Link Mobility Group Stock price
📊 Peer Group
📈 What is it?
The peer group consists of the companies with the most similar business model. They serve as a benchmark for putting a stock into context.
🧮 How is it selected?
Based on similarity of business model, meaning companies from the same industry with comparable products and a similar customer base. That's the only way to compare apples to apples.
🏛️ Why does it matter?
Whether a stock is cheap or expensive is best judged by comparison. A P/E of 18 or an EV/FCF of 20 can look cheap or expensive depending on the yardstick. The peer group gives you the most accurate one: companies with a similar business model that operate under the same conditions.
🎯 What does it mean for investors?
When a metric sits below the peer average, the stock is valued more cheaply relative to its competitors, and above the average more expensively. A discount to the peer group can be an opportunity, but it can also have a reason (for example lower growth). The comparison is a starting point, not a verdict.
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Key metrics
📘 Market Capitalization
📈 What is it?
Market capitalization shows how much a company is currently worth on the stock market.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps classify companies by size (Large, Mid, Small Cap) and indicates their market presence and relative stability.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Large-cap companies tend to be more stable, often pay dividends, but may grow more slowly.
- Smaller firms may offer higher growth potential but come with more volatility.
- Market capitalization is a useful indicator of company size — but not a measure of whether a stock is undervalued or overvalued.
📘 Enterprise Value (EV)
📈 What is it?
Enterprise Value represents the total cost to acquire a company — including its debt and excluding its cash reserves.
🧮 How is it calculated?
(= Market Cap + Net Debt)
🏛️ Why is it important?
EV gives a more complete picture of a company's value than market cap alone and is used in key valuation ratios like EV/FCF or EV/Sales.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Enterprise Value shows the true cost of buying a company, including all financial obligations.
- It is more accurate than just looking at market cap, especially when comparing companies with different levels of debt or cash.
- Professional investors prefer EV-based multiples because they better reflect the company’s full financial footprint.
📘 Net Debt
📈 What is it?
Net Debt shows how much debt remains after subtracting a company’s available cash reserves.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It indicates how dependent a company is on borrowed money and how easily it can service its debt in the short term.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Low or negative net debt signals financial strength and flexibility.
- Companies with strong cash positions are better positioned in crises.
- High net debt increases financial risk — especially in environments with rising interest rates or economic downturns.
📘 Cash
📈 What is it?
Cash represents all liquid assets a company can access immediately — including cash, bank deposits, and short-term investments.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It reflects a company’s financial flexibility and resilience — enabling investments, buybacks, or buffer in downturns.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A strong cash position means greater room for maneuver and crisis resistance.
- Cash-rich companies can invest, pay down debt, or repurchase shares.
- But excess idle cash might indicate a lack of growth opportunities.
📘 Shares Outstanding
📈 What is it?
Shares outstanding represent the total number of a company’s shares currently held by investors — excluding treasury stock.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It’s the basis for key metrics like Earnings Per Share (EPS), Market Capitalization, or the Price/Earnings ratio (P/E).
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Fewer shares in circulation typically increase earnings per share — making each share more valuable.
- Share buybacks reduce the number of shares and boost per-share metrics.
- Issuing new shares does the opposite — diluting shareholder value and lowering per-share figures.
📘 Price-to-Earnings Ratio (P/E)
📈 What is it?
The P/E ratio shows how many times a company's earnings per share are reflected in its current share price — in other words, how "expensive" the stock appears relative to its profits.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The P/E ratio is one of the most widely used valuation metrics. It helps investors assess whether a stock appears cheap or expensive compared to its earnings power.
🧮 Calculation
📊 P/E (TTM) = Based on earnings from the last 12 months (Trailing Twelve Months):🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low P/E may indicate undervaluation — or signal underlying issues.
- A high P/E may reflect strong growth expectations — or an overvalued stock.
📘 Price-to-Sales Ratio (P/S)
📈 What is it?
The P/S ratio shows how much investors are paying for $1 of the company’s revenue – regardless of profitability.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
P/S is especially useful for evaluating growth companies or businesses not yet profitable. It reflects how the market values the company’s sales.
🧮 Calculation
Market Cap = kr6.65b | Revenue (TTM) = kr7.73b
Market Cap = kr6.65b | Estimated Revenue = kr8.44b
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low P/S may indicate undervaluation — or low profitability.
- A high P/S can reflect strong growth expectations — or excessive optimism.
- Especially helpful when evaluating companies where profits are low, volatile, or negative.
📘 Enterprise Value to Sales (EV/Sales)
📈 What is it?
EV/Sales shows how much investors are paying for $1 of revenue — considering not just equity, but also debt and cash. It’s the capital structure–adjusted version of the P/S ratio.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It’s ideal for comparing companies with different levels of debt. It reflects a company's true cost relative to its revenue.
🧮 Calculation
Enterprise Value = kr8.66b | Revenue (TTM) = kr7.73b
Enterprise Value = kr8.66b | Forward Revenue = kr8.44b
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- EV/Sales allows for capital structure–neutral company comparisons.
- A lower ratio may indicate undervaluation; a higher one may signal strong growth expectations or overvaluation.
- Especially helpful when evaluating high-growth companies with low or negative earnings.
📘 Enterprise Value to Free Cash Flow (EV/FCF)
📈 What is it?
EV/FCF shows how many years it would take for a company to "pay back" its enterprise value using its free cash flow.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It focuses on real cash generation, ignoring accounting noise — ideal for assessing profitability and value based on liquidity, not earnings.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low EV/FCF may signal undervaluation and strong cash generation.
- A high EV/FCF might reflect weak recent cash flow or aggressive growth expectations.
- Best suited for stable, mature businesses with predictable free cash flows.
📘 Price-to-Book Ratio (P/B)
📈 What is it?
The P/B ratio compares a company’s market value to its book value — showing how much investors are paying for each dollar of net assets.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
P/B is commonly used for asset-heavy industries like banks or industrials. It helps assess whether a stock is trading above or below its net asset value.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A P/B below 1 may signal undervaluation — or weak profitability.
- A P/B above 1 implies the market expects future value creation (e.g., brand, IP, growth).
- Best used for companies with tangible assets and strong balance sheets.
📘 Equity Ratio
📈 What is it?
The equity ratio indicates what portion of a company’s total assets is financed by shareholders’ equity – in other words, how much it relies on its own capital.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
A high equity ratio reflects financial strength and stability, especially during downturns. It’s a key indicator of a company’s solvency and long-term risk profile.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Companies with high equity ratios are generally more resilient and less dependent on external debt.
- Low equity ratios can signal higher risk or aggressive financial strategies.
- Important: Always assess the equity ratio in combination with the return on equity (ROE). This shows not just how stable the company is – but also how efficiently it uses shareholder capital.
📘 Return on Equity (ROE)
📈 What is it?
Return on equity (ROE) shows how efficiently a company uses its shareholders’ equity to generate profit. In other words: how much net income is earned per dollar of equity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROE is a core profitability metric. It helps investors understand whether a company delivers attractive returns on the capital provided by its shareholders.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROE indicates that the company is using its capital efficiently and profitably.
- It’s especially meaningful for capital-intensive businesses or firms with high equity bases.
- Important: A very high ROE can also result from high debt levels – always interpret it alongside the equity ratio to assess financial health.
📘 Return on Capital Employed (ROCE)
📈 What is it?
ROCE measures how efficiently a company generates profits from its total capital – including both equity and interest-bearing debt.
🧮 How is it calculated?
It evaluates the return on all capital employed, regardless of how it’s financed.
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROCE is ideal for comparing companies with different financing structures. It shows how well management uses capital to create value for both shareholders and creditors.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROCE means the company uses its capital efficiently – regardless of whether it's funded by debt or equity.
- The higher the ROCE compared to peers, the more value the company creates with its invested capital.
- Especially relevant for capital-intensive sectors like industrials, energy, or infrastructure.
📘 Return on Invested Capital (ROIC)
📈 What is it?
ROIC measures how efficiently a company generates returns from the capital invested in its core operations – regardless of whether the capital comes from equity or debt.
🧮 How is it calculated?
- NOPAT = Net Operating Profit After Taxes
- Invested Capital = Operating assets minus non-interest-bearing liabilities
🏛️ Why is it important?
ROIC is one of the most accurate indicators of capital efficiency. Unlike return on equity, it is not distorted by leverage and shows how much value is created for all capital providers.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high ROIC shows how effectively a company uses the capital that is truly invested in its core operations.
- Unlike ROCE, ROIC focuses only on the capital that is actively used to run the business – and that requires a return (i.e. interest-bearing).
- Especially useful when comparing companies with large amounts of excess cash or non-interest-bearing liabilities – giving a more realistic picture of capital efficiency.
📘 Leverage Ratio (Debt-to-Equity)
📈 What is it?
The leverage ratio indicates how much a company relies on interest-bearing debt (such as loans and bonds) relative to its shareholders’ equity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
This ratio helps assess a company’s financial structure and risk profile. High leverage can enhance returns – but also increases exposure to interest rate changes and financial stress.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A low leverage ratio signals financial strength and independence.
- A higher ratio can improve returns in good times but increases risk during downturns or rising interest rate periods.
- 👉 Always interpret in the context of industry, capital intensity, and interest rate environment.
📘 Revenue
📈 What is it?
Revenue shows how much a company earns in total from selling its products and services – the gross income before any costs are deducted.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Revenue is one of the key figures to assess a company’s size, market position, and growth potential.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growing revenue indicates rising demand and can be an early signal of future earnings growth.
- Comparing actual and expected revenue reveals trends in the market environment and analyst sentiment.
- Note: Strong revenue alone isn’t enough – margins and profitability matter just as much.
📘 EBITDA
📈 What is it?
EBITDA stands for “Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization.” It reflects a company’s operating profit before the effects of financing, taxes, and accounting depreciation.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBITDA is widely used to evaluate a company’s operating performance – especially across capital-intensive sectors or international comparisons.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high or growing EBITDA indicates strong operational profitability – independent of taxes, interest, or accounting methods.
- It’s especially useful for comparing companies across sectors or geographies.
- Important: EBITDA is not a net income figure – it excludes key costs like depreciation and interest.
📘 EBIT
📈 What is it?
EBIT stands for “Earnings Before Interest and Taxes.” It reflects a company’s operating profit after depreciation, but before interest and tax expenses.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBIT is a core profitability metric that shows how well the company performs in its main business operations – independent of capital structure and tax environment.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBIT indicates strong profitability from the company’s core business – before financial and tax effects.
- It allows better comparison between companies with different debt levels or tax structures.
- Compared to EBITDA, EBIT already accounts for depreciation and reflects capital intensity more clearly.
📘 Net Income
📈 What is it?
Net income is the company’s total profit – the amount left after all expenses, taxes, interest, and depreciation have been deducted.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net income is the most comprehensive measure of a company’s profitability – showing how much actual profit remains after all business and financing costs.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growing net income indicates that the company is managing all of its costs efficiently.
- It directly influences valuation metrics like P/E ratio and the company’s dividend capacity.
- Over time, net income trends reveal how resilient and profitable the business model really is.
📘 Free Cash Flow (FCF)
📈 What is it?
Free Cash Flow shows how much actual cash remains after a company covers its operating expenses and capital expenditures.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
FCF reflects a company’s real financial strength – regardless of accounting profits. It shows how much flexibility a company has for dividends, share buybacks, or debt reduction.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- High free cash flow means the company generates real, usable cash – independent of reported net income.
- It’s often the most reliable base for sustainable dividends and buybacks.
- Declining FCF can be an early warning sign – even when profits appear stable.
📘 Revenue Growth
📈 What is it?
Revenue growth shows how much a company’s sales have changed compared to the previous year – both on a trailing basis (TTM) and based on forward projections.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected revenue ÷ Revenue in prior year − 1) × 100
Forward growth is based on analyst estimates for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Rising revenue signals growing demand, business expansion, and market share gains – especially important for growth-oriented companies.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Growth is the engine of long-term value creation – especially in tech and growth sectors.
- What matters is not just current growth, but its sustainability.
- Forward projections reflect whether analysts expect continued momentum – or a slowdown.
📘 EBITDA Growth
📈 What is it?
EBITDA growth shows how much a company’s operating profit (before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) has increased or decreased compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected EBITDA ÷ EBITDA from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate is based on analyst projections for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Growing EBITDA indicates improving operational profitability – regardless of financing or accounting effects.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Strong EBITDA growth signals operational efficiency and scalability – especially during growth phases.
- EBITDA growth can be an early indicator of margin and earnings expansion – but should be assessed alongside revenue and EBIT.
📘 EBIT Growth
📈 What is it?
EBIT growth shows how much a company’s operating profit (after depreciation, but before interest and taxes) has increased compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected EBIT ÷ EBIT from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate is based on analyst projections for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
EBIT growth is a direct indicator of a company’s business performance – taking into account capital intensity through depreciation.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Rising EBIT signals improving operating profitability – even after accounting for depreciation.
- It’s especially important for evaluating companies with significant capital expenditures.
- Combined with revenue and EBITDA growth, EBIT growth provides a well-rounded view of operational progress.
📘 Net Income Growth
📈 What is it?
Net income growth shows how much a company’s bottom-line profit has increased or decreased compared to the previous year – both on a trailing basis (TTM) and based on analyst projections.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Forward = (Expected net income ÷ Net income from prior year − 1) × 100
The forward estimate reflects analysts’ expectations for the current fiscal year.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net income is the ultimate measure of profitability. Growing net income signals stronger efficiency, cost control, and sustainable earnings power.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Stronger net income boosts valuation, dividend potential, and investor confidence.
- If profits stall while revenue grows, it may signal margin pressure.
📘 Free Cash Flow Growth
📈 What is it?
Free cash flow (FCF) growth shows how a company’s available cash – after covering operating expenses and capital expenditures – has changed compared to the previous year.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Free cash flow reflects real financial strength. Growing FCF indicates more flexibility for dividends, share buybacks, and reinvestment.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Declining FCF may point to rising investments, increasing costs, or weaker operating performance.
- Especially for dividend investors, FCF growth is critical – since dividends are paid from actual available cash.
- A negative trend isn't always bad, but it deserves closer attention.
📘 Gross Margin
📈 What is it?
Gross margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains after deducting the direct costs of goods sold (like materials and production). It represents the company’s “raw profit” before fixed costs, taxes, and interest.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Or simply: Gross Margin = Gross Profit ÷ Revenue × 100
🏛️ Why is it important?
Gross margin indicates how efficiently a company can produce or procure what it sells. It is a key measure of product-level profitability and pricing power.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high gross margin suggests strong pricing power and efficient production.
- Falling margins may signal rising input costs or competitive pressure.
- Compared to peers, gross margin offers insights into the quality of a business model.
📘 EBITDA Margin
📈 What is it?
The EBITDA margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as operating profit before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.It reflects operating efficiency without being distorted by financing or accounting factors.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The EBITDA margin reveals how much operating income a company generates per dollar of revenue – independent of capital structure and tax effects.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBITDA margin reflects strong core profitability – before accounting distortions.
- It allows for effective comparisons across companies and sectors.
- A stable or growing margin signals efficient cost control and business scalability.
📘 EBIT Margin
📈 What is it?
The EBIT margin shows what percentage of revenue remains as operating profit after depreciation but before interest and taxes.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
The EBIT margin reflects a company’s core profitability while accounting for capital intensity (e.g. machinery, infrastructure). It’s especially useful for comparing businesses with different levels of depreciation.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high EBIT margin shows that the company remains efficient even after factoring in depreciation.
- It’s especially relevant for capital-intensive industries.
- Stable or rising EBIT margins over time are a strong indicator of pricing power and business quality.
📘 Net margin
📈 What is it?
Net margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as bottom-line profit after deducting all costs, interest, taxes, and depreciation.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
Net margin reflects a company’s overall efficiency – across operations, financing, and taxation. It shows how much actual profit is generated from each dollar of revenue.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high net margin means the company is not only strong operationally but also manages financing and taxes efficiently.
- Peer comparisons reveal business quality and competitiveness.
- Declining margins despite revenue growth can be a red flag for rising costs or inefficiencies.
📘 Free cash flow margin
📈 What is it?
The free cash flow (FCF) margin shows how much of a company’s revenue remains as actual free cash after covering all operating expenses and capital expenditures.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
This margin reflects the true liquidity generated by the business – independent of accounting rules or depreciation. It’s especially relevant for dividends, buybacks, and reinvestment decisions.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high FCF margin means a company consistently generates strong cash flow.
- It’s a positive signal for financial stability and shareholder returns.
- The long-term trend is key – a declining margin may indicate rising investments or weakening operating efficiency.
📘 Earnings per share (EPS)
📈 What is it?
Earnings per Share (EPS) shows how much profit is attributable to a single share – and is one of the most important metrics for evaluating a company's performance.
🧮 How is it calculated?
The diluted share count reflects potential new shares that could be issued through options, convertible bonds, or other rights.
🏛️ Why is it important?
EPS is the basis for many key valuation metrics like P/E ratio, PEG ratio, or payout ratio. It enables comparisons of profitability across companies, regardless of their size.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- EPS captures per-share profitability and is especially useful for comparisons over time or with analyst estimates.
- Rising EPS may signal consistent growth or share buybacks.
- Important: Always use diluted EPS for more realistic valuations – especially in companies with stock-based compensation.
📘 Free cash flow per share (FCF per share)
📈 What is it?
Free Cash Flow per Share shows how much free cash flow a company generates per outstanding share – after investments, but before dividends or debt repayments.
🧮 How is it calculated?
Free cash flow is calculated as operating cash flow minus capital expenditures (CapEx).
🏛️ Why is it important?
FCF per Share reveals how much real cash is available per share – useful for dividends, buybacks, or reducing debt. Unlike net income, free cash flow is harder to manipulate and often seen as a more reliable metric.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- High FCF per share signals strong financial flexibility.
- It shows how much capital the company can effectively reinvest or return to shareholders.
- Particularly relevant for dividend payers and capital-efficient businesses.
📘 Short interest
📈 What is it?
Short interest indicates how many shares of a company are currently sold short – that is, borrowed and sold by investors who expect the price to decline.
🧮 How is it calculated?
It reflects the percentage of a company’s shares that are being shorted relative to the total shares available.
🏛️ Why is it important?
Short interest serves as a sentiment indicator: A high value may signal skepticism or bearish expectations – but also increases the potential for a short squeeze if prices rise unexpectedly.
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- Low short interest usually indicates market confidence in the company.
- High short interest can be a warning sign – or an opportunity if sentiment shifts.
- Especially relevant in volatile markets or ahead of key earnings releases.
📘 Employees
📈 What is it?
The employee count shows how many people a company employs worldwide – offering insights into its size, structure, and business model.
🧮 How is it calculated?
🏛️ Why is it important?
It helps assess operational scale, labor intensity, and cost structure. Combined with revenue and profit, it enables key metrics like revenue per employee or productivity.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high headcount can signal operational complexity – but also significant growth capacity.
- Revenue per employee is a key indicator of efficiency.
- Especially useful for comparing tech, industrial, or service-heavy companies.
📘 Turnover per employee
📈 What is it?
Revenue per employee indicates how much revenue a company generates on average per employee – a key measure of efficiency and productivity.
🧮 How is it calculated?
The employee count is typically taken from the most recent annual report.
🏛️ Why is it important?
This metric helps compare business models – especially between labor-intensive and technology-driven companies. A high value suggests automation, operational efficiency, or strong value creation per head.
🧮 Calculation
🎯 What does this mean for investors?
- A high revenue per employee indicates a scalable and margin-strong business model.
- A low figure may reflect labor-intensive operations or lower value-add.
- Especially helpful when comparing tech companies to industrial or service sectors.
Link Mobility Group Stock Analysis
Analyst Opinions
14 Analysts have issued a Link Mobility Group forecast:
Analyst Opinions
14 Analysts have issued a Link Mobility Group forecast:
Link Mobility Group Events
Past Events
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AUG
19
Q2 2026 Earnings Call
30 days ago
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MAY
12
Q1 2026 Earnings Call
4 months ago
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FEB
12
Q4 2025 Earnings Call
7 months ago
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NOV
5
Q3 2025 Earnings Call
11 months ago
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AUG
20
Q2 2025 Earnings Call
about one year ago
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StocksGuide Free
Link Mobility Group — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Good morning, and welcome to LINK Mobility's Second Quarter 2026 Presentation. Joining me today are CEO, Thomas Berge; and CFO, Morten Edvardsen. Following the presentation, we will open the floor for questions, which can be submitted through the Audiocast at any time during the presentation.
With that, Thomas, over to you.
Thank you, Christian, for the introduction, and good morning to everybody listening in. Before going into the quarterly results, I would like to outline how LINK is positioned to capture both today's messaging demand and the next generation of customer engagement. We're still in the early stages of a broader shift toward mobile-first customer engagement as consumers increasingly live their digital lives through their mobile devices. Businesses are recognizing that the most effective way to engage customers is through the mobile phone. At the same time, richer channels, improved technology and AI-enabled capabilities are significantly expanding what can be delivered through these interactions. As a result, the market for mobile engagement will become substantially larger and more valuable over time.
With strong operator relationships, extensive channel connectivity, a solid customer base and a broad customer engagement platform already in place, LINK is uniquely positioned to benefit from this evolution. AI is enabling more and new customer engagement solutions by automating conversations, personalized campaigns and content creation, increasing the value of trusted communication infrastructure, channel connectivity and orchestration capabilities. As businesses increasingly deploy AI-driven customer engagement solutions, we see a driver for higher-volume of customer interactions and messaging traffic, creating additional growth for the industry. We continue to see strong demand for proven messaging channels today. SMS remains essential for critical communication, authentication and notifications and continues to be a highly relevant channel for enterprises across markets.
At the same time, richer channels such as WhatsApp and RCS are becoming increasingly important for conversational customer engagement. Customers will not only want to send messages, but to create richer interactions with their end users, combining the right channel, the right content and the right timing. This is where we see demand moving towards richer conversations, context-aware engagement, orchestrated journeys, AI-enabled interactions and seamless human handover when needed.
LINK is already well positioned to support this evolution through a broad product portfolio and AI-enabled technology platform. We provide customers with access to core messaging channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, Viber, and RCS, supported by broader customer engagement solutions, including MyLINK Engage, MyLINK Marketing Platform, MyLINK Studio and MyLINK Connect. These products address several of the key trends we see in the market, including context-aware engagement, channel orchestration, AI-enabled interactions, trust and compliance, all supported by LINK's underlying platform and connectivity capabilities. These products are used by customers today. Later on in the presentation, we are going to go through a recently won contract with one of the world's largest fashion retailers, using LINK's products to create an advanced customer engagement experience, validating LINK's ability to meet the needs of some of the most advanced enterprises in the market today. We see multiple long-term tailwinds supporting the continued evolution of mobile customer engagement and believe LINK is well-positioned to benefit from these trends.
LINK is uniquely positioned within the competitive landscape. LINK occupies an attractive position between smaller local providers and larger global platforms. Rather than competing purely on local presence or purely on technology, our strategy is built around combining the strengths of both. Smaller local providers often have strong customer relationships and local market knowledge. However, they frequently lack the technology investments, scalability and product breadth required by larger enterprise customers.
On the other hand, large global platforms often have strong technology and scale, but typically lack the local presence, customer intimacy and market-specific expertise required in many of the countries we serve. We believe LINK has a unique position in the middle. We combine local execution and deep understanding of market-specific requirements with an AI-enabled technology platform, broad channel connectivity and increasingly sophisticated customer engagement capabilities. This allows us to help automate communication, orchestrate customer journey and deliver more personalized engagement at scale while maintaining the local expertise and trusted relationships that differentiate LINK in our markets. To sum up, we believe LINK combines the strengths of both local providers and global platform. Our AI-enabled technology platform, deep messaging expertise, local market presence and trusted delivery creates a unique position in the markets.
LINK's competitive positioning is not only strategic, but also visible in the P&L. By combining advanced technology with strong local execution, we can create market demand and growth. Starting on the left-hand side, we see strong momentum on LINK's advanced conversational solutions labeled CPaaS on the slide. CPaaS gross profit growth has a 39% CAGR from 2023 to Q2 this year, reaching NOK 148 million on an LTM basis. CPaaS solutions generate significantly higher gross profit margin than traditional SMS with approximately twice the gross profit margin. As customers adopt richer and more advanced engagement solutions, LINK benefits from both growth and improving margins. Conversations take place on also key channels like RCS and WhatsApp. In Q2, RCS billable events increased by 112% year-on-year, while WhatsApp billable events increased by 194%.
The right-hand side of the slide shows the other part of LINK's advantage, which is our local presence. LINK has 30 offices, local presence in 21 countries and a strong installed customer base of 68,000 customers. This gives us customer proximity, local market understanding and the ability to work closely with customers as they adopt increasingly sophisticated customer engagement solutions. This becomes more important as use cases become more advanced. Feature-rich channels like WhatsApp and RCS, together with customer journey orchestration and AI-enabled interactions typically require a higher degree of customer onboarding, advisory support and ongoing optimization.
