Nemetschek Stock

Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone, and a warm welcome. Thank you for joining our earnings call today to discuss the results for the second quarter and the first half of 2026 results. With me today are our CEO, Yves Padrines; and our CFO, Louise Ofverstrom.

Today's conference call is being recorded. A replay of the call will be available at our website after the call. Additionally, you will find the quarterly report, the presentation and the press release on our Investor Relations website as well.

But now let's get started. So I would like to turn over to our CEO, Yves.

Thank you, Stefanie. Welcome, everyone, to our H1 2026 earnings call. You have probably all seen our pre-release on Tuesday with our fully confirmed organic guidance as well as our expected outlook following the completion of the HCSS acquisition. As usual, we have prepared a short but informative presentation containing the most important information with regards to our second quarter as well as first half year results that our CFO, Louise Ofverstrom, and I will briefly walk you through so that we have enough time to address any questions you may have in the end.

To begin with on Page #3, please find some highlights of the most important aspects of the second quarter as well as the first half of 2026. Firstly, I will summarize our second quarter 2026 as very successful with a continuation of the remarkable momentum we have seen at the beginning of the year. This development was again, first and foremost, driven by an excellent performance in our Build segment, which continued its outstanding growth trajectory also in the second quarter. At the same time, the Design segment continued to show a strong growth despite the exceptionally high comparison base in Q2.

The reported EBITDA margin in Q2 was impacted by the slightly negative foreign currency translation effect, and in addition, an extraordinary transactional currency effect as well as M&A-related costs. If we adjust the reported EBITDA margin only for the acquisition-related one-off costs, the margin would have already been at 31%. With our H1 results, we are, therefore, where we wanted to be after the first 6 months of the year, driven by the strong increase in recurring revenue in the Design and Build segments and despite the weaker-than-expected development in our Media segment.

The increase in the underlying profitability, so excluding FX and M&A effects, demonstrates our healthy operating leverage, the continued focus on our cost base and continuous improvement and operational excellence. The foundation for this very strong operational performance is the continued progress we have made across all our key strategic focus areas, whether that is in AI with a successful rollout of multiple agentic AI-based products such as Bluebeam Max, our next design intelligence platform, and of course, the ongoing subscription transition and the transformational acquisition of HCSS. These initiatives and investments are not only paying off already today, they are also making sure the Nemetschek Group is fully prepared for the future.

Based on a very successful start of the year as well as the continued progress on our strategic initiatives, we are, therefore, well on track to once again reach all our goals for the financial year and therefore, fully reiterate our organic outlook for 2026. In addition, we also expand our outlook following the acquisition of HCSS, but more details on that later in our presentation.

On Page #4, you see an overview of the corresponding figures to the Q2 development that we just discussed. Overall, we continued our strong growth dynamic and delivered another very good quarter and a strong finish to the first half of the year 2026. Starting with the ARR, or annual recurring revenue. As a result of one of our key strategic priorities, the transition to a subscription- and SaaS-centric business model, our annual recurring revenue recorded an increase of plus 15.9%. If we adjust for the FX headwind we had in the second quarter, mainly stemmed from the weaker U.S. dollar, our ARR increased by plus 17.4%.

The main driver behind this strong growth were once again the revenue from our subscription and SaaS offerings, which increased by plus 29.6% in constant currency. Thanks to this substantial growth in our recurring revenue base, we were able to strongly increase our revenues once again despite a very high comparison base in our Design and Build segment and the weaker-than-expected performance in Media in Q2 by plus 13% on a reported basis.

On an FX-adjusted basis, the growth even amounted to plus 14.5%. The main growth driver was once again the exceptional performance of our Build segment, in particular, Bluebeam, which continued to benefit from strong network effects, its successful international expansion and the unprecedented investment in data centers. In addition, we also saw a good growth in the Design segment, which continued its successful subscription transition, including the sale of multiyear contracts to convert existing maintenance customers to subscription.

The EBITDA increased by 11.5%, plus 15.8% FX adjusted to EUR 98.6 million in the second quarter, corresponding to a reported EBITDA margin of 30.1%. However, in addition to a slightly negative translation currency effect stemmed from the weaker U.S. dollar, the EBITDA was also impacted by an extraordinary transactional currency effect. This effect, in the higher single-digit million euro range, resulted from the revaluation of assets and liabilities held in a nonfunctional currency of an individual group company as of the reporting date due to the significant and unexpected exchange rate fluctuation during the quarter.

Furthermore, the reported EBITDA margin already includes acquisition-related one-off costs of a low single-digit million euro amount. Adjusted for this one acquisition-related cost only, the EBITDA margin in Q2 amounted to 31%. Finally, net income for the quarter, also driven by our strongly improved financial results, grew over proportionally by 20.3% to EUR 66 million, resulting in earnings per share of EUR 0.57.

Before Louise will dive deeper into our Q2 financial results as well as the first half of the year, I would like to use this opportunity to also give you an update on our defined strategic focus areas and the various highlights in the first 6 months of the year on Page #5. Starting on the left side. Artificial intelligence plays a pivotal role for us, not only in optimizing our own internal processes and productivity, but especially in advancing our product development to deliver even greater value to our customers and shareholders.

Our goal is clear: to become the construction AI leader. We are deeply convinced that AI represents a tremendous opportunity, and we are ideally positioned to capture it. Over decades, we have built deep knowledge expertise and strong integration into our customers' workflows as well as long-standing trusted customer relationships, strong network effects and vast industry-specific data sets across the entire life cycle, primarily for buildings, and now with the acquisition of HCSS, also in the infrastructure and heavy civil sector.

Over the past months, we have already introduced several truly value-adding AI features into our product portfolio. For example, we successfully rolled out our agentic AI suite, Bluebeam Max. Bluebeam Max supports users with time-consuming tasks such as quality control in the preconstruction phase, document analysis, quantity takeoff and 2D to 3D conversion, thereby increasing productivity and efficiency throughout key construction processes. In addition, we launched our next-generation design intelligence platform that use AI and integrated simulation to help teams in the design and planning phase to make better decision during the design process.

As you all know, one of our absolute top priorities over the last few years was to strengthen both our resilience and long-term growth potential by increasing the share of recurring revenue through our transition to a subscription- and SaaS-centric business model. I'm very pleased to say that this transition is progressing extremely well. We are seeing strong momentum across the group, especially in the Design segment, where the pace of the shift continued to be high.

As a result, we reached a new record share of recurring revenue for the group, a direct result of the dynamic growth in our subscription and SaaS business. Over the past 6 months, we have continued to enhance our go-to-market approach even further, especially by expanding our international presence and the successful internationalization of our brands.

Our goal is twofold: first, to make our business more resilient by reducing our dependency on a single market or region; and second, to unlock new growth opportunities for the Nemetschek Group in high potential regions. This is why we continued our expansion into high-growth markets such as Southeast Asia to complement our expansion into India and the Middle East as Nemetschek, representing the full portfolio of the group. Going forward, we will continue this strategy and expand into new markets and regions in the coming quarters and years.

M&A has always been an integral part of the Nemetschek Group's DNA and a key driver of our long-term success story. We have a strong track record of highly successful and value-accretive acquisitions. The latest example, which is only the largest -- which is also the largest acquisition in the Nemetschek Group history is HCSS, which increased our market opportunity by 30% in the highly attractive infrastructure and heavy civil market. By combining HCSS with our leading brands in the Build segment, we create the next construction tech giant with a unique combination of scale, growth and profitability and a global construction, AI and technology powerhouse covering the full range of end markets and customer segments.

In addition, we also did some smaller technology acquisitions such as Morpholio, which is a leading provider of mobile design apps for architects and designers, which strengthens our design ecosystem by seamlessly connecting early-stage conceptual design and sketching with professional BIM card workflows while adding differentiated AI and mobile capabilities. Another very small bolt-on acquisition was mbue, which strengthens our AI capabilities in pre-construction and construction document workflow and will, therefore, further enhance Bluebeam Max with specialized workflow-driven AI. These acquisitions are mainly technology-centric with almost very, very low revenue.

In parallel, we are also continuing our dedicated venture investment strategy. Over the past years, as you know, we have made several minority investments in highly innovative AI-driven start-ups, which align perfectly with our long-term AI and technology strategy. A good example is our recent strategic investment in Dawex, which strengthens our long-term AI strategy by enabling trusted data ecosystem and secure data exchange, key prerequisites for the next generation of AI-powered and agentic workflows across the AEC/O life cycle. There is no construction AI without trusted AI, and this is why Dawex is helping the market with.

And last but not least, in the area of business enablement, we work on the further harmonization and further enhance operational excellence across the Nemetschek Group. Artificial intelligence also plays an increasing role internally, for example, in software development, customer success and support, et cetera. And we are increasingly leveraging AI to further enhance efficiency and harmonize processes across the group.

And with that, I hand it over to you, Louise.

Thank you, Yves, and a warm welcome to our earnings call for the second quarter as well as for the first 6 months of the financial year 2026 from my side as well. Yes, Yves has already touched on some of our key financial figures, so I will therefore now give a deeper look at a bit more detail on the results and underlying drivers behind the most important financial aspects of our Q2 and of the first half year of 2026. So yes, I would say, in line with what we just heard from Yves, I see the first half of the financial year 2026 as a strong testament to our strategic direction, with high and profitable growth as well as good and consistent progress in all our strategic focus areas.

On Page #7, you can see a summary of the results of our strong progress in the first half year of 2026. And let us start with our top line development here. For the period of January to June, we recorded a reported growth of 11.9% to EUR 640.7 million. When adjusted for the continued FX headwinds, especially in the first quarter, and those are mainly stemming from the weaker U.S. dollar, we achieved a strong revenue growth of 15.7%.

And as expected and fully in line with confirming the good progress of the execution of our strategic road map, the main growth driver was once again the recurring part of our business. And this is reflected in our annual recurring revenue, ARR, which increased by 17.4% at constant currencies to EUR 1.25 billion. And that is driven by our subscription and SaaS revenues, which grew by an impressive 32.4% at constant currencies, reaching EUR 514.7 million.

Our reported EBITDA increased by 16.5% to EUR 197 million in the first 6 months of the year. And that corresponds to a reported EBITDA margin of 30.7%, however, negatively impacted by the aforementioned extraordinary transactional currency effect in the higher single-digit million euro range in Q2 and as well, as mentioned by Yves, by M&A-related costs. Adjusting for the M&A-related costs in the first half of the year only, the EBITDA margin reached 31.5% in the first half of the year.

Our profitability development in the first half of the year and the expected strong underlying improvement in the second half are fully in line with the guidance we provided in March and consistent with the seasonal patterns we have seen over the past few years. We, therefore, remain very confident to achieve our full year EBITDA margin guidance of 32% to 33%, driven by our abilities to scale, our healthy operating leverage, our relentless focus on cost efficiency and effectiveness as well as continuous improvements in operational excellence despite ongoing investments into the strong future growth of our business and the ongoing subscription transition in the Design segment. Lastly, the right-hand side of the slide highlights our continued good cash generation and the high quality of our balance sheet despite the expected and deliberate increase in net debt of around EUR 100 million at the end of the quarter to prepare for the closing of the HCSS acquisition as of July 1.

Let's turn to Page 8, where you will find the development of our four segments during the first half of 2026. So starting on the left side with our Design segment as usual. In the first 6 months of the year, the segment recorded a growth of 7.3%, which is 9.7% on a constant currency basis, to EUR 279.1 million. The transition to a subscription- and SaaS-based business model continued to be the main growth driver, just as expected, and progressed successfully and according to plan, reflected in the very strong growth of this revenue category of 50.4% on an FX-adjusted basis.

During the first half of the year, we continue to sell monthly contracts to support the migration of existing maintenance customers to a subscription-based model at our Graphisoft and Allplan brands only. Despite a strong underlying operating performance, as you can see, the reported EBITDA margin for the first half contracted to 23.9%, and this reflects an impact from an extraordinary transactional currency effect. As mentioned, this effects in the higher single-digit million euro range resulted from the revaluation of the assets and liability held in a nonfunctional currency of one of our individual group companies. And as of the reporting date, there were significant and unexpected exchange rate fluctuations during the second quarter in that single currency. Excluding this effect, the segment's margin would have been strong and more in line at a comparable level to last year.

Continuing with our Build segment. That continued to deliver a stellar performance also in the second quarter, driven by high underlying growth in new users in the U.S., but also internationally. As a reminder, in 2025, the Build segment benefited from the inorganic contribution of GoCanvas as well as by temporary positive effects following the successful completion of Bluebeam's subscription transition. Consequently, and as fully expected, growth moderated somewhat in the first half of the year of 2026, yet at a still outstanding high level.

For the first half year 2026, the segment recorded revenue growth of 21.1%. Excluding the still significant FX headwind from the weaker U.S. dollar that especially hits this segment, the growth reached a high 27.1%. The EBITDA margin in the first half in this segment reached a very strong 39.8%, an increase of around 520 basis points year-on-year, and that is despite continued investments to support the strong expected future growth.

Let us move on to our smallest segment, Manage, which recorded a growth of 3.9% on a reported and 3.8% on an FX-adjusted basis in the first half of the year. Here, we saw continued good demand and a well-stocked sales pipeline across both existing and new customers, particularly in the public and financial sectors. And this provides a strong foundation for growth acceleration in the second half of the year, in line with our guidance. Especially during the end of the second quarter, growth accelerated, particularly for software solutions in the areas of workspace management and energy efficiency and therefore, increased growth rates at the end of the quarter towards double-digit revenue growth already. For this -- for the first half of the year 2026, the segment's EBITDA margin amounted to 7.8% versus 9.3% amid continued investments into the future expected growth of the business.

And last but not least, let me come to our Media segment, where the reported revenue declined slightly by 0.7% to EUR 59 million, while the FX-adjusted growth amounted to 3.3%. The segment's business performance was impacted by the ongoing challenging market environment, as mentioned, especially in the important U.S. market, and where customer spending simply remains cautious and decision-making and sales cycles continue to be strongly prolonged amid ongoing customer consolidation and subdued spending on content creation as well. Also here, the last month of the quarter showed first signs of stronger growth acceleration than seen in the earlier part of the second quarter, but the market remains challenging.

The EBITDA margin of the segment expanded in the first half to 29.8% from 28.1% last year. In addition, during the first half of the year, the Media segment has laid important foundations for higher future growth, including diversification and the launch of new products like Archviz, rendering solution to further drive expansion into the AEC/O industry, and also the introduction of a Digital Twin solution for [ real ] products, only to mention a few in this segment.

But let us now turn to Slide 9 and to a topic that has been a regular feature of our earnings call over recent years, the successful transformation of our business model towards subscription and SaaS. The progress we have made is clearly reflected in the revenue mix shown on the left of the slide. In the first half of 2026, recurring revenues reached a new record level of 95% of group revenues. Subscription and SaaS revenues now accounts for 80% in the group compared to only a small proportion of our business when we began this transition.

The middle of the slide puts this whole development into a longer-term perspective. And since the first half of 2022, total recurring revenues have increased from EUR 250 million to EUR 609 million, mainly driven by the strong subscription and SaaS revenues, which have increased from EUR 93 million to EUR 515 million. This means that we have expanded this more predictable and resilient revenue stream by more than 5x within less than 4 years.

The momentum also remains strong in the second quarter here. ARR and recurring revenues both grew by 17.4% at a constant currency, while subscription and SaaS revenues increased by 29.6% at constant currency. At the same time, license revenues declined by 40.8% at constant currency. And this is, as you know, intended and the consequence of our transition as customers now increasingly move from perpetual licenses or completely move from perpetual licenses to subscription offerings. Licenses, therefore, now contribute only to 2% of total group revenues and therefore, have an increasingly limited impact on our overall performance.

Altogether, the figures on this slide demonstrate that our business model transition remains fully on track and continues to strengthen the quality, the visibility and the resilience of our revenues going forward. As usual, and to conclude our revenue of the first half of 2026, we provide a more detailed overview of the key P&L and cash flow items here on Page #10.

We have already addressed our main KPIs such as revenue growth and EBITDA margin in more detail. And therefore, let us now have a closer look at the details of our cost base and its underlying drivers. Here, you can see that we are seeing strong leverage in our OpEx structures, driven by economies of scale in our growing portfolio and also our relentless focus on both cost efficiencies and also cost effectiveness. And that also was a clear trend throughout the first half of the year 2026.

Let us have a closer look at the personnel costs, the largest component with a share of roughly 50% of our total operating expenses. Here, we saw a reported year-over-year increase of 7.1% in the first half of 2026, which is clearly below our revenue growth despite impact of personnel costs that we had from the technology acquisitions, the small acquisitions we made and also some seasonal differences. In other words, thanks to our healthy operating leverage, our various operational excellence initiatives, our cost base grows at a very reasonable pace and therefore, contributes nicely to the continuous increase in underlying profitable growth. The higher-than-usual increase in other operating income and expenses, as you can see here, is mainly attributable to the M&A-related cost of the HCSS acquisition.

Going further down the P&L, you see the overproportional growth in our earnings per share with an overproportional increase of 29.9%. This strong development is supported by a strongly improved financial result, which is driven by a substantial positive effect in the other financial income and resulting mainly from the hedging we did in conjunction with the acquisition of HCSS.

Coming to the cash conversion after the first 6 months of the year, that came on in below the high level of 180% in the prior year. And whilst the underlying cash conversion is unchanged, very strong and high, the quarter was primarily impacted by a number of special effects happening in the second quarter that -- the main effect coming from a change in invoicing timing for Bluebeam. As Bluebeam is a major part of our portfolio, that has an impact. It doesn't have a revenue impact. It has a onetime effect on the cash. That's why not a lasting effect, but a onetime effect.

We had some tax prepayments. We had some negative foreign exchange effect that all concluded into the second quarter, and there was a smaller effect on the cash flow impact from the multiyear contract. So if I were to exclude these extraordinary effects, the cash conversion for the first half of the year would have been around 110% and therefore, broadly in line with the prior year level. And whilst we had special effects in both years, the average still circulates around and above 1, based on our operating performance, as we are used to.

