived now a couple of years in Finland. Prior to that, I lived and worked several years abroad, in France and in the U.K., but happy to be back here. And I really look forward to bringing my experience and support Gofore in the next phases of growth.

As you said, you've been working in the IT industry for the last couple of years, and it's been a kind of a turbulent time that...

Yes.

...not only the Gofore numbers are showing that, but also the industry numbers showing that many companies kind of feeling the change in the economic climate, maybe even the changes in the technological landscape with AI and so forth, but I would say more of the economic climate.

So there probably will be a little bit of a winner and loser situation in this for the future. And I would like to ask you, what do you consider to be the success factors that make a company the winner in a turbulent period like this?

Yes. So I have a couple of points. I think one is adaptability. So as you said, the industry has been in the constant change and the technologies are also constantly changing. So the winners are the ones who are able to adapt and then transform.

Then I think one important point is focus on the client. So basically understanding the client needs and business problems, and actually helping to solve those and deliver real results rather than just technical work.

And then I think at the end, it comes down to having the best talent and best people. So who has the skilled and smart consultants that the client trust and want to employ again and again. So I think at least with those 3, you go quite far.

I think we understand each other quite well here. And I do believe that Gofore is well placed to deliver on those success factors. Thank you, Saara, for this presentation and looking forward to being with you here in the future results presentation.

Yes. Thank you. Me too.

And of course, at this point, I also want to take the opportunity to give huge thanks to Mr. Teppo Talvinko, who has been for 6 years my partner in crime up here and talking to investors on many occasions. It's been a pleasure working with you, Teppo.

Then next, let's look a little bit on the future, on the targets and outlook for '26. A reminder, Gofore has ambitious targets set by the Board in '24, in the midst of the little bit more difficult economic cycle, and we have not seen any reason to change this. This is what we believe in and want to work towards.

And if we look a little bit where we are right now, the growth target, we are actually on track. And that's, of course, at this point, thanks to the bigger investments that we've made during '25. But those investments are also super important for the coming -- for this year, for the coming years, organic growth. So I believe that they have not only made Gofore bigger, but they have especially made Gofore a lot stronger to compete for that growth that we will need in the future.

Profitability-wise, as I showed you, the second half of 2025 was closer to our profitability target. We are not there yet. We have a lot of work to do, but also we consider that we have the right tools here in place to take also our profitability in the coming years to the level that we have been targeting for, well, almost ever the 15% target being the longest living part of the target setting that we have.

Then if we look at the outlook a little bit, here, you will find Q1 performance drivers that we've included in the results report. But if we first look a little bit on the fundamentals, in Finland, we do see from the beginning of the fourth quarter, and we are estimating that the Finnish economy will grow in '26 and the growth will accelerate in '27. And these are important, of course, fundamentally wise, our -- for our growth.

And the same goes a little bit for the German economy. We've been, I would almost like to say, a little bit unfortunate with bad luck being -- focusing on the 2 countries in Europe that have been the weakest in the current economic cycle. So both Germany and Finland have been suffering in the last couple of years. But we also see that the German economy is expected to grow this year. Again, very, very important.

And especially for the Finnish growth, it is estimated to be driven by export industry -- by manufacturing industry. So that suits well with the customer segments that we are focusing on.

But looking a little bit on the shorter-term drivers here. Growth-wise, we, of course, have the capacity increases from the investments that we made from the acquisitions, and that's going to continue the growth in Q1. That's something that is almost certain.

On top of the acquisitions, we are expecting a little bit of total capacity growth also. We have areas where we recruit quite actively right now, and that's important. And then there's, of course, also the areas that are not yet at least in a similar and strong situation. But to have the capability areas that are growing, that's important, and we expect the net change here on top of the acquisitions to be positive in the first quarter.

Especially, we are counting on demand to pick up within the manufacturing customers and the DACH market. It's smaller here, but of course, we do also see that there will be growth during '26 in the Defense and Space industry.

Profitability-wise, we expect the good level or the kind of fundamental drivers for a good level to continue from Q4 to Q1. We've had, let's say, better transition of the year than we've seen in going from '24 to '25 or going from '23 to -- from '23 to '24 in terms of customer demand quite well holding up over the year change. And that's always a good signal for the coming year.

On the other hand, what we've highlighted in the report as well is that the absences during January have been on an unusually high level. So that will be also reflecting on the results for Q1 as will also do the integration work. So there is some integration work related to bringing together Huld and Gofore organizations operationally now, and that will result in a slight loss of customer work, and that will be reflected on the Q1 profitability. And nothing we are worried about. It's just something that has to do with the integration work and nothing structural.