In our experience, customers increasingly value a partner that can help them identify use cases, implement solutions and maximize value from the more advanced engagement capabilities. LINK combines advanced technology with local execution, allowing us to support customers throughout their journey. To sum up the last three slides, they show why we believe LINK is well positioned for the next phase of customer engagement. We see attractive long-term tailwinds in personalized conversational messaging. LINK has a differentiated position in the competitive landscape, and this position is already translating into results. Strong CPaaS momentum and rapid adoption of richer messaging channels show that our combination of advanced technology and local execution is enabling us to compete effectively and convert market demand into growth.
Moving over to the Q2 numbers. Overall, we are pleased with the development in Q2. As communicated following Q1, our priority was to return to organic gross profit growth, and we delivered on that commitment with 2% organic gross profit growth for the quarter. This is a clear improvement from previous quarters and fully in line with targets. It marks a return to growth and reinforces our expectations of a stronger second half of the year. We continue to see strong momentum across the business. Customer demand remains healthy with new contracts reaching an all-time high of NOK 53 million in the quarter, while LTM contract wins increased to NOK 184 million, up 16% year-on-year. Growth was driven by both SMS and CPaaS, demonstrating healthy demand across our portfolio. We continue to see a gradual shift to higher margin and more advanced engagement solutions, which will support long-term value creation.
LINK delivered the highest ever reported adjusted EBITDA of NOK 272 million, while generating NOK 192 million in operating cash flow. Reported EBITDA came in at NOK 252 million, also record high. This demonstrates both the earnings power and the cash-generative nature of the business. Pro forma adjusted EBITDA, as displayed on the slide, was NOK 286 million, including full quarterly effect of acquired entities.
Disciplined capital allocation remains an important part of LINK's value creation strategy. During the quarter, we completed two accretive bolt-on acquisitions, KPM Solutions in Italy and Web2SMS in Romania. These acquisitions strengthen our market position and demonstrate continued execution of our disciplined M&A strategy while maintaining a strong balance sheet.
Turning to the outlook for the second half. We are reiterating H2 expectations with reinforced confidence based on Q2 performance. In H2, LINK is expecting mid- to high-single-digit gross profit growth. Growth expectations for H2 are based on the growth indicators we see across the business. Record high new contract wins improve visibility into future revenue and gross profit development with the LTM contract wins up 16% year-on-year. At the same time, conversational solutions through OTT channels continue to scale, supporting future gross profit growth. We're also observing continued growth across the broader customer base with net retention improving to 101%, close to the target of 105%. Taken together, these factors reinforce our confidence in delivering mid- to high-single-digit gross profit growth in H2.
Contract wins reached an all-time high of NOK 53 million in Q2, representing the strongest quarter in LINK's history and reflecting healthy customer demand across both SMS and CPaaS solutions. SMS contract wins reached NOK 31 million during the quarter, representing a 29% increase year-on-year. At the same time, CPaaS contract wins reached NOK 22 million, making Q2 the second strongest CPaaS quarter on record, only surpassed by the same quarter last year, which included several extraordinary large OTT contract wins. CPaaS represented 42% of total contract wins, highlighting the continued shift to richer and higher-value customer engagement solutions. The strong CPaaS results were supported by continued momentum in OTT channels such as WhatsApp and RCS. Overall, record contract wins provide further evidence of healthy customer demand, strong commercial execution and improving momentum across the underlying business, supporting our confidence in a stronger second half of the year.
This slide highlights a recently won contract with one of the world's largest fashion retailers. We believe this customer is particularly interesting because it is an advanced enterprise and an early mover in AI-enabled customer engagement. Customers like this are often ahead of the broader market and can provide valuable indications on how future customer demand evolves over time. The contract also demonstrates that LINK already has the capabilities, platform and expertise required to deliver those more advanced customer engagement solutions today. The customer relationship is already building on successful existing use cases, including digital receipts and basket recovery through WhatsApp.
The new use cases take this customer engagement journey to the next level. It starts with an AI assistant as the first point of contact where end users contacting the brand through WhatsApp are initially met by an AI-powered assistant. This allows the customer to automate part of the interaction while still keeping the experience relevant for the end users. When needed, the conversation can be handed over seamlessly to a human agent without forcing the customer to leave the channel or restart the interaction. Advanced customer engagement is not only about automation. It's also about combining automation, messaging and human support in a way that improves customer experience.
From a commercial perspective, these type of solutions represent a significant long-term opportunity for LINK. They are increasingly software-driven and value-added with materially higher margin potential than traditional messaging revenues. The contract is also important because it does two things. It provides a concrete example of where future customer demand is heading, and it demonstrates that LINK already has the platform and capabilities required to deliver advanced AI-enabled customer engagement solutions today.
SMSPortal is a highly attractive business and the market leader in South Africa. As stated last quarter, the second quarter reports lower growth momentum due to high comparables same quarter last year. We expect to return to growth in H2 as the business continues to show positive development, a growing commercial pipeline and a highly efficient technology platform that customers can rely on for high-quality and cost-effective messaging. At the end of Q2, new customer contracts under implementation had reached an annualized run rate of approximately 450 million messages with a further 770 million annualized messages remaining to be ramped up. In addition, SMSPortal added approximately 200 million annualized messages in the quarter from new contract wins to be implemented. Based on this development, we expect SMSPortal to deliver growth in H2. In addition, WhatsApp is ready for launch during H2 with volumes expecting to start scaling from Q4 and continue through 2027, adding another potential growth driver over time.
Creating long-term shareholder value remains the core objective of LINK's capital allocation framework. We continue to allocate capital where we see the strongest value creation opportunities per share while maintaining a disciplined balance sheet and a financial policy. M&A remains a core part of this framework. Over time, LINK has built a strong track record of identifying, acquiring and integrating businesses across our markets, having completed close to 40 acquisitions and integrations. We continue to evaluate a healthy pipeline of opportunities. In the near term, our priority remains targeted bolt-on acquisitions. We believe these opportunities can provide attractive returns, strengthen our local market positions and be integrated efficiently into the existing platform.
During the quarter, we completed two accretive bolt-on acquisitions, KPM Solutions in Italy and Web2SMS in Romania. At the same time, shareholder returns are expected to grow over time, in line with our policy, and we continue to maintain flexibility to scale M&A activity if market conditions and opportunities align with our return requirements. We expect mid- to high-single-digit organic gross profit growth in H2. As I mentioned earlier, improving business performance, record high new contract wins and continued OTT momentum all support this expectation. LINK's business model remains highly scalable with significant operational leverage. As gross profit growth improves, we expect adjusted EBITDA growth to develop faster than organic gross profit growth over time.
Capital allocation remains focused on maximizing long-term shareholder value. Accretive M&A continues to be our first priority, supported by a strong pipeline of opportunities and a proven acquisition playbook. At the same time, we continue to maintain a disciplined leverage policy of 2.0x to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA.
With that, I will hand over to Morten, who will take you through the financial performance for the quarter in more detail.
Thank you, Thomas, and good morning, everyone. The second quarter results were strong with improved quarter-over-quarter organic growth momentum, solid customer demand demonstrated by record high contract wins, all-time high adjusted EBITDA from M&A add-on and continued strong cash conversion from operations. We also concluded our NOK 300 million share buyback program in May with a total of 13 million shares acquired. And subsequently, we have canceled 20.9 million shares or approximately 7% of total outstanding shares.
Before moving on to the quarterly results, I will start by highlighting an important characteristics of LINK's business model, namely the diversified customer base and industry exposure. The contribution from LINK's top 10 customers has remained consistent over time at around 15% of total gross profit, while remaining 85% is generated from the broader customer base. This demonstrates that LINK is not dependent on any single customer and that our earnings are supported by a large and diversified set of customer relationships across markets and industries. Banking & Insurance, Technology & Software Platforms, Telecommunications, Retail & E-commerce represents our largest industry verticals, but no individual sector accounts for a dominant share of total gross profit.
We believe this diversification is an important strength of the business as it supports resilience across different economic environments. This also provides exposure to several industries that continue to benefit from structural digitalization trends and growing demand for customer engagement solutions. Our commercial strategy remains focused on increasing wallet share with existing customers, winning new customers and expanding across products, channels and use cases. This allows us to continue building a broader and more diversified gross profit base over time.
Turning to the quarterly results and firstly, the revenue development. Reported revenue increased 17% year-over-year to NOK 2.1 billion for the quarter. A significant part of the growth came from acquired businesses and especially SMSPortal in South Africa, while organic revenue growth improved quarter-over-quarter to 3% in stable currency. Organic revenue development was supported by continued improvement within the Enterprise segment, where organic revenue growth increased 2 percentage points quarter-over-quarter to 6% in stable currency.
Growth improved across all enterprise regions compared to the previous quarter, supported by healthy demand for customer engagement solutions and continued strong momentum in CPaaS. Increased adoption of CPaaS solutions contribute positively to quality and hence, margin profile of our revenue base. Within Global Messaging, revenue declined 3% year-over-year. As previously communicated, this was mainly driven by lower traffic volumes from four large customers, while the broader Global Messaging customer base continued to develop positively.
The bridge chart below illustrates the quarterly development. Enterprise contributed with NOK 75 million in growth, partly offset by the Global Messaging decline of NOK 14 million. This resulted in the organic revenue growth of 3% in stable currency. Foreign exchange had a negative impact of 5 percentage points or NOK 89 million in the quarter, while acquisitions contributed with NOK 320 million to reported revenue. The acquisition contribution mainly relates to SMSPortal, which contributed NOK 280 million of revenue during the quarter. In addition, the U.K. acquisitions contributed NOK 31 million, while KPM Solutions in Italy and Web2SMS in Romania were consolidated from June and contributed with NOK 10 million.
Looking at the revenue retention and churn development on the next slide. This slide illustrates the continued normalization in LINK's net retention rate, reflecting the improved growth momentum across the customer base and low level of churn. Enterprise churn declined to 2.2% from 2.9% in the previous quarter. As highlighted in previous quarters, enterprise churn continues to reflect the impact of a higher-volume SMS customer that churned in Q4 last year. As the strongest comparable revenue quarters relating to this customer have passed, the headwind will ease going forward. At the same time, we continue to see strong customer stickiness across the broader enterprise business, supported by increasing adoption of CPaaS solutions.
Global Messaging churn was also reported at 2.2% in the quarter and is within the normal range for this segment. We are pleased to see net retention strengthen quarter-over-quarter by 5 percentage points to 101% in the quarter. We believe this reflects the continued strength of the broader customer base and supports our view that customer trends remain healthy. As highlighted previously, the impact from a small number of share-of-wallet customers in Global Messaging has weighed on the net retention metrics of recent quarters. With this headwind now fading and Enterprise revenue growth improving, net retention metric is developing in line with our expectations towards our medium-term target of 105%.
Turning to the gross profit development. Reported gross profit increased 16% year-over-year to NOK 492 million for the quarter, including a negative currency effect of NOK 21 million. Organic gross profit returned to positive territory with 2% growth in stable currency. Enterprise gross profit continued to improve and grew 3% organically during the quarter, contributing NOK 9 million in incremental gross profit. The improvement was supported by stronger growth momentum across both Northern and Central Europe and CPaaS solutions continued to contribute positively to growth. Increasing adoption of higher-value engagement solutions support both gross profit growth and quality of revenue mix.
Within Global Messaging, gross profit decline narrowed quarter-over-quarter to 3% year-over-year, corresponding to a modest NOK 2 million decline, reflecting the impact of the mentioned share-of-wallet customers. Combined, this resulted in organic gross profit growth of 2% in stable currency or a 3 percentage point improvement in growth quarter-over-quarter. As mentioned, foreign exchange had a negative impact of NOK 21 million due to strengthening of the NOK, while acquisitions contributed NOK 83 million, whereof NOK 77 million related to SMSPortal.
Turning to the margin bridge below. Enterprise margin declined 0.8 percentage points year-over-year, primarily driven by stronger growth on larger, lower-margin customer contracts. At the same time, continued growth in OTT solutions contributed positively to margins, offsetting 0.3 percentage points of the negative mix effect. Acquisitions contributed positively to gross margin development, primarily reflecting the higher margin profile of SMSPortal at 28% in the quarter. As a result, reported gross margin remained stable at 24% despite the mentioned customer mix effects. Takeaways here, organic gross profit growth has returned to positive territory, supported by strengthening enterprise momentum and stabilization in Global Messaging. While the revenue mix continues to improve through OTT solutions and margin accretive acquisitions. This positions LINK for stronger organic growth in the second half of the year.
Moving on to development in adjusted EBITDA. LINK reported all-time high adjusted EBITDA of NOK 272 million in the quarter, representing an increase of 28% year-over-year driven by acquisitions. While organic adjusted EBITDA declined 1% in constant currency, profitability trends continued to improve during the quarter, linked to improved gross profit growth. This demonstrates the operating leverage in the business where improving gross profit growth increasingly translates into stronger EBITDA performance. The limited decline in organic adjusted EBITDA of NOK 3 million reflects two offsetting developments. The return to positive organic gross profit growth contributed to NOK 7 million increase, which was offset by an organic NOK 10 million increase in operating expenses. The organic increase in OpEx was 5% year-over-year and was primarily driven by salary inflation, growth-related investments and NOK 3 million from higher bad debt recognition.
Turning to the margin bridge below. Organic adjusted EBITDA margin declined from 12.1% to 11.5%. This was mainly driven by the lower enterprise gross margin discussed on the previous slide and a slightly higher OpEx to sales ratio as OpEx grew faster than organic revenue during the quarter. Foreign exchange contributed positively by 0.1 percentage points, while acquisitions added 1.7 percentage points to adjusted EBITDA margin. SMSPortal was the largest contributor given its accretive adjusted EBITDA margin of 24%. As a result, reported adjusted EBITDA margin increased from 12.1% to 13.3% year-over-year. Overall, the quarter demonstrates the scalability of LINK's business model. The improvement in organic gross profit growth during the quarter contributed to stabilizing organic adjusted EBITDA. As we expect organic gross profit growth to strengthen in the second half of the year, we also expect adjusted EBITDA growth to continue to improve.
Touching on the P&L, I will focus on the items below adjusted EBITDA. Nonrecurring costs amounted to NOK 20 million in the quarter. The largest component was M&A-related costs of NOK 16 million. Approximately NOK 7 million related to SMSPortal and primarily reflecting the retention program we have, while NOK 4 million related to the acquisitions of Web2SMS and KPM Solutions. The remaining amount mainly reflects runoff costs and ongoing due diligence activities. In addition, restructuring costs amounted to NOK 3 million and option-related social security tax expenses amounted to NOK 2 million in the quarter linked to non-exercised options.
Depreciation and amortization amounted to NOK 129 million during the quarter. Of this, NOK 69 million related to amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets and NOK 54 million related to intangible assets mainly from R&D. As we have highlighted previously, acquisition-related amortization is noncash in nature and does not impact dividend capacity. Net finance expenses amounted to NOK 64 million during the quarter. This consisted of NOK 22 million net interest expenses with NOK 31 million in bond and RCF interest, offset by NOK 3 million in reclassification effects related to cross-currency swap interest to other financial items and interest income on cash deposits of NOK 6 million.
Other financial expenses totaled NOK 40 million, primarily related to the cross-currency swap associated with euro financing structure, where NOK 29 million was related to noncash fair value adjustments, while interest payments equated for NOK 10 million, whereas NOK 3 million is related to the recast related to first quarter. Net currency effects were close to neutral during the quarter. Profit from continuing operations amounted to NOK 49 million in the quarter, while total profit for the period was NOK 104 million. The difference relates to discontinued operations where we recognized a NOK 55 million reversal of tax accrual following the finalization of U.S. tax returns related to the sale of Message Broadcast.
Finally, we are pleased to see adjusted profit for the period from continuing operations increased by 87% year-over-year to NOK 118 million compared to NOK 63 million in the same quarter last year. We believe this metric provides a more representative view of the underlying earnings and dividend capacity of the business as it excludes acquisition-related amortization, which is noncash in nature.
Then I look at the balance sheet. LINK continued to maintain a solid financial position with financial flexibility to support both future inorganic growth opportunities and shareholder distributions. Noncurrent assets increased year-over-year, primarily reflecting completed acquisitions with the largest contribution related to SMSPortal. Trade receivables and payables were both impacted by acquisitions and currency movements during the period. Receivables include NOK 178 million of acquisition-related effects, while payables include approximately NOK 198 million from acquired businesses. Cash and cash equivalents amounted to NOK 764 million at the end of the quarter. The reduction compared to last year reflects the completed share buyback program and M&A-related payments combined totaling NOK 1.5 billion in cash outflow in the last 12 months.
Equity amounted to NOK 5.4 billion at quarter end, corresponding to an equity ratio of 52%. This continues to reflect a strong balance sheet and substantial capacity. Long-term debt consists of EUR 225 million in outstanding bonds and currently EUR 20 million are drawn under the revolving credit facility with a total frame of EUR 65 million. The bond financing carries an average interest rate of 3-month EURIBOR plus 2.53%. Net interest-bearing debt amounted to NOK 2.1 billion at quarter end.
Reported leverage decreased to 1.9x adjusted EBITDA during the quarter, reflecting cash outflow related to acquisitions and the concluded share buyback program in the quarter. Adjusted for these capital allocations, leverage remained stable quarter-over-quarter and continues to remain below LINK's target leverage range of 2.0x to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA. The cash generation in the business supports strengthening financial capacity going forward to execute on our disciplined capital allocation strategy, combining M&A and growing shareholder distributions.
Moving on to my final slide, where I will cover some key aspects of the cash flow development. LINK generated NOK 192 million of cash flow from operations during the quarter and NOK 732 million on an LTM basis. After adjusting for nonrecurring M&A-related costs, cash flow from operations amounted to NOK 211 million in Q2 and NOK 822 million on an LTM basis. Working capital had a negative impact during the quarter due to normal fluctuation in payments related to larger customers, while remaining broadly neutral on an LTM basis. Taxes paid of NOK 70 million were broadly consistent with the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA cash conversion remained strong at 89% on an LTM basis, demonstrating the underlying cash-generative nature of the business.
CapEx amounted to NOK 46 million during the quarter and continues to primarily reflect investments in CPaaS solutions and platform development. We continue to expect total CapEx in 2026 to be lower than in 2025 as optimization initiatives are implemented across the group. At the same time, we are seeing encouraging early customer demand for AI-enabled solutions and expect this demand to accelerate over time. We are, therefore, actively reallocating investment capacity towards AI initiatives, ensuring that LINK remains well positioned to capture this emerging growth opportunity. Interest paid and lease payments amounted to NOK 31 million during the quarter and relates to bonds and net interest costs associated with the EUR/ZAR cross-currency swap established in connection with the SMSPortal acquisition.
I would note that there we made a correction in Q2 related to overstating cash effect of the cross-currency swap in Q1, but the cash effect is correct on a year-to-date basis. After CapEx, interest and lease payments, LINK generated NOK 134 million in cash flow during the quarter. Despite NOK 47 million negative working capital effects, cash generation remains strong, demonstrating the resilience of the business model and providing continued flexibility to fund organic investments, pursue bolt-on acquisitions and support future growing shareholder distributions.
Looking at the cash bridge at the bottom of the slide, the business generated NOK 192 million in operating cash flow during the quarter. After CapEx and lease payments, cash flow amounted to positive NOK 143 million. The reduction in cash during the quarter was driven mainly by share buyback and M&A. Share buybacks represented NOK 169 million in cash outflow, while acquisition-related payments amounted to NOK 209 million. This included acquisitions in Romania and Italy as well as the first conditional payment related to SMSPortal of NOK 160 million. These outflows were partially offset by financing activities, including a EUR 20 million draw on the revolving credit facility. As a result, cash and cash equivalents amounted to NOK 764 million at quarter end.
With that, I will hand the word back over to Christian for the Q&A session.
Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Morten. We will now move on to the Q&A session. Questions can be submitted through the Audiocast platform. We already have received some questions. We will start with some questions from Halvor Dybdahl from Arctic. Very interesting to see the AI-enabled contract with a large fashion retailer. Can you elaborate more on the partnership? And in general, how is demand for such solutions developing across your customers?
I can respond to that. It's a great question. The partnership with this client has been in place for years. The customer has always been very active on how they approach customer engagement and customer communication. And as I said, we have several existing use cases with them already, which are quite advanced. And then we have taken it to the next level now together with this customer to sort of put in place an AI agent to help with incoming requests and customer support.
The demand for these solutions are building momentum. So it's not the only customer we delivered such a solution to. So it's building momentum, and we see more demand in less penetrated countries actually in Southern Europe compared to the Nordics. The Nordics is lagging a little bit behind on these new solutions, but the more populated countries in Southern Europe has a strong demand for these solutions.
Great. Moving on to some questions on SMSPortal. Growth in SMSPortal has slowed since the acquisition. Do you see any large change in the market dynamics in South Africa? And what needs to change for SMSPortal to deliver on the growth you previously expected?
First of all, the market dynamics in South Africa is very, very good. And in favor of SMSPortal, they have a state-of-the-art technical platform that delivers cost-effective messaging with the highest throughput and lowest latency in that country. The reason for the decline in the current quarter is exactly what we informed on the previous quarter in Q1, and we see that we have high comparables. Same quarter last year, meaning second quarter 2025, we had millions of additional messages due to a few customers wrongly templating the messages. So instead of sending one or two messages, they send several more. So that is the reason for the softness in the current quarter.
When we acquired SMSPortal, we also said that the growth here is going to be more chunky, meaning that it's going to, on average, be high-single digit. That is what we expected, but it will vary a little bit more. So some quarters, it might be double digit. Other quarters, it might be mid- to low-single digit. And the reason for this is SMSPortal's ultimate selling point in the local market, which means that they are getting in bigger contracts. So when the contracts come in, then the growth momentum increases and then it slows down again when you have quarters where this is not the case. And we have also seen that the implementation of new contracts and also signing of new contracts has been slowed by the transaction. So we're catching up now. Yes, a long answer to a very good question.
Yes. Great. We can keep on SMSPortal. SMSPortal faced some delayed new contract volumes. Will these volumes convert in Q3? And how does that factor into the H2 guidance?
The short answer to that is yes. It's also contributing to the Q2 numbers. So we see underlying the growth momentum when you sort of exclude the high comparables, it's not that bad. It's pretty good actually and in line with the forecast we gave for H2. So we expect more customer contracts to be implemented at scale during the second half of 2026, improving the growth momentum in SMSPortal. As we showed on the slide, there's a good backlog and also a high signed contracts that are under implementation.
And then last question on SMSPortal. Do you still expect SMSPortal to deliver high-single-digit organic gross profit growth over time?
I already answered that. That is still our expectation. South Africa is a good market, and we see potential here for a good potential to deliver high-single-digit gross profit growth. But as I said, it's a little bit more chunky in SMSPortal due to the size of the contracts they are getting in.
And then another question on isolated decliners. Can you share how much isolated decliners declined this quarter?
I can take that one. Christian, we see the isolated decliners. They are performing in line with the previous 2 quarters. So it's in line with what we expected. So the sort of decline from the decliners is significantly less in the second quarter than it was in the first quarter, but there is still a drag there, which is expected then to fade out in the second half as we communicated previously.
Good. We have a question on number of shares in the company following the cancellation, and that is 285 million shares. Then also a question on the FX effects in the quarters, which were quite large. Could you elaborate on the FX effects?
Yes. So when we do reporting, we're basically done on average rates for the months, when we do reporting, and we see that the NOK has strengthened towards several of the foreign currencies that we are operating in, and that gives a drag on gross profit, it is a NOK 21 million drag, meaning the sort of -- if we apply same FX rate as last year, the reported gross profit would be NOK 513 million. So there's a significant impact in the quarter from FX.
Given your expectation for accelerating growth in H2, is this mainly driven by easier comps and technical factors? Or are you also seeing a genuine improvement in underlying market demand?
We are seeing an increased market demand for the more advanced solutions, conversational messaging solutions on RCS and WhatsApp and that is being documented by the numbers we're reporting with more than 100% growth in volumes for those two channels and also a much higher growth on gross profit. Market itself, it's pretty stable. As I've said, the last 3 years. It's a little bit tougher than normal, but it's pretty stable. I am happy with the commercial execution in the last couple of quarters. We've been able to close a lot of new won contracts, significantly over our targets. So the commercial execution, I'm happy with.
Good. Could you elaborate on the contract mix? Overall gross profit contribution from new contracts increased while CPaaS declined by around 16% year-over-year to NOK 22 million. Are customers shifting towards simpler messaging solutions? Or was this mainly a timing and mix effect in the quarter?