Despite the increase in net debt at the end of the second quarter, in line with our strategic acquisition road map as well as additional debt incurred after the closing of the HCSS deal in the third quarter, we maintained a very solid balance sheet. And in addition, thanks to our aforementioned good operating performance as well as a very strong cash flow generation, we will be able to very quickly deliver and return swiftly to our usual outstanding balance sheet metrics. So all in all, I believe it's really fair to say that the financial performance in the second quarter builds on the very strong start to the year and concludes a very successful first half of 2026.

And with that, I'll hand it back to you.

Thank you very much, Louise, for this comprehensive overview of our financial results. As we come to the end of our presentation on Page #12, I would like to turn to our organic guidance for the current financial year 2026 as well as expanded outlook following the acquisition of HCSS. As highlighted earlier in the presentation, our H1 results are fully in line with our expectation, and we have laid a very good foundation to once again achieve all our targets for the financial year.

Based on the strong fundamentals as well as our very resilient operational business model, we fully confirm our organic guidance for fiscal year 2026 after the first half of the year. We continue to expect an attractive growth at a high profitability in 2026 as well even despite the high comparison base of the previous year, as well as the ongoing subscription transition in our Design segment. In particular, the Executive Board continues to expect a revenue growth at constant currency of 14% to 15%. In addition, the EBITDA margin is forecasted to be in the range of 32% to 33%. Excluding only the acquisition-related one-off costs, the EBITDA margin expectation would have even been at the upper end of the guidance range.

Following the first-time consolidation of HCSS as of July 1, 2026, the Executive Board estimates an additional currency adjusted contribution to the group revenue growth after taking into account the currently estimated PPA effect of around 600 basis points in the financial year 2026. Including the acquisition-related one-off costs and therefore, starting from the midpoint of the reported organic EBITDA margin guidance of 32% to 33%, a dilution of around 150 basis points is expected following the HCSS acquisition. This mainly reflects the expected impact of the purchase price allocation for HCSS as well as ongoing integration expense and recurring expense related to a newly established share-based compensation program designed to support and drive value creation in the expanded Build segment over the coming years.

The mentioned PPA effects, and here, in particular, the deferred revenue haircut mandatory under IFRS will be recognized over a period of 12 months and is expected to be front-end loaded, with the majority being recognized during the first 6 months after closing. Based on preliminary estimates, it is therefore expected to reduce the revenue contribution of HCSS by a mid- to high 20s million euro amount in the second half of 2026, with a corresponding impact on the EBITDA.

So please let me highlight here that these figures, therefore, do not yet reflect the full potential of the HCSS acquisition. In this context, however, I would also like to emphasize that in addition to our standard remarks, that the guidance is based on our assumption that there are no material changes in the global macroeconomic or industry-specific conditions. Our extended guidance is also based on the fact that the financial contribution of the HCSS acquisition for fiscal year 2026 remains preliminary as the final financial impact of the acquisition, including the resulting PPA charges, will only be finalized later this year.

So to conclude and summarize the presentation for the first 6 months of the year 2026. Our financial results, along with our fully confirmed organic guidance, show that we are once again delivering on our promises and goals. And this is true for operational development, where we continue to show industry-leading growth and also for our key strategic initiatives, which builds the basis for our continued high and profitable growth in the future.

And with that said, I would like to thank you for your attention, and we are now ready to take your questions. So operator, please, back to you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from George Webb, Morgan Stanley.

I've got three questions, please. The first one just on Bluebeam Max, given it's been available through the reseller channel for a period of time. I'm kind of curious on what you're seeing and hearing in terms of the early adoption rates and additional levels of feedback you've been getting?

Secondly, on Media. Kind of acknowledge that you've got these growth initiatives going on to turn around the segment performance, but curious how patient you're willing to be if that growth doesn't start to meaningfully uplift? And I guess, relatedly, how important is the architectural visualization it brings to the Design segment? Or if this segment does remain structurally dilutive to group growth, would you consider different solutions for it?

And then just lastly, a technical question around the HCSS contribution. If I look at the guidance, the 6% growth impact you've called out I think implies about EUR 70 million in the second half. And if I unwind the kind of mid- to high 20s million revenue haircut, you're kind of talking around EUR 100 million for H2, which simplistically would be EUR 200 million on an annualized basis for 2026. That feels a little light given that HCSS, I think you called out, did USD 215 million last year, which I think is about EUR 185 million. And you've obviously talked to the high teens growth plus you'd expect out of HCSS. So curious, on that bridge. Is that U.S. GAAP to IFRS translation? And if you can add anything around where you're seeing HCSS growth this year, that would be great.

Many thanks, George. So to answer your first question on Bluebeam Max. So clearly, as you know, we launched Bluebeam Max first in February, which was only for large enterprise customers. And then we are planning to roll out only in Q3, Bluebeam Max globally also to resellers and to the web, et cetera. And as you know, we have done that already, back end of May.

So we have around 2 months now of rollout of Bluebeam Max, and I must say that we are extremely positive. The performance and the rollout is better than planned. But we have to be also cautious because at the end of the day, at the beginning, all the early adopters and the huge fans are the one really jumping on the product. So now we have to see what will be the adoption of Bluebeam Max over time.

But clearly, the feedback that we get is that users are really happy with some of the current features available, for example, the AI-assisted Drawing Review and Smart Review. They see clearly speed and productivity gains. They report that Bluebeam Max lets them do more, do it faster and with a high degree of accuracy, which is, of course, highly important in construction, especially for preconstruction rolling reviews and [ BIM ] preparation. And then they also like this link between PDF and BIM, where we are now these architects and BIM-oriented teams, they really like the fact that we are able to connect 2D markup to BIM models and pushing comments back into, for example, Revit or Archicad and other design tools, which reduce rework and then also miscommunication between PDF review and authoring tools.

And of course, as I said, we are, for the moment, onboarding the super users. And the good news is that we are clearly evolving now our product road map for Bluebeam Max. There will be also new features available within the next few months and before even the end of the year. This is why also we had made this small -- very small acquisition, which is just this small tech start-up called mbue, which is no revenue, but really helping us in their technology to accelerate our Bluebeam Max road map.

So overall, highly positive. And so far, in terms of pricing, as you know, it is introduction in price. So that's why we have the opportunity to also increase the price after 12 months with some of these customers. But of course, as we are going to also inject more new features which should bring more efficiency and productivity gain to our users, we are also planning to have different type of packages and also probably more consumption pricing model in addition to the subscription that the users are paying for. But for the moment, our main focus is to make sure that we have as much adoption as possible. We need to show that the efficiency and productivity gain is here, et cetera.

Second question on Media. Obviously, a disappointing performance. And here, the disappointing performance is mainly coming for contraction with our customer base. And this contraction, interestingly, is not coming necessarily by AI or whatever. It is mainly due to the fact that we have, for example, more consolidation in the market, especially when you have large M&A going on in media and entertainment. Or you have also very large, massive downsizing in media and entertainment. If you take a few weeks ago, the example of Microsoft game business unit, which downsized by around 3,000 people. And therefore, once we have renewals of some of these accounts, there is a contraction because we have less users than we used to.

Now to try to counterbalance that within the next few months and quarters, which might not materialize too much short term, but more for next year, we are going to bring more consumption-based type of pricing on Maxon. And then we have also, as we said, now launching this rendering solution for architectures called Redshift [ RVs ], which was first developed on Vectorworks and now also available on Autodesk Revit since June, we announced that at AIA. And it's now also on beta test on Archicad.

But of course, for that to materialize and to have significant revenue, it will also take time. So it's not like we will see big needle mover change on the revenue within the next few weeks and months. It will take a little bit longer.

So yes, for the moment, it is disappointing. Now is architecture and [ RVs ] an important piece for our AEC business? Well, it is complementing it. But for the moment, we see this business in rendering and still part of the Maxon business. And we see the Maxon business in the media and entertainment division of the Nemetschek Group as still a separate business versus our core business, which is in AEC/O. So -- and we are treating this business still separated. So therefore, it's not fully integrated in terms of G&A, et cetera. And so we will do our best now to try to recover.

But we are not expecting any longer, this high single-digit or even double-digit growth for Maxon this year. And we are reading our guidance to be more in the -- around the mid-single-digit revenue growth for 2026 for Maxon.

Okay. And maybe I take the third question, which was on the contribution by HCSS. And I think your train of thought is absolutely correct. I think you might be slightly off on the numbers. There's no change whatsoever on the growth in HCSS as expected of the higher teens, and it's really delivering well.

So where it really different a little bit is your assumption on the deferred revenue haircut. And that's also the only adoption that we have in the revenue between U.S. GAAP and IFRS, as you know. So that's why, as we have said, it's in the mid- to higher EUR 20 million. And you should rather go to the -- I mean, it's an estimation yet. We are still working out the detail. As you know, it's customary. You have 12 months to do it. We do it as quick as possible, but it needs to do the full calculation. So you should rather go to the higher side of that. And if you add that to the normal -- also, say, deduct that from the normal growth, you are back to the high teens, higher teens, and then you have the deferred revenue effect that is impacting the first 12 months. And of course, we are back then to normal in the growth.

So I think that your contribution of EUR 70 million is definitely too low from what we're expecting. It needs to be higher than that. And then that's why you need to go to the expected growth, take out the, so to say, mid- to higher 20s deferred revenue haircut. And then you are clearly above EUR 80 million, I would say. And that's to say, depending a little bit, how much deferred revenue haircut we have, but there's no change whatsoever in the very strong growth in HCSS.

Got it. I appreciate the detail. Can I just throw one last one in? I guess from an adjusted EPS perspective, which excludes the PPA effects, do you have any updated view on how you think about kind of accretion dilution, particularly for 2027 at this stage, or not so much?

Yes. Well, you have two things in the EPS calculation following the HCSS acquisition. It's PPA, as you say, but it's mainly also the noncontrolling interest. So you know that the EPS is only calculated on our shareholdings. And that, of course, we need to deduct the 28% approximately that's held now by Thoma Bravo. So that's, so to say, the bigger impact on the EPS calculation.

So what we see, including all -- including the PPA and the noncontrolling interest factor, we see that 2026, as I said, that will be -- that will not be accretive. 2027 will be more or less flat, and 2028 will be -- definitely will be accretive. So it's turning somewhere '27 -- definitely in '28. If we are really good, it can be in 2027, depending a little bit also on the PPAs, et cetera. But in general, it's a very strong deal, and that's why it's accretive very early. So it's '27-'28, depending on really where it's happened. We are a bit conservative to say it will definitely be 2028, where flat in 2027. If we were then to take out the PPA effects, then you are, of course, quicker in the accretion. So then you are definitely in 2027. But I think you should also really be mindful of the noncontrolling interest there.

Maybe just to give you a little bit of color on the PPA as well as we are still doing that depending on, of course, as you know, how we allocate the consideration to the different asset classes that we have acquired. And HCSS has a fantastic strong customer base and technologies that will be the main areas. And those are, so to say, in those categories, we have rather longer amortization periods, right? And that's -- we are now in the details of how really to allocate that, but that's also how you should be thinking about the amortization on the PPA. All in, it's a strong deal.

Our next question comes from Alice Jennings, Barclays.

I've just got a couple, if that's all right. So the first one is just on the guidance. So it implies a bit of a deceleration in growth in H2, which is as expected, I think, from 12% to 14%. I'm just wondering what would need to happen in order to reach kind of the upper or the lower end of that range?

And then also as a bit of a follow-up, what are your expectations in terms of each division for the second half? So I know you mentioned mid-single digit for Media, but yes, some comments on the other segments would be useful. And then just my second question is about investment and what your priorities are for investment in the second half and whether there's been any changes to your planned investment based off of the impact that we saw on margins in the second quarter?

So on the guidance, clearly, we had a very strong H1 with 16% revenue growth at constant currency. We are, therefore, highly confident as of today that we will reach our guidance, which is between 14% and 16%. So obviously, we are prudent.

As you know also, the Nemetschek Group, in our DNA, we are sometimes also quite conservative, and we want to make sure that with all the macro political environment that we have currently in terms of any energy crisis and others and macro political aspect, we want to be prudent. So that's why we confirm our guidance. But obviously, we are very confident that we can reach this guidance and probably in a strong way. But of course, we need to see now how Q3 will evolve and also Q4. But yes, so very comfortable view for the moment.

And if you look -- if I take then to go -- to look into the guidance on the segment, we haven't changed our guidance on any other segment, then Media is the only one that we have since taken down slightly. Of course, we see a slightly higher growth. You see that Design and Build, especially Build is performing well. So that's why I would say, to come to the higher end, we should, of course, perform very strongly in all our other segments and maybe also a little bit stronger in Media. But let's say, as Yves said, it's more on the realistic side.

I think also in the guidance that we have had and seen, I think what we should also always consider that in the second half of the year, whilst Build remains extremely strong, as you saw also in the first half of the year compared due to the comparables that we had in the prior year with GoCanvas contribution, but also with the aftermath of the Bluebeam transition into a fully subscription model, you will have -- we have a plan, so to say, a slightly lower growth in the second half of the year for Build, but that's to say, in line with our expectation. So that's why we have confirmed all our other segments and then to say maybe towards a little bit the higher end here and there and Media with mid-single digit in the second half.

So with our priorities and investments in the second half, we haven't changed our priorities and investment. Of course, we are very strongly invested into our products, into our AI additions in order to continue to serve this market and our customers in line with their expectations and needs, of course, as well as possible. We are continuing also to invest into interesting early-stage ventures, et cetera. We are, of course, also continue to screen the market for M&A and like. So our investment priorities have not changed.

And again, just to comment also on your point on the EBITDA margin. Purely organically, if you look at our EBITDA margin, as we already indicated, excluding the M&A cost, we will be at the upper end of the range at close to the 33%, excluding M&A.

Our next question comes from Nicolas David, ODDO BHF.

I have three, actually. The first one is still on the guidance. Can you elaborate a little bit on your assumptions regarding the multiyear deals you expect in the Design segment for H2? And maybe also for 2027, what kind of lending you expect there?

My second question is on Germany. You are posting again, a nice healthy growth of 14% in H1 after the rebound of [ H2 ] last year. In H2 last year, you flagged a nice win regarding the internationalization of Bluebeam as a tailwind for Germany, notably. Is it still the case? Or did you benefit now more from also a recovery in the Design segment? Any color would be helpful there.

And last topic is regarding the ForEx transactional negative impact of Q2. I fail to see the region currency we're talking about because I fail to see a currency which has been quite weak in Q2. USD has been weak for a while. So if it's USD, can you elaborate for the reason of the timing for doing it now?

Maybe I'd start with the last one with the FX impact. So what we have there, it's -- as we have said as well, it's due to the -- it's a transactional effect. It's not to say just converting one of our group companies' balance sheet into our euro balance sheet. It is a transactional effect of our -- one of our group companies. And that company is having its own balance sheet in Hungarian forint and holding assets in euro.

And it was actually not any currency getting weaker. It was, as you know, after the elections in Hungary in April, the forint appreciated very, very strongly in Q2. This is an extraordinary effect. So it's not about one currency weakening, it's really about this very strong and all of a sudden strengthening in the forint. And that, of course, that revaluation effect hits that group company because the group company holds the assets and liabilities in euros have their own functional currency in forint, and that's why it changes.

And when we convert it -- and if it is too difficult, please ask off, we will be able to give more details if you want. That's the effect we see in the P&L. Just to give you a little bit more detail on it. When we then convert that Hungarian balance sheet into our consolidated euro balance sheet, you can say, well, then you're there, right, your net effects off. You do. So you don't really have the -- from a full financial impact from a -- you don't incur a financial loss to the group, but you take that other conversion effect into the other comprehensive income through the equity, and it's nonrealized FX gains. So whilst we showed the one effect, the transactional effect in the P&L coming from our group company, we have the countering effect of that nonrealized FX loss and gain in our equity.

So for the whole group, it's not a loss in financial contribution, but in the P&L, you have this transactional effect. So that's why it's a strongly extraordinary effect, and it's driven by the Hungarian forint appreciation. And you can see now that it's not weakening again. It's still at an elevated level versus what it was. But now it's coming back, so to say, coming back down again versus the euro, but that is the reason behind. I hope that was a little bit more detail that is understandable.

Yes, that makes sense.

Then regarding Germany, clearly, we had a good momentum in the market. First of all, we can see that the momentum is more positive. Digital permitting is increasing. Now I would not say that the residential market is booming yet. But clearly, there is a more positive momentum in the market, which is starting to be translated also by better performance also in Design. So Design had a strong performance in Germany in H1 and in Q2. Also thanks to move to subscription from some of the existing maintenance customers, but also with new seats and new logos.

And then, yes, clearly, Bluebeam has a very strong growth in Europe in Q2, especially in Germany. So overall, a positive impact in the market for both coming mainly both from Bluebeam and from our Design brands.

Then let's conclude with your first question. That was the question of multi-year impact in our guidance for the second half of the year. We don't assume neither headwinds or tailwinds from that. We approximately assume the same level in the second half as we had in the first half.

As you know, it's a little bit -- sometimes it's a little bit different to hit the right quarter because it's depending on which customer groups really takes up a multiyear contract versus a normal contract. So you shouldn't expect any additional FX out of that in the second half. That's at least what we have assumed in the guidance.

And I think it's important to reiterate, though, that we are now in the second year of the use of multiyear contracts, and you know how the revenue recognition are for those. So if you look at really the impact of multiyear contracts in this year in 2026, we actually have a headwind from that if you compare 2025 and 2026. So why -- as we have -- if we would have only done yearly contracts in '25 and '26, we would actually have had a higher growth in the Design segment in 2026 because then those -- that revenue that was recognized already in 2025, that would have then come as yearly contracts this year. So that postponed effect that we have in 2025 would have come in 2026.

This is just accounting metrics, right? So it is, of course, if we would have only yearly contracts in this year, then, of course, the revenue contribution would have been lower. But I think it's important always to look at the full circle as we have using -- we are using the 3-year contracts to make sure that our customers can convert and go into -- in a safe mode into the subscription transformation, which we know that especially some of the European countries, but also others, some of our clients really want to have this planning security for the 3 years. And that's why we need to look at 2025 and 2026.

But to answer your question clearly, we are not expecting any additional -- any, so to say, higher or lower FX. We are expecting approximately the same level in the second half as we did in the first half.

Our next question comes from Nay Soe Naing from Berenberg.