January was reported as part of our full year report and let's say that's roughly in line with what I just said. Holiday period was a little bit of a surprise to us. Capacity developed as expected. We added to the capacity numbers, added Esentri. Otherwise, close to net zero change there, I think. A little bit of a positive change, but very small.

And I want to round off the outlook part with listing our priorities for '26. What we will be focusing on and what we also encourage the investors to look at. And first one is that we want to make sure that the integrations from the big investments in '25 are successful, and that we maximize the value of those investments.

We will see cost synergies realizing during '26, and we will also see business results improvements during '26 from both Huld acquisition in Finland and the Esentri acquisition in DACH or that's what we are targeting.

Secondly, what is super important is, of course, deliver on the turnaround in organic growth. We are now at 0 level looking at Q4, and looking forward, we want to see that as a trend, and of course, return to the positive organic growth track that's extremely important for our future performance. And this will especially be true in the DACH region where we are doubling -- we are targeting double-digit growth in terms of net sales in this year.

And thirdly, on the agenda and priorities is our slogan of rethinking consulting, which means the development of our offering portfolio, making sure that we -- with the chosen focus industries, we are in a place where we can develop unique value to our customers. And we've done a lot of work here and now is the time to reap the results of that and get the results actually visible in performance numbers.

So that's the 3-part priority list that we have set out for ourselves in '26. And that concludes the targets and outlook part. And as the last one, I want to welcome Tommi Rasinmaki and Osmo Haapaniemi here with me, and we will be talking a little bit about AI development. Welcome, Tommi and Osmo.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Osmo, you are the Managing Director and Founder of Valimo Studios, which we will come back to shortly. And Tommi, you are working in Gofore as the Head of Business in our management consulting part, which is also responsible for the AI advisory services that we do with our customers.

So good to have you here. And I will let the experts do a little -- much of the talking, but to start with kind of give the big idea of how we at Gofore approach the topic of AI, which is, of course, a big change for our customers. It's a big change for the digital consulting industry. Some even consider it to be a disruptive change. We'll see about that, I guess. But we are prepared, of course, to face big changes from there.

And what our playbook basically is to, of course, see to it that we upskill our workforce, that we are attractive to new talent because in times of change, of course, you want to make sure that you also get the new talent from the market.

Secondly, we develop our own AI offering and expertise, offer basically, that's where we want to position Gofore as a comprehensive partner in AI transitions for our customers. We think we are just -- have just taken the first small steps in these AI transitions with the customers, and they will need a lot of help in concluding the transition. So that's where we are strong.

Again, focusing on specific industries, that means also that we can give the AI technology, some specific value in the industry context and make sure that our customers get what they want from their AI investments. And kind of a plus 1 in the playbook is that we are, of course, looking at investment opportunities also in the AI context. And what we now have is Osmo here from our group company, Valimo Studios, which we have together with Osmo and Olli-Pekka Saksa founded, and that's an important addition to our portfolio.

So basically, building on that playbook, we're going to have this short discussion about AI development. And we're going to start with Osmo. And -- maybe you can tell us a little bit about what Valimo Studios is and why it exists?

Yes. Thank you, Mikael, and good to be here. So Valimo Studios is a new specialist company in Gofore Group, specializing in AI transformation. And our core mission is to help customers operationalize AI and that way create new business value out of the new technologic capabilities that we now have at hand.

And maybe a few words about me and Olli-Pekka, 20 years in the consultancy business and having led different consultancy businesses. And last year, we came together, talking about the transformation and the change to consultancy business, but even more importantly to customers' businesses. And we just saw that this is a kind of place, a situation that kind of requires a new approach also to the market. And that's why we decided to found a new company.

And overall, we see that as of now, technology is moving a lot faster forward and companies are changing. And that creates a kind of growing adoption gap. And now AI is moving from a kind of passive tool, Copilots, personnel productivity, more into agentic workflows and processes.

And most probably at some point, we will have AI as a kind of agents and coworkers working with us. And that creates a kind of a massive change for companies, and they need to rethink their processes, operations, technology landscape, and how all these enable them to serve their customers in the best possible way. And we try to build Valimo to kind of bridge this gap and help companies to kind of solve this challenge.

Yes. Thanks, Osmo, and great to have you in the group. Welcome like officially into the Gofore Group. You and we together talk about Valimo Studios as an AI-native consultancy as opposed to the, can we say, the legacy digital transformation consultancies. But to be honest, there are a lot of these AI-native consultancies popping up now every week or so. What makes Valimo different?