I can take that one as well. New CPaaS contracts was the second highest quarter ever, only surpassed by the same quarter last year. Same quarter last year was unusually high due to timing impact of several larger CPaaS contracts sort of hitting the same quarter. So no, we are seeing the opposite. We are seeing that the more advanced products and solutions are increasing in size, both in the P&L and when you look at won contracts.
Good. Could you speak a bit about the higher-margin software revenue opportunity you mentioned? And when you expect this will be a more meaningful portion of group revenues?
It's a meaningful portion today. As you saw on the slides, there is a good increase in gross profit from these more advanced solutions that we call CPaaS solutions, looking at -- it's NOK 148 million on an LTM basis in the current quarter. So it's growing in size and it's becoming more and more meaningful. This, we expect, is going to gradually continue happening going forward as well.
Good. What kind of investments are you making to invest in the platform for context, automation and AI-driven engagement?
We are making more investments on engagement solutions and AI. Morten, do you sort of want to touch upon it as well because you mentioned you had some comments on that in the CapEx.
Yes, basically, so we're seeing given the demand we're seeing in the market on this more advanced solution and especially on the AI side, we communicated earlier that we are doing optimizations on the CapEx side. So we expect it to come down 10%. We are seeing a need to sort of reinvest even more into these solutions this year. So we're reallocating some of those savings that we did on the investment side into these solutions. So we still expect CapEx to be below 2025, but we are reallocating more into these solutions, which is -- we're starting to see demand, especially as Thomas exemplified with this customer that we're signing a deal with, it's seeing those demands accelerating, we also put some more investments behind it.
Good. Do you expect further adjusted EBITDA margin progress in H2 versus what you achieved in Q2?
We typically see, of course, when you look at the gross margin, Q4 is a softer quarter. So my take is that it will get higher than overall than we've seen so far in the first half, but fairly stable, I would say, but maybe slightly higher.
And then on H2 guidance, you guided mid- to high-single-digit organic gross profit growth in H2. What are the key swing factors that could push results toward the high versus low end?
Yes, I can take that one. It is typically three factors to it. We have a strong contract backlog. We are, of course, dependent on the implementation of these contracts coming through to realize effects in the P&L. We see that mainly is linked to sort of on the customer side that they are able to put the necessary resources in place and put it into the road map to actually be ready on their side. So there is always an uncertainty for us.
And then it's, of course, the development of the existing customer base. Q4, especially a little bit more difficult to have full visibility, especially on retail campaigns. So that is one factor, which is sort of impacting whether it's going to be in the low or high end. And then it's, of course, the uptake on CPaaS and OTT contracts, which is -- we have a significant backlog with high-margin solutions. It's also linked to my first point, how fast we're able to actually scale those contracts. I think those are the three main factors.
Then for estimation, on acquisition-related expenses, is Q2 a reasonable near-term run rate?
I would say Q2 is elevated. We had some runoff costs on the larger targets in the quarter. So we would see around NOK 6 million coming from the net -- the retention program in SMSPortal. And then beyond that, it will be costs linked to due diligence processes and eventually closing of smaller bolt-on targets mainly. So I would say it should be NOK 8 million to NOK 10 million is my take on it, but it really depends on actually deals coming through and the activity that we will see.
Could you please give some comment on the dividend policy? Is this something valid in the near-term future?
Yes. So on the overall dividend policy, we launched that in Q3 last year. We said that for the fiscal year of 2025, we would have -- we're targeting a distribution of NOK 300 million, and we did that through a share buyback program, which was closed in second quarter. And we also did the subsequent cancellation of those shares, as mentioned in the call. So basically, for this year, we have utilized the distribution capacity we have under the bond agreement. So we're targeting this distribution to grow over time. So we started off with approximately NOK 1 per share, and then we expect that to grow over time. And then the sort of normal next distribution would then be in 2027 following the Annual General Meeting.
Good. Are you seeing or expecting to see any effects from the new marketing regulations in South Africa?
No, not at all. They are completely immaterial, and we have that functionality already today, and it's been in place within SMSPortal for the last 2 years.
Good. Of your customers and gross profit, excluding SMSPortal, what share uses the MyLINK suite versus legacy platforms from acquisitions?
The exact percentage point varies a little bit, but you can sort of look at the license fees that we are generating and then the amount of revenue or the amount of gross profit that we're reporting on the OTT channels, and you will get a sense of it. Yes. Going into further details there, it's probably not productive here.
Okay. Does the centralized structure make it challenging to upsell more advanced products?
Not really. If you want to sell these solutions, you have to have people on the ground in the local markets selling it. So that is independent of having a centralized and decentralized structure. It's a slightly more hassle when you want to implement it because then you will have some use cases on legacy or local platforms and then you will have the new use cases on the centralized platform. But I wouldn't call it a problem. It's more like a detail.
Good. Do you believe sales channels and the importance of local support will change over time as AI tools to a larger degree can be used by enterprises for implementation?
What we see is the opposite actually, that the more complex tools, including AI tools, the more support they will need both in the process of selling it and then implementing it. They need a lot of touch points with us in order to do it correctly. So we see the opposite actually.
If demand is improving, which markets and product areas do you expect to contribute most, for example, Marketing Platform, payments or other parts of the portfolio?
I would expect all parts of the portfolio to contribute MarketingPlatform and payments are now contained in the Nordics, but it's still showing a nice growth momentum. When we launch that in other regions, the growth potential gets higher. But we see sort of a broader-based growth when it comes to the product portfolio.
Good. And the last question, a bit technical one. Can you give some color on CPaaS new contract wins? It looks to be up 6% on an LTM basis, while LTM CPaaS gross profit growth is up 17% from full year 2025. Does that mean current CPaaS gross profit growth is driven by earlier contract converting and we should expect that to moderate ahead?
No, not necessarily. The P&L effect deviates from the won contracts that we report on a quarterly basis because these contracts need to be implemented and scale. So much of the P&L effect is from CPaaS contracts that we won in 2024 and 2025, not that much in 2026. So it's more a reflection of that.
Very good. We do not have any more questions at this time. We will give you 20 seconds before we conclude the session.
There seems to be no further questions. So that concludes the Q&A. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Morten, and thank you for listening in. See you next quarter.
Link Mobility Group — Q2 2026 Earnings Call
Link Mobility Group — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Hi, and welcome to LINK Mobility's First Quarter 2026 Presentation. With me today, I have our CEO, Thomas Berge; and our CFO, Morten Edvardsen, who will present the Q1 results. You can post questions online at any time during the presentation. With that, I leave the word over to you, Thomas.
Thank you for the introduction, [ Kristian ], and good morning to everyone listening in. We will start as normal with a brief introduction to LINK Mobility and the platform we have built over the past years. LINK is today the leading CPaaS provider in Europe, serving enterprises with critical customer communication across channels such as SMS, RCS, WhatsApp, e-mail and voice. Through our platform, businesses can communicate securely, efficiently and at scale with their end users across both transactional and marketing-related use cases. Over time, LINK has built a strong market position through a combination of organic expansion, technology investments and disciplined M&A execution. Since 2014, the company has completed more than 35 acquisitions, which together has strengthened our geographical footprint, customer base and product capabilities. Today, we serve 66,000 customers and delivered around 40 billion messages over the last 12 months, including volumes from SMSPortal.
LINK currently employs around 700 people across 30 offices with operations spanning in 21 countries in Europe, South Africa and Latin America. This local presence remains an important differentiator, allowing us to combine scale and tech capabilities with strong local customer relationships and connectivity. In the center of the slide, you can see LINK's product portfolio and the breadth of the MyLink platform. The platform enables clients to manage customer communication, engagement, authentication, payment, automation across multiple channels through both software applications and APIs. We continue to strengthen these capabilities, particularly within higher-value CPaaS solutions such as WhatsApp RCS, conversational messaging and AI-supported communication workflows.
LINK's broad geographical footprint and strong local market position, combined with our scalable platform and growing CPaaS capabilities provide a strong foundation for continued organic growth and long-term value creation. Q1 represents a step in the right direction and supports our view that LINK remains on track to organic growth after a weak fourth quarter. While overall performance remained negatively impacted by a specific number of isolated customer declines, the underlying business continues to perform and early growth indicators are strengthened in the quarter. Organic gross profit growth improved quarter-over-quarter by 3 percentage points and ended at negative 1% in Q1, in line with our expectations. Isolated decliners continue to impact gross profit negatively by NOK 20 million, primarily within the Global Messaging segment. The broader customer base nearly offset these effects through stable underlying development.
As illustrated in the graph on the right-hand side, the impact from these isolated decliners will normalize in Q3 with easier comps for the second quarter versus current quarter. Looking at commercial momentum, we continue to see encouraging development. Contract wins during the quarter amounted to NOK 48 million at the higher end of expectations. On an LTM basis, signed contracts increased by 8% for SMS and 32% for CPaaS, corresponding to 17% total growth across signed contracts. This development supports improving growth visibility as signed contracts are implemented and ramped up over the coming quarters. We also continue to see strong growth within higher-margin CPaaS solutions, particularly within RCS and WhatsApp where billable volumes increased by more than 100% year-over-year. This remains strategically important as CPaaS solutions carry a significant higher margin than traditional SMS and therefore, support both growth and profitability over time.
Net retention improved in the quarter, increasing from 92% to 96% sequentially. We still have 9 isolated customers negatively impacting NRR by approximately 7 percentage points. Excluding these customers, underlying retention levels continue to develop positively and support our confidence in returning to normalized growth. Adjusted EBITDA development is closely linked to gross profit trends due to LINK's scalable business model. Underlying OpEx growth is low at 3%. As gross profit growth improves, the expected adjusted EBITDA development to recover accordingly, returning to growth. Finally, capital allocation remains an important focus area for LINK. M&A continues to be a core pillar of our medium-term strategy. Current valuation conditions mean we are prioritizing share buybacks and targeted bolt-on acquisitions. During the share buyback program, LINK repurchased approximately 13 million shares for around NOK 300 million.
LINK proposes cancellations of 21 million shares, corresponding to 7% of total shares at the general assembly end of May. We also announced the bolt-on acquisition of Web2SMS in Romania, further strengthening our footprint and scale in the Romanian market. This slide highlights 2 of the most important drivers supporting our expectations of accelerated growth going forward, improving commercial momentum and the continued shift towards higher-margin CPaaS solutions. Starting on the left-hand side, we continue to see strong momentum with closed contracts across both SMS and CPaaS. On an LTM basis, estimated gross profit on signed contracts increased by 8% for SMS and 32% for CPaaS, a total growth of 17% on new contracts. This development reflects improving commercial activity across the business and supports stronger growth visibility over the coming quarters as new contracts are implemented and ramped up. The momentum within CPaaS continues to strengthen.
The current quarter is the second strongest quarter ever for CPaaS contracts within. We observed growing customer demand for conversational solutions and digital engagement products. CPaaS gross profit has increased significantly over the past years, corresponding to a CAGR of 37%. Gross profit margins are roughly 2x higher for CPaaS products versus traditional SMS products. This trend is documented in the growth of OTT volumes. Billable RCS volumes increased by 104% year-over-year, while WhatsApp volumes increased by 151%, illustrating the ongoing transition to richer and more value-added communication. This development is strategically important for LINK. The company is not only seeing improved commercial momentum and stronger contract activity, but also an increasingly favorable product mix, where a larger share of growth comes from higher-margin CPaaS solutions, supporting both future growth and profitability.
Total contract wins in Q1 amounted to NOK 48 million in expected gross profit at the higher end of expectations. The development continues to be increasingly driven by CPaaS-related contracts and OTT solutions, which represented 40% of total post won contract. There is typical a lag between signing new contracts and full commercial ramp-up. Historically, approximately 75% of gross profit from these contracts are realized within 12 months following signing, meaning the current commercial activity supports improving growth visibility going forward. The charts at the bottom of the slide document the continued acceleration within CPaaS and OTT solution. Gross profit from new CPaaS contracts increased by approximately 27% year-over-year, supported by strong momentum across payment chatbots, AI agents and engage solutions.
We continue to see particular strong commercial momentum within the sector's technology and software, telecommunication and government-related customer, which remains key contributors to recent contract wins and future growth opportunities. Overall, we believe the strong commercial momentum, combined with accelerating adoption of higher-margin CPaaS solutions positions LINK for improving organic growth and profitability going forward. We believe AI represents a meaningful opportunity for LINK, both from a growth and a profitability perspective, while at the same time, reinforcing the strategic value of our infrastructure and market position. We observed AI strengthening LINK's competitive position within the CPaaS ecosystem. While AI lowers the barrier to create communication content and workflows, the importance of trusted infrastructure, operator connectivity, compliance and secure message delivery continues to increase.
LINK has spent many years building direct operator integrations and strong local market positions across Europe, creating infrastructure that is difficult to replicate and highly relevant in an AI-driven communication landscape. LINK's role as a trusted gatekeeper for channel owners and trusted advisers for enterprise clients are increasingly important as conversational communication volumes rise and enterprises place greater emphasis on conversational quality and end user engagement as well as security and compliance. Turning to the right-hand side of the slide, we see AI as a natural extension of LINK's existing software and CPaaS capabilities. AI enabled more intelligent communication workflows, better customer engagement and increased automation across the platform. This includes areas such as advanced channel orchestration where AI can optimize communication timing, channel selection and customer journey across channels.
Selecting the right channel, timing and format can significantly improve delivery rates, engagement and customer outcomes. We also see significant opportunities within 2-way communication and conversational messaging. AI-powered interactions will improve customer engagement, increase response rates and support faster and more efficient customer service processes. Combined with analytics and ROI dashboards, this allows customers to gain more real-time insight into campaign performance, customer behavior and measurable business outcomes. Importantly, many of these capabilities are software-driven and less dependent on messaging volumes alone. Over time, we believe this will support increased customer stickiness, higher customer value and potential higher-margin recurring revenue streams on top of LINK's existing communication platform. We view AI as both an enabler of future growth and a reinforcement of LINK's strategic positioning.
AI is expected to improve customer value, support scalability, increase end user engagement and strengthen our relationship with our customers. Acquisitions remain a core pillar of LINK's long-term strategy and an important driver of long-term value creation. Over the past decade, LINK has built the leading European CPaaS platform through a combination of organic growth and disciplined M&A execution, completing more than 35 acquisitions since 2014 and establishing strong local market positions, broad operator connectivity and scalable product capabilities. Our medium-term M&A strategy remains unchanged. We continue to see a strong pipeline of attractive opportunities across existing and new markets, and we believe scale, local market presence and product breadth remain important competitive advantages within the CPaaS industry. In addition, LINK has demonstrated a strong track record of disciplined execution and successful integration of acquired businesses.
At the same time, we're currently adapting our short-term capital allocation priorities to reflect prevailing market conditions and valuation levels. As highlighted in the lower section, we are prioritizing share buybacks and targeted bolt-on acquisitions over larger transactions. We believe this is the most attractive capital allocation approach. This allows us to maintain strategic flexibility while continuing to allocate capital in a disciplined and value-accretive manner. We continuously evaluate M&A opportunities and capital allocation alternatives and stand ready to act as market conditions and valuation change. As mentioned, targeted bolt-on acquisitions remain an important part of LINK's capital allocation strategy. During Q1, LINK announced the bolt-on acquisition of Web2SMS in Romania, for an enterprise value of approximately EUR 4 million, corresponding to 5.8x LTM adjusted EBITDA. The transaction strengthened our local footprint and customer position in an attractive market.
Turning to SMSPortal. We remain highly confident in the long-term growth outlook for the business. SMSPortal holds a leading market position within A2P messaging in South Africa, supported by a strong local customer base, a scalable technology platform and attractive underlying market fundamentals. Starting with the financial development at the center of the slide. Gross profit increased by 2% year-over-year in Q1, negatively impacted by elevated comparables from same quarter last year. As highlighted on the right-hand side, Q1 '25 benefited from temporary multipart messaging errors with a few customers which positively impacted messaging volumes with 4% of total volumes during that period. As a result, reported growth in Q1 reflects unusually high comparables rather than deterioration in the underlying business. We also observed high comparables in April and partly too. All other months have normalized comparables. The underlying commercial momentum within SMSPortal remains strong.
The company continues to see healthy organic volume development from existing customers, combined with continued new customer additions across multiple verticals. SMSPortal has built a strong commercial pipeline with signed contracts representing approximately NOK 1.2 billion annualized messaging volumes expected to enter implementation during Q2 2026. This corresponds to approximately 7.5% of SMSPortal's LTM messaging volumes. As illustrated in the lower chart, management expects approximately 60% ramp-up run rate realization by the end of the second quarter with full annualized run rate effect during H2 as contracts continue to ramp up following the implementation. This supports confidence in high growth momentum over the coming quarters. We also continue to see encouraging progress within OTT-related solutions, particularly WhatsApp, where positive proof-of-concept testing is currently ongoing with selected customers.
Overall, we believe the slower growth in Q1 is temporary in nature, while the underlying business development commercial momentum and implementation pipeline continue to support a strengthened growth outlook for SMSPortal going forward. Our ambition remains to deliver high single-digit gross profit growth over time. We see the underlying growth drivers across the business remain intact, supported by increasing B2C messaging volumes per capita, continued CPaaS adoption and AI-driven communication workflows acting as a long-term structural tailwind. We expect growth momentum to gradually strengthen as isolated customer-related declines normalize, combined with stable growth momentum from the rest of the customers and high contract backlog from recently signed new contracts. We state that we expect gross profit growth to return to positive in Q2 and mid- to high single-digit growth in H2. LINK's business model remains highly scalable with significant operational leverage.
As gross profit growth improves, we expect adjusted EBITDA growth to develop faster than organic gross profit growth over time. This is supported by stable underlying OpEx development and the scalability of our platform. M&A remains LINK's first priority over the medium term and continues to represent an important driver of long-term value creation. At the same time, we remain disciplined and flexible in our capital allocation approach, continuously evaluating opportunities across both acquisitions and shareholder distributions depending on market conditions, valuation levels and strategic opportunities. Overall, we believe LINK is well positioned to capitalize on the structural growth opportunities within CPaaS market through a combination of improving organic growth, scalable profitability and disciplined capital allocation. With that, I will hand over to Morten, who will take us through the financial performance for the quarter in more detail.
Thank you, Thomas, and good morning to everyone on the call. I will start my section by touching on LINK's customer and industry diversification, which we believe remains an important strength of the business model and supports the resilience of the underlying gross profit base. The contribution from LINK's top 10 customers has remained stable over several years at around 15% of total gross profit. This demonstrates that LINK does not rely on any single customer for overall profitability. The remaining approximately 85% of gross profit is generated from a broad and diversified customer base across multiple markets and industries. LINK's gross profit exposure is also well diversified across industries. Banking and insurance technology and software platforms, telecommunications and retail and e-commerce represent the largest verticals, but no individual industry accounts for a dominant share of total gross profit. This diversification supports resilience across varying macroeconomic conditions and customer spending environment.
Importantly, several of the industries where LINK has strong exposure continue to benefit from structural digitalization trends and increasing demand for enterprise communication, customer engagement and automation solutions, which supports long-term growth opportunities. Finally, our commercial strategy remains focused on driving sustainable growth through increased wallet share with existing customers, continued new customer additions and further diversification across industries, products, use cases and geographies. To sum up, we believe LINK's diversified customer base and industry exposure provide a strong foundation for stable long-term growth and profitability. Turning to revenue development for the quarter. Reported revenue increased by 21% year-over-year to NOK 2 billion for the quarter, primarily driven by contributions from recently completed acquisitions. In stable currency, organic revenue remained stable year-over-year as improving enterprise revenue growth offset the decline within Global Messaging.
Closed and consolidated acquisitions contributed NOK 372 million of revenue during the first quarter related to the consolidation of acquired businesses in the U.K. and South Africa. In the Enterprise segment, organic revenue growth improved quarter-over-quarter by 2 percentage points to 4% in stable currency during the quarter. The improvement was primarily driven by stronger growth momentum across Central Europe, combined with continued growth within OTT and CPaaS-related solutions. Importantly, new OTT contract wins continue to support the quality of revenue growth given the higher value and more sticky nature of these solutions. Within Global Messaging, revenue declined 12% year-over-year, mainly driven by lower traffic volumes from 4 large share of wallet customers. At the same time, the broader underlying customer base within Global Messaging continued to develop positively and grew 14% in the quarter.
The bridge chart in the lower section further illustrates the quarterly development. The positive enterprise contribution of NOK 49 million year-over-year was offset by a NOK 48 million decline within Global Messaging, resulting in stable organic revenue development in fixed currency. Foreign exchange had a negative impact of NOK 19 million, while acquisitions contributed NOK 372 million to reported revenue growth of 21%. Overall, the quarter reflected stabilization in organic revenue development with improving enterprise momentum offsetting isolated declines within Global Messaging, while growing contribution from higher-value CPaaS and OTT-related solutions continue to strengthen the quality and resilience of the revenue base. Looking at revenue net retention and churn development, this slide illustrates the continued improvement in LINK's net retention rate as the impact from isolated customer-related declines gradually phase out.
Enterprise churn declined slightly quarter-over-quarter to 2.9% and the elevated enterprise churn level primarily reflects the previously communicated loss of a high-volume SMS customer since last quarter. Importantly, underlying customer stickiness within enterprise remains strong, particularly within OTT and CPaaS-related solutions where deeper integrations and broader product adoption support higher retention levels over time. Within Global Messaging, churn increased to 2% during the quarter, primarily related to the loss of a very volatile and low-value aggregator customer. Importantly, the impact on gross profit was close to being immaterial given the very low margin traffic for this customer. Looking at the lower graph, we report a net retention rate, which improved quarter-on-quarter from 92% in Q4 to 96% in Q1, representing a meaningful improvement both quarter-on-quarter and year-over-year.
As highlighted previously, the isolated decline in customers continue to negatively impact net retention rate by approximately 7 percentage points in the quarter. Excluding these isolated customers, the underlying retention development across the broader customer base remains healthy and continues to improve. Management continues to expect a gradual normalization toward a medium-term net retention rate target level of approximately 105% over time. Then over to gross profit development. Reported gross profit increased by 20% year-over-year to NOK 492 million, primarily driven by contributions from recently completed acquisitions as in line with revenue development. Organic gross profit in stable currency declined 1% year-over-year. Enterprise contributed positively with NOK 7 million of organic gross profit growth, supported by continued strong OTT and CPaaS momentum.
In particular, RCS volumes increased by 104% year-over-year, while WhatsApp volumes increased by 161%, continuing to support both growth and underlying margin improvement. Within Global Messaging, gross profit declined 19% year-over-year, corresponding to NOK 12 million during the quarter. The decline was related to reduced wallet share from 4 larger customers, representing NOK 15 million of gross profit impact during the quarter. Excluding these customers, the underlying Global Messaging business continued to develop positively and grew 6% from growth on other existing customers. Current effects had a negative impact of NOK 6 million, while acquisitions contributed NOK 94 million to reported gross profit growth, mainly driven by the acquisition of SMSPortal with NOK 82 million. Moving to the margin bridge below.
Enterprise gross margin impacted total margin negatively by 0.3 percentage points, primarily driven by growth from larger lower-margin clients, which diluted the margin mix year-over-year. At the same time, continued growth within higher-margin OTT and CPaaS solutions contributed positively to overall margin by 0.7 percentage points and partly offset the dilution effect from client mix. Currency effects reduced reported gross margin by 0.2 percentage points during the quarter, but was offset by contribution from acquisitions and mainly from the higher margin level in SMSPortal. Overall, the quarter reflected stabilization in underlying gross profit development with overall organic gross profit growth improving 3 percentage points quarter-over-quarter. This was despite a negative year-over-year impact of NOK 20 million from isolated decliners, mainly within Global Messaging. As the impact from these isolated decliners fade out, the improved underlying growth momentum supports improved gross profit growth over the coming quarters.
Turning to the adjusted EBITDA. Reported adjusted EBITDA increased by 34% year-over-year to NOK 265 million, primarily driven by contributions from the completed acquisitions, including SMSPortal. Organic adjusted EBITDA declined 6% year-over-year in stable currency, corresponding to NOK 11 million. This development largely reflected the softer organic gross profit development during the quarter. NOK 5 million of the decline was related to lower organic gross profit, while underlying OpEx growth remained controlled at around 3% year-over-year, corresponding to NOK 6 million and primarily driven by inflation in salaries, but also by supporting hosting and license costs. This development illustrates the operating leverage inherent in LINK's business model. With a scalable business model, weaker gross profit development will naturally have a more visible short-term impact on adjusted EBITDA growth.
At the same time, this dynamic also works in the opposite direction, meaning that as organic gross profit growth improves, management expects adjusted EBITDA growth to recover and improve at a faster pace than gross profit over time. Closed and consolidated acquisitions contributed NOK 81 million to reported adjusted EBITDA growth primarily related to the acquisition of SMSPortal with NOK 72 million. Looking at the lower chart, reported adjusted EBITDA margin increased from 12% in Q1 '25 to 13.2% this quarter, while organic adjusted EBITDA margin declined to 11.2%, reflecting the lower gross margin, as explained and increased OpEx to sales from stable organic top line and OpEx growth. Acquisitions contributed positively to reported margins with SMSPortal being the largest contributor given its strong margin level compared to the rest of the group. Now on to the profit and loss statement.