In the interest of time, maybe I'll just keep it to one. I was wondering if you could maybe share how you're thinking about monetization plans for the AI features outside of Bluebeam? Obviously, within Bluebeam, we know there is a premium package of Bluebeam Max. But I noticed that you've introduced AI features in Graphisoft this year, I think also in Allplan as well. So it would be great to know more about how you're planning to monetize features outside of Bluebeam in the rest of the organization.

So clearly here, as you may have seen also, for example, at Allplan, we have this Steel Genie solution, which we are pricing mainly as a new package and is still under subscription, but at a big premium. So the same philosophy that what we are doing with Bluebeam Max. And you will see us doing that still this year mainly for all our rollout of our different Max features. So you will see, without disclosing too much also, an Allplan Max package, but other Max packages, et cetera.

And the monetization will be an uplift and growing our average revenue per user by having much bigger premium subscription package still for these AI packages. And then, of course, over time, we will bring more consumption model where then, the pricing will be then a mix of both licensing plus tokens. But on the token side, we are, for the moment, not planning to sell tokens stand-alone. So it will be always part of a value-added package where we may include also some tokens in case we sell also, tokens. But for the moment, as you know, with Bluebeam Max, our users, our customers, it is for them to have a partnership or a relationship with some of the LLM vendors. So for example, they need to have a Claude Pro or whatever subscription.

Now of course, we have MCP integration going on for all our different product lines. And of course, we are now embedding more and more also, additional AI features in our more basic packages. And here, we're not necessarily pricing that separately, but we want to make sure that we have more and more adoption of our AI features. Really depending now on the customer segment, but also the customer size, we still have a big variation of feedback from our customers. The great news is that our customers are adopting much more AI today than it was a year ago, of course, but that's the case for everyone, including, I assume, you on the phone.

But the thing is if you take, for example, we did a small study recently with architecture firms in Western markets, so North America and in Europe. And around 70% of the people responding declare that they do not trust yet fully, the output coming from AI in general. So there is still some work to be done. The good thing is that there is a trusted relationship between our fan base and us. So they believe and strongly in the product that they use on a daily basis, if it is Archicad or Allplan or Vectorworks or in structural engineering where they are even more conservative, RISA or Scia, Frilo, et cetera. And this is why on our side, it is very important that the intelligence that we bring to our products, thanks to the Nemetschek intelligence layer, are bringing strong reliability. And therefore, it is key that we have trusted and strong data that, of course, is key to our success.

But overall, I would say that it is going in the right direction. But again, we are in a highly conservative market in AEC/O in construction and also in a very SMB market. So they are probably more -- not probably, they are, in general, more conservative and more prudent than larger enterprise accounts, especially in industrial or manufacturing or automotive or the type of sector.

So this is why also we want to make sure that they are not afraid on the pricing side. And in terms of monetization for the next few months and a couple of quarters and more, it will be still subscription based so that they have clear understanding. And also, they can forecast the upcoming costs that they have using our tool. But they want also prediction. Like all of us, we want to have some prediction on our costs. And that's why subscription licensing-based type of pricing is still the model that you will see from us for the short term. Midterm, we may evolve with something more hybrid. But first, we want to make sure that we have strong adoption.

And also maybe just to add on that, when we do that and when we go to that value-added consumption-based hybrid model, if we were to go that, it's also important that the AEC/O intelligence and the harness and the knowledge graph really lays with what we offer. And that is also how we can price in the value addition.

And we also can link then, the routing to which LLM to use for which kind of workflows, et cetera, which also, of course, impacts the cost efficiency for our users, also for the use of LLM. So that's part of that kind of consumption-based package. It's not just to say, to use tokens, it's also that we can make sure that our clients can also then have a balanced -- a strong outcome for a balanced cost contribution. And that's why it's a little bit more than just adding tokens, but we will come back to that when we -- when that's going to -- in that direction.

Our next question comes from Joseph George from JPMorgan.

Yes, just one for me, please. I guess if we fast forward maybe 1 year, once HCSS is fully integrated, what does the organic growth outlook for the Build division then look like? I guess I'm trying to ask, to what extent does the integration of HCSS mean that the Build division is maybe now more profitable, but perhaps growing slightly slower on an underlying basis? Or do you think that with HCSS integrated, the Build division can still grow organically at 20% plus through the midterm?

Yes. That's currently our view that in a year from now, we should be still in around 20% organic. I mean, then it would be the new organic growth, including HCSS because HCSS will be fully integrated and at constant currency. Of course, the base is getting higher, but we should hold around 20%.

Okay, great.

And that's because Bluebeam will be higher than 20%, maybe HCSS in the higher teens.

Our next question comes from Victor Cheng, Bank of America.

Maybe two from my side. First of all, can you maybe talk a bit about HCSS growth in H1 this year? I'm just conscious of what George asked earlier as well. Thinking about H2 contribution, obviously, you said 600 bps and walked us through the bridge. But how are revenues generally split between H1 and H2 for HCSS as well?

And then second question, maybe on Design. Can you give us an update exactly where you are with subscription transition across brands? And thinking about as we kind of go further with migration, should we expect pricing strength coming back in 2027? And maybe put differently, are you seeing already higher growth from brands that further into the transition?

Thanks, Victor. So maybe to start with the Design question. So today, if you look at the Design division, we have around 65% of our total revenue in Design which is subscription by the end of Q2. We are planning to be around 70% by the end of the year. And we are planning to be around 90% plus subscription by the end of 2027.

Now if you look at where we are per brand, clearly, Allplan and Graphisoft are still in the middle of the move to subscription for their legacy customer base. So of course, when you move to subscription, you have a headwind. Even though you may say that, yes, multiyear is also bringing some tailwind, but the headwind is clearly there.

And if you look at Vectorworks, yes, they started subscription already many years ago, but they did it mainly for new seats. So Vectorworks only started their move from legacy customers from maintenance to subscription last September, so in September 2025. So they will still have some time to go.

But overall, again, around 90% plus of our total Design revenue will be subscription by the end of next year. So yes, so 2027 will be still a headwind year for subscription in Design. So the tailwind will probably more come after that in 2028 and slightly beyond. But 2027 will be still a challenging year for Design because of the move and the migration to subscription. So it will be similar to 2026, or yes.

But of course, also, I think also your question related a little bit to the pricing in Design, if I got it correctly. And that's, of course, also the strategy in Design is very much linked to the increasing the average revenue per user, which is also coming by the new products, AI features. I say features, but it might be product suites or features adding -- enhancing our current offering models, design suites and Steel Genies and the like that you see that will convert more and more into a suite of products. And that's why you also have in the already converted subscription, so to say, then you, of course, also have a greater flexibility also to increase the average revenue even if you don't per se, increased prices very strongly.

I think the pricing policy as such without adding features and functionality is rather unchanged. We have -- we always apply price increases although our main growth is always driven by volume growth, and that will continue. But I think what we see a shift now as we have so much opportunity in the market is really for the -- say, upcoming increase on the average revenue per user as well, and that's very exciting.

I think to come to the HCSS growth, well, we see the first half of the year, there's no major cyclicality in the HCSS business. So that was a strong high teens in the first half. And that was what you should generally expect. I think you should not forget, though, and that's very important, the PPA, the deferred revenue effects that we will have over the first 12 months, as you know, those will not be linear. Those will be front-loaded, so that will have a higher impact on the first 6 months.

It's nothing we can really steer. It's due to the accounting principles under IFRS. And that's why you should not assume a linear one. You should -- it contribute like we also did for HCSS, a stronger contribution in the first half year and then less towards the second half. And then in a year from now, we are out of that, and we see that coming back to what we just said, strong high teens. And then combined with our very strong Build segment as we have it already now in the 20s plus, and then you come to that very strong growth as we just alluded to.

The next question comes from Michael Briest, UBS.

Yves, you bought a second reseller this quarter focused on Vectorworks in Germany and Switzerland. You're paying over EUR 50 million, and it only looks like headcount increased by 180 quarter-on-quarter. And at a group level, you only made EUR 200 million in sales in Germany. Can you explain how you came to that price and what incremental revenues ComputerWorks brings?

Louise, the cash paid was EUR 8 million less than the price you agreed. And for the Australian reseller in Q2, it was EUR 5 million less. And it suggests that you owe the resellers money because neither of them had any positive working capital. In fact, the Australian reseller had a negative EUR 2.5 million working capital position. Can you explain why the cash paid is less than the price in the books? And I think I noticed this happened a couple of years ago when you bought the French reseller. And then I've got another question.

Sure. So regarding Vectorworks resellers, this is for the Swiss and German market. It is something that we have done as some of our resellers -- and this is something which happened also in the past, there is generation shift with some of the resellers, and we have to, therefore, look at clearly, continuity. Obviously, most of these reseller and businesses are already in an agent move, so which means that when we do such acquisition, it doesn't have really an impact on revenue. Or when it does, it's very, very, very low, so there is no really strong revenue contribution.

And how we make the calculation, so this is mainly linked to the revenue that they generate, and it is depending on what also they bring as add-on because some of these resellers also did some localization of the product. So they have also some IP. So we are also buying some of the IP around the product, not only for purely the localization, but also the IP which are add-on solutions.

And here, the good thing with ComputerWorks is that they had really strong add-on products and features and solutions that they were selling on top of Vectorworks. And this is what we are also clearly buying there. And more or less, it is around the [ 1x ] revenue in terms of multiple.

Yes. And coming to what we really pay for in this, I mean, the gross purchase price that we generally pay for, that's, of course, the very strong customer relationships that have been built over years, acquired goodwill, so to say, which are other assets as well. And also the liabilities that is also deferred revenue, et cetera, as they are already on such a model, but it's also cash. So yes, in generally, that's the normal purchase price formula, so to say, to do a deduction of cash from what we actually paid.

So that is -- it's -- whilst these resellers do not really have a significantly high cash balance, that's not what we have. It's a normal price allocation formula, what we pay. But what we've paid for really is very much in line with what I said as well for the customer relationships and also the revenue, the expertise they have. And also, we take over the people and the standing they have built up.

Just -- I mean to follow up, ComputerWorks is -- the person who sold you that business is still in business as a reseller. So they just sold you the Vectorworks reseller in the countries. And Louise, there's 0 net assets in ComputerWorks. So whatever the cash and the debt is and the liabilities, then they're 0. Those are your numbers. And [indiscernible], it was minus EUR 2.5 million. So you took on the liability of the reseller for EUR 2.5 million.

So I think coming back to what that ComputerWorks is still active. So that was -- I don't want to go into way too much transactional details here on the call. But in general, so what happened there, there were different businesses and they were split out. So we took over all the business that related to everything they have done around the Nemetschek Group. And there were some other businesses that we have done. There have been legal splits there in different entities, et cetera. So whilst there are still business pursued, it has nothing to do with the business of the Nemetschek Group. And that would say, that's something I cannot comment on because that's due to the private seller.

So that's the structure. So everything we bought out, they are not continuing as a reseller with everything. And everything they built up was in terms of as Yves contributed to before as well. So everything they built up about expertise into our segment is something that we took out, and there was a smaller portion that they still have that has nothing to do with that business. It just happened to be in the same legal entity that was taken out.

So that is -- I think that's a transaction structure which is very important to understand. So it's not that they are continuing to and they have no rights to do that either any longer, but that's also not -- that was not the reason. It was just that they had some completely different business that they [indiscernible].

A separate question, Louise, just on multiyear deals, but this is in Design, not in Build. If I go to the websites of [ CDW, Insight and SHI ], they're all offering 3-year subscription deals paid upfront for Bluebeam in the U.S. and Canada. How long has that been going on? And what proportion of Bluebeam deals come from 3-year subscriptions? And is this related to the EUR 27 million in long-term deferred revenue on the balance sheet? Or what caused that long-term deferred revenue?

Yes. So in Bluebeam, we don't -- we didn't use the 3-year contracts throughout the subscription. We had a completely -- we have a full subscription transitioning within 1.5 years, more or less as we had and concluded that already some time ago. We didn't use 3-year contracts there. We don't per se use multi-years contract, except for large enterprise deals and also governmental deals, et cetera. And that is -- that's something that we have always used and will always do. That's just a very small part of the portion that is linked to these large enterprise deal or, say, governmental clients. And this is what you are referring to is exactly that kind of structure, which [indiscernible].

But I can go to [ Insight's ] website now and buy a subscription for $1,400 for 3 years of Bluebeam core. And that -- I'm not an enterprise or a government entity.

So what this reseller is targeting is really this kind of clients. So I will check on the website, that is not how that is sold, and this reseller is focused on that. And that's why that's the background around that. So the model is for Bluebeam is not the 3-year contracts, and that is also not what is offered. And that's also, as we always say, we have a smaller portion in the group in general, but that's not contributing to a larger portion of the Bluebeam growth. And as I said, that focused resellers, and I'm happy to come back to you regarding the web page, that is not what is offered, so to say, in general to clients. But what I just said is the customer type that is targeting with us.

And just to make it clear on Bluebeam, if you take the total Bluebeam revenue, we have some large enterprise customers, too. And in some cases, we have ELAs. And with the enterprise license agreements, there could be also, in some cases, of course, multiyear deal. But all ELAs and potential 3-year deals that we may have from some customers, it represents less than 1% of the total revenue of Bluebeam. Less than 1%.

Understood.

And I think it's very clear, and I think that's very important also to underline that we have no interest in general in multiyear contracts, right? That's not the subscription business model, and that's not what we are interested in. As we have said all the time, we use that in order for our customer base, we are very, very keen on meeting our customer base where they are. And that's also the planning security. And there are always and there will always be, so to say, a certain group of clients that will need this. But this is not what is offered actively, and that's not in our interest to say, going forward in the subscription model. That's not the typical contract base that we will have or see or offer.

But this is the cause of the long-term deferred revenues of EUR 27 million?

Yes. The long-term deferred revenue for Bluebeam is due to SSAs coming out of this kind of governmental business deals. But you were asking about what can be offered and about what today. So say, what is for the long-term deferred revenue for Bluebeam, what you can see that is coming about this existing contract that did not convert into subscription. That is still SSA because it's due for more governmental business.

And is the 27 all Bluebeam, or is there some Build in there?

No. What I just referred to was Build. Of course, there's a smaller -- say, Bluebeam is built and a smaller effect out of Design in there as well. But that's to say the effect of Build.

So the Design products are sold on 3-year deals with cash paid all in advance as well then? Because that's what I can see on the website for Bluebeam. It's 3 years paid in cash, all in advance.

No. In general, there's also -- if there are multiyear contracts, they are paid on a yearly basis. That's the structure. Then you have some governmental contracts as well that you know that you have completely different conditions, and that's a one-off deal more or less very different deals than the rest. There are some contracts that have been paid upfront, but that's not the general model. The general model is that the multiyear contracts are paid on a yearly basis.

Our next question comes from Ben Castillo, BNP Paribas.

Just two, one on Bluebeam. Could you just talk about maybe the opportunity in penetrating your existing Bluebeam customer base with Bluebeam Max? What could you achieve here over the midterm in terms of upsell? And on the pricing part, you mentioned the introductory pricing of Bluebeam Max. Just curious, what the customer feedback has been specifically on that sort of price uplift versus the value uplift that they perceive? How is your confidence there on potentially raising prices a little bit further out?

Look, I think on pricing, it's too early to say. I mean, we really rolled out Bluebeam Max now for 2 months. I think we will know exactly the price leverage also we have when it will be the time for renewals.

Our customers are very price-sensitive, especially when you look at the long tail of small, medium customers. This USD 590 per user annually introduction in price, yes, could potentially be increased. But now we need to see the reaction of the customers. And of course, for that, we need also to bring more and more over time, additional features, which we are doing. And we will see how we may potentially increase such price or directly jump maybe to a consumption-based pricing.

So for the moment, we did not communicate on that, but also we have different scenarios in place in our planning. And it will also depend on how the adoption of Bluebeam Max evolves over time and also the feedback of our user base, which is going to evolve over time. Because, again, from all the current Bluebeam Max customers that we have, we have very strong early adopters. And they will not have the same feedback than maybe an average Bluebeam user. So we need to make sure that we have also feedback from these -- or more feedback from these average Bluebeam users and not the strong adopters, and then we will see. So too early to say.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Stefanie Zimmermann for closing remarks.

Thanks, everyone, for attending. We are looking forward to catching up with you next quarter. If you have any follow-up questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. [ Patrick ] and myself, we are available. And so let's conclude the call for today. Thanks again for joining.

Hello, everyone, and a big welcome. Thanks for joining our call today to discuss the Nemetschek Group's acquisition of HCSS that we announced yesterday night. With me today are our CEO, Yves Padries; and our CFO, Louise Ofverstrom. Today's conference call is being recorded. A replay of the call will be available at our website after the call.

Additionally, you will find the press release and the presentation on our Investor Relations website as well. First of all, Yves will walk you through the presentation, and then we have enough time to answer your questions. But now let's get started. So I would like to turn over to Yves.

Thank you very much, Stefanie, and good morning, everyone, and welcome. Exciting times for the Nemetschek Group. In addition to our Investor Relations team, I am joined by our Chief Financial Officer, Louise Ofverstrom. Today is a very special and exciting moment for the Nemetschek Group. I'm truly delighted and proud to announce that we have signed a definitive agreement to acquire Heavy Construction Systems Specialists or short HCSS. HCSS is, I would say, the leading provider of technology solutions for the highly attractive infrastructure and heavy civil construction markets in North America.

The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2026 and is therefore pending and subject to customary regulatory approval and closing conditions. The transaction marks a major milestone for the Nemetschek Group and an important step forward in our journey to become the global leader in the AEC/O industry.

Given the very short notice for this call, it is great to see so many of you joining us today. So thank you all for your time and your interest. We'll walk you through this transaction and explain why this is such a compelling and transformative step for Nemetschek Group.

Before we dive into the details, you will see an overview of today's agenda on Slide #2. In addition to the press release we published late last night, we have prepared a presentation that covers the key aspects of the transaction in more detail. I will start by outlining the company's strategic rationale behind our decision to acquire HCSS. Then we'll give you an overview of the attractive business, product portfolio and positioning of HCSS, the tailored transaction structure as well as the significant value creation potential, including attractive synergies we see from this acquisition. And finally, we will open the call for your questions during the Q&A session.