Yes. Maybe I'm not too fond of the term anymore. It's been kind of a little bit overused at this point. But if we start with what does it mean to us, I think it kind of starts from the company being kind of designed for the AI era, and we're leveraging AI in our internal ways of working and processes, more importantly in delivery, taking the kind of productivity benefits of the new technology to provide more value to the customers. And of course, a full focus on solutions that leverage AI to create that add-on value to the customers.

And then what differentiates us, when we were setting up the company, we were a little bit surprised that on the kind of new company field, there were companies focusing quite a bit to strategy part, and then to technology agencies and that. And we wanted to kind of take a kind of holistic approach. So we are building a company with multidisciplinary team from strategy to technology, and then to adapting those solutions. So maybe that's one area.

And then we have a team of super experienced consultancy business persons, and nobody knows where AI is in 2 years' time. And at least personally, I think that our biggest competitive advantage is the kind of agility and the speed we can learn and having a discussion with customer and learning something and then next day, having it kind of thought through and a part of our story. That's one.

And then, of course, Gofore. We want to have a kind of an industrial partner who can bring the credibility from the beginning. And then, of course, the scale when we kind of enter bigger transformation projects. And so those 3, I would say.

To me, that makes a lot of sense. I like it.

Tommi, as said, you are heading the management consultancy at Gofore. And as such, you see from the, let's say, holistic perspective, what our customers are actually doing, and at what phase their AI transition is. Can you tell us about Gofore's holistic approach to AI transition?

Absolutely. Thank you, Mikael. Well, our approach is comprehensive, as you mentioned. But let me try to cover it through our AI transition model called AI Beyond Tomorrow. And I think it's the best way to do it is through some concrete examples. So I think we can jump to that.

I think that what it takes to succeed in AI transition is about leading this kind of systemic vehicle, so not just the disconnected parts of it. And if we start looking at our framework from the bottom, at the basis, the Data and the Platform Foundation. And in practice, this means a lot of work with the data, data availability, data quality, also about the technical governance, meaning, and ensuring the controlled and secure environment for AI solutions development.

And to speed up our clients' work in this era -- this area, we have productized our services called the AI Landing Zone, which is the collection of best practices, how do you in practice to put up this kind of a platform and data foundation.

On top of that, you can see these 4 wheels, so to say. And if we start from the individual part, it is about the services like workforce upskilling, training services, also about the cultural change adoption, because things are moving really fast. You need a good innovation culture.

But one hot topic to take on that is the AI 1000 trainings. It's the training focused on -- for the management teams and Board members and business owners. Gofore is one of the founding partners of that training model, and it's been initiated by the AI Finland. And just last year, we were awarded as the Training Partner of the Year in the Finnish AI Gala as well.

And we've done multiple trainings for different kind of companies, from big to small, and it's been really, really great.

And one thing to mention, we have just announced today the strategic partnership with the AI Finland and their teams. So looking forward to even more close collaboration with them.

If we point out one thing from the organizational wheel, I would highlight the importance of the enterprise architecture. It hasn't gone anywhere. And I think it's actually even more important now when we are figuring out how we get AI into our organization operations and processes, and how do we develop that.

The business wheel, it's all about what AI really enables. It's about product and service innovations, ending up into new business models. And Gofore is really well positioned as we've been talking already that we've been quite systematically building our capabilities, the end-to-end capabilities, all the way from strategy work to the development and maintenance of these new type of innovations and solutions.

And of course, important part of it is the fourth wheel, digital development. And I think this is the wheel that is at the fastest disruption at the moment. But at Gofore, we help our clients to move towards the AI-native digital service production that runs on top of the AI platforms. So we can provide a clear path to this changing operating model.

And to me, I feel like the bottleneck is not anymore in the speed of coding. So we need to look at the whole life cycle of the digital development, starting from the, how we define the business needs, how we do prototyping coding, of course, as well all the way to how do we do it in the secured and controlled manner and ensuring the quality.

To run these wheels, we need an engine. So the AI transition engine is, this is the leadership that connects technology and people, sets direction and keeps the organization moving at the right pace as well.

So all in all, to get the AI investments paying off, you need to have the strong foundation, 4 wheels aligned, and a well-led engine.

Well put. And from both of you and from the things I hear from customers, I think we are now really entering the time when customers kind of realize that it's not just about adding a tool or adding a simple individual productivity tool like Copilot, which some people use and some don't, to be honest about that as well.