As we already covered the development down to adjusted EBITDA in detail, I will focus on the remaining items in the P&L statement. Nonrecurring items amounted to NOK 24 million during the quarter. This mainly consists of M&A-related costs of NOK 24 million, where NOK 9 million related to SMSPortal, including a 2-year retention program with NOK 6 million recognized in the quarter, which is recurring until end of 2027. Restructuring cost of NOK 5 million was partly offset by a NOK 5 million reversal of option-related social security tax expenses. Depreciation and amortization amounted to NOK 128 million during the quarter. The largest components were NOK 69 million related to acquisition-related PPA amortization and NOK 53 million related to amortization of software and solutions, including R&D assets. As previously communicated, the PPA-related amortization is noncash in nature and does not impact cash flow generation or dividend capacity.
Net financials were positive NOK 2 million during the quarter compared to negative NOK 35 million same quarter last year. The year-on-year improvement was mainly driven by a positive currency effect of NOK 42 million related to the NOK strengthening versus especially euro, partly offset by net interest expenses of NOK 40 million, consisting of NOK 31 million in bond interest and net impact of NOK 9 million related to cross-currency swap between euro and ZAR. Post-tax reported net profit for the period increased to NOK 85 million for the quarter compared to NOK 39 million in the same quarter last year. Finally, adjusted net profit for the period, excluding PPA amortizations, increased to NOK 154 million in Q1 compared to NOK 98 million in the same period last year. We believe adjusted net profit provides a more representative view of the dividend capacity by excluding noncash PPA-related amortization effects. Then on to the balance sheet.
LINK continues to maintain a solid financial position with ample capacity to support future inorganic growth and shareholder distributions. Noncurrent assets increased year-over-year primarily from completed acquisition with NOK 1.7 billion related mainly -- or impacted mainly by SMSPortal of NOK 1.5 billion. Other movements relate mainly to FX and amortization effects. Receivables were lower compared to the same period last year. M&A and currency contributed with net NOK 160 million increase, while underlying decrease was related to normal working capital fluctuations. Cash and cash equivalents amounted to more than NOK 800 million at the end of the quarter. The reduction year-over-year primarily reflects debt repayments, share buybacks and completed acquisitions, including SMSPortal with NOK 1 billion in cash consideration. Equity amounted to NOK 5.4 billion at quarter end, corresponding to an equity ratio of 53%, which continues to reflect a strong balance sheet position.
Payables increased year-over-year driven by M&A and FX effect of NOK 143 million, while the remaining increase was related to normal working capital movements. Turning to financing. Long-term borrowings mainly consist of 2 outstanding bonds, loans totaling EUR 225 million, carrying an average interest of 3-month EURIBOR plus 2.5% Net interest-bearing debt amounted to NOK 1.8 billion at the end of the quarter. Reported leverage increased quarter-over-quarter to 1.7x adjusted EBITDA, primarily reflecting the share buyback program and option-related tax payments of NOK 97 million in the quarter. Adjusted for these items, underlying leverage remained stable quarter-over-quarter at 1.5x and continues to remain comfortably below LINK's target leverage range of 2 to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA. LINK continues to maintain significant financial flexibility and balance sheet capacity to support both future M&A activity and shareholder distributions going forward.
Moving on to my final slide, where I will briefly cover cash flow development and the company's liquidity position. LINK generated net cash flow from operating activities of NOK 109 million in the quarter, while adjusted cash flow from operations amounted to NOK 138 million for the quarter and NOK 775 million on an LTM basis. Working capital had a temporary negative impact in Q1 from normal fluctuations, while remained fairly neutral on an LTM basis. Taxes paid were affected by a regular biannual SMSPortal tax payment of NOK 32 million for the period covering the period from September 2025 to February 2026. After adjusting for nonrecurring M&A-related costs, adjusted EBITDA cash conversion amounted to 52% in the quarter, below normal levels, primarily due to temporary working capital effects and elevated tax payments, while remaining strong at 87% on an LTM basis.
CapEx amounted to NOK 47 million in the quarter and mainly reflects continued investments into CPaaS solutions and platform development. Management continue to expect CapEx level to gradually decline during 2026 towards approximately 10% lower levels compared to 2025. Interest paid mainly related to the LINK02 and LINK03 bond loans in addition to approximately NOK 9 million related to cross-currency swap interest connected to the hedging of future cash flows from SMSPortal established in December last year. The annual net interest paid from the swap is expected to be just below NOK 30 million. Moving to the quarter-on-quarter cash bridge in the lower section, where I'll focus on the last section post normal operations. During the quarter, cash outflows related to the share buyback program amounted to NOK 131 million, while net option-related payments totaled NOK 91 million, where direct tax payments constituted NOK 97 million in the quarter.
The NOK 91 million in the bridge also reflects payments from option holders exercising options in Q1 of NOK 6 million. In Q2, we will have approximately NOK 170 million in cash outflow related to the concluded share buyback program and additional NOK 26 million expected in taxes related to option program exercise not settled in Q1. Interest paid was NOK 42 million during the quarter, while foreign exchange movements had a negative impact of NOK 50 million on the cash balance. As a result, quarter end cash and cash equivalents amounted to NOK 813 million. Overall, the underlying operational cash flow generation in the business continues to remain solid, while the sequential reduction in cash during the quarter was primarily driven by shareholder distribution and option-related payments. That concludes the financial section, and it's now time for Q&A. And back to you, [ Kristian ].
Thank you for the presentation, Thomas and Morten. We will now start the Q&A session. You can post questions online during the Q&A session. We'll start with some questions from Henriette Trondsen in Danske Bank. Isolated decliners will have easier year-on-year comps going forward. Any signs of improvement from these customers into next quarter or that volumes for these customers will eventually return in 2026?
I can answer that one. These customers have stabilized the gross profit contribution in Q4 and also in Q1. Expectations going forward, these customers are more volatile. The base case with management is that we don't expect or we don't foresee an increase nor a decrease, a stable level, that is sort of what we view as most likely. But as I said, changes happen more quickly here.
Can you comment gross profit margin expectations, in particular, Global Messaging going forward?
Yes, I can take that. I think the level we're seeing now is most likely level we see going forward. There's obviously more volatility in terms of client mix and also destination mix, which impact, but this is a level we would expect to be in going forward.
Thank you. Are you seeing any change in pricing from operators or competitors?
No, not really. There's been small price increases in Norway from the mobile operators, very small price increases in the U.K., and that's what I can remember. Price competition is stable and has been stable for years in the enterprise market.
On CPaaS, is Apple's opening up RCS in the Nordics now expected in H2?
The last signal we have gotten from the mobile operators in the Nordics is that they are opening up RCS either in Q3 or Q4. So they are communicating a delay they previously said Q2. We don't have any more information regarding RCS opening up in the Nordics, and we don't have any ability to impact it either.
Thank you. And then from Jesper Stugemo, how confident are you in a return to organic gross profit growth given the 9 isolated decliners?
It's always difficult to forecast the future. But based on the information that we are seeing now in the company, the increased backlog of new contracts, the movement on RCS and WhatsApp and also the easier comparables, we view it as more likely that we're going to in H2 be in the mid- to high single-digit gross profit growth lower than what we sort of communicated in this Q1 report.
Have you seen any structural shifts in the European CPaaS market, i.e., reduced volumes from substitutes such as in-app notifications or increased competition from other global players?
No, we don't see substitutes from in-app notifications in general at all. It's only related one country, the financial industry sector, but sort of that is not -- it's a small country, and it's not a big impact. So that is not the case. We are seeing a transition over from SMS to RCS and WhatsApp. That is something we have seen for some time now, and it's growing the trend. There's no more increased competition from global players. The competition picture is pretty stable. The only thing I would -- there are some small low-value use cases on SMS that are being substituted by e-mail. But that is nothing new either. That has sort of happened in the last couple of years. And the impact for us is fairly low.
Thank you. Aside from less negative impact from the 9 isolated decliners, what gives you confidence to guide for a return to growth in H2?
As I said, we're seeing an increase in new contract wins, a 17% increase on an LTM basis. This will normally sort of generate an increased growth momentum and this is implemented and scaled, which we are doing as we speak. We're also seeing increased demand for WhatsApp and RCS, more conversational use cases on the OTT channels. And as we sort of have given you some more information in the quarterly report, we also see some easier comparables, especially in Q3 and especially in Q4. So that gives us the visibility to sort of give the statements that we communicated now in the Q1 report.
Great. How comfortable are you on mid- to high single-digit organic gross profit growth in H2? And what factors determine whether you end up in the lower or upper part of that range?
I've already answered the first one, but the latter I can respond to, mainly 2 things, how quickly we're able to ramp up and scale the new contracts. That depends somewhat on LINK, but also it depends on customer and how quickly they move. So that is one element. The other element is, of course, the Global Messaging segment and how that will develop in the second half of 2026.
Are RCS, WhatsApp primarily replacing SMS use cases or opening new use cases?
Conversational use cases are mostly new, mostly. There's a little bit replacement, but to the most extent, it's new use cases. So it's a mix, both new and replacements, but the new as far as we see now, is higher, significantly higher than the replacements.
Given the strong voice-related growth seen by your peers, although more in North America, how are you viewing investing more in voice products given the potential here?
Voice products, we do got voice products. In Europe, the demand for them is quite limited, especially in the enterprise market. So most of the voice products we are offering are to more aggregators. North America and Europe differs here. In North America, they've been used to being communicated with voice with their robot messages. In Europe, this is a product which the end users do not like. And as a consequence of that, enterprises do not demand it. So we are not planning any further voice investments in Europe. On the contrary, we just want to capitalize on the product features that we're having. Going into North America is more dependent on what we do on M&A. We are not planning to sort of do organic greenfield investments on voice in North America. We're too far away.
Thank you. Since there are no further questions, we will give participants 20 seconds to write some questions if you have any. That concludes the Q&A session. Thank you to Thomas and Morten, and thank you for all participants. See you next quarter.
Link Mobility Group — Q1 2026 Earnings Call
Link Mobility Group — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Good morning, and welcome to LINK Mobility's Fourth Quarter 2025 Presentation. With me today are our CEO, Thomas Berge; and our CFO, Morten Edvardsen, who will walk you through the key developments and financial performance for the quarter. Throughout the presentation, you are welcome to submit your questions online, and we will address them during the Q&A session at the end.
With that, I'll hand it over to our CEO, Thomas Berge.
Thank you for the introduction, Kristian, and good morning to everyone listening in on the call. We'll start with Slide 3 with a brief overview of LINK Mobility. LINK Mobility is Europe's leading provider of digital messaging, a position we established over time through a combination of strong organic growth and a proven track record of successful acquisitions. Today, we are the #1 player in Europe with application to person or A2P messaging. In practice, this means we enable businesses to communicate directly and securely with their customers through channels such as SMS, RCS and WhatsApp. Our.
Award-winning RCS solution positions LINK at the forefront of next-generation messaging, offering enterprises richer, more interactive ways to engage with their users. We serve approximately 65,000 customers on a recurring basis, sending around 23 billion messages in the last 12 months through our product portfolio. LINK employs 700 people across more than 30 offices with operations spanning 18 European markets as well as South Africa and Latin America. Since 2014, we have completed over 35 acquisitions, which have been a key driver in building scale, customer stock and tech functionality.
At the center of the slide, you can see our product portfolio, a broad modular offering that allows customers to manage and automate communication across multiple channels. The MyLink suite includes tools for marketing, engagement, payment and APIs, essentially covering the full life cycle of digital customer interaction. Finally, on the right-hand side, we highlight LINK's footprint, demonstrating how the company has established strong local positions across Europe and selected international markets. This broad platform now provides a solid foundation for continued growth, both organically and through future strategic acquisitions.
2025 has been a transformative year for LINK Mobility with clear progress across profitability, cash generation and strategic execution. We strengthened the business both operationally and financially while continuing to scale the footprint. The key highlight for the year is our operating earnings growth compared to our 2024 numbers and including the full year contribution from acquisitions completed in 2025, adjusted EBITDA increased by 48% year-on-year, while leverage rose only modestly from 1.35x to 1.49x. This shows that we can deliver high growth and profitability while maintaining financial discipline and a healthy balance sheet.
Looking at growth, we delivered 5% pro forma gross profit growth in 2025. That is below our target. And given the opportunities we see in the market, we believe we should be able to deliver stronger organic growth than this. A softer fourth quarter weighed down the full year results. Improving organic growth is top priority for us going forward. Still, we delivered 7% pro forma adjusted EBITDA growth in 2025, demonstrating continued scalability in the business.
Last year was an active year on the M&A front. We completed 3 acquisitions, including SMSPortal, adding more than NOK 300 million in combined cash EBITDA to the group. We also introduced our first ever shareholder distribution policy, reinforcing our commitment to consistent capital return. Cash generation remains strong with our NOK 400 million in free cash flow, supported by solid cash conversion across the business. With the addition of SMSPortal, we expect cash generation to improve further, giving us meaningful flexibility to invest in core business and conversational solutions, pursue selective M&A opportunities and return capital to shareholders through dividends or buybacks, all while maintaining a healthy leverage ratio. Q4 was weaker than expected due to headwinds that we view as largely temporary rather than structural. The underlying demand, our pipeline and the continued shift toward higher-value conversational channels gives us confidence in returning to stronger growth.
Reported gross profit came in at NOK 461 million, up around 6%, including M&A, but down roughly 4% organically year-over-year. On a pro forma basis, gross profit declined 2%. The software development mainly reflects a weaker performance in parts of our European footprint. We saw lower volumes in Global Messaging, some negative accounting effects and softer enterprise campaign activity in what is normally a seasonally strong quarter. South African business delivered around 5% pro forma growth, which is in within normal variance versus our high single-digit target. Adjusted EBITDA declined 8% on a pro forma basis, mainly reflecting the shortfall on gross profit.
OpEx increases were somewhat higher versus previous quarters due to negative year-end accrual deviations. Reported EBITDA for the quarter was NOK 198 million, with the difference to adjusted EBITDA primarily related to nonrecurring M&A items. Operating cash flow in the quarter was solid. We generated NOK 236 million from operations, supported by a positive working capital release of NOK 87 million, bringing full year operating cash flow to NOK 700 million. Commercial activity remains healthy. We closed NOK 40 million in contract value during the quarter, in line with expectations and internal targets. We observed continued high demand from the market for conversational solutions on top of OTT channels with one contract on RCS being the second strongest quarter ever.
For the full year, contract wins represent an expected gross profit of NOK 175 million, up 17% year-over-year. On the M&A side, we maintain a pipeline representing around EUR 50 million in cash EBITDA at attractive multiples. Discussions and due diligence are progressing as planned. We successfully closed and consolidated SMSPortal in December, which also delivered positive EBITDA growth in the quarter of 7%. The long-term growth drivers remain intact. We continue to see strong momentum in next-generation OTT channels. Billable RCS volumes grew 113% and WhatsApp volumes grew 177% year-over-year. Both channels are increasing their share of total messaging traffic.
We view the weak performance in the current quarter as a temporary slowdown and expect to return to organic growth over the coming years or coming quarters. The Q4 impact was driven by an unexpected reduction in share of wallet from 3 customers in Global Messaging and 1 customer in Central Europe on top of the handful declining enterprise accounts we already highlighted in prior quarters. The gross profit decline was attributable to these 9 customers. As shown in the upper left chart, these clients contributed negatively to gross profit growth of NOK 27 million in the current quarter, which more than explains the total organic decline of NOK 17 million.
Most of the NOK 27 million decline originates from the 4 larger customers reducing their share of wallet. These customers with aggregator-like behavior shifted away from LINK. The customers do not share detailed information behind their actions, but we assume the shortfall in volume is due to specific pricing considerations on selected destinations. We have already initiated targeted commercial actions to restore volumes to a normal level with these accounts. The rest of the customer base continues to perform, although growth was softer in Q4 due to negative impact of accruals and lower enterprise campaign activity. The residual customer stock delivered NOK 10 million in gross profit growth, including net negative year-end accruals of NOK 7 million. Excluding these one-off accounting effects, underlying growth in the quarter was NOK 17 million, which better reflects the true momentum in the business and in line with previous quarters.
In the retail sector, campaign activity was somewhat lower than expected, also somewhat lower than same quarter previous year. We do not see any common factors here, only smaller discrepancies on numerous retail clients in the current quarter. Looking ahead, we expect the group to return to organic growth over the coming quarters. This is supported by 3 factors. First, comparables with isolated decliners ease as we move through the year, although Q1 will still face tougher comparisons. Second, we are executing targeted commercial initiatives to recover volumes with the impacted customers. And third, the broader customer base continues to develop positively, supported by strong contract wins in 2025, up 17% year-on-year. Overall, these factors gives us confidence that the Q4 slowdown is temporary and that we're well positioned to return to growth.
For the full year, LINK achieved NOK 175 million in expected gross profit from new contracts, representing 17% growth year-over-year. This strengthens the forward visibility and provides a solid foundation for continued growth as these contracts ramp up and convert into gross profit over time. In the fourth quarter, we delivered NOK 40 million in estimated gross profit from new contract wins. This was in line with our expectations and quarterly targets. The mix towards CPaaS continues to improve, which remains a key strategic priority for us. CPaaS now represents more than 40% of total contract value for 2025, reflecting the ongoing shift toward higher value, more scalable solutions and a structurally stronger revenue mix. Within CPaaS, OTT solutions are showing particularly strong momentum. OTT now represent the majority of CPaaS contracts closed and gross profit from OTT increased 46% year-on-year to NOK 12 million in the quarter.
Within OTT, we are seeing encouraging traction on RCS, where we delivered our second highest quarter ever in terms of contract wins. Overall, this highlights solid commercial momentum and improving mix towards higher-margin solutions and a good starting point for future growth. Let's turn to the 2 key structural drivers behind LINK's organic growth. Although our recent performance have been softer than expected, we view this as mentioned as temporary. The core fundamentals remain solid and the long-term growth drivers that underpin LINK's strategy are unchanged. The first driver shown on the left-hand side is the increasing adoption of A2P messages across Europe.
We continue to see adoption growth, and there remains significant room for further expansion across Europe, providing a solid foundation for sustained long-term growth. The second driver illustrated on the right-hand side relates to the new and more advanced CPaaS solutions. We are observing growing traction for richer channels such as RCS and WhatsApp, which offer higher ROI for clients, more efficient customer interactions and greater engagement, particularly in sectors like banking, retail and logistics. Together, these 2 trends, higher adoption rates and ongoing shift toward advanced conversational solutions are the key enablers of LINK's organic growth strategy going forward.
Moving on to the newly acquired South African entity. SMSPortal is a strong and well-established business. It's the #1 A2P messaging player in South Africa, serving more than 5,000 customers on a market-leading platform with high throughput and reliability. Over the last 12 months, the business has handled around 16 billion messages, so this is already at scale, profitable and highly recurring volumes that fit very well with the LINK model. Performance was in line with expectations, steady quarter-by-quarter improvement in gross profit and positive adjusted EBITDA development. In stable currency, gross profit grew around 5%, which is within the normal variance for a stand-alone quarter.
On the commercial side, we're encouraged by the pipeline. We are implementing new contracts from new customers in the first half of the year, representing roughly 600 million messages on an annualized basis. Beyond that, the broader pipeline is substantial with an estimated 1.7 billion messages. Integration activities are progressing according to plan. Platform synergies are being evaluated. We are actively exploring cross-sell opportunities on specific customer and LINK's CPaaS solutions across the SMSPortal customer base.
LINK Mobility was recognized by Juniper Research, one of the most respected analyst firms in telecom and CPaaS space. We received 2 major awards, Platinum winner for Best Customer Interaction solution, reflecting the strength of our platform to create seamless conversational customer experiences across channels. In addition, we were awarded Gold for Best RCS monetization solution. This is encouraging as RCS and next-generation messaging are key strategic priorities for us and important growth drivers going forward. These awards are not just nice recognitions, they confirm that we continue to innovate, that our product portfolio is strong and that customers trust LINK with the most business-critical communication. This kind of independent validation is confirmation that what we're building is competitive on a global level.
Overall, M&A discussions and due diligence are progressing as expected, and we continue to see an attractive market for inorganic growth opportunities. During the quarter, we successfully completed the closing and integration of SMS portal. At the same time, we have a healthy and active pipeline. We currently have 9 prioritized targets in various processes and 5 companies are in due diligence. Larger opportunities naturally carry more uncertainty in terms of timing and signing. The combined scale of these prioritized opportunities is significant. Together, they represent more than EUR 50 million in cash EBITDA.
Looking ahead to the next 3 to 6 months, our focus is clear. We will continue capturing synergies and operational improvements in SMSPortal while progressing the most attractive targets in our acquisition pipeline and positioning LINK for larger, more structured processes where we can leverage our scale and track record as a preferred buyer.
To sum up, our inorganic growth strategy remains disciplined, but clearly opportunity driven. We operate comfortably within our leverage range of 2 to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA, supported by a proven M&A framework and a strong track record of successful integration. Our pipeline has never been stronger and with our financial flexibility, we're well positioned to act quickly when the right opportunities comes along, always with a clear focus on quality, profitability and long-term shareholder value.
My last slide captures our key medium-term objectives built around 3 pillars: growth, profitability and capital allocation. Starting with growth. Our ambition is to deliver high single-digit gross profit growth over time. While we saw softer momentum in Q4, we expect a gradual normalization through 2026. Some of the headwinds we experienced at the end of the year will likely still impact the first part of the year, but the underlying drivers remains intact, supported by solid order intake and continued growth in OTT channels.
Turning to profitability. We expect adjusted EBITDA growth to outpace gross profit growth, reflecting the scalability of our business model, consistent with what we have demonstrated historically. Finally, on capital allocation, accretive M&A remains our first priority, supported by a strong and actionable pipeline. At the same time, as highlighted last quarter, we expect shareholder distribution to increase over time, reflecting our expectation to be able to fund both continued M&A activity and growing returns to shareholders. At the same time, we remain committed to maintaining financial discipline, targeting a leverage range of max 2.0 to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA. LINK is committed to deliver sustained value creation, combining profitable organic growth with accretive M&A and attractive shareholder returns.
With that, I will hand over to Morten for a closer look at the financials.
Thank you, Thomas, and good morning to everyone joining the call. I'll now walk you through the group's financial performance for the fourth quarter. Starting off with an update to segment reporting. We have made updates to our segment reporting this quarter following an internal reorganization to align customer management under the best suitable part of the LINK organization. This includes shifting enterprise customers with aggregated like behavior under the management of the Global Messaging organization to secure the best possible handling and growth on these clients.
The shift also includes the Tismi business unit in Netherlands, which customer profiles aligns best with Global Messaging. In addition, the Italian business unit has been reclassified from Western to Central Europe region. To ensure comparability, all historical figures have been restated to reflect these changes. With the acquisition of the South African entity SMSPortal and consolidation from December 2025, we introduced the segment Rest of the World, capturing both the domestic and international business of the acquisition. Hence, figures for this segment aligns with previous communication regarding the acquisition.
Then to the results. Reported revenue increased 7% year-on-year to nearly NOK 2 billion, while organic growth declined 5% in the quarter. As illustrated in the lower graph, the organic decline was mainly driven by a decline in the Global Messaging segment with NOK 116 million, partly offset by growth in the Enterprise segment of NOK 29 million. The organic decline was more than offset by M&A contributing with NOK 211 million in the quarter, resulting in positive reported revenue growth overall. The revenue decline on the mentioned 9 declining customers represented a revenue decline of 9% in the quarter or NOK 166 million, mainly within Global Messaging but also impacting enterprise regions as in previous quarters.
Organic enterprise revenue grew 2% year-on-year, driven by Northern and Central regions, while Western Europe reported an organic 2% decline, impacted by softer-than-expected campaign activity and slight increase in churn in the quarter. Overall implementation of closed won CPaaS contracts are strengthening the overall quality of revenue and hence, structurally improving margins. The Global Messaging segment declined 24% in the quarter, and the main driver was loss of wallet with 4 large aggregated clients in an inherently volatile business. Overall, while Enterprise continues to deliver positive growth and a trend of improved revenue mix, the group's organic revenue declined driven by the weaker performance in Global Messaging.
Then to the next slide, giving an overview of churn and net retention. Starting with churn, we observed a quarter-on-quarter increase in enterprise churn. This was, among other effects, related to new churn on one high-volume SMS customer with low margin. This client is, on the other hand, working with LINK on implementation of future OTT solutions. In general, OTT contracts typically come with higher value and stronger integrations, which over time supports improved stickiness and customer lifetime value. Looking at net retention, which was broadly stable quarter-on-quarter, but remains below our target level.