As you all know, M&A has always been an integral part of Nemetschek's DNA and a key driver of our long-term success. Over the last decade, we have built a strong and highly successful track record of acquisitions, including key deals such as Bluebeam or GoCanvas as well as a number of highly innovative technology acquisitions, for example, lately, Firmus.ai in October of last year.

At the same time, we have always been very selective in our approach, ensuring that every transaction is a perfect fit in terms of strategy, scale and culture. And this is exactly why we are so excited about HCSS. HCSS is one of the most attractive assets in the entire AEC/O software space with a leading market position in the highly attractive infrastructure and heavy civil construction markets, combined with a very strong and profitable growth and a very close relationship with its customers.

By combining HCSS with our leading brands in the Build & Construct segment, we are creating a unique combination of scale, growth and profitability and a global construction technology powerhouse covering the full range of the market. So we are building the next global construction technology giant. Given the size and quality of HCSS and the fact that it is by far the largest acquisition in our company's history, a traditional debt financing transaction will have required a significantly higher level of leverage, limiting our financial flexibility and increasing the risk. This is why we have chosen a tailored transaction structure for this deal.

It allows us to execute this transformational step while maintaining a strong balance sheet and preserving full strategic flexibility for future investments and acquisitions and also brings Thoma Bravo, the world's largest software-focused investment firm on board as a very strong partner.

Importantly, it also means that the Build & Construct segment, including HCSS, will remain an integral part of the Nemetschek Group and will continue to fully control, manage and consolidate the business within our integrated group structure with Thoma Bravo as a minority shareholder in the Build & Construct segment. So our ambition is clear: to set new standards in construction technology and further reinforce Nemetschek Group's position as a leading global player in the AEC/O industry, making this transaction a key milestone and an important building block in the company's history. And it is also helping us to push forward the fact that we are becoming a vertical AI leader in the AEC/O industry.

Moving on to Slide #5, which summarizes the key element of our strategic rationale for the acquisition of HCSS and highlights why we are so excited and confident the transaction will create substantial value for the Nemetschek Group as well as for our customers and, of course, our shareholders.

Let me now walk you through the key elements of our strategic rationale in more detail. First, this transaction is about creating a leader in construction technology. It significantly scales and strengthened our position not only in the Build & Construct market, but across the entire AEC industry. By bringing together HCSS, one of the world's largest provider of infrastructure and heavy civil construction software with our existing Build & Construct portfolio, so Bluebeam, GoCanvas, including SiteDocs and Nevaris, combining that with their leading solution across the Build & Construct segment, we are combining highly complementary capabilities across infrastructure and buildings, covering the entire construction life cycle in all end markets.

Second, we are significantly expanding our addressable market and further strengthening and scaling our position in infrastructure, thereby making the overall Nemetschek portfolio more balanced and ultimately even more resilient. Infrastructure and heavy civil construction is a highly attractive segments supported by very strong structural growth drivers such as aging infrastructure, large-scale government investments and ongoing urbanization.

In HCSS, we gained direct access to a significant size in the segments and significantly expand our opportunity in Build & Construct by more than 30% in our market expanding to a growth at a CAGR of around 11% and reaching approximately USD 12 billion by 2028. At the same time, we are further strengthening our presence in North America, one of our key growth region.

Third, the combination of our technologies creates a comprehensive end-to-end construction software portfolio, enabling seamless workflows across different user groups and markets. Furthermore, we see strong cross-selling opportunities by accessing new customer segments and additional verticals as well as the ability to scale HCSS through our existing global footprint in EMEA and Asia Pac.

As a result, we also expect competing top line as well as EBITDA synergies as part of the deal. In addition, very similar to the Nemetschek Group, HCSS as a vertical software provider is ideally positioned to win in AI due to its deep domain expertise, customer relationship and network effect as well as 40 years of proprietary industry-specific data.

Combining that with Nemetschek's advanced AI capabilities will enable us to benefit from the huge workforce-related TAM opportunity in the construction industry. And finally, we are doing all of this while preserving our balance sheet strength, our strategic flexibility as well as our group structure and the successful way we operate our business, enabled by the tailored transaction structure.

As I highlighted earlier, the Build & Construct segment, including HCSS, will continue to be fully consolidated and managed by the Nemetschek Group. Thoma Bravo as a minority shareholder in the Build & Construct segment. Together, by combining their strong software expertise with our deep industry knowledge and operational capabilities, we are very well positioned to capture the significant growth opportunities in the build and construction market.

Next few slides provide a comprehensive overview of HCSS and its industry-leading end-to-end platform for infrastructure and heavy civil construction. HCSS headquartered in Sugarland, Texas U.S.A. is one of the world's leading provider of infrastructure and heavy civil construction software with more than 550 employees. The company is purpose-built for self-performing contractors offering an end-to-end platform of mission-critical solution across the entire project life cycle from bidding a job, delivering safely, on time and on budget.

HCSS has more than 4,000 customers primarily in the U.S. and Canada, and its solutions are trusted on some of the world's most iconic projects. The customers now win 75% of work across 50 U.S. Department of Transformation markets and produce 40% more bids than competitors, thanks to HCSS solutions. HCSS combines strong growth with a very attractive profitability profile comparable to our stand-alone Build & Construct segment.

In 2025, HCSS generated around $215 million in mainly recurring, so subscription-based revenues. Over the last years, company has built an impressive track record, combining sustainable strong top line growth, for example, an ARR increase of 21% in 2025, combined with a very high profitability reflected in an EBITDA margin of around 40% in U.S. GAAP.

Mission-critical nature of its solutions deeply embedded in its customers' daily workflows drives a very highly customers' loyalty and strong retention are reflected in their KPIs, such as extremely low churn rate of below 2%. HCSS, very close and long-standing customer relationship was a foundation for decades of proprietary industry-specific data, a highly valuable asset in the age of AI, covering solutions such as HCSS predictive AI.

So let me walk you through HCSS solution portfolio in more detail on Page #8. HCSS is a vertical software provider with deeply integrated purpose-built solutions supporting every stage of the project life cycle for infrastructure and heavy civil construction. This product platform is structured around 3 core functional pillars: estimating, operations and fleet, anchored by 2 core systems of record, HeavyBid and HeavyJob.

Starting with estimating. HeavyBid is an industry-leading solution for heavy civil contractors, enabling highly accurate cost modeling, optimized bidding and full support for both [ HCSS ] platform and subcontracted work. Operations, HeavyJob serves as the operational backbone connected field teams with the office through real-time data, production tracking and cost visibility, complemented by HCSS plans, field communication and HCSS safety, digital safety management.

And finally, in fleet, HCSS provides integrated solutions for asset tracking, utilization and maintenance, enabling real-time visibility, reduced downtime and optimize fleet performance through tools such as Equipment360 and Telematics.

Overall, what stands out is a deep integration across all 3 pillars, creating a unified platform that connects estimating, execution and fleet management and is, therefore, deeply embedded in customers' daily operations. Creates what clearly differentiates HCSS is its strong customer-centric approach and consistent focus on delivering measurable value.

Slide #9 illustrates how HCSS delivers tangible and measurable impact for customers on a daily basis, driving real ROI, which is the foundation for its customer loyalty, high retention rates and ultimately sustained strong growth. Across the platform, HCSS solutions deliver clear and measurable improvements in customer performance. For example, customers using HeavyBid meet up to 60% more bids, while HeavyJob enables 88% of projects be completed on or under budget, while HCSS safety users achieve a 96% lower reportable incident rate compared to the industry average. This clearly highlights the strong and measurable value delivered by HCSS to its customers in their day-to-day operations.

As mentioned earlier, we have chosen a tailored transaction structure for this deal. Let me now take a moment to walk you through the structure and key elements of the transaction as outlined on the next Slide #11.

Transaction structure is designed to further strengthen our Build & Construct division, while maintaining Nemetschek's financial strength and strategic flexibility.

As part of the transaction, Thoma Bravo will contribute HCSS to our existing Build & Construct segment, which already includes our leading brands, Bluebeam, GoCanvas, including SiteDocs and Nevaris and in exchange will receive a minority shareholding in the combined segment. At the same time, we'll refinance all of HCSS existing financial debt and liability, which will impact Nemetschek Group's net debt position by approximately EUR 450 million.

Following closing, Nemetschek will hold approximately 72%, while Thoma Bravo will hold around 28% of the enlarged Build & Construct segment. Importantly, the Build & Construct segment will remain an integral part of the Nemetschek Group, and we continue to fully manage, control and consolidate the business within our integrated group structure. This also means that the transaction has no impact on the organization or shareholder structure of the Nemetschek Group, as you will see on the next slide.

On Slide #12, you see our familiar overview of the group's organization structure. Apart from Media segment, which account for less than 10% of our current revenues, we are fully focused on the AEC/O sector with our 3 segments, Design, Build & Construct and Operate & Manage covering the entire life cycle of buildings and infrastructure projects. And as you can see, apart from the addition of HCSS and the minority shareholding of Thoma Bravo in Build & Construct segment, there are no changes at all on the organizational and shareholder structure of the Nemetschek Group. We will continue to control, steer and manage Nemetschek Group as one integrated group.

Let me now walk you through why we are convinced that this transformation transaction will take the Nemetschek Group to the next level in terms of size, market potential, product offering and financial profile and therefore, create substantial value for our customers and shareholders. Let me start with the underlying infrastructure and heavy civil construction market, which forms the foundation of the software market we are now able to better address with this transaction. This market is a highly attractive, strongly growing and resilient and supported by several strong structural growth drivers.

First, we see significant investment needs driven by an aging infrastructure worldwide with global spending expected to exceed $100 trillion by 2040. Second, this is supported by major current infrastructure programs and sustainability investments worldwide, such as the $1.2 trillion program in the U.S. and the EUR 500 billion package in Germany, which provides long-term funding and sustainable demand for the market. Third, the construction industry in infrastructure and heavy civil construction still shows a very low level of digitalization, creating substantial potential for efficiency gains through software, AI and automation. And finally, the ever-increasing labor shortage in the construction industry are accelerating the need for digital solutions, which offers potential to address the huge workforce-related TAM for this underlying market with our AI-driven and Agentic solutions.

Building on this strong underlying infrastructure, heavy civil construction market, the next Slide #15, illustrates the significant software market opportunity we are now able to address. With the acquisition of HCSS, we are now significantly expanding our existing market opportunity from around $7 billion to around $9 billion, representing an increase of around 30%. This expansion is driven by our massively scaled exposure to the infrastructure and heavy civil construction segment, complementing our existing exposure to the buildings market. At the same time, this combined market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 11%, reaching approximately $12 billion by 2028, therefore, further strengthening long-term growth potential for our Build & Construct segment.

Very important slide #16, which nicely illustrates the breadth and completeness of our combined Build & Construct portfolio following the acquisition of HCSS. Historically, Nemetschek Group has been a leading technology provider, primarily focused on the design, construction and operations of buildings with strong solutions across all key verticals highlighted here in blue, including residential, commercial and public buildings. The addition of HCSS and its highly complementary product portfolio, we are now extending our capabilities further into infrastructure and heavy civil construction highlighted here in green on this slide. This includes key areas such as highways, railways, bridge as well as water, sewer and electricity networks, effectively filling the remaining gaps in our portfolio.

As a result, we now offer a truly comprehensive suite of mission-critical software and technology covering all major end markets and customer groups across the construction life cycle. Beyond the significantly expanded market opportunity as well as a greatly increased scale of our business, we also see an attractive synergy potential over the medium term due to this acquisition. These synergies can be broadly grouped into 2 categories: top line synergies driven by go-to-market and product initiatives as well as cost efficiencies.

On the revenue side, we expect to benefit from broader customer access, cross-selling opportunities and an accelerated global presence as well as strong product integration across field and office workflows. For example, Bluebeam will gain improved access with its best-in-class collaboration tools to the infrastructure sector, while at the same time, enabling HCSS to benefit from its global footprint, channel partners and customer base.

Other examples are GoCanvas, which will further strengthen the field forms and safety solution for HCSS while gaining access to HCSS customer base or Nevaris will enhance its offering in infrastructure, particularly in the DACH region by leveraging HCSS capabilities.

On the cost side, we see efficiencies, for example, by leveraging the combined AI capabilities of the Nemetschek Group and HCSS as well as by realizing economies across areas such as sales and marketing, G&A, IT infrastructure and, of course, R&D. In sum, we therefore also see a synergy potential of at least a mid-double-digit million euro amount on EBITDA in 2028.

Let me briefly highlight how the acquisition of HCSS support one of our most important strategic priorities. Nemetschek's transformation from a leading vertical software player to a vertical AI leader in AEC. We are deeply convinced that AI represents a tremendous opportunity, and we are clearly positioned to capture it.

You may recall Slide #7 from our last earnings call, which outlines the key foundation that position us to win in AI. Over decades, we have built deep domain expertise and strong integration into our customers' workflows as well as long-standing trusted customer relationships, strong network effects and vast industry-specific data sets across the entire life cycle, primarily in buildings.

And it is exactly this critical prerequisite that HCSS now brings the Nemetschek Group for the civil engineering and infrastructure domain. Building on this strong foundation, we are leveraging our proven AI strategy and HCSS strong AI capabilities across 3 key levers: product innovation, targeted M&A investments as well as strategic partnerships, all aimed at accelerating our AI road map and scaling AI across the group.

This ultimately enables us to further expand our addressable market by unlocking the significant workforce-related TAM in our industries by strengthening our competitive moat and building a scalable data and intelligence flywheel across our platform. In addition, we are further enhancing our internal efficiency, driving tangible cost savings that enables additional investment in our long-term growth. So Slide #19, bringing all of this together, transaction translates into a highly attractive and significantly strengthened financial profile for Build & Construct segment, and therefore, the entire Nemetschek Group.

We are maintaining, in part even enhancing the already strong growth and very profitable profile of the segment, but at a significantly larger scale. To give you a sense of this, by 2028, we expect the combined Build & Construct segment on a stand-alone basis to generate more than EUR 1 billion in revenue. This is a milestone that we have only just achieved at the entire group level for the first time in our history in 2025.

At the same time, business will be characterized by a highly recurring revenue base of around 95%, exceptionally strong customer retention and an EBITDA margin of more than 40%, a level clearly above the group average. All of this means that we are building not only a Rule of 40 business, but a segment close to a Rule of 60 profile, a truly unique combination of scale, growth and profitability in the entire AEC/O industry.

Slide #20 shows what this ultimately means for the Nemetschek Group. With a significantly increased share of our business coming from the high-growth and high-margin Build & Construct segment, we are further enhancing the overall growth and profitability profile of the entire Nemetschek Group. The same time, the transaction leads to a substantially improved and well-balanced end market exposure. While infrastructure and civil engineering have historically played only a minor role for the Nemetschek Group at around 10%, it will now become a much more meaningful part of our business, driven by the increased exposure to the resilient infrastructure and civil engineering markets.

As a result, we are significantly reducing our dependence on residential and commercial construction cycles as infrastructure, civil engineering and public sector demand tend to be structurally more stable and less cyclical. Ultimately, it creates a significantly larger, better balanced, more resilient and stronger Nemetschek Group, well positioned to deliver sustainable growth and long-term value for our customers and shareholders.

Now as we are coming to the end of our presentation on Slide #22, we have summarized the most important transaction highlights. We have already covered in detail the key terms of the transaction, the attractiveness of HCSS as well as a significant increase in scale, market opportunities in infrastructure and heavy civil engineering as well as growth and margin potential the acquisition unlocks for Build & Construct segment and for the Nemetschek Group, of course.

The result of this transaction is the creation of a construction technology giant with a truly unique combination of scale, growth and profitability across the entire AEC/O industry. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2026 and is subject to customary regulatory approval and closing conditions until the transaction close and each company will continue to operate independently.

More details regarding the transaction, potential synergies as well as the expected impact on Nemetschek Group's financial as well as the outlook for the current financial year will be disclosed after closing.

With that said, I would like to thank you for your attention, and we are now happy to take your questions. So operator, please, back to you.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Alice Jennings from Barclays.

I think my first question is just on the ARR growth of 21%, obviously, very impressive. But I was just wondering what have kind of been the main drivers of this in the last few years in terms of is this strong market growth or like which particular segments of HCSS has driven that? And then what are your expectations for that growth going forward?

And then the second question is just on the revenue synergies. So yes, quantified the kind of synergies from EBITDA, but could you give any kind of color on the level of contribution you expect just on the revenue side from the acquisition?

Thank you. So as you have seen, yes, the ARR in 2025 was 21% for HCSS. It is mainly driven by very strong new logos and user growth. Pricing is not only per user. They have also pricing based on the size of the customer, the size of the construction projects, et cetera. So it's not only a per seat. Clearly, they had a very nice growth in terms of user base, new logos, et cetera. So that was clearly the main drivers.

And yes, the infrastructure industry is growing, I mean, especially in North America. So of course, that's the benefit they have is to be part of this very significantly growth market in North America in heavy civil infrastructure. What we expect in terms of revenue growth for the coming years, here, I will not talk about ARR, but more about revenue.

So clearly, if you look at the revenue piece, we are in clearly very high teens type of revenue for the next few years, I mean, close to 20% clearly for HCSS. Then on revenue synergies. So clearly, the revenue synergies, if you look at what I said before on the synergies, which would be on the EBITDA side, which is mid double-digit million euros by 2028, I mean, you should assume -- and that's at least what we expect as a synergy and EBITDA. So that's the minimum. It should be over that. Around roughly half of it will come from revenue and half of it will come from the cost side.

The next question comes from George Webb from Morgan Stanley.

Congrats on announcing the deal, and thank you for the overview. I've got a few questions, please. Firstly, are you able to kind of help us understand where HCSS is in its growth cycle? It's been around since 1986. It's not a new company. It's a bit over $200 million of revenue, as you mentioned, 17% revenue growth. And just noting that your partner, Thoma Bravo bought the business in 2021, what are the strategic things they've been doing with the business over the past few years? And have they done a subscription shift journey in recent years? That's the first question.

Secondly, just a little bit more detail on HCSS and its AI journey in terms of product road map and monetization strategy would be great. And then just last one, which I guess is more financial and technical. Is the debt associated with this deal to be held within Build & Construct or at the group level in the sense that will Thoma Bravo in their minority result be accountable for 28% of the related interest? Or will that all go to the Nemetschek shareholders?