But when we go into the more complicated organizational holes, we have the enterprise architecture, as Tommi said, and Osmo mentioned, the kind of change need for processes. But for whole organizations and even individuals, we know that we are not always there, as individuals, the best to adopt new ways of working. And now we are talking about a lot of professions, a lot about -- a lot of roles in white-collar work that will be actually quite radically changing.

But Tommi, could you just mention a couple of concrete examples what we do with our customers in the AI sphere?

Absolutely. Starting from the -- our public reference city of Helsinki and their centralized application maintenance solution office, it's a great example. It might not be the most awesome case, but it's saving millions.

And the thing why it is saving millions, of course, bringing centralized maintenance solution is already efficient way, but we are bringing more and more AI into it. And of course, we're doing it in a kind of a gradual way, taking AI where it is bringing value right away, and we have great experiences on that and expecting to save even more and do it even more effectively, the maintenance there.

Another thing is to the AI governance models. We have been now doing kind of a comprehensive governance model for large enterprises. It means defining the roles and responsibilities, and also the processes on how to procure, develop, and operate AI solutions.

To mention a few others, I'm really excited about one strategy project that we have ongoing. It combines also the organization-wide coaching and learning into the strategy process. And I think it's actually a smart way to approach this, the AI strategy work, because it's all about adapting and learning new all the way along as you go. So not -- with AI, it doesn't work that you set the strategy and just implement it, you need to learn along the way.

And one other thing to mention, we're also leading the human side of change in one of the largest AI transformation programs in Finland. So there are a few. And there's a lot more, of course.

Yes. Yes. Interesting what the future brings. Before we go to the audience questions, just one short question to both of you. We are now in 2026, as you know. And 2026 might be the year when organizations on an average, there are leaders, of course, already start to invest more programmatically into AI, coming from kind of the capability building, the expertise or learning about what AI is and doing the more of the proof-of-concept type of projects to something bigger. Would you agree? Is 2026 the year when we see that?

We will definitely see at least the kind of a big jump forward in that. And at least in our customer discussions, the productization, finding the kind of bigger value lever cases in the organization and then starting to move those forward is kind of a very topical discussion that we are having. So definitely, I believe that we are moving forward.

And last year, we were still hearing that in some companies, majority of the AI investments were going to Copilot licenses and then they were just given to people and not much happened. And now clearly, there's more kind of this organizational productivity approach, which I think makes a lot of sense.

Yes. And I think even though it's one hype word more, but the agentic approach is really speeding up the production level implementation. And also we are now starting to see the investments in the public sector as well, more and more coming that is focused on AI.

And of course, they have been putting the investment budget 2 years ago, and now we can see the results and expecting to see a lot more in the coming year.

Public sector, on an average, it's a little bit behind the private sector, I guess. But when the wheels get turning, things will happen. Yes.

Let's go to audience questions.

We have Jaakko Tyrvainen, an analyst from SEB following us. And first question is that the financial markets are speculating that the AI-native software will disrupt the existing SaaS market. How are you expecting this to impact the IT consulting market?

I've been recently learning the mindset of the financial markets, I guess, with the sell first and ask questions later thing. So this is at least something that's happening there. But joke aside, I think at least the markets have kind of -- they are confused about this.

On the one hand, they say that SaaS software will be replaced by more tailor-made solutions. And at the same time, they are saying that there will not be a need for software development. So that's at least something that I'm a little bit puzzled about. Do you have something that you want to add to this question?

I wouldn't call myself as a kind of an expert in this field, but -- but I don't think that the kind of bigger SaaS products are going anywhere. Maybe the role is evolving, and they will definitely be there as a kind of a transactional and master of record type of systems. But it will be interesting to see how much companies start to build their own tailored workflows on top of those master of records, and kind of moving away from the UIs of those SaaS platforms.

And potentially, that, of course, means quite a bit of work for consultants like us to be there and help them redefine those processes and ways of working and then connect, for example, AI into those.

Yes. And if the trend really would be that SaaS market is dying, that would mean that we're going to replace those solutions by some customer tailor-made solutions, and that would be a big potential to go for and companies like us. So we can see this as an opportunity as well. But as mentioned, those players will be there in a form or another.

And I think we are a little bit kind of overreacting to the software development productivity topic. Even it's very fast to build stuff, the faster you build, the more you need to test and the more you need to do work on the kind of product management side and so on. So I don't think that to the overall workload, it's make sense.