As shown in the chart, retention has stabilized compared to recent quarters, which is encouraging. However, performance in the quarter was impacted by softer campaign activity and a more competitive environment in the aggregator segment. The previously mentioned 9 clients reduced net retention by 9 percentage points in the quarter. That effect is expected to fade out over the next quarter, supporting a gradual improvement in net retention. We remain confident in returning to our medium-term target level of approximately 105%, which supports high single-digit gross profit growth.
Then to the gross profit. Reported gross profit increased 6% year-on-year, including acquisitions to NOK 461 million, while organic gross profit declined 4% in stable currency. The organic decline in gross profit was primarily driven by the Global Messaging segment, where gross profit decreased 21% or NOK 14 million, mainly due to the mentioned reduced share of wallet customers, representing NOK 18 million. The Enterprise segment declined 2% organically in the quarter or NOK 3 million. This includes a net negative year-end accounting impact of NOK 7 million, hence, underlying growth was slightly positive at 1%. The softer growth momentum compared to previous quarters was impacted by lower-than-expected campaign volumes in the quarter, while we observed a continuation of growth on CPaaS solutions and especially OTT channels, now representing more than 6% of total gross profit.
Organically, gross margin improved by 0.4 percentage points, mainly driven by Global Messaging representing a lower share of total revenue compared to same quarter last year. The year-end accounting effects impacted margin negatively by approximately 0.4 percentage points and was offset by positive margin impact from higher-value OTT solutions in line with previous quarter of 0.5 percentage points. Currency and acquisition effects weighed slightly on the reported numbers, resulting in a reported gross margin of 23.3%. Hence, reported margin was slightly down. The underlying organic margin trend remains positive.
Over to adjusted EBITDA and the margin development. Reported adjusted EBITDA increased marginally year-on-year, including M&A and declined 15% organically in fixed currency. The organic decline was NOK 32 million, whereof NOK 17 million explained by the organic gross profit decline and NOK 15 million is related to higher OpEx year-over-year. OpEx grew 7% year-on-year in the fourth quarter. The organic OpEx increase in the quarter was higher than previous quarters due to year-end closing effects and timing items. Full year organic OpEx increase was modest at 4%, reflecting ordinary inflation and planned investments to support growth.
Acquisitions closed and consolidated during 2025 contributed with NOK 33 million to adjusted EBITDA in the quarter, which more than offset the organic decline. Adjusted EBITDA margin decreased from 11.5% to 10.9%, driven by higher OpEx to sales influenced by lower top line and partly offset by the gross margin expansion. Closed and consolidated acquisitions supported expansion in reported margin by 0.6 percentage points with SMSPortal being the largest contributor, operating at a reported EBITDA margin of 22%.
Then to the next slide on the P&L. I will, as always, comment on the key items below adjusted EBITDA. Nonrecurring items were reported at NOK 21 million in the quarter, primarily related to M&A transaction costs with NOK 12 million, where NOK 7 million related to SMSPortal and restructuring activities of NOK 9 million in the quarter. EBITDA came in at NOK 195 million. Depreciation and amortization totaled NOK 116 million or up NOK 24 million quarter-over-quarter, where NOK 12 million related to 1 month of SMSPortal ownership, while the remaining linked to year-end catch-up related to finalized internal R&D projects during 2025. The estimated future quarterly amortization of SMSPortal are NOK 36 million, pending the finalization of the PPA.
Net financial items were negative NOK 46 million, consisting of net currency loss of NOK 25 million, net interest expense of NOK 27 million and other financial items representing a positive impact of NOK 6 million. The net currency loss mainly includes a mark-to-market valuation loss with no cash effect of NOK 23 million related to ZAR/EUR cross-currency swap established in relation to the SMSPortal acquisition. Net interest expense of NOK 27 million consisted of NOK 32 million in bond interest, including amortized transaction costs, partly offset by interest on cash deposits held. Other financial items was positive NOK 6 million related to a positive earn-out adjustment related to the Net Real Solution acquisition in Spain. This results in a profit before tax of NOK 33 million and net profit for the period of NOK 31 million post the tax expense of NOK 2 million recognized in the quarter.
Then to the balance sheet. Overall, the financial position remains solid with strong liquidity and ample capacity to support continued inorganic growth with a cash position of NOK 1 billion and leverage of 1.5x adjusted EBITDA after closing SMSPortal. Total assets increased slightly year-on-year, primarily driven by higher noncurrent assets following acquisitions completed during the year as well as foreign currency effects. Total receivables were positively impacted by continued collection efforts, improving DSO year-over-year and settlement of an earn-out and partial sellers' credit repayment related to the U.S. divestment, offset by acquired entities and currency effects.
Cash position, as I mentioned, is NOK 1 billion end of the year, down NOK 1.4 billion year-on-year. The decrease primarily reflects debt repayments and M&A activity. Net debt repayments totaled NOK 835 million during the year, while the NOK 1 billion cash consideration for the SMS Portal acquisition was funded from existing cash reserves. These outflows were partly offset by solid cash generation throughout the year.
Looking at the financing, long-term borrowings consist of 2 outstanding bonds totaling EUR 225 million with an average cost of 3-month Euribor plus 2.53%. In addition, we have an undrawn working capital facility of EUR 65 million, which provides further headroom to fund operations and future M&A. Equity stands at NOK 5.7 billion, corresponding to a solid equity ratio of 52%. Net interest-bearing debt supported at NOK 1.6 billion, resulting in a leverage of 1.5x adjusted EBITDA and up 0.5x quarter-on-quarter, driven by the closing of the SMSPortal acquisition. Leverage remains below our target range of max 2 to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA.
Then to my final slide on key cash flow items. We delivered adjusted cash flow from operations of NOK 257 million in Q4, reflecting strong underlying profitability and good cash discipline. This corresponds to a cash conversion of around 119% of EBITDA. Working capital normalized in Q4, leading to a net positive cash effect from working capital on a last 12-month basis of NOK 22 million. Taxes paid were higher in Q4 due to timing differences. On a last 12-month basis, adjusted operating cash flow amounted to NOK 782 million, corresponding to an adjusted EBITDA conversion of approximately 95%.
CapEx have been elevated through 2025, primarily driven by fast track investments in our CPaaS platform and in Q4 initiatives supporting additional consolidation and strengthening commercial development. We expect these investment levels to normalize into 2026 and expect CapEx level to come down by approximately 10% in 2026. Interest payments reflect the new LINK02 and LINK03 bonds, and we continue to maintain additional liquidity through the undrawn revolving credit facility, as I mentioned.
That concludes the presentation, and it's now time for Q&A. Back to you, Kristian.
Thank you, Thomas and Morten. We will now start the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] If Q4 had included a full quarter of SMSPortal instead of 1 month, how materially different would reported gross profit and EBITDA have been?
We are presenting that on Slide 5, where the full pro forma results for the group is presented. So on a full pro forma basis, including SMSPortal for the full quarter, gross profit will be NOK 531 million versus the reported NOK 461 million. And on adjusted EBITDA will be NOK 293 million versus NOK 216 million reported.
Should we expect SMSPortal to be margin accretive to the group already in Q1? And how quickly can synergies be realized?
I can take the first one. We already see margin accretion effect also in the Q4 numbers. So our expectation is that when we close the acquisition that it should lift the margin -- adjusted EBITDA margin by 1.5 percentage points. And I would say still they're operating at a margin of 22%. So it should be margin accretive definitely also in the first quarter.
When it comes to the synergies, we see that we are actually able to implement on some customer synergies that we have customers in our footprint with traffic to South Africa that we are in a position to win now. And also, we see that we can export some of the SaaS solutions that we are having and also OTT channels like WhatsApp to some of the customers in South Africa. The first synergies are going to materialize quicker than the second category, WhatsApp on the customer stock in SMSPortal. The time line to sort of sign a new contract and to implement the solution is, of course, a little bit longer, but we expect that to be positive gradually during 2026.
Good. You mentioned move toward more SaaS-like CPaaS KPIs, which metrics should investors focus on going forward to capture underlying value creation?
The metric we are following up is gross profit growth, adjusted EBITDA growth, and we're also monitoring quite closely the contract backlog. So those are the 3 main KPIs for us.
With a pipeline of over EUR 50 million in cash EBITDA and several targets in due diligence, how confident are you that we will see at least one acquisition in 2026?
I'm very confident on that.
Given current market volatility, do you see opportunities to acquire assets at even more attractive multiples than historically?
We see that the valuations are quite stable. So historically, it's been somewhere between 6 to 7x cash EBITDA, and that would sort of be the normal valuations for most targets.
You mentioned strong RCS contract momentum. With Apple opening up RCS in the Nordics, how should we think about the revenue potential over the next 12 to 24 months?
I am more occupied with sort of gross profit potential here. So Apple is planning to open up for RCS in the Nordics. Exactly when we don't have full transparency on it, Q1, Q2. And we do see that customers, enterprise customers in the Nordics, they are increasingly interested in the solution, and we're doing more and more PoCs in the Nordics on RCS. So I would believe that the gross profit growth potential on that channel in 2026, 2027, especially 2027 is going to be quite good.
You mentioned that 4 large customers weighed on growth in Q4, but except for 9 clients, organic growth were NOK 17 million. Did 4 or 9 clients drive the miss?
We basically have 2 buckets of decliners. The 4 -- that's share of wallet clients, which means that they are enterprise clients, but they have somewhat of an aggregator like behavior. Those 4 clients drove most of the decline in the fourth quarter. The 5 other customers are customers we informed of in the second quarter that cut use cases. They do not have other vendors, but they decided to eliminate certain use cases that resulted in volumes declining at the beginning of the year. We stated in both Q2 and Q3 that, that effect on the total gross profit growth was about 2 to 3 percentage points. It's in that area also in the fourth quarter, and that's going to be the last quarter we will have those enterprise clients negatively impacting the growth momentum as the impact is sort of worn out after 12 months.
Good. Are there any differences in conversion rate from order intake to revenues between A2P and CPaaS? Are the lead time longer in CPaaS?
The lead times on CPaaS was longer in 2024, 2023. We are seeing that it's improving as the product is getting more and more mature. So the lead times are catching up when it comes to -- compared to legacy solutions. So a little bit longer still, but the gap is being closed.
What is your capacity for buying back your own shares? And how do you think about that versus further M&A?
The capacity is basically in the general assembly from May. This is something we are -- or the Board is always considering on a constant basis what the best option for value creation is. We do see a lot of potential for value creation on M&A also. So we are going to do what is best for creating value for the shareholders.
Should we expect SMSPortal to continue to grow at the same rate as in Q4 in 2026?
SMSPortal without inflow of bigger customers normally sort of grow in the mid-single digits. Historically, the growth has been more chunky, meaning that it can grow significantly over high single digit for a certain period of time when they have won some bigger customers and more sort of in the single digit when that's not the case. So over time, we do expect SMSPortal to grow in the high single digits, but it's varying between the interval I mentioned.
Good. What concrete actions are you taking to improve organic growth and revenue retention in the enterprise customer segment?
The commercial strategy is the same. The market is adopting to a larger degree, the new CPaaS solutions. So what we are doing is tactical changes to what kind of use cases and which verticals we are trying to address. And also, we are doing tactical changes constantly on legacy products on what use cases and what size of customers we want to focus on. So this is sort of something that we are doing on a recurring basis.
Do you have any information as to why some of your larger Enterprise customers have lowered their spend?
Yes, we do. On the Enterprise side, we know exactly why. Some of the decline is due to them just stopping the use case or that they are using a cheaper channel like e-mail because they feel that the return on investment is high enough to justify the cost.
And then the gross profit margin is lower in other regions than just Western Europe compared to last year. Is this a structural shift or random fluctuations?
I think we should remember that we have NOK 7 million in year-end accounting -- net negative accounting effects, which are impacting margin mainly in, I would say, Nordics and Western. Also, I would say the underlying margin development is more linked to traffic. We don't see a sort of structurally different margin picture overall sort of per client level. So it's more linked to client and destination mix to some degree year-on-year. I also mentioned just for Western, there's an impact, of course, of the acquired entities in the U.K., which is coming with a lower gross margin.
What makes you confident volumes will return to growth in Q1 and for 2026 as a whole?
As we outlined in the Slide #6, we -- the 9 customers, we see the contribution there on the lower graph. And we see the sort of contribution from these clients easing off to entering the comparison will be sort of lower as we go through into 2026. Q1 still had a quite significant contribution to gross profit. Also, we believe the initiatives that we are taking and closed contracts will positively contribute to a gradual improvement in the growth momentum.
Yes, I can also just mention that we don't see any structural changes in the market. We see strong demand for the more advanced solutions and continued demand for sort of SMS and legacy solutions. After 3.5 years of outgrowing the market, Q4 was soft or weak. This is something we experienced before also like 2022. And we've seen historically that we're able to bounce back in the coming quarters. So we don't see any reason why this shouldn't happen in 2026 compared to our sort of experience with markets and what we've seen historically.
Good. And then a little bit on the same question. Could you please give more details on why the weak volumes in Q4 was considered more temporary than structural?
It's mainly connected to the 4 share of wallet customers. Those customers, they are using a multi-vendor strategy because they are terminating on a global level, their messages. The volumes there are more volatile. So for Q4, we had a large decrease on those 4 customers, which was unexpected for us. We have had these customers for a few years. There are no structural reasons to this. The volume can flow back partly or wholly or it can sort of increase more again.
So that's just the nature of those use cases. There's nothing indicating in the enterprise market that there are any structural changes. It's growing quite nicely even if we had a somewhat lower campaign activity in the retail segment in the fourth quarter, which is also not a sign from sort of the way we see it as a structural change. So that has happened historically as well. Campaign activity in the fourth quarter in a year can be somewhat lower than what we expected. And then sort of we revert back to normal again Q1, Q2 and then Q4 next year is at par with expectations. So that's sort of the main summary from our side.
And could you also provide some information on seasonality effects with regards to SMSPortal?
We don't see a material seasonality effect in SMSPortal. It's fairly flat across the quarters, maybe slightly higher in Q4, as you can see from our pro forma numbers. There is no -- the seasonality is a little lower than in LINK.
Thanks. Why does the growth in messages differ so much from revenue gross profit growth?
It basically comes from the price per message in SMSPortal compared to the rest of the LINK footprint. That's the main driver for it, I would say.
And then a question on the segment changes. What's the reason that's being done now, the segment changes to Global Messaging?
What we have done some changes to the internal organization that was planned actually since the summer. And part of that change was to strengthen the team that follow up aggregators and enterprise customers with aggregator-like behavior to make sure that we have a stronger operational and a better customer follow-up. So that's the reason for it.
For the Global Messaging reduced share of wallet customers, will you reduce your prices to increase your share of wallet so we should expect lower gross profit margin in Global Messaging going forward?
No, that's not the plan. We are following -- we are, of course, working with those existing customers to regain some of the volumes or the whole volumes, but we also got a couple of new customers coming in that will hopefully sort of make a positive impact. We are not planning to lower margins in that segment significantly in order to grow revenue. We have a strategy of growing the gross profit.
Could you comment on the strength in RCS versus competitors, both on aggregate and geographically?
Yes. On RCS, geographically, we have a very strong solution, not necessarily on the gateway side. We have a very good throughput and latency there, just as good as the bigger competitors. But we have a strong offering of SaaS solutions to help the client do their communication content and library functions and template managers and stuff like that, which according also to Juniper is being recognized as very good compared to the industry. The smaller competitors that we are seeing mostly on a day-to-day basis on the enterprise segment in the different countries where we operate, most of them, they don't have any RCS connectivity at all. So there, of course, we have a large competitive advantage.
In which key regions do not Apple support RCS currently? Could you just update the market on that?
Apple supports -- I can do it differently and state where Apple supports RCS, U.K., France, Germany and Spain. We are expecting Portugal and the Nordics to follow the beginning of this year, Q1 or Q2. We don't control that, of course, it's Apple and the mobile operators who control it.
Do you see any risk for more customers reducing their SMS volume in 2026?
There's always going to be some customers reducing volumes on certain use cases, and there will always be other customers that are growing quite nicely. This changes over time. We don't see that there is a trend that enterprise customers are reducing volumes. So we don't have any reasons to expect that this will happen sort of at the same pace as we experienced in 2025. No. Some customers, they increase, other customers, they decline. Historically, sort of we've been able to deliver a healthy growth momentum. So that is sort of the normal expectations.
Yes. Can you give any further details on enterprise weakness related to the same customers that have reduced spending in prior quarters? Do they use other competitors? Can you share more details behind the weakness?
I guess the question is regarding the 9 questions, which was divided in 2 buckets, 5 enterprise customers declining on certain use cases. There are no commonalities between them. It's different from each of the 5 customers. And the other 4 customers that has a share of wallet, enterprise customers with more aggregator-like behavior, that is mostly due to price considerations. They have found other competitors offering attractive prices on the destinations that we have. So now we're working on to match and retrieve some of the volumes either on those destinations or on new destinations.
How has pricing discussions -- regarding M&A, how has pricing discussions developed since the last report? And can you give any further details on size?
Pricing discussions on M&A is fairly similar to what we experienced in the previous quarterly reporting. We have the interval of 6 to 7x cash EBITDA, which is our normal purchase price discussions or valuation discussions. Regarding the size of the pipeline, we have a few bigger opportunities there. And we also got a couple of sizable opportunities in due diligence. Any more detailed commentary around that where they are and so on, I don't think I should go into those details due to competitive reasons.
In general, do you see any changes in the competitive landscape with regarding to pricing and yes.
No, pricing is pretty stable in the enterprise market. We don't see any increased price competition nor any lower price competition. It's quite stable. In Global Messaging, of course, it's more fluid and volatile, which we experienced in this quarter. There, the price competition is stronger as most of the customers there have a share of wallet. There's 2 customer categories in the Global Messaging segment. It's aggregators, which is by nature, very price sensitive.
Then you have the enterprise customers who have a share of wallet strategy on the vendor side because they're terminating on a global level and no player in the A2P market is able to do that competitively. So they have to use different vendors. And they are price sensitive, but they also have quality considerations. So it's less price sensitive than the aggregating market. But still, volumes due to a multi-vendor strategy can be somewhat more volatile. What happened in the fourth quarter, it's more volatility than we've seen before. So that is sort of the way we view it.
Could you give some flavor on the synergy potential of the SMSPortal acquisition?
I think we've answered that already. It's mostly on the customer side. SMSPortal on the OpEx side is very, very efficient.
SMSPortal gross profit growth of 5% year-on-year feels a bit low given the maturity of the total addressable market, at least, I believe. Please comment on price versus volume impact for SMSPortal in the quarter.
I think Thomas commented on the growth momentum in SMSPortal that could vary within sort of a range depending on the inflow of new clients. We see a good number of closed volume that's going to be implemented over the first half. So that's positive. There's also a significant pipe of also larger targets, which is being worked on. So that gives us confidence about the future growth momentum. I think the volume development is fairly in line with the price or revenue growth that we're reporting for the quarter.
What commercial initiatives are you considering to restore volumes for isolated decliners?
I think that has already been answered, and I won't repeat it because we have more questions and we're running out of time.
The new contract on SMSPortal that should add NOK 600 million in new messaging volumes, should we assume same GP per message as the rest of SMSPortal's business or higher, lower?
Yes, you could assume that just for ease.
Given the impact we have seen from large customers in '25, how should -- how much of gross profit currently comes from top 1 and 10 customers?
Top 1 represent about 4%. Top 10 is about 14%.
Any other large customers where you see a risk of large volume reductions in line with what you have seen in 2025?
No, nothing that I am aware of now. No.
And then what can you do on the cost side to offset the reduction in gross profit growth?
If we can, of course, reduce costs, that's an alternative. We have chosen not to do so yet because we believe that we're going to regain the growth momentum during 2026, and we see a lot of growth opportunities in the future, especially for the more advanced CPaaS solutions. So we believe as of now that it's better to sort of regain the momentum and then make sure that we maximize resources internally to extract growth momentum going forward.
What is LINK doing to reduce time from contract signing to go live on new contracts to improve financial contribution from these contracts faster?
We're, of course, following up the customers, especially the bigger contracts. That is done. So that has been done historically too. Most of the time when we are having delays, it's because development resources within the clients, they are occupied with other elements in the road map. That is difficult to change, of course, and we just need to be patient there and make sure we are in contact with them on a regular basis. So we have a priority in the road map.
Could you elaborate on gross margin development, excluding one-offs and FX? Are you seeing structural pricing pressure from operators or competitors?
Yes, the one-off effects that we had in the quarter is impacting the margin by -- the organic margin development by 0.4 percentage points. As we have commented on before, we didn't see any sort of structural difference in pricing or -- and margin pressure as such. Pricing from operators is sort of following normal trends, seen a price increase in the Nordics over the last few years, which we have alluded to before. But no sort of -- no significant changes, I would say, compared to previous quarters.
And then I think this will be the last question. Do you see any signs that AI could enable alternative communication channels that might structurally threaten LINK's organic growth? If not, what do you consider to be the company's key moat in preventing this?
AI is something we see as an asset when it comes to helping us and the customers to design and create communications. When it comes to communication channels, there are physical connectivity that needs to be in place, which AI can do. AI can help on API integrations, but you can't automate it. So I don't see a structural threat from AI going in and sort of doing these sort of connections to the different communication channels. We see it more as a value for future growth.
Thank you. That concludes the Q&A session. Please reach out if you have any further questions, and we will be happy to answer them. Thank you to Thomas and Morten, and thank you for all your questions. See you next quarter.
Link Mobility Group — Q4 2025 Earnings Call
Link Mobility Group — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Hi, and welcome to LINK Mobility's Third Quarter Presentation. With me today presenting, I have CEO, Thomas Berge; and CFO, Morten Edvardsen. You can ask questions online during the presentation.
With that, I leave the word to our CEO, Thomas Berge.
Thank you for the introduction, Kristian, and good morning to everybody listening in. LINK is Europe's leading provider of digital messaging. That's a position we have established over time through a combination of strong organic growth and a proven track record of successful acquisitions. Today, we are the #1 player in Europe within application to person or A2P messaging. This means we enable businesses to communicate directly and securely with their customers through channels such as SMS, e-mail, voice, RCS and WhatsApp. Our award-winning RCS solution position LINK at the forefront of next-generation messaging, offering enterprises richer and more interactive ways to engage with end users.
We approach the enterprise market through a strategy of local touch points with our clients. We have numerous sales reps, customer service and customer success employees on the ground, winning new contracts and supporting existing clients in the local language and local culture. This setup is creating a larger reach than many of our competitors who have a more regional or centralized approach to the market. We serve approximately 60,000 customers on a recurring basis who send 23 billion messages per year, adding another 20 billion messages when including SMS portal.
LINK now employs 700 people across more than 30 offices with operations spanning over 18 European markets as well as South Africa and Latin America. Operations in Latin America is so far limited and a consequence of the acquisition of NRS in 2024. Since 2014, we have completed over 35 acquisitions, which have been a key driver in building both our scale and our tech platform. At the center of the slide, you can see our product portfolio, a broad modular offering that allows customers to manage and automate communication across multiple channels.
The MyLink suite includes tools for marketing, marketing automation, CDP engagement, payments and APIs, essentially covering the full life cycle of digital customer interaction. Finally, on the right-hand side, we highlight LINK's footprint, which demonstrates how the company has established strong local positions across Europe and in selected international markets. This broad platform now provides a solid foundation for continued growth, both organically and through future strategic acquisitions.
LINK delivered steady and robust growth with expanding margins and strong cash generation in the quarter. We're also announcing the introduction of our shareholder return policy, an important milestone for the company. While accretive M&A will remain first priority, our financial position and cash generation are strong enough to support both continued M&A activity and shareholder distributions. For 2025, we target an ordinary distribution of approximately NOK 300 million, equivalent to around NOK 1 per share to be executed through a combination of treasury share cancellations, share buybacks and subsequent deletions. Over time, we expect shareholder distribution to increase as the business grows organically. In a year with high M&A activity, creating long-term value, the level of dividends or buybacks may be adjusted accordingly.
LINK delivered another good quarter with both growth and margin expansion. On a pro forma basis, including SMS portal, gross profit increased 6% year-on-year, in line with expectations. The gross margin expanded by 2.3 percentage points to 24.3%. This is driven by a favorable product and traffic mix and continued traction on higher-value/margin solutions. Like the previous quarter, gross profit growth was tempered by a few larger enterprise clients that are still moderating their communication spend, negatively impacting the growth momentum with 2 to 3 percentage points.
This headwind is expected to continue to impact the rest of 2025. The effect will diminish as we hit 2026. However, the underlying trend remains solid with high contract wins and strong traction on higher-margin conversational solutions. Pro forma adjusted EBITDA increased 9% year-on-year to NOK 268 million, a margin of 13.5%, up 1.7 percentage points from same period last year. This highlights the scalability of our business model. Reported EBITDA came in at NOK 171 million, impacted by nonrecurring costs, mainly related to M&A activity. From a revenue quality perspective, we continue to see favorable shift with high-margin conversational OTT solutions outpacing traditional messaging.