Maybe I'll start from the back. So starting instantly with the debt that's very straightforward. So yes, as always, we refinance on the most senior level in the Nemetschek Group, but we give that through intercompany dependence on how we fund that, but that is given to the Build & Construct, it will be debt on the Build & Construct division. So of course, also there, both shareholders are liable for the growth and also the interest expense.

And of course, we also expect a quick deleveraging as always in the Build & Construct segment. That's also, of course, the normal assumptions that we take also here given what you also used to see from us.

And thanks, George, for your question. So HCSS' growth is clearly coming from seats, new logos and progress the cross-sell, as I mentioned. So it's more than price. Clearly, we have the same phenomenal great success than Bluebeam. Clearly, the growth potential in North America is still very, very significant. And interestingly, the infrastructure and heavy civil construction market is even much more conservative than in buildings, which is surprising, but it's a fact. So they are more conservative. That's why also the churn is only 2%.

And of course, the fact that they have a very strong product portfolio, but more conservative in the fact that the level of digitalization in heavy civil and infrastructure is even slightly lower even than in buildings. That's why we have huge opportunity of continued growth and the structural drivers of infrastructure and heavy civil digitalization is still there for many years.

Then on the AI front, so they have worked on many, many aspects. As I said before, Nemetschek and HCSS are vertical software provider with domain expertise in AEC that is deep and specialized and that are integrated in the workflow and process of HCSS customers. And as you know, AEC/O is a specific and special industry. Construction and AEC are niche, highly regulated and fragmented. And they have done a very, very strong progress in their solutions. So we see clearly also very nice opportunity of combining Nemetschek and HCSS AI capabilities.

For example, AI expands our addressable markets from tools into outcome-enabling services. Value we can create through AI will be much larger through these as the services TAM, so humans and services TAM in construction is significantly larger than the tool TAM, so the software TAM. And by joining forces with HCSS, we can now address an even larger scope of services and deepen into an intelligence that spans architecture, engineering and construction.

And in addition, also extend our customer base that we can monetize with AI servicing on. So data and intelligence loops create compounding advantage. Every project run through our system makes our AI smarter. And this makes our AI smarter. This is not just features, but it's proprietary intelligence that improve this usage and cannot be easily replicated. This will enable us to create even bigger moat and competitive advantage, especially versus start-ups or even potentially new market entries.

Operating leverage and reinvestment is also key. AI-driven efficiency gains are systematically reinvested compounding innovation velocity and competitive advantage. So we see clearly that given the incumbent and deep understanding of the domain data from estimate to delivering projects, HCSS is sitting on a unique opportunity to leverage AI. And with Nemetschek and Bluebeam advanced AI competencies, we believe that we can bring value to customers and even more value to customers via AI.

And then if you look at the Nemetschek AI Hub and Bluebeam Firmus AI acquisition, this sets us up to help HCSS bring valuable use cases such as intelligent schedule optimizer, where, for example, AI agent can continuously analyze production rates, crew utilization and weather forecast to detect schedule changes to help identify productivity drops and recommend solutions.

For example, working with Nemetschek AI Hub, HCSS can deliver quickly an assistive AI kind of a copilot capabilities, where assistance is embedded directly into the users' workflows to provide real-time and conceptual intelligence, having users operate with expert level proficiency without ever leaving their active task.

And I think maybe just to add one thing to that Yves, which is very important as we always discuss as well, this is a highly, highly conservative industry. And that's why trust is the basis for everything in AI here. And that's the domain -- deep domain expertise of HCSS with the Nemetschek Group. We both bring an enormous amount of trust to the market. And combined with our AI capabilities, we really see that this is really the unique opportunity also to leverage on both the data, the proprietary knowledge, but also the trust that we bring together to the market.

So and again, George, so they have the HCSS AI features. So they have this AI-assisted cost estimate builder, which is institutional knowledge. So the value proposition here is that this tool solves a major industry problem by digitizing the expertise of senior estimators, surface insights from past projects, ensuring that even after senior employees retire, their expert insight remains accessible to the next generation. Then they have another AI feature, which is quick pricing in preconstruction efficiency.

So here's the value proposition is that the AI feature increases bid, throughput and accuracy by leveraging data-driven suggestion based on historical production data. It moves estimator from tedious manual data entry to a high-level strategic review, allowing them to focus on the high profit margin business. And of course, all know our great AI features and products as an [ MHA ] Group, such as what we are now planning for launching since last month or since even end of February with Bluebeam Max, et cetera, and our AI visualizer.

The next question comes from Charles Brennan from Jefferies.

Congratulations on the deal. I've got three fairly quick questions, if I can. Firstly, the deal structure here is relatively complicated. Is there some kind of put and call transaction in place and a time line associated with it for you to get rid of the Thoma Bravo 28% holding? It doesn't feel like that's an optimal structure going forward.

Secondly, I've had lots of investors asking me today what the implied enterprise value is you're paying for the business. Can you give us what the theoretical value was you attributed to the Build division, so we can calculate that EV?

And then lastly, if I just look at consensus expectations for the Build division today in 2028, it's about EUR 830 million of revenue. Against that backdrop, your EUR 1 billion target feels like it's a growth downgrade relative to consensus. Is your assumption here that we come out with revenue numbers that are comfortably above EUR 1 billion when we add this combination in?

Thank you very much. So clearly, on the deal structure, to be very, very clear, there is no put and there is no call at all. So Thoma Bravo, we are very, very pleased to partner with them. As you know, the worldwide leader in software private equity investments. And their options to exit is that either we acquire their shares, part of their shares. Second option is that we partner with another sponsor and a private equity partner, who would acquire Thoma Bravo shares or option 3, which is an attractive one, too, is to do an IPO. But if we do an IPO, the IPO will be only for Thoma Bravo shares. We will not sell shares at the Nemetschek level. We will still stay as a high owner and majority owner of the Nemetschek Group.

So then on the implied enterprise value. So here clearly, what we have done to make this deal was to take EBITDA of both business, HCSS EBITDA and Build & Construct EBITDA. And then, of course, you put a multiple on top of it. If it would have been over a year ago, this deal, as you know, the multiple will be in the 35 or even above. If you look at today, we are probably in the 20-plus type of multiples.

So it's really relative. Whatever the multiple is, if you take this piece of EBITDA split, the ownership split will be 20% for Nemetschek and 30% for Thoma Bravo. Here, we preempted deal. I started the discussion with Thoma Bravo a long time ago. We had HCSS in our radar a very long time ago. This is, from my view, the leader in infrastructure and heavy civil software in North America. And we really wanted to increase significantly our presence in the construction and build segment, in particular, in infrastructure and the public sector and heavy civil. These assets have been impossible for us to acquire in a normal process.

And Thoma Bravo didn't want to sell these assets, wanted to do a full process later. And -- but this would not have been accessible for us. So we started to brainstorm and I suggested this creative structure so that we are able to acquire HCSS without impacting our leverage and of course, our balance sheet and potential future investment power.

Of course, with a slight small control premium. But at the end of the day now, if you take also the fact that we are financing all the HCSS debt, which is around EUR 450 million, we will finance via some cash and, of course, debt. We are now at slightly around above 22% ownership and 28% ownership for Thoma Bravo.

Yes. And I think what we should really highlight here is that we are entering this highly attractive segment on these parameters, as Yves just outlined. It's not a plain vanilla deal, but we are really combining forces and combining the joint forces between Thoma Brava and ourselves to continue to create value. I think there's a huge testimonial to the value creation potential that is in here.

And I think also that we get the direct access now to this highly attractive segment, we get the direct access to this underlying business of proprietary data, domain knowledge, et cetera, in the segment that would have taken us a long time to build up if we would not have acquired this and to also retain our full flexibility of our balance sheet for future additional growth on top, I think that is a unique opportunity at this kind of financial profile that is unseen in the market.

And then to answer your last question, I can say in a very comfortable way and that clearly, we see the Build segment in 2028 to be above the EUR 1 billion revenue and also at an even much higher profitability than today. Again, we are talking above 40% EBITDA margin, over EUR 1 billion revenue with 95% of this revenue being recurring. So clearly, a transformation deal for us.

The next question comes from Agarwal Deepshikha from Goldman Sachs.

I just had a couple -- like 3 of them. So first of all, like looking at the asset at HCSS, where is it on the move to the subscription journey? I think it said that the majority is like on subscription. So just get a sense of how much of that ARR is on traditional maintenance versus subscription? And while you said -- while it said ARR growth last year was 21%, what has been the trend line growth of it in the past?

Second question is basically on the competitive dynamics. Can you just give a little bit of detail in terms of what are the key players that this asset typically comes across in North America? And how do you see it differentiated versus them?

And the third one will be basically like on the overall -- just basically like a follow-up of that like a question in terms of how to look at the valuation of the asset in terms of -- would it be like based on what you said, would it be fair to assume that roughly it would be closer to a 20-plus EBITDA multiple on the asset?

So if you look -- thank you for your question. So if you look at HCSS, yes, they have around 85% of the revenue is recurring. Out of this 85%, it is mainly subscription. So -- and when you say subscription, 60% is cloud. So it's cloud connected. So 60% is cloud and SaaS and 40% is subscription, but on-prem software subscription like we also have some of the Nemetschek portfolio. And then if you look at the ARR growth in the recent years, it was very similar in the 20-plus type of percent ARR growth.

Maybe second question on the key players. So as I say, I would say that they are the leader in heavy civil and infrastructure software in North America. They are #1, clearly a big #1. And then you have a smaller #2. And in the #2, you would have Innate, you would have also then Trimble. And then you have a much smaller player such as Procore and Autodesk, but they have a very small market share. So clearly, Innate and Trimble are kind of the #2-ish and then Autodesk and Procore much smaller. And then you have a very small long -- highly fragmented across ERP and some OEM extension and long-tail point solutions of small players.

But I think also, Yves, we can add to that, that HCSS is substantially larger, has a substantial minority piece in the market. And then the other ones are really much smaller. So I think this is really, as you said, the way we look at it is this is the leader.

Yes. So it's clearly 3 to 4x bigger than the second 2 or top 3 player in the market. And I explained the fact that they have end-to-end solutions for infrastructure.

The next question comes from Michael Briest from UBS.

A couple from me as well. Just in terms of the Thoma Bravo, do they get a seat on the group Nemetschek Board? Or will they not be represented there? There's no mention of the accretion you expect from the deal, and I appreciate it's a complex structure. But could you give any indication on 2027 accretion?

And then the debt that you're inheriting, I appreciate you want to pay some down and refinance quickly. But clearly, it's multiyear debt, there's a cost to that. Can you give any sense of what the interest payments would be in a full year and how quickly you expect to be able to bring those down?

Thank you very much. So clearly, Thoma Bravo, they do not have any Board seat at the group level. They will have a minority Board presence just for the Build & Construct segment as they have 28% minority in the business, and we have around 72%.

Yes. And as to the accretion, yes, it will be accretive after 2027. I think it's important to see we always have -- of course, we need to -- that needs to play out when we close the deal, right? But also we always have some haircuts, et cetera, at the beginning. But I should say, it's definitely an accretive deal. And also as to your question of interest rates, et cetera, let us come back with that as soon as possible.

You can assume, so to say, our normal financing conditions, you also know where we are standing in the market with a very good investment-grade rating. So of course, very comfortable interest rates there. But we have still not really decided what part of cash and debt we will use. That's a little bit depending also on the final amount. But let us come back to that, Michael, as soon as we close the deal.

Sorry, did you say after 2027, it will be accretive?

Yes. Just depending a little bit also how the purchase price adjustments come, et cetera, but that's closely there, so to say. So definitely after 2027, give or take, but definitely not thereafter. Also thereafter, of course, but not later.

Yes.

The next question comes from Victor Cheng from Bank of America.

Congrats on the deal. A number of my questions have been answered but maybe a couple of follow-ups. You talked about competition maybe on the North America side. As we look at Europe as well, any kind of opportunities to expand here? Who are you seeing as the bigger competitors in the Europe side?

And then secondly, when I look at the customer size as well, you mentioned a wide range of customer size, but I think that the average ticket size is a lot bigger than the typical Bluebeam customer. So just wondering kind of is it a different kind of go-to-market? How much synergies can you extract from there?

And I guess, lastly, I just want to double check what you said earlier, did you mention that Thoma Bravo will be also paying 28% of the debt interest since you said that will be on the Build & Construct segment?

Yes. Thank you very much, Victor. So yes, clearly, as I said, we are in my view, the leader, HCSS in North America for civil and infrastructure. Now if you look at competition outside North America, so first, we are doing this deal really to focus on North America. We see huge opportunity of growth in North America alone. So as we may also go a little bit more broader internationally, but we will probably pick more carefully in which markets because if you look at this business outside North America, especially in Europe or in Asia, it is highly fragmented.

It's not like you have a huge big player in Europe, for example. So you will have a localized by region, like you have one good player or a couple of player in Scandinavia, in U.K. and in DACH, Central Europe, et cetera. So we are really going to be very careful on our internationalization piece because the growth, we see it still there for a long, long time in North America.

Nevertheless, we see strong opportunities for us in Germany, especially also thanks to Nevaris because Nevaris has already some capabilities there. And now they will enhance -- we will enhance Nevaris capabilities with HCSS to really tap even further and stronger infrastructure and heavy civil market in Germany. And then there could be also some other markets we are currently defining in Europe.

So for example, Thoma Bravo in HCSS, they made a small acquisition in France last year, but there could be also other opportunities maybe in the Pacific, et cetera. Now if you look at the customer size, you're completely right, Victor. HCSS, first of all, they only do direct go-to-market. Only have their own sales team and they sell directly. They don't have indirect, they don't have web store. So it's high touch in some pieces, but it's clearly bigger type of customers.

Of course, they have also very small customers, but a big part of their revenue is coming from [ e-plus ] larger type of customers. And this is where it's beautiful because, as you know, Bluebeam, yes, we also have very, very large construction companies as customers. So that's why these guys are also sometimes HCSS customers and Bluebeam customers. But interestingly, what HCSS will benefit is the fact that Bluebeam is very, very strong in SMB.

Bluebeam is already strong in SMB also in infrastructure and in heavy civil. And we will be able, thanks to our channel go-to-market, but also web store to really help accelerate some of the growth of HCSS, it's indirect and web store go-to-market capabilities that they do not have today.

Yes. And maybe last but not least, yes, the debt would be Build & Construct debt. So that will, of course, be carried by the Build & Construct division and therefore, also proportionally by both shareholders.

[Operator Instructions] the next question comes from Naing Nay Soe from Berenberg.

I've got two as well, if I may. The first one and maybe one for Yves, starting with your product strategy going forward or product road map. You've done a few acquisitions, including GoCanvas and Firmus AI as well, really building up a strong product portfolio in the Build segment. I was wondering if you got any -- how should we think about consolidating these different acquired assets going forward because we've seen in the industry of how much technical debt it could create if you go through multiple acquisitions in a short span of time.

And then my second question is around customer overlap. Considering that HCSS has got a big presence in infrastructure and heavy civil industries, that Nemetschek has less presence in. Is it correct to assume that there is little customer overlap between HCSS and Nemetschek Group today?

Thank you. So clearly, if you look at our road map and also on the M&A front, what we are focusing on is really more technology acquisitions, so buy versus make. And we are looking a lot, as you know, in AI acquisitions. So -- or at least in AI venture investments. So that's why we made around 16 start-up investment over the last 3.5 years in AI. We acquired Firmus.ai last year and also Manufacton, which has also an AI angle. But of course, we are continuing to focus on AI.

Doing more consolidation in the market, this could be an option. But I would say that for the moment, we want to digest first is a very important strategic transformation deal for the Nemetschek Group. If there are interesting opportunities, and there will be, we will, of course, look at them. But as you know, we are very sensitive on how we pick our M&A activities. So we want to make sure that when we do something, we are either #1 or #2 in the market and also making sure that we have very strong technology, very strong potential growth for the future and of course, strong profitability so that this business is not going to dilute too much our growth, of course, and our EBITDA. And AI is very indifferent. So AI, we will build a much smaller type of companies.

Yes, might be a little bit more EBITDA dilutive, but at the end, with a much, much, much smaller scale, but this will accelerate our vertical AI leadership in AEC. If you look at the customer overlap, I mean, there are some customer overlap, but it's mainly coming from Bluebeam because Bluebeam and HCSS are both very strong in the U.S. So a good portion of HCSS customers are already using Bluebeam, but it's not like it's 80%. So it's like a good percentage is already using Bluebeam.

And of course, with ALLPLAN, this is more in the design and planning phase. We have ALLPLAN still, which is more for purely transportation, bridge, road tunnel design. For example, Autobahn here is a very strong customer. Here, there might be also some nice also opportunities potentially to cross-sell ALLPLAN solutions to some of HCSS customers.

Of course, that's not clearly a big part of the synergy, but it is an opportunity. And when I look at other interesting opportunities is that we have already some HCSS customers who are also using feed management solution from GoCanvas, for example. So here, there is also an overlap, not huge, but still, there are clearly GoCanvas customers, who are also HCSS customers.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to the management for any closing remarks.

Yes. So thank you very much for your questions and the discussions and thanks for attending our call today. And if you have any follow-up questions, so please do not hesitate to contact me or Patrick. We are available, of course, today, tomorrow, whenever you have a question. And if there are no further questions, let's conclude our call today. Thanks again for joining and catch up soon. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Nemetschek Earnings Call for the Financial Year 2025. I'm Moritz, your Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Stefanie Zimmermann. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone, and a warm welcome. Thanks for joining our earnings call today to discuss the results for the financial year 2025 and the outlook for 2026 with us. With me today are our CEO, Yves Padrines; and our CFO, Louise Ofverstrom. Today's conference call is being recorded. A replay of the call will be available at our website after the call. Additionally, you will find the annual report, the presentation and the press release on our Investor Relations website as well. But now let's get started. So I would like to turn over to our CEO, Yves Padrines.

Thank you, Stephanie. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our financial year 2025 earnings call. As usual, I have prepared a short and informative presentation on the highlights of the financial year 2025 that our CFO, Louise Ofverstrom and I will briefly walk you through so that we have enough time to address any questions you may have during the Q&A session.