And Jaakko's other question is related to that. How has the AI-powered code creation been so far visible in daily operations? Have you been able to speed up the outputs? And if you -- if so, have you or your customers benefited from the productivity gains?

Yes. And on the other hand, both Tommi and Osmo have been already referencing the kind of that code creation as such is not the only thing happening in a software development process. So when you speed up that and get the productivity gains from that, there will be other bottlenecks.

And typically, when the scale of projects of software development grow, then there are other bottlenecks that need to be addressed that are maybe even more important. AI can be helpful there as well. But it's not only about the software development productivity.

And in the daily operations, obviously, our software developers are AI-enabled, and we will be using AI tools, and we're really systematically building that capability to everyone in the software development.

Again, from Jaakko, a question, given the foreseeable productivity leap in code creation -- he's really into code creation, I see. How are you positioning against those rivals who trust offshoring in their delivery? For example, how large share of your billable hours are coming from software engineering, pure code creation, relative to larger international competitors?

Not commenting on the larger international competitors and what their share of code creation is. Ours is maybe comparing more to the domestic competitors. I think we have a little bit of a smaller share of pure code creation work, because we have the comprehensive offering and we have the advisory business.

We have the quality assurance business, and we have kind of all of the phases of the transition that customers need. So we are a little bit, I think, less dependent on the software creation capabilities going. That's not something that you can even put an exact number on, but let's say, 30% of the businesses is in that area.

Daniel Lepisto from Danske Bank asked that, what are the areas or segments where you are recruiting currently and seeing better demand?

Well, we'll be mentioning some examples, cybersecurity and especially strong in the manufacturing industry, and the kind of cybersecurity of more and more digitalized products and the cybersecurity of production, those are very important areas.

In the advisory arm of the business, there's several parts that are also recruiting quite heavily, including project management, which is often a kind of a good sign that the customer demand is there. There's happening -- there's things happening with the customers. They need project managers. So that's always a kind of a good more general sign. Data, AI part kind of the natural answer to that.

Daniel goes on to ask that, are you satisfied with your current Defense and Space capability now post Huld? Or could there be room for further M&A in this space?

And the answer is that we are actually quite satisfied. What we got with the Huld acquisition is both a customer portfolio, domain-specific knowledge for both Defense and Space. But especially, I think something that is often overlooked is the capability, the ability to operate in security-sensitive environments, which is about -- it's about, of course, expertise of the experts, but it's also about process-related stuff that needs to be adapted to the security sensitive environment.

It's about even premises, that you have the ability to work with security sensitive subjects. And these are not the subjects that are first -- when AI tools are brought in first, actually, quite often, it is not allowed to use the AI tools, and that's, of course, a security thing happening there and has to do also with another big topic that we haven't discussed today, maybe in future shows, but digital sovereignty and technological sovereignty of -- that I think has gone from being just a policy concept to being something actually really on the agenda of our customers.

From Daniel, again, can you discuss the positive outlook for your Defense and Space business in a bit more detail, especially when it comes to opportunities and potential collaborations ahead? Also what was the Defense and Space share of '25 sales through Huld?

We haven't disclosed exact numbers, so I won't do it here either. And of course, it's a little bit difficult to discuss in concrete terms the opportunities. But as we all know and for unfortunate reasons, investments into Defense, investments into Security are not the ones where public finances are limited. So that's an area.

And that's, of course, reflected then to the Defense equipment manufacturing part where, actually, we have quite a lot of organizations working in Finland with product development, both, of course, the domestic ones, but also the big European ones. A lot of them have product development operations in Finland being interesting customer opportunities for Gofore.

Then we have a question from [ Estie ]. How is agile and lean processes advisory nowadays? Is Data/Cloud, AI or Leadership taking major parts of customers' attention? Or do they improve on business agility too?

Tommi, do you have some viewpoints on this?

Yes, they are because, now maybe because of AI, the organizations are also evolving. And of course, we've seen a lot of change negotiations in the recent years to the economic situation probably, but also because the organizations are also changing. They're changing their operating models and the roles are evolving because more AI coming into it.

There was one study that stated that by the end 2030, there's 60% of the kind of job roles are different than nowadays. So we don't even know what the roles of the future are. So definitely, there's a need of different kind of consulting related to the agility and the overall management consulting.

So maybe you could even say that in a sense, there's nothing new with the change that AI brings. We've always lived in the changing world, but AI is only accelerating that, and every organization needs to live with the very fast paced change.

We've spent a little bit over an hour. I'm sorry we can't take all of the audience questions. This was all for today. Thank you for being with us in this results presentation stream and see you again.