As illustrated on the bottom right charts, RCS traffic grew by 134%, while WhatsApp volumes increased by 368% year-on-year. Commercially, this was our strongest third quarter to date in terms of new customer wins with EUR 43 million in new contracts signed despite the typical softer seasonality of the period. This represents a 53% increase year-over-year. This demonstrates both solid underlying market demand and the continued effectiveness of our localized go-to-market approach.
Finally, on M&A, activity is accelerating with a pipeline stronger than ever, representing more than EUR 50 million in cash EBITDA opportunities within our historical valuation range of 6x to 9x cash EBITDA. We are also seeing a higher number of larger level-up opportunities that could further strengthen our geographical presence in the pipeline. The SMS Portal acquisition remains on track to close by the end of November, which will solidify the company's cash generation substantially and unlock further growth opportunities.
Starting at the top with pro forma gross profit development, we saw a 6% increase year-over-year in stable currency. The organic footprint reported 5% gross profit growth, driven by the Enterprise segment. A handful of enterprise clients continue to lower their communication spend compared to last year, which is impacting year-on-year growth momentum by around 2 to 3 percentage points negatively. This is in line with the effect we saw last quarter. We expect this effect to diminish towards the end of the year. Growth was also supported by higher-margin conversational contracts, which continue to drive both gross profit expansion and margin improvements.
The growth momentum for SMS Portal is reported at high single digits, which is in line with expectations. Turning to adjusted EBITDA. We delivered 9% organic growth in stable currency, outpacing gross profit growth, underscoring the scalability of our business model. The strong gross profit performance translates efficiently into EBITDA, supported by limited OpEx growth of around 2% year-on-year. When including SMS Portal, pro forma adjusted EBITDA growth was also 9%. LINK closed NOK 43 million in new customer contracts, representing a 53% year-on-year increase, and this was actually our strongest third quarter to date in terms of new contract wins.
The growth was largely driven by strong SMS A2P performance, particularly within the banking sector and software platforms. At the same time, new CPaaS contracts grew 23% year-on-year, supported by the continued adoption of OTT-based solutions such as WhatsApp and RCS. In the bottom chart, you can see that OTT solutions represents the majority of CPaaS contracts closed with OTT contract wins up NOK 2 million or 33% year-on-year. Key growth areas include supermarkets, retail and e-commerce, where we've seen increased demand for rich interactive communication.
Overall, approximately 30% of total contract value this quarter came from new customers, demonstrating LINK's ability to both expand its client base and strengthen relationships with existing customers. There are 2 key drivers supporting LINK's organic growth potential over time. The first driver shown on the left-hand side is the increasing adoption of A2P messaging across Europe. Adoption has risen across all regions where LINK operates with particularly strong momentum in Central and Western Europe. While the Nordic market remains among the most mature globally, we continue to see adoption growth even in this region, albeit at a lower level.
There remains significant room for further expansion across the rest of Europe, providing a solid foundation for sustained long-term growth. The second driver illustrated on the right-hand side relates to the new and more advanced CPaaS solutions. We are seeing growing traction for richer channels such as RCS and WhatsApp enabling conversational solutions, which offer higher ROIs for clients, more efficient customer interactions and greater engagement, particularly in sectors like banking, logistics, retail and e-commerce. Together, these 2 trends, higher adoption rates and the ongoing shift towards advanced conversational solutions are the key enablers of LINK's organic growth going forward.
Next, we'll take a closer look at the 2 examples, illustrating the right-hand driver on the organic growth, the shift towards conversational messaging use cases on RCS and WhatsApp and how these solutions are being implemented across specific industries. We'll start with an example on how LINK's digital assistant on WhatsApp is being used within the logistics sector. The transportation and logistics industry accounts for roughly 10% of LINK's gross profit, and it's an area where our solutions are helping clients automate customer communication and drive efficiency.
Using LINK's Digital Assistant on WhatsApp, customer can easily track packages, get delivery updates or request quotes all directly through the chat. This helps our clients provide an instant and personalized support while reducing the workload on their customer service teams. As a result, companies that use these solutions are experiencing around 30% fewer inbound calls, which leads to lower operational costs and improved customer satisfaction. This is a great example on how LINK's conversational messaging solutions create tangible value for our clients by combining automation, scalability and improved customer experience.
Next is an example from the banking and insurance sector, which accounts for roughly 1/4 of LINK's gross profit. This use case illustrates how RCS messaging is being used to combat fraud and suspicious transactions. Let me briefly explain how this works. When a bank identifies a potential suspicious transaction, such as a money transfer or online payment, that transaction is automatically put on hold. The customer then receives an RCS message with transaction details, asking them to confirm whether it was them or not. The customer simply replies, yes, it was me or no, it wasn't. And the response is integrated directly into the bank's IT system for instant processing. The benefit of this use case are clear. The solution is secure as RCS agents must be approved by mobile operators and Google before going live. It delivers a faster response time from customers, a better user experience than SMS and allows richer communication with more room for content and branding.
Feedback from both banks and end users have been highly positive and adoption of this anti-fraud use case continues to grow. As shown in the box at the bottom, profitability on this use case is significantly higher than for regular SMS with gross profit 4x higher when there's no customer reply and up to 8x higher when the customer responds. The next 3 slides will focus on capital allocation. Following the acquisition of SMS Portal, LINK has a strong financial position, supported by solid growth and high cash flow generation. This enables us to initiate shareholder distributions while continuing to pursue accretive M&A opportunities and deliver organic growth.
From a capital allocation perspective, our objective is to strike the right balance between pursuing growth opportunities and providing shareholder distributions, all within a framework of financial discipline and a resilient balance sheet. Our strong growth and robust cash flow generation is giving us the flexibility and capacity to achieve this. As shown in the table on the bottom left, our normalized pro forma cash generation for the last 12 months before M&A-related costs amounts to over NOK 600 million. The high cash flow position provides us with the capacity to fund both accretive M&A and shareholder distribution going forward. Let's turn to the graph on the bottom right to help illustrate this.
M&A activity will vary in both size and timing. But in what we consider a normal year, we will typically acquire around NOK 100 million in cash EBITDA at an average historical multiple of approximately 6.5x. This implies a total acquisition cost of roughly NOK 650 million. To fund such transactions while maintaining a stable leverage ratio, there are 3 key factors that provide recurring funding for us. First, when we acquire NOK 100 million in cash EBITDA, the acquired earnings directly increase our debt capacity by around NOK 200 million, assuming a leverage ratio of 2.0x. Second, our organic growth also contributes to expanding debt capacity. Assuming 10% organic EBITDA growth adds NOK 220 million in debt capacity without increasing the leverage.
We have the ability to finance about NOK 420 million through debt while keeping our leverage ratio unchanged compared to our annual cash flow generation of more than NOK 600 million. Thirdly, LINK intends to fund a portion of future transaction using LINK shares. It is natural to assume that around 1/3 of the acquisition price will be settled in shares. In such cases, the cash funding requirements to maintain a stable leverage ratio in years with normal M&A activity becomes minimal with these assumptions only NOK 13 million. This means that following the acquisition of SMS portal, LINK is in a position to fund CapEx to support organic growth, pursue M&A and provide attractive shareholder distribution, all without increasing our leverage ratio.
We find this to be quite unique shareholder offering, combining shareholder distributions with compounding growth from organic and inorganic initiatives. Let's move over to the new shareholder return policy where we introduced a target shareholder distribution for 2025. Our overall ambition is to deliver long-term value to shareholders by providing a competitive return on invested capital. For 2025, we are targeting an ordinary shareholder distribution of approximately NOK 300 million, equivalent to around NOK 1 per share. Over time, we expect these ordinary distributions to grow in nominal terms, subject to the level of M&A activity. These distributions can be carried out either as dividends or through share buybacks, followed by share cancellations, depending on the Board's assessment of the most value-accretive option for shareholders at any given time.
At the same time, accretive M&A transactions that generate high long-term value will continue to be prioritized. As M&A activity naturally varies from year-to-year, periods of higher acquisition activity may lead to temporarily lower levels of ordinary dividends or buyback. The same applies for periods of lower M&A activity. Dividends and buybacks may increase. Finally, LINK remains committed to a financial discipline with a target leverage ceiling of 2 to 0 to 2 to 5x. This policy reflects an approach where we remain focused on creating long-term value through both organic and inorganic growth, while recognizing that in years with normal levels of M&A activity, there will be excess free cash flow available, which we intend to return to the shareholders, both to deliver attractive shareholder return and to maintain capital discipline.
As communicated earlier, LINK targets an ordinary distribution of approximately NOK 300 million, equivalent to around NOK 1 per share for the fiscal year 2025. For this distribution, we tend to cancel treasury shares and may also execute additional share buybacks with subsequent cancellations. This approach has been selected due to its lower liquidity requirements, allowing LINK to maintain financial flexibility heading into 2026 and positioning the company to capitalize on a strong and attractive M&A pipeline.
LINK has a strong M&A pipeline. Activity has accelerated after the summer. As shown on this slide, market activity and engagement levels are high, and we're currently seeing larger and more structured M&A opportunities than usual. We have 10 prioritized targets in the pipeline, including several larger transactions. Naturally, larger transactions come with a higher degree of uncertainty around timing and completion. I would not expect all of the larger transactions to close as complexity, valuation and risk profile is more likely to appear as a no-go compared to bolt-on acquisitions.
Out of the 10 prioritized targets, 6 are already in due diligence. And again, some are larger than what we typically have seen in the past. Larger deals in due diligence also have a higher uncertainty around timing and completion, but they also carry greater potential for value creation. Importantly, the quality and maturity of the pipeline have improved significantly, giving us strong confidence in our ability to execute value-accretive transactions going forward. In total, the 10 prioritized targets represent more than EUR 50 million in cash EBITDA, reflecting a very strong and actionable pipeline. The valuation is within the range of 6x to 9x cash EBITDA.
Looking ahead, the next 3 to 6 months, our immediate focus is closing and integrating the SMS Portal acquisition, which is expected to be completed by the end of November. Following closing, we will concentrate on extracting synergies and unlocking more growth opportunities within SMS Portal. At the same time, we are progressing several bolt-on acquisitions currently in due diligence across Europe, while also positioning LINK in processes for larger and more transformative targets.
To sum up, LINK's inorganic growth strategy remains disciplined, yet highly opportunity driven. We continue to operate within our defined leverage range of 2 to 0 to 2 to 5x adjusted EBITDA, supported by a proven M&A framework and a solid track record of successfully integrating acquired companies. The M&A pipeline has never been stronger. And with our financial flexibility, we are well positioned to act decisively when the right opportunity arises. LINK's key medium-term objectives are built around 3 pillars: growth, profitability and capital allocation. Starting with growth. LINK targets high single-digit gross profit growth over the medium term. This growth is driven by increasing mobile messaging adoption across geographies continued expansion in high-margin conversational and OTT messaging solutions and our localized go-to-market approach.
We expect adjusted EBITDA growth to outpace gross profit growth, reflecting the scalability of our business model and margin improvements because of product mix and operational leverage. Regarding capital allocation, accretive M&A remains our first priority. High cash generation enables both M&A and shareholder distribution, and we expect shareholder distributions to increase over time as organic growth further increases cash generation. We will remain strongly committed to maintaining financial discipline, targeting a max leverage range of 2.0 to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA. Altogether, these key medium-term targets positions LINK to deliver sustained value creation, combining profitable organic growth with accretive M&A and attractive shareholder return.
With that, I will hand the word over to Morten to provide a closer look at the financials.
Thank you, Thomas, and good morning to everyone listening in. I'll now take you through the third quarter financials for the group. Let's start with the overview of revenue development. Reported revenue for the quarter came in at almost NOK 1.7 billion, a reported growth of 2% year-on-year, impacted by contributions from recent acquisitions. Organically, revenue declined by 7%, which was primarily driven by the Global Messaging segment. Approximately 6 percentage points of the organic decline were attributable to the Global Messaging segment. This reflects a combination of the residual impact from the traffic we deliberately terminated in the third quarter last year as well as somewhat more competitive environment on low-value, high-volume use cases.
These dynamics are fully in line with our expectations and also reflect the continued strategic shift in our business towards higher-margin traffic. LINK remains well positioned to capture new volumes going forward based on access to high-quality routes preferred by clients. In the Enterprise segment, revenue remained fairly stable, and we continue to observe a favorable traffic and product mix shift. As Thomas mentioned, we continue to experience a temporary impact from a handful of large enterprise clients, which are optimizing their communication spend. While this moderated the overall growth momentum in the quarter, we expect the effect to diminish by end of the year.
The quality of revenue continues to improve, supported by OTT contract implementation and an increasing share of higher-value channels. Looking at the bridge in the lower left, we can see that there are 2 main drivers that explain the revenue development this quarter. A year-on-year decline of NOK 102 million in the Global Messaging segment and a positive M&A contribution of NOK 132 million. This resulted in an overall reported revenue growth of 2%. The acquired contribution reflects recently closed acquisitions in Spain and in the U.K.
Moving on to churn and net retention. Starting with churn, we saw quarter-over-quarter improvements across both the Enterprise and Global Messaging segments. and churn levels remains at a low level with churn rates of 1.5% and 1%, respectively. The adoption of new CPaaS solutions are expected to further strengthen customer stickiness through deeper integrations and higher switching costs. Looking at the chart below, reported net retention rate was 89% in the quarter, up from 84% in the previous quarter. The impact from terminated traffic since third quarter last year was lower in the quarter as the effect is starting to roll off.
The somewhat more competitive environment among aggregators impact net retention, but the request for high-quality routes is expected to benefit LINK going forward. The impact from the enterprise clients adjusting their communication spend is expected to fade and supports an improved net retention rate into 2026. Looking ahead, our medium-term gross profit growth target of high single-digit growth implies a normalized net retention rate of approximately 105%, supported by the expectation that around 2/3 of new revenue will be generated from our existing customer base.
Then to the next slide on development in gross profit and gross margin. Reported gross profit increased by 12% in the quarter, reaching NOK 401 million. Organic constant currency growth in gross profit was 5%, while closed and consolidated acquisitions contributed with an additional NOK 25 million in the quarter. Enterprise gross profit growth improved by 2 percentage points quarter-over-quarter, reaching 5%, supported by more favorable traffic mix and continued margin improvement. As previously highlighted, a few large clients have temporarily reduced noncritical communication spend, impacting overall group growth by around 2 to 3 percentage points. This effect, which was also present in the second quarter, is expected to diminish by the end of the year.
Global Messaging delivered 9% gross profit growth or NOK 3 million, supported by higher value traffic, while conversational OTT solutions continue to contribute to both margin expansion and growth. Looking at the gross margin, total group margin expanded by 2.7 percentage points year-over-year, driven by traffic and product mix improvements. Enterprise gross margin contributed 1.3 percentage points to the overall margin expansion, supported by a shift toward higher value traffic and products. OTT channels continue to support margin expansion with 0.3 percentage points year-over-year, somewhat higher than the previous quarters. Global Messaging contributed positively, improving total margin by 1.4 percentage points from an improved traffic mix.
The margin expansion was partly offset by a slight negative mix effect from closed and consolidated acquisitions. In summary, we delivered solid gross profit growth with continued margin expansion, supported by an improved traffic mix and the phasing in of OTT channel contracts. Moving on to the adjusted EBITDA. We report 17% year-over-year growth, driven by both acquisitions and solid organic performance. On a constant currency basis, organic adjusted EBITDA increased by NOK 14 million, corresponding to 9% growth. Reported adjusted EBITDA reached NOK 195 million in the quarter. The organic improvement was driven by NOK 18 million gross profit growth, partly offset by a 2% or NOK 4 million increase in operating expenses, resulting in a net organic increase of NOK 14 million.
Closed and consolidated acquisitions contributed an additional NOK 14 million. Turning to the margin chart at the bottom of the slide. Margin expanded 1.5 percentage points year-over-year to 11.5%. The improvement was supported by gross margin expansion, partly offset by higher OpEx to sales following organic top line decline. Acquired entities had a modest dilutive impact of 0.2 percentage points to the margin. In summary, Q3 was another solid quarter with both organic and acquisition-driven EBITDA growth, supported by a modest increase in OpEx as a result of the scalable business model.
Let's now turn to the statement of profit and loss. And as always, I will only comment on material items below adjusted EBITDA. We recorded nonrecurring items of NOK 24 million in the quarter, mainly related to M&A activity. This includes NOK 14 million in direct M&A costs, NOK 7 million in restructuring costs also linked mainly to acquired entities and NOK 3 million in ordinary option costs. Depreciation and amortization amounted to NOK 95 million in the quarter. This includes NOK 27 million related to amortization of intangible assets from R&D activities, NOK 63 million from PPA amortization on acquired entities and NOK 5 million from depreciation of leased and fixed assets.
Important to note that there is no or very limited replacement CapEx expected for the PPA-related amortization and the NOK 63 million are not impacting the group's dividend capacity according to the bond terms. On a year-to-date basis, the PPA amortization was NOK 185 million. Net financials were negative NOK 38 million. This includes a net currency loss of NOK 21 million, primarily related to euro exposure and NOK 22 million in net interest expense. These were partly offset by a NOK 6 million positive fair value adjustment related to the earn-out of the Firetext acquisition.
Then to the balance sheet, which remains solid and provides ample capacity for continued inorganic growth. At quarter end, total assets amounted to NOK 9.8 billion and equity stood at NOK 5.5 billion, representing an equity ratio of a solid 56%. Noncurrent assets were lower year-over-year, mainly reflecting currency effects and the termination of LINK 01 bonds. We invested in our own bonds totaling NOK 877 million, which were canceled in the fourth quarter last year. This was partly offset by NOK 389 million related to M&A add-on as well as currency adjustments. Development in receivables were positively impacted by the settlement of the U.S. divestment receivables and part of the sellers credit totaling NOK 218 million in year-over-year effect.
We also saw an underlying improvement in DSO, which contributed to a year-on-year reduction in trade receivables. Cash and cash equivalents ended at NOK 1.9 billion. The year-over-year decrease mainly reflects debt repayment, M&A activity and share buyback program. The initial cash consideration for the SMS Portal acquisition will be financed with approximately NOK 1 billion in cash from the balance sheet. Long-term borrowings totaled NOK 2.6 billion, reflecting 2 outstanding bonds amounting to EUR 225 million in total with an average rate of 3-month [indiscernible] plus 2.53% margin. We also have an undrawn working capital facility of EUR 65 million, which remains available for M&A.
Net interest-bearing debt was supported at NOK 809 million, corresponding to a leverage ratio of 1x adjusted EBITDA and down quarter-over-quarter. This highlights the strength of our balance sheet and provides flexibility to pursue further growth opportunities. Finally, to my last slide on key cash flow items. For the last 12 months, we have generated NOK 400 million in cash flow after CapEx and interest, excluding M&A-related costs. Cash flow from operations was strong in the quarter, corresponding to 101% of adjusted EBITDA or NOK 196 million. The solid performance was positively impacted by working capital release from improved collections.
On an LTM basis, net cash flow from operations, excluding M&A costs amounted to NOK 750 million, representing a healthy conversion rate of 92% from adjusted EBITDA. The nonrecurring items primarily relate to M&A transaction costs. CapEx in the quarter increased NOK 5 million year-over-year, mainly reflecting inflation effects and fast track development following increased market demands for our CPaaS solutions.
For the full year 2025, we expect CapEx to be around NOK 190 million. Following the EUR 145 million debt reduction earlier this year, the reported bond interest payments in the quarter reflect a lower run rate associated with the new LINK 02 and LINK 03 bonds. The current level of interest payments can therefore be considered representative for the coming quarters.
In summary, cash generation remains strong with healthy conversion from adjusted EBITDA and supports both continued M&A activity and shareholder distributions going forward. That concludes the financial section and the Q3 presentation, handing the word over to Kristian and Q&A.
[Operator Instructions] We will start with some questions from [indiscernible] from [indiscernible] Fitzgerald. Please, could you explain the thinking behind the share buyback and the shareholder return policy when you also have attractive high-return M&A targets?
Yes, I can answer that one. After the acquisition of SMS Portal, we are generating so much cash that we realistically are not able to utilize all of it on M&A activity, also taking sort of the debt capacity into consideration also that we would like to use the share as part payment. So we believe that we can do both performing accretive M&A on sensible targets, which is value accretive and also do share buybacks or dividends.
Great. Also with regards to the buyback for 2025, when do you expect to receive approval? And when is it expected to complete?
We are expecting this to happen in 2026. Of course, the Board has given the approval and exactly sort of how much of the shares -- treasury shares that we are sitting on are going to be canceled and how much we're going to buy back. We're going to have to sort of give some further guidance on that in the Q4 reporting in February.
Great. Outside of the handful of enterprise customers who are trimming their spend a bit, what kind of conversations are you having with customers for the outlook and 2026?
We are having a lot of different conversations with our customers. We've got 60,000 of them. You can sort of divide it up in 2. The first main item is conversational solutions with chatbots, AI. There's a lot of interest in that, both within notifications, customer service use cases and mobile marketing. So we're having a lot of different conversation on those kind of products also on the OT channels. The customers are super curious about RCS and WhatsApp specifically. and how that could fit into their different use cases. Secondly, we are also doing a lot of upselling activities on SMS, as you can see from the new contracts. SMS is still interesting for many of our customers, and we're sort of broadening the number of use cases that existing customers are having.
Any color on the main customer sectors that could drive full year 2026?
Yes. Right now, logistics and the finance industry, including insurance looks promising. But we're also seeing a lot of interest on mobile marketing and e-commerce. One trend is that with the OTT channels, you're able to bundle the communication differently than SMS. You have a lot more features to choose from. So we're seeing that the different use cases are merging actually. So something starting with a notification can during the message or conversation turn into more like a mobile marketing activity. So -- and that is also a trend that we are seeing.
Could you provide some color on how you are investing in AI to further accelerate cross-sell?
We're spending resources on AI, integrating into our chatbot and the agent handling workflow offerings. So that's one area which we're going to continue. It's not like it's finished. It's working as it is, and it's commercially viable and customers like it, but we need to improve and add more functionality into it. On top of that, content creation, both the campaign builder and template manager, we are, as we speak, introducing AI into that. So we can help customers automate their communications to a larger extent.
Great. Could there be any reasons why the SMS Portal acquisition may not complete? Or is it more or less a done deal?
It's more or less a done deal. There is nothing I see that is an obstacle on closing that deal. We expect closing end of November.
Then we move over to a question from [indiscernible] from Nordea. Could you elaborate a bit of your dividend policy? How is the flexibility in terms of dividend versus buybacks? And could you remind us again about the bond restrictions in terms of payout ratio?
Yes. The dividend policy has a lot of flexibility in terms of dividends versus buybacks. As I said, it's the Board who is taking that decision on a yearly basis based on what they believe is the most value accretive to the shareholders. The Board is, of course, going to listen to shareholders and their preference when they take that decision. Bond restrictions, there's a restriction on net income or adjusted net income. If I don't remember it incorrectly, Morten, it's 75% adjusted for PPA depreciation.
Yes, there's some noncash adjustments that can be made, but it's 75% of adjusted net income, previous year's net income.
Great. Moving on to some questions from Olav Rødevand in Pareto. Could you provide more color on the 2 to 3 percentage points enterprise headwind for the remainder of 2025 now that we're mid-November or know about the mid-November, but let's go.
Yes. I think we saw this effect entering -- on some of this entering 2025. We spoke about this in Q2. We see the sort of similar impact in Q3 as we are presenting today. And we expect this effect to be present until end of the year, and then it would fade out basically. Yes, I can't really give any flavor on Q4 or start of Q4, but we expect the similar effect sort of through the second half.
And also, what are you observing in client activity that gives confidence this headwind will diminish into 2026?
Basically, a handful of clients, which we saw were sort of optimizing their -- or turning down their communication spend. They did that, as I said, in the beginning of the year, most likely following a new budget year, and that's the feedback we're getting. So we expect sort of that to fade out after a 4-quarter effect.
And then on shareholder distributions, how are you thinking about buybacks versus dividends?
Yes. I guess I've already answered that question. It's -- the Board has the flexibility to decide on a yearly basis what is most value accretive to the shareholders.
Moving on to some questions from [indiscernible] in Danske Bank. Could you split what part of CPaaS growth is transitioned from A2P and how much is net new gross profit?
Yes, I can start and then Morten can add his comments on it. The CPaaS growth, a part of it is coming on top of SMS. It depends on different use cases. There are some use cases which is not possible to do as of now on SMS, so that will come on top. Other use cases, for example, for the logistics industry, it's a cannibalization of SMS because instead of sending out a reminder on SMS, they're doing this on WhatsApp with the intent to engage in a conversation.
We're super happy with both. We see that we make more money regardless and also the conversational solution, even if it's cannibalizing an existing SMS the volume normally increases because the conversation means that there's a lot of messages going back and forth between the end user and our chatbot. Have any else to add, Morten?