Let me start with the key messages of the fourth quarter and the full year 2025 on Slide #3. We delivered a very strong finish to the year, driven by an excellent performance in our Build segment, which once again showed outstanding momentum, in particular at our brand Bluebeam. At the same time, the Design segment also continued to perform very well, supported by strong subscription dynamics, including continued demand for multiyear contracts despite an exceptionally high comparison base in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Looking at the full year 2025, we continued our very strong growth path with a high double-digit growth while further improving our profitability. The main growth drivers are a significant increase in subscription and SaaS revenues, particularly in our Design and Build segments, reflecting the continued success of our transition to a subscription and SaaS-centric business model.

Please keep in mind that while we achieved an attractive profitability in 2025, reported EBITDA was impacted, among other things, by extraordinary nonoperating effect in the low teens million euro range related to the unexpected insolvency of a service and payment provider.

[indiscernible] innovation and in particular, artificial intelligence remain the key strategic focus for the Nemetschek Group. We are increasingly evolving a leading vertical software player into a vertical AI leader, leveraging our deep domain expertise, unique data intelligence as well as trusted customer relationships along with strong network effects.

In this foundation, we see a tremendous opportunity to extend our TAM and address substantial workforce-related TAM across the industries that we address.

Looking ahead, Nemetschek is very well positioned to further strong and profitable growth. Based on our strong market position, the continued momentum in subscription and SaaS and our accelerating AI innovation road map, we expect an above-market organic revenue growth of plus 14% to plus 15% at constant currencies for the financial year 2026, combined with a high EBITDA margin of 32% to 33%.

On the next 2 slides, you will see how these key messages translate into the development of most important financial indicators in the fourth quarter as well for the full financial year 2025.

Starting with an overview of our fourth quarter results. Overall, we delivered another strong quarter and a very good finish to the year. Starting with the ARR, or annual recurring revenue, in line with one of our key strategic priorities, transition to a subscription and SaaS-centric business model or annual recurring revenue recorded an increase of plus 17.6%. If we adjust for strong FX headwind we had in the fourth quarter, mainly stemmed from the weaker U.S. dollar, our ARR increased by 22.9%. It is substantial growth in our recurring revenue base, we were able to strongly increase our revenue despite the very high comparison base in Q4 by plus 18.8% on a reported basis and plus 16.7% on an FX-adjusted basis. The main growth driver was once again the exceptional performance of the Build segment, in particular, Bluebeam and the continued good growth in the Design segment.

The EBITDA increased by 12.4% or plus 19.9% at constant currency, outpacing revenue growth and resulting in a very strong EBITDA margin of 32.9% despite the ongoing transition to subscription and SaaS in the Design segment. Finally, earnings per share increased by plus 25.2% to EUR 0.56, supported among other things by strongly reduced interest expenses year-over-year.

We continue with an overview of our full year 2025 results on Slide #5. In a nutshell, 2025 was another very successful financial year and a strong confirmation the Nemetschek Group is on the right path, delivering very high and highly profitable growth while making consistent progress across all our strategic focus areas.

Starting with the top line. Reported revenue grew by plus 19.7% to EUR 1.19 billion, making for the first time in the history of the group that we have exceeded EUR 1 billion revenue mark. Adjusted for FX headwinds, particularly the weaker U.S. dollar, revenue growth at plus 22.6%.

Addition to the strong organic development, the growth also benefited from the inorganic contribution from GoCanvas during the first half of the year as well as temporary positive effects related to the successful completion of the subscription transition of Bluebeam.

The recurring part of our business once again proved to be the main growth driver, particularly subscription and SaaS revenues. Consequently, revenue in this category increased by an impressive plus 51.2% to EUR 858.7 million or plus 55.6% at constant currency. Our EBITDA increased by plus 23.3% on a reported basis and by plus 28.9% at constant currency to EUR 371.1 million, corresponding to a reported EBITDA margin of 31.2%.

Please also keep in mind that if we adjust for the extraordinary nonoperating effects related to the unexpected insolvency of a payment and service provider in the first half of the year, the underlying profitability would have been even higher.

Looking at the bottom line, earnings per share increased by plus 23.9% to EUR 1.88. And on the right-hand side of the slide, you can also see our continued strong cash generation with a cash conversion of almost 109% as well as the very high quality of our balance sheet. This very solid financial position, combined with our strong earnings and cash flow development provides a high degree of resilience going forward and also enables us to act opportunistically and strategically should attractive M&A and venture investment opportunities emerge.

Coming to Slide #6. Before I hand over to Louise, who will provide a deeper dive into our financial results, I would like to briefly address what is currently the most important topic for us. Our transformation from a leading vertical software player to a vertical AI leader and how we will achieve this.

Let me state this very clearly upfront. At the Nemetschek Group, we are deeply convinced that AI represents a tremendous opportunity, and we are ideally positioned to capture it. For decades, we have built deep domain expertise and strong integration into our customers' workflow by serving the AEC/O and media industries, especially in construction, a deep understanding of workflows, building codes and regulations is absolutely critical.

At the same time, this has enabled us to build long-standing trusted customer relationship and strong network effects. This trust often built over many years is what enables us to construct to start-ups or new market entrants to successfully introduce AI-driven solution in an industry that is inherently conservative given the highly regulated nature of the industry and the associated liability risks.

And finally, we benefit from access to vast industry-specific data sets across the entire building life cycle, a key competitive advantage that is extremely difficult for new entrants to replicate.

Building on this strong foundation, let me now briefly walk you through the three key levers we are using to develop an AI scale across Nemetschek Group.

Starting with product development. AI is not new to us. We have been actively developing AI capabilities for several years. However, over the past 3 years, we have significantly increased our investment to further accelerate innovation. It enables us to continuously enhance our product portfolio with AI-driven solutions that deliver tangible value to our customers.

A recent key example is Bluebeam Max, our new AI-enabled solution, which we successfully launched commercially as planned a few weeks ago. It combines Bluebeam's AI development with the technology of Firmus AI and integrates agent-based AI into Bluebeam's PDF workflows, enabling early risk detection in preconstruction design reviews and helping increase efficiency while reducing costly rework. As planned, solution is initially being rolled out to direct large customer first, a broader rollout across indirect channels and our web shop over the course of the year.

In addition, we are accelerating our AI road map through targeted M&A, such as, for example, the acquisition of Firmus AI last October as well as venture investments in AI start-ups, complementing our internal capabilities with leading-edge technologies and further strengthening our position in AI-driven innovation.

And finally, strategic partnership are another important lever. On the technology and commercial side, we collaborate with partners such as Google Cloud to scale our AI capabilities. At the same time, our academic partnerships with institutions such as Technical University of Munich, Stanford University, Nanyang Technological University Singapore support ongoing research, innovation and knowledge transfer in AI for the build environment. This ultimately enables us to expand our addressable market by unlocking the significant workforce-related TAM in our industries by strengthening our competitive moat and building a scalable data and intelligence flywheel across our platform.

In addition, we are further enhancing our internal efficiency, driving tangible cost savings that enable additional investments in our long-term growth. With that, we now hand it over to Louise.

Many thanks, Yves, and a warm welcome to our earnings call for the financial year 2025 from my side as well. Yves has already briefly touched on some of our key financial figures for the past financial year. So I would therefore now like to take a closer look at the most important financial aspects of our 2025 results as well as our main underlying drivers.

Starting on Slide 8, we have an overview of the development of our four segments in the financial year 2025. Let us start with our Design segment. In 2025, the segment continued its strong growth momentum and grew 10.4% 12.2% currency adjusted, and that's despite a high comparison base in the previous year, especially in the fourth quarter. Positive growth momentum in 2025 was driven by a strong increase in the segment subscription and SaaS revenues due to the continued successful ramp-up of the subscription transition.

And in addition, growth was partly supported by 3-year contracts. These contracts are being used strategically only during the subscription transition in order to accelerate the migration of existing maintenance customers to a subscription-based model at our Graphisoft and Allplan brands.

Reported EBITDA margin of 28.1% contracted slightly year-on-year due to the associated short-term accounting-related dampening effects of the subscription transition, and the extraordinary nonoperating effect from the insolvency of a service and payment provider in the first quarter of 2025. When adjusting for these extraordinary service and payment provider effect, the underlying EBITDA margin would have been at prior year level despite the ongoing very successful transition to subscription.

Continuing with the development of our Build segment, which once again delivered a stellar performance during 2025, driven by sustained strong customer demand across the board, but particularly strong for Bluebeam.

In addition, the segment benefited in the first half of the year from the inorganic contribution of GoCanvas, which we have acquired as of July 1 in 2024. and it was also impacted by temporary positive effects following the very successful completion of Bluebeam subscription transition.

Consequently, and as expected, growth moderated somewhat yet at a continued high level in the second half of the year, reflecting the normalization of temporary effects following Bluebeam's successful subscription transition and the resulting higher comparison base thereof.

The financial year 2025, reported growth of the segment reached 41.3%. Adjusting for the strong FX headwind, mainly stemming from the weaker U.S. dollar, growth reached an impressive 46.6%.

Reported EBITDA margin reached a strong 35.8% growth, an increase of around 400 basis points year-on-year and despite the continued investment to support the future growth of this strong and highly dynamic segment.

Let us move on to our Managed segment, which recorded modest growth, 4% for the full year 2025. In the fourth quarter, however, we saw a [ re-affiliation ] of growth momentum in line with our plans of reshaping of this segment, revenue increasing by 6.8%. This development was driven by a stronger momentum in new large customer orders and reflects all the measures we have taken to refed focus and strengthen the segment this comes with -- also in line with our strategic focus and despite our continued investments in the segment's product portfolio and future growth opportunities, and EBITDA margin that expanded to 12%, up from 10.2% in the prior year.

Last but not least, let us have a look and come to our Media segment, which continued to be impacted by mixed market dynamics, including cautious customer spending, particularly in the important U.S. market. And in addition, the segment was also affected by the missing subscription sales in the first half of the year following the unexpected insolvency of the payment and service provider.

And as a result of this, revenue in the Media segment increased only moderately 0.8% on a reported basis or 2.9% at constant currency to EUR 121 million. Adjusting for this one-off impact related to the service and payment provider, revenue growth for the full year 2025 would have been in the mid-single-digit percentage rate and therefore, well in line or slightly above market growth in this segment, as good and consistent cost control, the segment's EBITDA margin declined only slightly to 33.9% despite the extraordinary nonoperating effect in the first half. If I exclude this effect, the EBITDA margin would have remained at prior year level.

As you know, the continued internationalization of our business remains a key strategic priority for us. On Slide 9, we can clearly see that we have successfully strengthened and expanded our international presence in 2025 as well. Looking at our regional revenue development, we have seen a strong growth across all our target regions over the last 12 months. In Europe, which still accounts for 48% of our group revenues, we continue to navigate partly more challenging market conditions in the DACH region, particularly in the Design segment. While we recorded an acceleration of growth year-on-year in our domestic market of Germany, growth outside Germany was again stronger and reaching around 20%.

Growth in Europe was well supported by a strong performance in our Build segment, particularly benefiting from the continued regional expansion of Bluebeam. In addition, although still from a relatively small base, our expansion into the Middle East region is progressing very well and is already showing promising growth since the inauguration of our new presence in the region in 2025.

In the Americas region, which once again recorded the highest growth among all regions at plus 24%, the important U.S. market continued to benefit from a continued strong demand environment, particularly for our Bluebeam and GoCanvas brands, which remain the main growth drivers in the region for us. In addition, growth in the first half of the year was further supported inorganically by the GoCanvas acquisition that we made in the second half of 2024.

Currently, 10% of our group revenues, Asia Pacific remains a key focus region for future expansion. While the entire region grew by 60% year-on-year, the important Japanese market showed a negative growth in 2025 due to a short-term and accounting-related effects on the subscription move of our Design segment impacting the growth temporarily in that market in 2025. In contrast, the rest of the region, and in particular here, Australia and India, continue to enjoy both ongoing very good market conditions and recorded very high growth rates. So as you can see, our internationalization strategy and the continued diversification of our global footprint is really bearing fruit and leaving us confident for further continued strong growth and expansion going forward.

And as we move forward, we remain focused on capturing new growth opportunities while, of course, simultaneously strengthening our leading positions in our existing key markets.

We already alluded to the fact that recurring revenues were once again the main growth driver in 2025. That does not come as a surprise and is a strong and important testament to our successful business model transition.

On Slide 10, we can see a comprehensive overview of the progress made over the past year and also over the longer term since the start of this key strategic priority, namely the transition to a subscription and SaaS-centric business model.

Starting on the left-hand side of the slide, you can see that our [ BOSS ] business model is now almost fully recurring with a share of 92% at the end of 2025. And we are already well advanced in our transition to subscription and SaaS with the vast majority, 72% now coming from revenues in the segment of subscription and SaaS.

Looking at the longer-term development, the chart clearly shows the speed and the scale of our progress in building up a fully recurring revenue base in our business model. Over the past 4 years, subscription and SaaS revenues have increased almost sevenfold, representing a CAGR of around 6%. And as you can see on the right-hand side, this strong development continued also in the fourth quarter in 2025 with a recurring revenue growth of 22.9% and an increase in subscription and SaaS revenues of even 37.2% on a constant currency basis.

So as expected and in line with our strategic focus, the more volatile license revenues declined [ 3% ] year-on-year at constant currency and underlining our aspired continued shift from perpetual licenses to subscription models well.

To conclude our review of the results of the financial year 2025, let us have a joint look at a more comprehensive overview of our key P&L and cash flow items on Page #11.

We have already addressed our main KPIs such as revenue growth and EBITDA margin in detail. And while revenue growth in the first half year of the year benefited not only [indiscernible] but also from M&A contribution as well as temporary positive effects related to the successful completion of Bluebeam subscription transition, our OpEx development and profitability were also impacted by some special effects. These included, for example, the acquisition of GoCanvas as well as the insolvency of a service and payment provider, as already stated. As a

result, the full year development of certain cost lines does not fully reflect the underlying run rate going forward. Let's take, for example, here, the largest component of our overall cost base, which is personnel cost. Here, we saw a reported growth of 14.6% year-on-year for the entire financial year 2025, and that might appear elevated at the first glance. However, this was mainly driven by a strong increase of around 24% in the first half of the year, driven by the addition of more than 300 GoCanvas employees who we were very happy to welcome to our group.

In the second half of the year, personnel cost growth normalized to around 6% and reflecting further improvements in the underlying resource efficiency. A similar pattern can also be seen in other operating income and expenses, which increased by 24.9% for the full year. This was also primarily driven by a significantly higher increase in the first half of the year due to the impact of the unexpected insolvency of the service and payment provider leading to a one-off cost impact.

Despite these effects, on a comparable basis, excluding amortization charges mainly related to the GoCanvas acquisitions, earnings per share before PPA increased by 23.5% to EUR 2.15, so very well in line with our EBITDA growth. Our underlying free cash flow generation in '25 was again very strong with a cash conversion of almost 109% and was additionally supported by a favorable tax cash flow impact following the changes in the U.S. tax regime. However, even when we exclude this positive effect in the U.S., cash conversion remains above 100%, and this is a strong level we also expect going forward.

It is therefore fair to say, I believe, that the development of our free cash flow before M&A, which increased by 32.7% year-on-year, once again underlines the high quality of our earnings well.

Finally, due to our strong operating performance, we again further improved the quality of our balance sheet with an equity ratio of 45.6% and a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio below 1x. So all in, Strong financials delivering a strong and successful record-breaking year. And with that, I'll hand it back to you, Yves.

Thank you. Louise has provided a very good overview of the underlying drivers that have enabled us to achieve or even exceed all of our targets for the financial year 2025. It's also clear that our targets for 2026 will be ambitious in light of our very strong performance last year and the resulting substantially higher comparison base.

So before we come to the end of our presentation with our outlook for the financial year 2026, let me briefly highlight on the following slide why we remain very confident in our ability to reach our goals for 2026 and beyond.

In short, is the strength of our underlying operational business combined with our clear strategic direction and strong innovation power, most importantly, our clear focus on artificial intelligence, which is embedded across all of our strategic priorities.

Let me briefly walk you through our different key strategic priorities shown on Slide #13, which builds the foundation for our future growth, while at the same time, illustrating how we are becoming a vertical AI leader in ACO.

Starting with innovation. Artificial intelligence is an important driver of innovation across the entire Nemetschek Group. As already mentioned earlier in the presentation, Nemetschek benefits from a unique combination of deep domain expertise, long-standing customer trusted relationships, strong network effect and access to large industry data sets. This unique position enables us to develop AI-driven solutions that deliver tangible value to our customers.

At the same time, we have significantly increased our investment in AI over the past years to further accelerate innovation across our portfolio while ensuring that all developments remain grounded in trustworthy principles that place the human, our customers or fans at the center.

Another important cornerstone of our strategy is to accelerate our AI road map by targeted M&A and venture investments. With acquisitions such as Famous AI, we further strengthened our technological capabilities and complement our innovation portfolio with leading AI expertise.

Our next key priority remains continued transformation of our business model towards subscription and SaaS, further on as a vertical AI leader, which continue to be a major driver behind the strong growth in recurring revenues that we have seen across the group. We are further strengthening our go-to-market approach, particularly by expanding our international presence and unlocking additional growth opportunities in high potential region such as India in the Middle East.

Another important pillar is our group-wide cloud platform and infrastructure. Here, we are building a comprehensive ecosystem by eliminating information silos and enabling connected end-to-end workflows. It also creates the technological backbone for scalable AI capabilities across our portfolio and helps us to meet the increasing demand for AI-driven solutions.

And finally, in business enablement, we continue to enhance operational excellence across the Nemetschek Group. Artificial intelligence also plays an increasing role internally, for example, in software development, service and support. And we are, therefore, increasingly leveraging AI to further enhance efficiency and harmonize processes for the group.

Taken together, these strategic priorities provide the foundation for continued innovation, strong growth and long-term value creation.

Coming to the end of our presentation on Slide #14, building on a very successful financial year 2025, which partly benefited from M&A contribution as well as temporary positive effects related to the successful completion of the subscription transition of Bluebeam, we aim to continue delivering attractive mid-teens organic growth in the coming years while further advancing our strategic priorities, most importantly, our transformation into a vertical AI leader in the industries we serve.

Looking ahead to the financial year 2026, this means that from today's perspective, the Executive Board expects a currency adjusted revenue growth for the Nemetschek Group in a range between plus 14% and plus 15%. At the same time, the EBITDA margin for the Nemetschek Group is expected to expand and be between 32% and 33%.

Based on our strong fundamentals, we expect to continue our strong attractive growth trajectory with high profitability going forward, even despite a high comparison base as well as the ongoing subscription and SaaS transition of our business model.

Please keep in mind, these forecasts are based on the assumption that the global economy and industry-specific conditions will not deteriorate significantly during the current financial year. In addition, it is expected that the war in the Middle East will not escalate further or persist for a prolonged period.

And with that, I would like to thank you for your attention. We are now happy to take your questions. Operator, please back to you.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question comes from Gerard Christholm from UBS.

It's Gerard on for Michael Briest at UBS. Our first one is on the contract assets and the multiyear deals. In 2025, there was an increase of about $30 million to the contract assets. Should we think about that as a reasonable proxy for the volume of new multiyear contracts signed during the year? And as we move through 2026, do you expect contract assets to continue rising at a similar pace? Or should we expect them to stabilize or even decline as existing multiyear deals unwind and then also billing patterns normalize?

Second quick one, just on capital allocation. Famous AI was, I guess, implied around 40x sales. How should investors think about that multiple in terms of the strategic value growth optionality that, that asset provides and then also comparable companies? And then what's the pipeline for kind of similar tuck-in or platform expanding acquisitions going forward?

Let me take first your second question on the capital allocation. So it is clear that we are scouting many, many type of M&A targets. These are either small AI start-ups, either some of them we are invested in, but a lot of them we are not yet invested in, and they are currently planning potential exits.

It's true that the multiples of such AI companies are much higher than the traditional software or vertical software companies. Nevertheless, if you take the example, for example, of our latest M&A on AI, which was Famous AI, the multiple was around 15x forward ARR, which is still reasonable. And then at the end of the day, we are also talking about start-ups, which have not been able yet to scale too much. And therefore, we are talking about very, very low revenue and in some cases, almost no revenue. So here, when we are looking at AI start-ups, we are mainly looking at buy versus make, accelerating our AI road map and therefore, it is more a technology acquisition than necessarily buying a lot of revenue. Therefore, the valuation maybe sometimes higher multiple, but the full amount of U.S. dollar or euro is still reasonable versus our capabilities of our M&A power.

Of course, we are also looking at bigger M&A activities, similar to GoCanvas size or even much bigger. And here, it is not about necessary AI, but making sure that we are able to complement our overall offerings, therefore, increasing even more our domain expertise in some specific segments, for example, in AEC, also having more better trusted relationship with customers. And of course, at the end of the day, having more access to very strong data intelligence industry solutions. And here, of course, when you look at more traditional software companies, they are more in the valuation multiple range as Nemetschek or even below.

Okay. Let me then answer the question on the contract assets. So the contract assets, as you know, they represent the unpaid portion of the revenue that we have recognized in relation to the multiyear contracts. So it's not necessarily a one-to-one combination, 1:1 translation of the additional revenues from multiyear contracts in 2025. But it's a very broad proxy, it goes in that direction, as you're saying.

And so you stated the EUR 29 million. This is the increase in 2025. You should note though that we -- when we prepare the 2025 financials, also decided to specify the presentation of contract assets a little bit. And that's why there is also an increase that will not showed in 2024, approximately EUR 3 million, that should -- if you want to make it like-for-like, that should be in '24. So the increase you can say is about EUR 25 million, EUR 26 million, something like that.

And if you look at that going forward, of course, a part of that will, so to say, go away in 2025 and you add a new one. So that's why the increase in 2026, we estimate somewhere around half of the book value of this. So around the mid-teens is what you can expect for contract assets addition then in 2026. I hope that helps.

Then the next question comes from George Webb from Morgan Stanley.

Firstly, on the Build segment, as we look into 2026, how are you expecting new customer acquisition within the growth mix looking this year? And perhaps you can talk a little bit about both sides -- both the kind of important sides of that coin, so Bluebeam as well as GoCanvas?

Secondly, on media, we've seen some of those headlines around the diversification measures you're doing in terms of the end markets you can sell into, but also kind of bearing in mind those AI considerations, how confident are you that media business can accelerate and deliver high single or double-digit growth and particularly thinking beyond 2026 when that payment service provider base comp effect drops out?

And then just lastly, with regards to AI and particularly as we start to think through the Agentic tools, which have been coming out over recent months, curious as to the extent it's led you so far is maybe influencing your decision-making around future hiring plans and the operating leverage that sits in the business?

Thanks, George. So first of all, if you look at the Build segment, I mean, as you have seen, we have very, very strong momentum since few quarters, many years. and the momentum is growing, growing and growing. Of course, we have a higher comparison base now. Therefore, in terms of pure revenue growth, you can expect that in 2026, the first half and especially Q1 will be higher in terms of revenue growth for Build than the second half, where you will see kind of more normalization of the revenue growth.

Nevertheless, of course, growth is driven a lot by Bluebeam. Of course, very pleased with Go Canvas. Growth is clearly in the plus 20% revenue growth. But clearly, Bluebeam has a very, very strong potential. And this potential is, as you know, not only in North America, where we still have the majority of our customer base, but where also the penetration of Bluebeam is only at 40% to 50% with large accounts.

Then we have this long tail of subcontractors and smaller AEC firms in North America, where we have a very, very big network effect. And therefore, we see some very strong user growth in North America.

Addition to that, as you know, we have this huge potential of growth internationally, Bluebeam, where we don't have very strong competition, but where we need to educate the market about, okay, what Bluebeam is and what Bluebeam can do. It is not only a markup on PDF to do collaboration software. it is also a tool to help you on the quality output, on productivity gain, on doing quality takeoff, doing estimating, et cetera, et cetera. And therefore, great thing is that when people are using Bluebeam, there was a very quick productivity gain and very quick ROI, especially as the price is so low. We are always saying that the price of Bluebeam per year is less than the price of a coffee per day, especially depending on it's much less than the price of a coffee per day.

So clearly, the Build segment momentum is coming from new volumes, new users. Of course, new users coming from existing customers, but majority of the growth is coming from just new customers alone, especially internationally, but also in the U.S. Of course, this will be more in the U.S. SMB when you talk about new customers because all the large customers are currently Bluebeam customers. But then internationally, yes, we are doing good in Sweden, for example, we are doing okay in U.K. We are doing much better, especially the last 18 months in France and Germany, but still here, huge opportunity of growth. And then Spain, Italy, Eastern Europe, Benelux, still a lot to do. Asia, we are starting from a very, very small base. We have almost nothing there, especially just a little bit in India. Japan, no presence. Middle East, we are just starting. Africa, nothing. And of course, Australia Pacific doing very well, but where we see still a huge opportunity of growth for Bluebeam.

So yes, Bluebeam and the Build segment, we still see huge potential of volume growth for the coming years. And then, of course, and we can maybe answer that in one of your questions, which may come up. It's also how AI is going to be a tailwind also to increase our average revenue per user across the entire portfolio for Nemetschek Group, but of course, first, over time on Bluebeam with Bluebeam Max.

To answer then your question on media. So clearly, we have seen that media in Q4 was still in a recovery mode. And the growth is better as we can see already now in Q1 2026. I mean it has been much more normalized. We are expecting for the full year of 2026, Maxon to have a revenue growth of high single digit, potentially close to the around 10% revenue growth at constant currency because a big part of the revenue of Maxon is in the U.S.

But clearly, I mean, the end market of Maxon is facing a lot of issues, especially in media and entertainment since many years. And therefore, they are spending much less. And this is not a threat necessarily coming from AI yet. It is just that our customers are spending less. There is less content production, high-quality production of content, et cetera. And this is why, as you know, we decided to accelerate the diversification of Maxon and in particular, now first in AEC, where we have launched Redshift RVs for Maxon, first on Vectorworks. And by this summer, it will be also available on Autodesk Revit and then at the end of the year, also on ArchiCAD. So Maxon Redshift [ RVs ] is state-of-the-art. I mean, of course, we are saying best-in-class rendering software solution for architecture.

Then in addition to that, on the diversification front, we also announced earlier this year in January at CES in Las Vegas, some preview of our Maxon Digital Twin product, which is still under development, but Maxon Digital Twin transform CAD and 3D models into photorealistic digital products. And it's designed for today's multichannel marketing pipelines.

So if you want this digital twin is an upcoming stand-alone application, which will power a new workflow for creating and using high fidelity digital representation of real-world products, projects or watch or whatever across modern marketing and brand design pipelines.

So it is intended to help brands and marketing teams maintain visual accuracy, consistency and creative control as products moved across formats, platforms and tools from traditional design software to AI-enabled application.

In addition to that, with Maxon, we also announced, as you may have seen at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a few weeks ago, a strong partnership with Tencent Cloud HY 3D AI engine, which we are now entering into Cinema 4D. So Tencent HY 3D AI engine is a best-in-class worldwide 3D AI model, which is really trained by, of course, a lot of data coming from Tencent, especially with all the games that they have. And we are planning to launch that in the next few months. First, with an integration with Cinema 4D, then, of course, also fully integrated with the rest of the product portfolio, also with Redshift, Red Giant and of course, Zbrush.

So this is going to help us now to diversify our portfolio to really embrace and more tap AI functionality to help our creative artist customer and really use AI as a creative accelerator, but then also to tap Maxon into this high growth in AEC because if you look at the AEC rendering software, so rendering solutions for architecture, we are talking about very, very high double digit growth of the market for rendering software for architecture.

Of course, it will still represent a small piece of the total revenue of Maxon for the short term, but we strongly believe that Maxon can still continue to have higher single digit, close to 10% revenue growth for the coming years, thanks to that.

And then on the AI agentic tools, clearly, I will let also Louise comment here that we have made a lot of progress in the last few years. We are partnering, of course, with many different technology suppliers, including Microsoft. We are working with Anthropic and of course, also Google Cloud on this front to really be more efficient in software development, in customer support. And therefore, as we are somehow improving on the cost side, but then we are, of course, reinvesting these cost savings in high-growth potential, especially high potential around AI, where innovation is key and not cheap, as you know, to hire key AI talent, of course, focusing on our growth in general, especially on the go-to-market front and internationalization.

Yes. And I think the only thing I would add to that is really we already see very positive impact also across the board in our functions, really with higher productivity, et cetera, we're using AI tools. But you can see the trend is a little bit also, you would see that going forward, the number of people we are hiring will go down. So that growth will be lower. But the people that we do hire, as Yves alluded to, they have a tendency to be more expensive as we hire to say the real [indiscernible], in our area, it's all about domain competence.

Of course, domain expertise has always been the case. But also, of course, now when we look at other areas, so you need more to say the people that we hire needs to really be the higher competency as well. So you can see a shift there. But I think the positive is that we across the board and across all functions, we see nice impacts already from the AI initiative that we have launched. And that's -- I cannot really think about any function that has not been up that very nicely.

That's great. Maybe if I could just very quickly come back on the prior contract asset question, Louise. You mentioned that mid-teens maybe expected increase in '26. How much visibility do you feel you have around that? And is that what you've baked into the guidance?

So I didn't get the first part of your question?

Yes. Just on that, you said the mid-teens million potential increase in the contract asset balance in 2026. Just about the visibility and then have you baked that into the guidance.

Correct. Yes, I missed that. Yes, that's also our assumption for the plan, of course, for 2026. We cannot -- as we have said before, we cannot really say that because we are not -- it's not our attempt to say to push that kind of contract. We use that as a tool to get our maintenance customers onto subscription, and that's depending on market and really to say also.

Of course, as we move on, there are more and more markets that are more maybe less conservative about subscription moves, et cetera. So that's why it's difficult to say really this will really be the number. But we expect approximately what we have -- what I alluded to before, that's also our current best estimation for and also baked into the guidance.

Then the next question comes from Nicolas David from ODDO BHF.

I have two. On the first one, I would like to come back on the AI monetization strategy and maybe taking Bluebeam Max as a tangible example. Are you offering the AI components or features on this pricing at the pricing, which is attractive right now in order to attract more customers and increase your moat? Or are you already pricing that at what could be the midterm value of that already? And if it's the case, do you expect a meaningful impact on your top line by 2026 or maybe more 2027? And also in terms of pricing, what would be in theory, the ideal price uplift linked to those AI features?

And my second question is regarding Germany. When you look at your numbers, it looks like you had a nice improvement already in H2 in Germany. Is it linked to deployment of Bluebeam? Or do you see also an improvement in the design segment there? And what do you expect for 2026? Do you expect this recovery to firm up?

Thank you, Nicolas. So first of all, on AI monetization, so it's very depending on the brands and the strategy and the road map. But let's go with the example of Bluebeam Max as you requested.

So we launched Bluebeam Max a few weeks ago, first as planned, first for our large Bluebeam enterprise customers, mainly first in the U.S. And then by mid-end Q2, we are going to also have Bluebeam Max available for our channel partners. So today, it's only our own sales force able to sell that directly to our large enterprise customers. It's more towards the end of the year that Bluebeam Max will be available on the web store for everyone. And we are doing that in a phased approach to make sure that we have the relevant also feedback from the customers, et cetera, et cetera.

Now how we are pricing Bluebeam Max? Bluebeam Max is a purely centric AI package. So we are really saying that as an AI package on top of the current Bluebeam packages. If you are a new user and new customers and if you want to have Bluebeam Max, you will pay as an introductory price 2026, USD 590 per year per user, where if you take today the premium package of Bluebeam, excluding Blue Max, the price is around USD 440 per year per user. So it's around $150 both the current price of Bluebeam premium package. So it's an introduction price, which means that we may potentially increase this price further in the future. But of course, we want to see first the reaction of the market.

We introduced already Bluebeam Max to beta customers in end of last year and of course, in January 2. We got some very, very good feedback. So we had hundreds of tester. And the beta user feedback is very, very positive. The features are, first of all, on [ ag ] markups to prevent rework and repetitive workflows. This is really creating value for people who are doing heavy reviews and who are executing takeoffs. We have features like automated stitching. We have also integration with Claude and in the future with other AI agent via [ MCP ]. We have also connection with Revit sessions automatically connected with Bluebeam Studios. We have smart overlay AI drawings comparison. We have smart review, AI plan checks, et cetera. And all of that really is really helping to gain a lot of time and therefore, making more efficient and productive the people using Bluebeam Max.

So already Bluebeam has a strong ROI. But here with Bluebeam Max, the feedback that we received from the early users is that the ROI is even stronger. Therefore, they will see the value and therefore, they should be able to be ready to pay for it. I mean that's a big assumption.

As you know, the construction industry is highly, highly conservative. I used to say that hunting and fishing are more -- are less digitalized than construction, but now even fishing is more digitalized. That's a little bit the issue is that as it is a very conservative, highly regulated market, let's see how much and how fast the adoption of AI features will be. The good news is that positive feedback.

Are we expecting big revenue out of Bluebeam Max in 2026? No. We are forecasting that in a very, very conservative way, too. But of course, you can see that the potential could be highly significant in the future to really help us to increase our average revenue per user with Bluebeam over many, many years.

Now of course, when you look at Bloom Max road map, today, it's -- the pricing is USD 590 all-in per user per year, again, as an introduction price. As we are going to launch additional AI features, capabilities and AI use cases on Bluebeam Max, you can see that the pricing will probably evolve to be hybrid where people, yes, we need to license the tool. Then in addition, there will be more consumption-based, token-based type of pricing, which will be kind of a hybrid model. So we are not planning to sell solely our AI features on consumption. There will be always a mix, especially for the short to midterm of licensing a tool, and that's also for the design division, not only for build, plus token-based, consumption-based pricing model.

Then to answer your second question on Germany, yes, there is better momentum when you see the market and when you talk to customers. Nevertheless, we are not fully there on where we need to be in the German market. There are still a lot of issues.

Yes, there is a lot of hope that the EUR 0.5 billion investment is coming soon in the market, but we do not expect huge needle mover in 2026, hopefully, in 2027. But the good news is that there has been already in the last weeks and months, better momentum with, for example, in Germany, an increase in building permits. So that's already a good sign. Nevertheless, still a way to go to see all these euros being invested and monetized properly in the market.

And then if you look at '24 and also in 2025 in general and also what we see now in 2026, the nice growth that we have in Germany is, of course, coming from Bluebeam, where we had a lower base. So of course, the growth percentage is bigger. But then also design is helping significantly and of course, some 3 years contracts where there are some 3 years contracts in Germany, only again for Graphisoft and for Allplan, but for the rest of the design brands. And we are using also 3-year contract in Germany as it is probably also a little bit more conservative market than other markets internationally to help our existing customers to move to subscription.

And then, of course, we had last time buy our fare license for design, especially with ArchiCAD in Germany, in particular, which also helped the boost end of Q4 2025.

And the next question comes from Alice Jennings from Barclays.

So I just have a question on AI. I mean, obviously, you've spoken a lot about the opportunity of kind of becoming a leader in AI and some of the initiatives and the product portfolio, including Bluebeam Max.

But could you possibly just take a bit of a step back? And if we think about kind of the medium to long term, how do you see AI as really transforming the business and also the industry? So for example, how do you expect like your go-to-market strategy to change, but also the way that you sell the products? And then, I guess, more generally, how will the way that you kind of run the business evolve in the age of AI?

And then just a second question on the outlook. So I mean, you spoke about media expecting to grow high single digits this year. But could you break down the growth by the other divisions in '26, so design, build and manage?

Sure. So if you look at AI, many, many impacts. And as we all know, this is a huge revolution transforming the way we work, we live, we learn. And of course, this will also change our end customer markets, including in AEC.

Obviously, the pro and the cons is that the fact that it is a conservative market. And unfortunately, our market is probably moving slower than other industry in terms of AI adoption. And in particular, also because we are not really enterprise-centric type of business, but majority of the revenue is coming from small, medium-sized businesses. And if you look at our design segment, it is mainly coming from super small businesses, very small architecture firms with 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 maximum seats.