I think you covered it. We don't disclose specifically the sort of cannibalization effect. It's also clients use putting this on top, as you say, and then sometimes you replace a part of the communication with a more advanced solution, which drives a higher profitability for us. So I don't think I have much to add beyond that, Thomas.
Yes. Okay. One of your peers has stated lower price points on CPaaS solutions recently. Is this something you are seeing as well?
Easy answer, no, we're not seeing that.
Great. And then lastly, some of your peers stated in their Q3 report that AI volumes are starting to be visible. Is this something you also are seeing?
I'm not sure what [indiscernible] means by AI volumes, but we see that AI, especially when it comes to the chatbot and agent handling, it's being utilized more and more. And of course, the volume connected to those products are increasing. So yes, I guess the question is, yes, the volume is visible and it's increasing, but it's connected to mainly chatbot and agent handling today.
Great. Moving on to some questions from Eirik from DNB Carnegie. [indiscernible] noted margin pressure on richer communication channels in their Q3 report. Anything you have noticed? If yes, which players are aggressive on price?
No, we haven't noticed that. Price levels are quite stable, and I would expect that to continue the next couple of years. When the volumes scale, meaning that sort of you get most likely in the neighborhood of 10% of SMS volumes, 10%, 15%, 20%, north of 10% at least. We might have some smaller price reductions on high-volume customers. But I would expect that on a longer-term basis, the gross profit in percent will be higher on the CPaaS solutions versus SMS because the return on investment is much higher and the solutions are more sticky. And we're also selling much more supporting software solutions like agent handling workflow and chatbots. I don't really know why cm.com said that in the Q3 report because we are not seeing that as of now.
And then over to the 2 to 3 percentage point headwind. Should we expect a similar 2 to 3 percentage point negative effect on organic growth in both Q4 '25 and Q1 '26 following reduced messaging spend from selected large enterprise clients?
Yes. We covered this previously, I think. So we expect the effect to sort of diminish by year-end. So it's mainly hitting the fourth quarter.
Yes. And then -- or will the impact be lower in Q1, so it will be lower?
Yes.
And then another question from [indiscernible]. Can you please help us understand implied volume of additional buybacks needed to reach NOK 300 million. Our math indicates approximately 4 million additional shares needed to be bought back. Is that ballpark correct?
We have close to 14 million treasury shares. So after clearing the long-term incentive structure that are in place now, our thinking is that the net there is -- would cover most of the expected sort of NOK 300 million. So most of it will be covered through the existing treasury shares holding.
Great. On the M&A targets, could you share some more color on geographies on those targets?
I don't want to be too specific on geographies because of competitive reasons. But in general, we are having some targeted discussions with opportunities in Europe. And in U.S., Mexico, that is sort of the main areas. But we're also discussing, of course, with potential M&A opportunities in other regions as well.
Also, what's the reason you are seeing more level of M&A opportunities than previously?
It's a little bit difficult for me to sort of answer what the owners of these businesses sort of their reasoning around it. But it might be that it's been -- the valuations when you look at the listed peers have been kind of hard in the last couple of years, but it's picking up gradually. So that might be sort of a trigger. I don't really know. We are focusing more on sort of engaging and understanding these opportunities. So we make sure that we do value-accretive acquisitions.
And then lastly from Eirik. Could we get an updated view on when RCS is likely to be launched in the Nordics on iOS and -- how ready are you at your end in terms of that RCS launch? Do you have like templates in place for different use cases so you can move swiftly to convert end customers from ATP to RCS?
The last message from the mobile operators and from Google to us was Q1, Q2 next year. We are ready. We are doing -- we have done internal training, and we are doing internal training of salespeople. We have the benefit of operating in several geographies and some of the geographies like Italy and France are quite advanced on RCS. So we're learning from the local teams there what worked and what didn't work. So we have a sharper introduction of the solutions in the Nordics. So we're just waiting and absolutely ready for launching RCS in the Nordics, and we have great hopes from the channel.
Moving over to some questions from [indiscernible] in ABG. Are there any companies that have been removed from your M&A pipeline? Or are the 3 in due diligence phase, the same 3 companies that has been in DD phase for several quarters?
There's been some movement, yes. So one has been terminated and 2 are still ongoing when you look at sort of the due dil pipe we had in Q2 reporting.
Should we assume that the EUR 35 million increase in combined EBITDA from M&A pipeline is driven by the 2 new companies you have added to the pipeline since Q2?
The pipeline of 10 targets, it's not just we didn't just add 2 new companies. Some have been taken out also as a not prioritized opportunity due to several reasons. And then a few opportunities have gotten into the target after summer due to -- yes, just us believing that the opportunity is sharper after the summer.
And then some more questions on M&A from Oystein. How many of the 10 targets in the pipeline are larger targets? Are these larger M&A targets all located outside Europe?
Most of them are located outside Europe, but there are also one inside Europe. The targets are -- how many are larger around -- depending on the definition, I would say 3, 4 are larger. And when you accumulate the EBITDA, the cash EBITDA figure from all the 10, it's higher than what we said because we -- as I said in the presentation, the larger acquisitions are more complex. So I would expect more of them to sort of pave the way compared to bolt-on acquisitions. Some of them hopefully are going to be closed as well, but we wanted to be a little bit conservative when we reported sort of the cash EBITDA target from the 10 in pipe.
Great. How yes, do you see any risk that the SMS Portal acquisition will not close before year-end?
No, that would surprise me extremely.
Were there any specific reasons or any specific contracts that drove the strong growth in GP contribution from new contract wins in Q3?
We have 2 larger contracts there. That's not abnormal per se. So I wouldn't say it's something abnormal or unusual, but we have a couple of bigger contracts there, but also a longer tail of smaller contracts. So.
It's usually a good mix of contracts, some larger ones and then several smaller contracts.
Yes. And then lastly from Oystein, what was the reason for the significant year-on-year drop in gross profit from nonconsolidated units you showed on Slide 5. I guess this means as Portal.
Yes. I can explain the graph. Basically, if you look at -- to sort of understand the growth on the acquired entities, you need to take the NOK 82 million, which is shown as the Q3 '25 number and need to add back the NOK 25 million in organic contribution in the quarter. That will take you to NOK 107 million, and that need to be viewed that is growing from the NOK 100 million, which we are seeing in Q3 '24. So there's around 7.5% growth on the acquired acquisition or acquisitions, including [indiscernible].
And then we will take a question from Susanne [indiscernible] in SB1 Markets. Could you elaborate on the terms on the new NOK 65 million working capital facility, annual clean down margin?
Yes. Overall, it more or less it follows mainly the terms -- same terms as we have in the bond agreements. It's sort of the carve-out there to do a working capital facility of 1x pro forma adjusted EBITDA. So it's a NOK 65 million. It can be upscaled depending on as we grow the pro forma adjusted EBITDA with acquisitions. There is no clean down. There is a maintenance covenant of 4x adjusted EBITDA. And in current debt is basically also following the bond terms of 3.5x. The margin, I don't want to comment on the margin that we don't disclose that externally due to the relationship with the banks.
Great. We have one more question from [indiscernible] Nordea. Could you give some flavor on customers' demand for CPaaS messaging versus traditional SMS going into the seasonal strong Q4?
Yes. In Q4, it's a peak season for mobile marketing use cases. So of course, we see a lot of traction on especially RCS there. WhatsApp is quite expensive on mobile marketing. So it's more limited there. But the general trend regarding -- regardless of Q4, which is more a special quarter with the holidays and Christmas and everything. As I said, it's -- the first movers are within the finance industry, banks, insurance companies and e-commerce and retail.
And then some other questions. Would larger acquisition challenge your leverage policy? Or do you expect to stay within your target range?
We are going to stay within our target range. So larger acquisitions, we can partly pay with shares. It's easier than bolt-ons. So we are going to stay within the target range of leverage. We're not going to go beyond that.
Great. Then we have a question we have had earlier, but we can take it one more time. How many treasury shares do you hold currently? And if needed, when will buyback start?
I think I covered that, we have close to 14 million shares of the sort of plan A is to cancel shares after cleaning or clearing out the LTIP program. So that should cover most of the NOK 300 million. But we will come back and give you an update if we will start buybacks.
If we assume a high level of RCS adoption across the Nordics in 2026 with iPhone enabled from Q1 '26, how should we think about the impact on gross profit?
Going forward, that should increase the gross profit margins in the Nordics. It's not like everything is going to be released as soon as Apple opens up, the clients need time to test and do proof-of-concept phase before they are able to scale the volumes. So this is going to happen gradually. We are expecting it to happen quicker than what we saw in France because of the momentum and traction we are seeing in the market. But it's going to take time before it's visible, hopefully. So if everything goes according to plan, end of next year, we should see sort of a positive impact in the numbers.
Yes. And is it reasonable to expect that RCS mix shift becomes margin accretive rather than dilutive at scale?
RCS should increase our margins, yes. There's no doubt about that because it's not just the channel. There are so many software solutions that we have to sell to the customers in order for them to utilize it. And also the return on investment from the customers, it is much higher.
Okay. Moving on to a question on SMS Portal. Can you clarify what remains before SMS Portal can be closed and whether you expect full consolidation already in Q4 or first from Q1 next year?
As we said in the stock release, we're just waiting for the expiry of the time period connected to handing back a license -- mobile license in July. So that's what -- that's the only thing that we're waiting for. All other conditions are being -- have been satisfied. So we do expect to close it late November, and then it's going to be included in the number from December 1.
Yes. That's the plan to consolidate fully from December.
Great. Moving on. Looking beyond existing CPaaS portfolio, can you give some color on the product road map for 2026?
Yes. As I said earlier, it's building on our software solutions, mainly campaign builder, template managers improve the AI functionality into it. It's new functionality on our chatbot and agent handling and also further investments on our marketing automation and CDP solution.
And are there specific new solutions integrations or channel expansions beyond SMS RCS that you expect to contribute meaningfully to growth in the coming 12 to 24 months?
We have the channels that we need. We have mainly sort of Viber, RCS, WhatsApp, SMS, e-mail, we also got voice services. So not really. There are other channels out there like Snapchat, for example, and Messenger and telegram and so on. But there is no real interest for that in the market. And as of now, the channel owners also haven't done the required investments as far as I see to sort of open those channel up as a relevant ATP channel.
And Twilio and Siem.com guided towards more higher-value conversational and AI-enabled services. Is this also part of LINK's road map?
Yes.
Lastly, this morning, [indiscernible] announced an offer to acquire [indiscernible] at roughly 0.85x EV sales on 2026 consensus. As this removes a listed peer and is clearly a signal of renewed consolidation in European CPaaS, how do you see this impacting the competitive landscape going forward? And does this change how LINK is thinking about its own strategic positioning in a consolidated market?
No, not really. We haven't seen [indiscernible] active on M&A for years. So it came as a surprise. And as far as I could read out of the stock release and also the press release from [indiscernible], it didn't seem like a sort of a friendly proposition. So let's see sort of what CM, how they will handle it. As of now, we don't see a tightening up of the competitive landscape on M&A. And what will happen going forward is difficult for me to say as well. Yes.
And then one more question. Do you believe consolidation multiples like this help set the valuation floor for scale, profitable CPaaS platform such as Link?
Difficult for me to say. The valuation, when you look at the EBITDA figure at least was okay and in line with a couple of other transactions that we've seen. Valuations of smaller entities and larger entities are quite different and especially between private and listed entities. So I don't think necessarily this is going to sort of set any floor or anything like that. We have seen that before historically also that sometimes a very expensive deal has been done by some of our competitors, and we have been able to close within our normal multiple range shortly thereafter. So I wouldn't expect that.
Great. That concludes the Q&A session. Thank you so much, Thomas and Morten, for answering all the questions. Thank you to all participants and for your questions. See you again next quarter. Have a [indiscernible].
Link Mobility Group — Q3 2025 Earnings Call
Link Mobility Group — Q2 2025 Earnings Call
1. Management Discussion
Hi, and welcome to LINK Mobility's Second Quarter Presentation. My name is [Kristian Niegel ], and I'm the IR and Corporate Strategy Manager here at LINK. Joining me today are our CEO, Thomas Berge; and our CFO, Morten Edvardsen. We'll start with the presentation, and afterwards, we'll open up for questions. Please feel free to post your questions online at any time during the session.
With that, I'll hand it over to our CEO, Thomas Berge.
Thank you for the introduction, [Kristian]. This year marks a major milestone for LINK Mobility as we celebrate our 25th year anniversary. We began in 2000 as a small Norwegian start-up and have grown into the European market leader in digital messaging, now trusted by more than 55,000 customers.
Our strategy is dedicated to providing digital communication products to the enterprise market for them to interact with their end customers. We approach the enterprise market through a strategy of local touch points with our clients. We have numerous sales reps, customer service and customer success employees on the ground winning new contracts and supporting existing clients in local language and culture. This setup is creating a larger reach than many of our competitors who have a more regional or centralized approach to the market.
Over the years, we have built a pan-European presence. We are the #1 provider in Europe for A2P messaging with a customer base that relies on our services on a recurring basis. Today, we have more than 700 employees across over 30 offices, a presence in 18 countries and have completed more than 35 acquisitions since 2014. If you look at the map on the right-hand side, you can see the breadth of our footprint and the acquisitions that have helped us get there.
Our growth story has been driven by a combination of strong organic growth and targeted strategic acquisitions. Profitability has always been a key priority. LINK is growing the business while generating additional profitability and cash. Since 2014, we have expanded steadily across Europe, completing over 35 transactions to strengthen our position.
Looking at our journey, you can see key moments in our history. Nordic expansion between 2012 and 2015. The European expansion from 2016. The acquisition by Abry Partners in 2018 and our relisting at the Oslo Stock Exchange in 2020.
In 2025, we expanded beyond Europe, once again with the acquisition of South Africa's SMSPortal. This marks a renewed and deliberate step into international markets aligned with our long-term growth ambitions. The combination of strong market leadership, long-term customer relationships and strategic expansions lay foundations for continued growth in the years ahead.
Q2 was a strong quarter for LINK, delivering both solid growth and important strategic progress. The highlight this quarter was the acquisition of SMSPortal, a market leader in South Africa. This is a transformative step that lifts our pro forma adjusted EBITDA and cash EBITDA to NOK 1.1 billion and NOK 0.9 billion, respectively. The transaction was agreed at an attractive upfront multiple of 4.6x cash EBITDA with an additional conditional payment of up to USD 30 million. Regulatory approval is progressing as planned, and we expect closing in early September.
Turning to our financials. Pro forma gross profit, including SMSPortal is reported at over NOK 500 million in the second quarter, representing 7% year-over-year growth despite challenging comparables. This performance was driven by continued strong demand for our high-margin conversational solutions combined with OTT channels and chatbots.
A handful of large enterprise clients reduced noncritical communication spend during the quarter, which we estimated lowered growth momentum by 2 to 3 percentage points. Similar patterns have been observed in previous years, typically following periods in which these customers have significantly increased their communication spend with LINK as has been the case in the recent years for the mentioned clients. The impact is generally temporary, and we expect this headwind to ease by year-end. The underlying market trends remain strong with continued support for growth in richer messaging channels with higher profitability.
Pro forma adjusted EBITDA is reported at NOK 283 million or a growth of 12%, in line with our stated performance targets. LINK's business model is scalable, meaning that most of the gross profit increase is hitting the EBITDA figure. Pro forma margin is also increasing from 11.3% to 13.8% or a growth of 2.5 percentage points.
Improvement in margins is a result of the accelerated growth momentum on high-margin conversational products, traffic mix in Europe and a profitability increase in SMS portal. The quality of our revenue continues to improve with gross profit growth outpacing revenue growth due to strong demand for advanced solutions with higher margin and strong comparable same period last year for selected customer with low-margin, high-volume traffic.
Lastly, CPaaS momentum is accelerated in the quarter. We saw record-high closed won contracts at NOK 50 million in gross profit terms. For the first time, CPaaS contract wins exceed ATP contracts. RCS contracts were up fourfold, now representing 24% of total wins.
The chart at the bottom right illustrates the growth in expected gross profit for won CPaaS contracts over the past 5 quarters, with a clear increase in Q2. Overall, Q2 shows we are executing on both growth and profitability while strengthening our market position and expanding our global footprint.
In Q2, we signed the acquisition of SMSPortal, the leading player in South African messaging market with a strong international customer base. This acquisition establishes a leading position for LINK in South Africa, supported by a robust technology platform, a scalable and profitable business model and contain competitive pressure with relatively few stronger local and international competitors. South Africa represents an attractive and growing market with predictable regulatory framework. SMS is still the primary communication channel.
The country also benefits from a stable regulatory environment and a growing digital economy, creating strong demand for scalable communication solutions. The transaction also opens substantial opportunities for synergies and accelerated growth. We see the potential to grow the SME customer base, expand into underpenetrated sectors and introduce our high-margin CPaaS products to address local market demand.
In addition, integrating SMSPortal's technology platform into LINK's existing operations will strengthen our capabilities and efficiency. All of this comes at an attractive valuation of 4.6x cash EBITDA on upfront consideration or 5.8x, including the maximum conditional payment. We are confident SMSPortal will be a powerful growth driver within the LINK family. The transaction is expected to close early September after regulatory approval.
In Q2, we delivered profitability improvements with pro forma adjusted EBITDA up 12% in stable currency and continued margin expansion. Pro forma adjusted EBITDA reached NOK 284 million in reported currency, with the margin improving to 14%. SMSPortal's highly scalable and efficient operations, combined with higher growth on the more advanced products with higher profitability in Europe and the decline on low-margin traffic in Global Messaging are driving the margin increase. The organic footprint delivered 11% growth with our scalable business model, enabling gross profit growth to flow effectively through to EBITDA.
We also saw a slight decline in OpEx compared to the higher levels same period last year. Pro forma gross profit grew 7% in stable currency, including the contribution from SMSPortal. This performance was driven by continued growth in high-margin conversational solutions and favorable traffic mix.
Looking at the organic footprint, growth was 5% in stable currency. The mid-single-digit growth rate reflects the impact from elevated comparables against a campaign-driven peak in the same quarter of last year as well as the temporary effect of reduced spend from the before-mentioned handful of enterprise clients estimated to have lower growth momentum by 2 to 3 percentage points. As we have seen in the past, such adjustments typically follow periods of significant increases in communication spend and are temporary. We expect this headwind to fade out by year-end.
On new contract wins, Q2 delivered a record performance, reaching an all-time high estimated gross profit value of NOK 50 million. 52% came from CPaaS solutions, highlighting the shift in our contract mix towards higher-value channels. The graph on the left shows the estimated annualized gross profit on new contracts. The numbers are extracted from our CRM system and the estimations are based on contractual arrangements and specific dialogue with clients. Internally, we have a target of achieving NOK 40 million plus in gross profit from new contracts per quarter, except Q3, which will be lower due to summer break.
Looking at the breakdown, gross profit from new CPaaS contracts increased 60% year-over-year to NOK 25 million. This growth resulted in CPaaS representing a larger share of new wins than traditional A2P SMS. New contracts on A2P declined as customers shifted towards richer and more advanced messaging solutions.
Conversational OTT solutions were a key driver of the CPaaS momentum in the quarter. They represent the majority of the CPaaS contract closed with OTT contract wins up NOK 7 million. RCS contracts were up 4x NOK 12 million in gross profit, supported by major wins in banking, insurance and further momentum coming from supermarkets, retail and e-commerce.
LINK Mobility is a growth company, positioned to benefit from two key trends: the ongoing increase in adoption rates for A2P SMS and the shift towards more advanced solutions on OTT channels. If we start with the adoption rates on the left-hand side. A2P SMS usage has been steadily increasing across all European countries where LINK operates. While the Nordic markets are among the world's most mature in the world, we have still seen growth in this region over the past few years, albeit lower than less mature markets.
There remains a strong growth potential in Central and Western Europe. You can see from the chart that A2P SMS adoption per inhabitant continued to increase with an 8% to 10% yearly increase in Central and Western Europe from 2017 to 2024. This ongoing adoption trend provides a solid foundation for LINK's future growth momentum.
At the same time, traction on the new CPaaS product is adding another growth layer. The expansion from one-way communication on A2P SMS to conversational dialogue on richer channels such as RCS and WhatsApp are opening up a large amount of new use cases. This means a higher return on investment for clients in mobile marketing campaigns, more value from notifications and more efficient customer interactions. As we saw previously, growth in CPaaS is already well underway.
The market is evolving rapidly with a clear shift towards more advanced CPaaS solutions. To capture this demand, it's critical to be channel agnostic, and this is exactly where LINK is strongly positioned. Our MyLink products enable clients to manage all customer engagement in one place, regardless of which channel their end users prefer. This flexibility is becoming increasingly important as the market shifts, ensuring that our customers can always meet their users where they are. In competition, we often see local players who lack the resources to invest in these kinds of solutions. This gives LINK a clear competitive advantage as we can offer more advanced scalable products that deliver higher value.
Another important trend that we are observing is the strong push towards WhatsApp. In several regions, WhatsApp has priced its services below operator levels. This strengthens LINK's bargaining power in the industry as we partly can control which channel we terminate messages on. We believe this is an opportunity to further strengthen gross profit growth through lower COGS. This also underlines the importance of being channel agnostic. LINK is well positioned not only to capture these changes, but also to lead the market transition.
RCS has become one of the key CPaaS trends in the market and customers increasingly demand compatibility with new messaging formats, LINK's model ensures that we can seamlessly support that shift, positioning us to capture the growing demand for RCS and other emerging channels. RCS is more mature in France, Italy and Germany with higher adoption versus the Nordic region. Less mature SMS markets are taking charge of utilizing the more advanced communication channels like RCS. The Nordic is expected to follow, especially when RCS is compatible with iOS in that region.
This slide shows LINK's first RCS pilot in Northern Europe, conducted in collaboration with Gjensidige to improve mileage reporting on cars. The pilot was carried out on Android devices. The use case is simple, Gjensidige want customers to report mileage more accurately. If you drive more than agreed, your compensation in case of a claim is reduced. And if you drive less, your insurance becomes cheaper. RCS makes this reporting much more interactive and convenient for the customers. The pilot results were a very strong success, underscoring both the reach and effectiveness of RCS.
On the right, you can see the status of the RCS rollout across Europe, where some countries have RCS limited to Android devices, while others already offer RCS on both Android and iOS. We see market demand increase exponentially when enterprises can reach all end users on RCS, not just Android users. In the Nordics, where iOS penetration is high, our best estimate is that iOS will open up for RCS in Q1 2026. While there is still uncertainty around the exact timing, we view this as a significant growth driver in the years ahead. By the time iOS adoption in the Nordic is possible, LINK will have refined and scaled RCS solutions in other markets. With our strong market share in the region, we are well positioned to capture the potential once the rollout is implemented.
LINK Mobility has demonstrated a strong track record of driving growth through value-accretive acquisitions. As illustrated by the acquisitions shown on the right-hand side, our extensive M&A activity has given us significant experience and a clear understanding of key drivers behind successful integrations as well as the pitfalls to avoid. With this experience, we have developed a structured M&A playbook that defines a set of criteria we consider essential for value creation. These criteria have been refined over time and serve as a guiding framework in our evaluation of M&A opportunities. Companies that meet these requirements have consistently shown the highest likelihood of successful integration and long-term value contribution to LINK.
We're looking for companies with strong local position and deep industry relationships, a proven ability to generate cash and a resilient customer base. Technological and commercial alignment is key, along with clear potential to realize synergies after the acquisition. Typically, our target valuations are between 6 to 9x cash EBITDA before synergies with upside potential from growth. However, as we saw with SMSPortal, individual transactions might deviate from this range with SMSPortal acquired at 4.6x cash EBITDA or 5.8x, including the maximum conditional payment.
Looking ahead to the second half of 2025, our main focus will be to close the acquisition of SMSPortal in South Africa, secure a successful integration and start extracting synergies and growth potential. We see opportunities to grow the SME customer base, expand into underpenetrated sectors and introduce higher-margin CPaaS products to address local market demand.
In addition, integrating SMSPortal's technology platform into LINK's existing operations will strengthen our capabilities and efficiency. At the same time, we will continue to execute our broader M&A strategy in Europe, where bolt-on acquisition remains an important lever for growth, allowing us to strengthen our market position and realize additional synergies across the group. When it comes to the current M&A pipeline, we have 8 prioritized targets with 3 in due diligence. The pipeline includes a mix of bolt-on acquisition and larger scale-up opportunity with targets both inside and outside Europe. In total, the pipeline represents more than EUR 15 million in cash EBITDA.
Overall, our track record demonstrates that we have successfully executed our M&A strategy. We remain focused on pursuing accretive opportunities and continue to actively monitor the market, maintaining an opportunistic approach as we evaluate potential targets.
Our key objective medium term is focused on value creation through a combination of organic growth and accretive M&A. Firstly, when it comes to growth, our ambition is to deliver high single-digit organic gross profit growth. This is driven by the 2 key market trends we discussed earlier, the ongoing increase in adoption rates for our A2P SMS and the shift towards more advanced solutions with higher margins.
Naturally, as we have seen this quarter, growth will show some fluctuations from period to period, but the underlying market trends remain strong with continued support from both rising adoption rates and the shift towards richer messaging channels.
Secondly, on profitability, we're targeting adjusted EBITDA growth outpacing gross profit growth. This reflects the scalable nature of our business model with gross profit expected to grow faster than operating expenses over time.
And thirdly, on capital allocation, our top priority remains accretive M&A while maintaining a leverage policy of maximum 2.0 to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA. This balance allows us to pursue attractive opportunities while preserving financial flexibility.
In short, our strategy is about balancing solid organic growth with margin improvements while using disciplined capital allocation to drive additional value through acquisitions.
That's it for me. Now we move over to the financial section. Over to you, Morten.
Thank you, Thomas, and good morning to everyone listening in on the call. Let me start with the SMSPortal transaction and the impact on pro forma financials on a last 12 months basis.
Firstly, a quick recap on the transaction details. The total purchase price amounts to up to USD 145 million equivalent. This includes $100 million upfront cash payment expected to be fully financed with cash on balance sheet, $15 million in equity consideration and up to $30 million in conditional payments over the next 2 years. The valuation at the time of signing represents 4.6x cash EBITDA on initial cash consideration and 5.8x, including the maximum conditional payment. We see this as an attractive entry point given SMSPortal's strong profitability and growth potential.
Looking at the financials for the group on a combined basis in reported currency. The pro forma revenues for the last 12 months reached NOK 8.5 billion. Adjusted EBITDA reached NOK 1.1 billion with an adjusted EBITDA margin of 13% with SMSPortal contributing with its higher margin profile.
Cash EBITDA is NOK 0.9 billion, which underlines strong cash generating capacity of the combined group. Following the cash payment of NOK 1 billion for SMSPortal, net interest-bearing debt would stand at NOK 1.9 billion, resulting in a leverage ratio of 1.7x adjusted EBITDA. That is comfortably within our financial policy range of 2.0 to 2.5x, leaving headroom for further inorganic growth. Overall, these acquisitions at scale improves profitability and strengthens our cash generation going forward.
Now let's turn to the reported financials for the second quarter. Starting off with revenue and how the shift in revenue mix is impacting profitability. Reported revenues for the quarter came in at almost NOK 1.8 billion, down 3% year-on-year. On an organic basis, revenue declined by 11%, whereas 8 percentage points are explained by Global Messaging, following the termination of low-value clients and destinations since the third quarter last year and the normal volatility that we observe in the aggregator segment.
A further 3 percentage points are related to the Enterprise segment, where elevated comparables from campaign peaks impacted year-on-year growth like we observed also in the first quarter this year. One large retail client alone explains around 3 percentage points of the decline due to abnormal volumes last year.
In addition, a handful of large enterprise clients have reduced their messaging spend, which dilutes the revenue growth momentum. We expect this headwind to diminish by the end of the year, while new contracts implemented partly offset the decline.
Foreign exchange effects of NOK 30 million and contribution from closed and consolidated acquisitions in Portugal, Spain and the U.K. of NOK 107 million bridges the gap between organic 11% decline to the reported 3% total revenue decline in the quarter. Overall, while the top line reflects high comparables and some short-term headwinds, the shift away from low-margin traffic toward higher-margin products is supporting improved profitability.
Moving on to churn and net retention metrics. Starting with churn, both Enterprise and Global Messaging remain at normal levels. Global messaging churn spike last year are reflective of LINK terminating low-value clients as a mean to preserve profitability and reduce bad debt risk exposure. The increased demand for more advanced CPaaS solutions further supports current drivers for low churn, such as sticky integrations and high transition costs.
Net retention came in at 84% in the quarter. A significant explanation to the reduction in net retention is the termination of low-value traffic within the Global Messaging segment, representing 8 percentage points impact in the quarter, which will normalize in the second half of this year.
In addition, the elevated comparables and the volume impact from a handful of large clients impacts net retention development in the quarter. It is important to highlight that while reported net retention has come down, gross profit growth continues to outpace revenue growth. The phasing out of current headwinds, especially on high-volume, low-margin traffic will largely fade out by year-end, which we expect to lead to a normalization of net retention.
Our medium-term target for organic gross profit growth in the high single-digit range would -- with a relatively stable revenue mix imply a normalized net retention of around 105%.
Then to the next slide on development in gross profit and gross margin. Reported gross profit increased by 11% in the quarter, reaching NOK 422 million. On an organic basis, growth was 5% with closed and consolidated acquisitions contributing an additional NOK 20 million. Organic growth was, as mentioned, influenced by elevated comparables from campaign-driven peaks in the same quarter last year as well as the impact from some large enterprise clients reducing noncritical communication spend, especially on SMS. This created a temporary headwind of around 2 to 3 percentage points, which we expect will diminish by year-end. At the same time conversational solutions supported both gross profit growth and margin expansion. Global Messaging segment delivered a 27% increase in gross profit, equal to NOK 8 million from growth on higher-margin traffic.
Looking at gross margin, the group gross margin expanded from 20.9% last year to 24% in the current quarter, reflecting an organic increase of 3.4 percentage points. Enterprise accounted for 1.6 percentage points of the organic uplift, supported by growth on higher-value clients and on advanced CPaaS solutions, including OTT on behalf of lower value traffic. Global Messaging added another 1.8 percentage points positive contribution to the total margin from traffic mix improvements.
Moving on to the development in adjusted EBITDA. Reported adjusted EBITDA growth was 18%, reaching NOK 212 million. On an organic basis, growth was 11% in fixed currency, equivalent to NOK 20 million. Of this, NOK 17 million derived from organic gross profit growth, while the remaining NOK 3 million reflects operating expenses being slightly down from a somewhat elevated level last year. In addition, closed and consolidated acquisitions contributed NOK 10 million in the quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 2.2 percentage points to 12.1% and was in line with the previous quarter. The improvement is mainly driven by gross margin expansion, as explained, reflecting a more favorable traffic mix and increased contribution from mature OTT channels. We also note that the operating expenses to sales increased as a percentage of revenue, which is a result of the lower top line. Overall, the quarter showed strong organic EBITDA growth and solid margin uplift.
Let's now turn to the statement of profit and loss, and I will comment only on material items below adjusted EBITDA, as I already covered the lines above. Nonrecurring costs came in at a higher level of NOK 47 million in the quarter. This includes NOK 28 million related to M&A activity as well as NOK 20 million in option cost, of which NOK 17 million is linked to accruals of social security tax, reflecting the strong share price development in the quarter. This results in an EBITDA for the quarter of NOK 165 million, slightly down year-on-year due to the higher level of nonrecurring costs in the quarter.
Depreciation and amortization were NOK 97 million, consisting of NOK 27 million from R&D intangibles, NOK 63 million from acquisitions-related PPA amortization with no replacement CapEx required and NOK 6 million from leasing and fixed assets.
Net financial costs were NOK 68 million in the quarter. Out of this, NOK 29 million related to net currency losses, primarily on U.S. dollars and euros. Net interest expense were NOK 30 million and consisted of mainly bond interest of NOK 39 million and amortized transaction cost of NOK 11 million, whereof NOK 6 million related to early recognition due to the termination of LINK01 bond in the quarter. These effects were partly offset by an interest income of NOK 20 million in the quarter. In addition, we recorded NOK 8 million in other financial costs linked to the call premium paid on the LINK01 bond.
Moving over to the balance sheet, which remains solid and provides ample capacity for further inorganic growth. Noncurrent assets ended at NOK 6.8 billion and down year-on-year. The main driver for the decline was the termination of the company's own investment in LINK01 bonds amounting to NOK 842 million, which were canceled in Q4 '24. In addition, negative currency effects contributed to the reduction, while partly offset by NOK 405 million add-on from M&A since last year.
Receivables were positively impacted by NOK 218 million received related to the divestment of Message Broadcast. This included a settlement of earn-out of NOK 144 million and a partial repayment of the sellers' credit of NOK 74 million. An outstanding balance of NOK 35 million remains on the sellers' credit, maturing early 2027 with a 5% interest payable together with the principal amount.
Cash balance stood at NOK 1.8 billion at the end of the quarter and is expected at NOK 800 million post closing of the SMSPortal acquisition, expected early September. Year-on-year, cash is lower due to debt repayment, M&A transactions and the share buyback program. At the same time, gross debt has decreased by NOK 1.5 billion year-over-year following the final refinancing of the LINK01 bond in June 2025.
Following the refinancing of LINK01, current debt structure consists of 2 outstanding bonds, LINK02 of EUR 125 million and LINK01 of EUR 100 million maturing in 2029 and 2030, respectively. In addition, we have secured a senior secured working capital facility of EUR 65 million, which provides additional flexibility for inorganic growth.
Equity stood at NOK 5.5 billion with an equity ratio of 55%, which underlines the strength of the balance sheet. Net interest-bearing debt was reported at NOK 870 million, and the leverage ratio declined quarter-on-quarter to 1.1x adjusted EBITDA. The received consideration for the divestment of the U.S. business had a positive impact on leverage in the quarter, while M&A activity added 0.1x to leverage. Including the SMSPortal acquisition, the leverage ratio would increase to 1.7x adjusted EBITDA, as mentioned, which remains comfortable within our financial policy range.
Moving over to my last slide on cash flow. Adjusted cash flow from operations was 77% of adjusted EBITDA in the quarter or NOK 164 million. Working capital development in the quarter was impacted by a delay in the payment process with a large global client and receivables of NOK 90 million from these clients were settled early July, hence, more than normalizing the negative working capital impact in last 12 months.
On an LTM basis, adjusted net cash flow from operations was NOK 757 million, representing a conversion rate of 96% from adjusted EBITDA. CapEx in the quarter was NOK 55 million, including an NOK 11 million out-of-period onetime correction, while underlying increase reflects fast-tracked development of CPaaS solutions due to strong market demand. For the full year, we expect CapEx level at approximately NOK 180 million to NOK 190 million.
In the lower graph, we see that beyond organic cash flow impact from M&A and U.S. receivables has a net positive impact of NOK 88 million in the quarter. Cash outflow of NOK 130 million related to acquisitions in the U.K. reflect both net cash consideration and share consideration of NOK 28 million, more than offset by the NOK 218 million cash consideration from the U.S. divestment received in the quarter.
Cash outflow related to financing of NOK 862 million in the graph mainly reflects NOK 842 million in cash outflow related to the final refinancing of LINK01 in June, NOK 35 million in proceeds from share issuance, including the NOK 28 million related to M&A and remaining NOK 54 million in interest paid in the quarter.
That concludes the financial section and the Q2 presentation, handing the word over to [Kristian] for Q&A.
Then we will start the Q&A session. Please feel free to post questions online at any time during the session.
So we have received a question from [ Erik Raftel ] in DNB Carnegie. You note that headwind is expected to diminish by end of the year on GP headwinds from a handful of enterprise clients. Based on what you see today, should we expect a gradual recovery through Q3 and Q4 towards 7% to 8% organic growth rate, excluding these effects? Or could we see organic gross profit growth bounce back to the high single digits already in Q3?
Yes, I can take that. Based on what we're seeing right now, we see, as mentioned, a headwind of 2 to 3 percentage points on these clients. We see them starting to adjust somewhat their spend on the beginning of the year. So we expect this to -- this effect to also impact the second half, so both Q3 and Q4, but sort of fading out. And then we should see a recovery then as these effects are faded out in the beginning of 2026.
Great. And then a new question from [ Erik Raftel ]. Maybe a bit of a disappointment that RCS still hasn't been launched for iOS in the Nordics. Do you have an updated view on when that is likely to happen?
Yes. The feedback from the mobile operators are in the beginning of 2026. Both the mobile operators and LINK rely on Apple basically implementing this in their operating software. So beginning of 2026 is the latest estimate.
And another question from [ Erik ]. For modeling purposes, could you help us understand what type of reported revenue is with the NOK 25 million CPaaS contract wins in Q2?
Yes. Specifically to the contracts sold in Q2, the margin of those were high end, I would say, at 57%. Typically, what we see is between 40% to 50%. So this is, of course, estimates in the Salesforce system. So typically, we see margin ending up at 40% to 50%. There are some higher-margin deals in the mix here. So the revenue linked is then mathematically, it's [ NOK 44 million ].
If we take a few steps back, you've turned the ship, performing very well on organic metrics, seeing accelerated momentum on CPaaS and then a step-up M&A transaction. Is it time for a Capital Markets Day sometime late this year or in 2026?
Thank you. We are thinking about arranging a Capital Markets Day in 2026 actually. We just signed a big acquisition. We expect closing in early September. And we think that it will be best to have a Capital Markets Day when we have a couple of quarters with the sizable -- the new sizable acquisition in the P&L.
Then two more questions from [Erik]. We will start with the first one. What is the effect of cannibalization on A2P from the growth of CPaaS? Would you be able to split what part of CPaaS growth is transitioned from A2P and how much is net new gross profit?
Yes, I can take that one. That's a good question. The answer to this is we expect a little bit of both, exactly how much, it's difficult to say. Some use cases on SMS will transition over to OTT channels and cannibalize existing volumes. For us, that is completely fine because we see that the use cases that are being cannibalized is being cannibalized because customers want to use that as an opportunity to engage with their end customers. So then we will have a dialogue. So there are much more messages and the profitability is much higher. And there are use cases which will not be cannibalized, which are new, which you cannot do on SMS today, which will come as you call net new gross profit. Exactly sort of how much this is, we don't -- it's impossible to calculate it basically.
Yes. And last question from [Erik]. CapEx was up approximately NOK 10 million quarter-over-quarter. Is NOK 55 million a fair run rate going forward? Or is it NOK 40 million to NOK 45 million as we've seen in Q3 '24 to Q1 '25 more representative ahead?
Yes. Just to note that we had the NOK 11 million onetime sort of out-of-period effect in the second quarter. So adjusting for that, we're at a CapEx level of NOK 44 million, which is -- so I would say, yes, NOK 40 million to NOK 45 million is what we expect at least in the second half of the year. So I think that's a fair assumption going forward.
Great. And then moving on to some questions from Petter Kongslie at Sparebank 1 Markets. Can you explain the decline in NRR performance, excluding terminated traffic?
Yes, adjusting for -- I think we explained some of these effects. It's related to the high sort of campaign-driven peaks that we saw same quarter last year and also, obviously, some of the clients which have reduced their spend. This is also impacting the NRR. Just to recap Q2 last year, we had a retail client in Central Europe sending extreme volumes, which alone is impacting NRR by a 3 percentage point drop, which was extraordinary campaign activity for this client.
Great. We can move on to the next one. You say that high single-digit gross profit growth equals 105% net retention rate. This had historically been 110%. What is the change?
When we say 105%, we're basically assuming a fairly stable revenue mix. Also between Enterprise and Global Messaging, we had periods of 110% and above for some quarters, and that was impacted by very high growth in the Global Messaging segment, where we now have sort of terminated traffic and closely monitoring both sort of margin levels and also bad debt exposure. So given a normalized revenue mix, the 105% will sort of support gross profit growth in the high single-digit range.
Great. And then a couple of more questions from Petter Kongslie. There is negative gross profit growth in South Africa in Q2. How does this compare to your expectations during due diligence? And how should we read this compared to guidance of high single digits?
I suspect, Petter, that you're referring to Slide 6 in the presentation where we have sort of tried to isolate out the nonconsolidated pro forma. How you should view this is that in Q2 2025, we have NOK 21 million, which -- of M&A effects consolidated into the P&L. So you need to add that on top of the NOK 85 million nonconsolidated pro forma. So that gives you around NOK 106 million in sort of -- which is comparable then to the NOK 91 million last year. So that gives you a growth of around 16%. So that's the growth momentum on the M&A part. I would say we're very pleased with the SMSPortal performance in Q2. It's growing nicely and according to expectations.
Great. And then CapEx around NOK 180 million, NOK 190 million this year, which is a significant increase compared to 2024. How should we view this in 2026?
Yes. As I mentioned, we have a onetime effect basically related to 2024 impacting the second quarter figures. So going forward, we will, of course, monitor sort of market demand for CPaaS solutions and the need to invest. But I would -- my best take is that somewhere between 2024 level, NOK 150 million and guiding NOK 180 million to NOK 190 million is what we would see in 2026.
Great. And last question from Petter. What about dividends?
I can answer that one. As I said on the M&A slide, sort of the main priority for us is to do accretive M&A. We have a big pipeline with a lot of interesting targets. So the main priority for the company as of now is to create additional value through accretive M&A. After the acquisition of SMSPortal, of course, the cash generation of the company is getting quite substantial, which could open up for a scenario or an alternative where we can do both. There is no decision on this yet, and we will revert back to you as soon as the Board has taken a decision on it.
Great. And then a question from Jesper Stugemo at Handelsbanken. Could you provide more color on net retention rate being low and enterprise customer reducing messaging spend? What type of use cases?
Yes. I think we explained the effects on NRR previously in another question. So when it comes to sort of the clients adjusting their spend, we're seeing as they're going through their communication with the end users and reducing some of the sort of noncritical updates, it could be during a service interaction, for instance, that they might reduce an SMS or so, which is sort of an update, which maybe they don't see us giving that much value to the client. So it's a small adjustment to the communication strategy and different kinds of settings in how they interact with clients. After they've been growing significantly and entering new budget years, they look at opportunities to take down costs, and they do small changes in the way they communicate with the end clients. So it ranges across different types of use cases.
Then we have a question from Vinay from Cantor. Congrats on a strong set of results. Just a couple of questions from me. What were the elevated campaign-driven peaks related to in the prior year period?
Yes. We also -- I mentioned one of these. We had a large retail client in Central Europe last year, driving massive amounts of volumes, which we knew were more or less nonrecurring. There are also other selected clients. This is more high-volume, low-margin clients, which were also pushing a lot of traffic. It's also something we saw into the first quarter that we're reducing spend year-on-year. It's across different types of industries, which we're pushing a lot. And it varies a little bit like Thomas said, it's how much they push in one quarter will vary a little bit and then they often push more in other quarters. So it's based on how they best see fit to communicate and push the message out to their end clients.
Great. And then he wants to understand the cost base, how that has evolved over the past year. So despite an organic gross profit growth expansion of 5%, your organic operating costs fell despite headcount rising. So where are these cost efficiencies coming from?
I can start before handing it over to Morten. It's important to remember that the first half of 2024 was exceptionally strong. We grew more than what we expected. That also impacted cost levels. Bonus accruals for employees, provisions for partners increases accordingly. So that is part of the explanation.
Morten, do you have any further details to add here?
I think you sort of covered most of it, Thomas. We had some higher -- a couple of other areas, which also were a little bit high last year. We had some bankruptcy clients, which we covered with some bad debt provisions, which is a little bit higher than normal quarter. So it was a little bit elevated in the second quarter last year, I would say, but you covered the main areas, which are the main drivers for the elevated OpEx you saw last quarter or same quarter last year.
We only have a few questions left. Please feel free to post questions online if you have any. So moving on. You reported record NOK 50 million gross contract wins in this quarter. How long is the typical lag from signing to revenue recognition? And what portion of these wins should we expect to see contributing already in Q3 2025?
This is sort of a very good question, but also a very difficult question to answer because it varies quite a lot. Some of these contracts are going to be implemented next week. Other contracts, we can use 2 years to scale them. It depends on the use case, the clients. What we see on average is that around 75% of the expected volumes are in the P&L after 12 months. On the more advanced solutions, it can take somewhat longer, but that is sort of on average, what we see.
Great. And then we have a question from Rayan at Danske Bank. Given the strong year-over-year growth in gross profit margin, could you break down the contribution from volume, client mix and pricing? Yes, we can start with that.
Yes. I think we can say that what we've seen over the last few quarters is a positive contribution margin on implementing the more advanced contracts, especially on OTT. So we see that contributing around 0.5 percentage point to the margin expansion. Other effects are more or less related to volume mix and client mix and also how big share of the business, the Global Messaging part is. So we see there's a significant contribution to the margin expansion from the Global Messaging segment, both being from the share of the mix and also the increased profitability in that segment. And then 1.6% is coming from the enterprise side, where we have, of course, a higher contribution from the more advanced solutions. I think that's...
And then what level should we expect going forward, especially as order intake on CPaaS is increasing for LINK and general demand across the industry?
Yes, we have communicated that we are working towards high single-digit gross profit growth. That is sort of the level that we are committing ourselves to. If we see that market demand for more advanced solutions are increasing and that we feel that it's appropriate to change or lift sort of what we are aiming for, then we will communicate that when we sort of see that happening. But as of now, we are holding the high single-digit gross profit growth target.
Great. Can you elaborate on how LINK is using AI internally, for example, in development operations or maintenance? Should we expect AI adoption to make LINK more effective either by reducing costs, accelerating product rollouts or improving service reliability?
Internally, we're using AI for development as most companies are doing, checking code and so on. We're also using AI in customer products. Content generation, for example, is something that we are developing AI functionality into. And we are also looking into using AI in implementing new contracts, but that hasn't -- that is still on proof-of-concept phase.
Regarding the sharp increase in fraud attempts via SMS and thus increasing focus among consumers on not clicking on links in SMS messages, how does this affect LINK's revenue?
Right now, it doesn't really impact us at all. This has been sort of a stable situation in the last 5, 6 years. So 5, 6 years ago, this has had a negative impact of the industry that it closed down certain use cases on SMS because you couldn't provide a landing page where sort of the necessary interaction between the end users and our clients could happen. The OTT channels, on the other hand, they bypass this problem because here, all the interaction is happening in the app. So the OTT channels are basically opening up a growth opportunity for us where we're able to bypass this fraud temps on SMS.
Great. It looks like there are no further questions. So that concludes the Q&A session. Thank you so much, Thomas and Morten, for joining this session, and thank you to all participants for joining the call this morning. Have a good day.
Link Mobility Group — Q2 2025 Earnings Call
Financial data from Link Mobility Group
Revenue
Revenue is the sum of all sales generated by a company, e.g. for its products or services.
Revenue (TTM) metric explainedDirect Costs
Direct costs are the costs incurred directly in connection with the manufacture of the product or service.
Gross Profit
Gross Profit indicates how much of the revenue remains in the company after deducting direct production costs. If the percentage share of sales is calculated, this is referred to as the gross margin.
Gross Profit metric explainedSelling and Administrative Expenses
Selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A) include all expenses for marketing and sales as well as the general administration of the company.
Research and Development Expense
Research and development costs (R&D) provide information on how much the company invests in the research and development of its products. The costs are particularly interesting as a percentage of revenue and in comparison to direct competitors.
EBITDA
EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) is the company's earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The EBITDA margin is calculated as a percentage of sales.
Depreciation and Amortization
Depreciation represents reductions in the value of the company's assets (e.g. due to wear and tear on machinery).
EBIT (Operating Income)
EBIT (Earnings Before Interest and Taxes) is the company's profit before interest and taxes, also known as the operating income. The EBIT Margin is calculated as a percentage of sales at
.
Net Profit
Net Profit represents the profit or loss after deduction of all costs.
Net Profit metric explainedStocksGuide Premium
| Jun '26 |
+/-
%
|
||
| Revenue | 7,729 7,729 |
12%
12%
100%
|
|
| - Direct Costs | 5,884 5,884 |
11%
11%
76%
|
|
| Gross Profit | 1,846 1,846 |
14%
14%
24%
|
|
| - Selling and Administrative Expenses | 582 582 |
2%
2%
8%
|
|
| - Research and Development Expense | - - |
-
-
|
|
| EBITDA | 927 927 |
26%
26%
12%
|
|
| - Depreciation and Amortization | 469 469 |
31%
31%
6%
|
|
| EBIT (Operating Income) EBIT | 459 459 |
21%
21%
6%
|
|
| Net Profit | 236 236 |
1,140%
1,140%
3%
|
|
In millions NOK.
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Link Mobility Group Stock News
Company Profile
LINK Mobility Group Holding ASA engages in the provision of a mobile messaging and communication platform as a service solutions for customer engagement serving enterprise, SME and government customers. The company is headquartered in Oslo, Oslo. The company went IPO on 2020-10-21. The firm develops and operates software for mobile telephone services to private and public businesses. Link Mobility Group Holding ASA is the Parent Company of LINK Mobility Group AS, that is a provider of services in mobile communication and a specialist in mobile messaging services, mobile solutions, and mobile intelligence. The Group’s activities are divided into five reporting segments: Northern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, Northern America and Global Messaging. The Group’s subsidiaries include MarketingPlatform Aps, Labyrintti International Oy, LINK Mobility Holding Aps as well as Link Mobility Development Hub EOOD.
StocksGuide Premium
| Head office | Norway |
| CEO | Mr. Berge |
| Employees | 699 |
| Website | www.linkmobility.com |