So here, the good thing is that we see that the adoption is growing for AI features with our customers. First, it started with architects. When we launched over 2 years ago, the AI visualizer, it was seen more as a gadget. But now that we're introducing more Agentic AI solution with our Nemetschek AI Assistant across our portfolio, especially first with ArchiCAD, they see that this is going to help them to really be more productive and efficient and kind of tapping the full power of, for example, ArchiCAD or Vectorworks of Allplan versus what they currently use. As you know, probably same case for you, you use a software, maybe you use 20% to 50% of the capabilities of the features, which are there. And here, thanks to the Nemetschek AI Assistant, when you prompt for specific task, it will use the full power of the tool.

And of course, it will help, for example, if you're an architect and you say, well, I just built this school now in Zurich, and I would like to take exactly the same design of this building to build this school now in Nuremberg in Bavaria. And here, instead of spending days and weeks of trying to redo your model, the Nemetschek Agentic solutions is going to help you to make sure that all the specific regulation linked to Nuremberg and Bavaria are going to be automatically done, et cetera, et cetera.

So our AI tools are here to really help them to have a completely different user experience, to have a copilot in their work to really to become a augmented architect, augmented project manager, and augmented structure engineers, et cetera. But for this customer base, what is highly, highly important is reliability of the output that they get from these AI tools. So the trust factor is huge.

And the good thing is that our user base, which are defining themselves as fans, they trust the product because they are using ArchiCAD or [ Frilo ] or [ SIA ] or Allplan for many, many years. And if you are structure engineers using [ SIA ] and [ Frilo ], you cannot accept that it's going to be only 99% reliable. You need 100% accuracy. especially in structure engineer engineering, et cetera. So here, we have this trust approach, which is really a network effect, which is probably differentiating ourselves via a newcomer, where they will not necessarily trust what is coming out from the tool, where here is our tools and solutions that they are using many hours per day on a very regular basis, and they are fans of these tools.

Of course, what we would like to see as a potential disruption in the overall market is to see instead of having just short term as we do agentic AI functionality to help our customers to be more efficient and productive using our tools in a segmented approach, which is what construction life cycle is today, is to see we can look at construction in a more systemic approach. which today doesn't exist really because it is not systemic. It is highly fragmented. It's mainly silos.

And here, there are probably some segments in construction, if you look at simple residential buildings, for example, where potentially we can have a more systemic AI flywheel type of solutions to streamline even much more the workflow between the different segments in this workflow and therefore, even accelerate further what AI capabilities can be and therefore, reduce time to market, reduce costs and therefore, be more efficient, productive and efficient. So of course, this is more I wish and something that we are working more on Horizon 2 or 3. But Horizon 1 is clearly to use all Agentic AI capabilities and power to help all different segment type of customers across the life cycle to be more productive and efficient and sustainable.

On our side, and as any companies in the world, AI is going to change fundamentally how we are organized. Target operating models will change over time. And as we are really focusing on being more AI first, of course, as Louise also explained, yes, you may see that over time, we're not going to increase net year-over-year -- too much our headcount. Of course, we will still. But we will have more and more agents working across all our different functions. It is how we are going to manage properly this hybrid workforce between human and agents and therefore, potentially also changing more and more our target operating model over time.

Of course, this is not something that is going to happen too quickly, but we see already some fundamental improvement and changes, especially in software development, in customer support on the go-to-market side, of course, if you look at digital lead generation, what Agentic AI can help. If you look at how now also our sales teams and go-to-market teams are using currently available AI solutions for sales, et cetera, it is really helping them significantly to be more efficient and productive. So we see definitely a productivity gain and efficiency gain and hopefully, a top line increase, thanks for using internally more AI functions.

More importantly, I think where AI is really changing the way we work short term now is in product management. So a product manager who is the CEO, General Manager of their product line, now they can really much faster prototype, new ideas in a few hours, in a few days, maximum with very, very small team. We're not talking about doing an MVP in 1 year or a few months, just with a handful of person, you can already do a lot of things in less than a week or even sometime in just a few hours. So this is really a huge change, huge change on how we are working. And the overall work of product management, especially in vertical AI companies such as what we are becoming is a very fascinating new role compared to what it used to be because now don't only define, but you can do yourself type of prototyping with a very, very small team. So very exciting times.

I think, Alice, you had a second question on the outlook for our other segments as well. So let me just briefly touch upon that.

And so we alluded to media already. So if I go into design and bear in mind that design is still impacted by the very successful subscription transformation in 2026 as well. The transition to a fully recurring revenue model, subscription-based model of Design segment is expected to be seen at the end of 2027. So 2026 is still continuing there. So that's, of course, how to reach the growth rates. But we still expect despite this effect we still expect a high single-digit or low double-digit percentage growth for the Design segment, driven by many of the reasons we just touched upon.

For the Build segment, of course, the very strong momentum will continue. We alluded to before what the additional extraordinary effects were in terms of growth rates, relative growth rates in 2025 that we will not feel in 2026. So that's a normalized level at a very high level that we see in 2026. And that's why we expect the Build segment as a total to be -- the currency adjusted revenue growth to be somewhere in the low 20s, low 20s percentage range. and which is, of course, at a much higher absolute level, right? So what Yves alluded to at the beginning as well.

And then last but not least, we see this positive effect in managed that we already saw in the Q4 in the fourth quarter, as we already alluded to that the measures that we are taking into the segments are really coming through. So that's why we expect a growth year-on-year in the low double-digit percentage range in this segment.

Then the next question comes from Nay Soe Naing from Berenberg.

I've got two questions, please. The first one is on the Bluebeam Max introductory pricing at EUR 590 on your base tier at EUR 440. That sounds like a very nice price uplift. And obviously, this is only introductory of the price. So the potential price uplift could be even more. So I was wondering how much of growth from pricing contribution should we expect for this year and beyond?

And my second question is maybe one for Louise. We've spoken about the benefits of the multiyear agreements and design in '25. It sounds like there's more of these benefits to come in '26. So do these benefits at some point turn into growth headwinds? And if so, when that might be the case?

Thank you. So on Bluebeam Max pricing, as I said, yes, it's introduction price EUR 590. Are we going to increase that significantly or not? We cannot answer this question yet. We need to see the reaction from the market, the adoption. It will probably increase, but it could be only slightly. We don't know yet.

So definitely, for 2026, you should not see any important price uplift impact coming from that. It will be very, very minimal. And for 2027, we will see. So I think it's too early to say.

In general, I mean, this is clearly a strong way, as you know, to increase our average revenue per user. Then in addition to that, as you also know, we not talking about AI with Bluebeam, we have a large legacy user base with 4 million users now. Not all are paid users because some of them, they used to be perpetual license customer who were paying subscription and then they stop subscription. But still, we have this big user base of customers. And if we are able now to upsell to some of them at the Bluebeam Max solution rate.

But in addition to that, we could also, in the future, price increase, which we are not planning to. And it is not the strategy. So we are not planning to increase the current pricing over the current customer of Bluebeam. We will only start looking at that if we see that we have a huge impact on volume growth of new users and new customers over time. That will be the lever. But for the time being, the average revenue per user increase will only come from new functionalities such as Bluebeam Max, but potentially others to come in the road map in the next few quarters.

And then let me take the question regarding the multiyear contracts. Yes, you're right. We continue in 2026 for Graphisoft and Allplan. And we don't see -- however, we see approximately the same volume as I alluded to before. So we don't see any additional tailwind multiyear contracts in 2026.

And looking ahead, of course, at some point of time, that effect will sweat out, so to say, that's clear. But you will have to see also that already now, we have also balanced the effect of less perpetual licenses in the last year. So that's the balancing. And you also see we are growing -- a strongly growing segment in the Design division also. This is just a small part, the multiyear contracts is impacting the revenues of the Design division. So we are also growing strongly also in our originating business. And that's, of course, until 2027 and beyond where you will see the comparable effects where these 3-year contracts, so to say, disappear in that respect, that will then balancing out.

So we don't expect that, that will be, so to say, at some point of time, a strong and severe hit out of that. But of course, you have counterbalancing effects also in the next couple of years. The Design division, as I said, is planning the design -- the transition to subscription to end with the end of 2027, we should be through with that transition.

And the next question comes from Joe George from JPMorgan.

I have two, please. Firstly, just on design organic growth of 6.5% in Q4. Can you just confirm what organic growth was excluding the contribution from multiyear deals? And then can you also please confirm if there were any other tailwinds to growth during the period, for example, from final time license sales in any of the brands?

And then second question is just on the phasing of Bluebeam and build growth for 2026. You mentioned an expectation for stronger growth in H1 versus H2. But are there any fundamental reasons that growth would be stronger in H1 versus H2, given that we're already now at quite a mature point in the subscription transition, and there doesn't seem to be a major difference in the organic growth comparables between H1 and H2. So I guess, does the guidance just reflect law of large numbers and some conservatism? Or is there a fundamental reason for slower growth in H2 versus H1?

Thank you. So maybe on the phasing for 2026 first, clearly, here, there is phasing. If you look at design, the phasing is a main fact that we have a lot of renewals coming end of the year. When you have a maintenance customer who were used to pay perpetual license and then they are an SSA, a lot of them do their renewals in Q4. Therefore, we have a very strong Q4.

And therefore, as it is a Q4 where we are planning to also migrate a lot of this now existing maintenance customer to subscription, this will have a significant impact on the revenue contribution. So that's mainly the main factor on design.

Then of course, in design, you have some volatility and it is very cyclic quarter-over-quarter. Sometimes in case of, yes, some of these multiyear deals that we used to have in the past. So you may have in 1 quarter or 1 month a lower comparable or higher comparable, et cetera. So of course, this will normalize in the future. But that's the main reason for the Design, the fact that design in H1 growth will be lower than in H2.

Then if you look at Build, so Build is slightly lower growth in H2. It's not coming from the fact that the business is going weaker because we still see huge momentum also planning forecasted for Q3 and Q4. But we have a large number and it's getting harder and harder to grow, of course, 30% on a strongly increasing revenue base. So it's just the fact that we have a bigger base and therefore, the percentage -- the number of users or new user growth might be still the same, but it's just that the base is higher, and therefore, the percentage growth will go lower over time. So that's the main driver.

And of course, if you go back to Design, we had also last year stronger perpetual license for some quarters, especially when we had end of sale of some products, also had some peaks in some quarters in 2025. That's also impacting the seasonality of the growth for Design in 2026.

Yes. I think to end that with the Design organic growth, as you said, it's all organic growth. But as I say, taking out the growth impact of the multiyear contracts for design in Q4, that will be approximately slightly south of 4 percentage points out of the 6.5% that you mentioned would come -- is the contribution from that. But bear in mind the very, very high comparables that we had out of the Q4 2024 for design. That's why with these numbers, Design are still ahead of the original forecast for Q4. So the organic to see the underlying growth was still stronger, but you can calculate and see slightly south of 4 percentage points.

And the next question comes from Victor Cheng from Bank of America.

Congrats on the solid quarter. I know you touched upon Bluebeam Max a couple of times now. But if we can double tap on it, can you give us some more color on with the beta testing and whatnot, I think anyone with an active license can try out the beta feature. You talked about hundreds of testers. I guess I was somewhat expecting a bit more given maybe closer to 1 million of active users with Bluebeam. And it seems like online, they're suggesting that there's some -- to some extent, a delay or another round of beta testing.

And then maybe second question is more kind of any update. Can you provide us some color on some of the momentum Q1 to date? I think you've mentioned media entertainment already improving, but any color as well for other segments, please?

Sure. Victor. So to be very clear, on Bluebeam Max, it is exactly as planned. There are absolutely no delays. And we have already paid customers. It's not only beta. So as I said, we are doing that in a phased approach, and that was the plan. So the plan was to first launch Bluebeam Max commercially to large enterprise customers and to only have our sales direct team selling and pitching Bluebeam Max to these large existing enterprise customers, especially in the U.S. to start with. And this started already last month, and we have already some paid customers.

The beta tester, it is more -- it was a case by case. Now of course, you can go online and try it, et cetera. But as you will see, is not so much marketing around Bluebeam Max on Bluebeam website. We are very cautious because, again, on channel, we will only have resellers being authorized and not all at the same time to sell Bluebeam Max more in May, June time frame. And then it will be only available on the web store more towards the end of the year. And why we are doing that is that because we really want to make sure that we have clear feedback and we have a measured approach on how we sell Bluebeam Max.

So Bluebeam Max is ready and not only ready, but it's already -- we are already generating revenue out of it. Of course, small amounts because it's only for some large enterprise customers. But still, we have around 2,000 of enterprise and strategic accounts that we are starting now to -- since a few weeks now to pitch a little bit more directly with our direct team, Bluebeam Max. So I hope this is answering the question.

Yes. And I think just to link that, that's very much in the normal Bluebeam approach that you will see. You saw that when we transided to subscription as well. We spend a lot of time together with our customer to make sure that we take feedback, implement that, et cetera. We have a huge user base. And you know that Bluebeam is adding so much value, and that's always top of mind. And that's why this approach is very much alike other approaches we have been taking as well.

And just to clarify on the beta, as you say, the beta, when we had the beta testing that was before now we have the first paying customers now since end of February. But for that beta that was really selected signed up beta customers when we talk about the beta customers. So it was not anybody testing. It was, let's say, a select after Bluebeam unbound where we have, so to say, signed up beta customers that did all the testing for the -- in the first batch to say. So that's maybe where the different terminologies come from.

And then on the second question regarding Q1. So of course, Q1 to date, we cannot comment too much on it. You should expect a good momentum still as we had also in Q4. We do not see any change in the end market dynamic. Europe is not going much, much better than before. Of course, we don't know what will happen in the Middle East. Middle East represents only a small piece, of course, very, very small piece of the total revenue of the Nemetschek Group. We only started really to be present, as you know, directly with our local presence in May of 2025 with the launch of Nemetschek Middle East in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

But as long as this war in the Middle East is not going to take forever, hopefully, and that the overall economical situation in the world is stable, we do not expect a big drama for the next few weeks before the end of this quarter, before the end of this month. So you should expect us to have a solid quarter again for 2026.

Of course, again, there is volatility, especially in design, where the quarters, Q1 especially will be lower than for design growth than for H2.

Then the next question comes from Balajee Tirupati from Citi.

Two from my side, if I may. First one, I appreciate Nemetschek vision of becoming a vertical AI leader. Towards that, how could you -- towards that, could you share your view on how important is integrated platform approach versus interoperability and open ecosystem?

And then second question is on cash flow. Nemetschek's cash conversion has consistently improved. And even adjusting for one-off effects in 2025, the conversion does appear to be ahead of 100% for both 2024 and 2025. And given this increased conversion has happened when multiyear deals have been accretive to revenues, it appears even more impressive. So as an analyst community, how should we think about conversion going forward? And is 100% or more than 100% cash conversion new structural normal for Nemetschek?

Yes. I can start with the cash conversion. And that, as you say, there are always in each -- I mean, you know how it is with cash flow, you always have some extraordinary effect, et cetera. But I think you're reading that. And as I alluded to before, that we expect our cash conversion to be at or above 100% also going forward. That is in line with our expectation and also our planning. And that is, of course, driven by the recurring revenue models, right?

So it's a little bit -- is a slight front load of cash for the revenues due to the, to say, over time recognition of revenue. So you could say that when we are absolutely done with the transition to subscription when we are on a fully subscription-based model, then you could see that we say that balances out a bit. But you should not forget that we are a strongly growing business.

And that's why we expect, so to say, in the next years, and let's say that's not only in 2026 and 2027, but to say longer term, we expect a cash conversion at or above 100%, not necessarily the 109%. As I said, there can always be a special effect, but this is, say, in this range is something that you should be able to calculate with.

And on the vertical AI front, so again, so we have two approach. So we have this brand-centric approach where we integrate Agentic solution on top of our tools. And we have also this platform approach. So as you know, we are building this AI-first open multi-cloud layer across all our brands, which is centered on a group-wide AI assistant with also our horizontal collaborative data intelligence platform, which we are going to talk about in the next few months, which is going to drive this life cycle, building life cycle intelligence from design to operation. And we are clearly doubling down on our -- also on our foundation model, especially our data foundation model and bending the Nemetschek Assistant as an Agentic AI layer across all our portfolio from design to build.

If you look at the Nemetschek AI platform strategy, so we are really focusing on a common AI layer and an AI assistant rolled out across all our flagship brands like ArchiCAD and Allplan, et cetera, and which is going to give user a consistent agent-based experience and cross-brand workflow. And it's also offering an open horizontal solutions, which is going to unify [ Beam ], [ IWMS ], but also third-party data coming from IoT operation data, which is going to enable analytics, simulation and AI-driven decision across the building life cycle.

So a third pillar is clearly our partnership also with large technology players such as Google Cloud but others to really industrialize these AI-first capabilities and run also a multi-cloud environment and support global scale and sustainability goals.

Today's last question comes from [ Maximilian Pascode from Alfa Value ].

I have only one especially on the Build segment and the Bluebeam and GoCanvas synergy. I would like to know if it's possible to have figures between the synergies between the two brands, if we have some cross-selling in these brands?

So as you might recall, Maximilian, when we acquired GoCanvas, this was a very strong synergetic case, and we get these synergies also by really doing things together. We said from the beginning, we'll not continue to GoCanvas, so to say, stand-alone because it's very much about bringing this together and where the synergy really lands. If it lands, if you may, then on the original Bluebeam side or on the GoCanvas side, we don't really care because for us, it's one segment, and it's interoperable way of seeing those synergies and generating those synergies. It's difficult really to place numbers, and that's what we have said.

But I think what I can allude to is that we have different categories of synergies that we had really targeted. And of course, we are razor sharp in ensuring that those are also coming through. And we really see that, that is happening. So we see good progress there, both be it that we use Bluebeam's channel partners, so to say, to use for Go Canvas sales. That's one thing, but also the white labeling of Go Canvas products into Bluebeam, also, of course, to access each other's customer base through upselling expansion and the like.

And also -- and that's also synergy to use our international network also for the expansion, of course, of GoCanvas, something that they would have had a lot of -- needed a lot of investment into build up by themselves.

So all in, we can see that this is going well in line with our plans as we have put it in the integration scenario. And that's why we also see a very positive growth of the whole Build segment as well. So we are very, very pleased with seeing the -- that it's difficult really to say this is exactly the amount of synergy coming from that or that. But we are -- as I said, we are very well aligned, very well in line with our assumptions as we had it when we did the acquisition.

And you can also see that also the first products that we have now really combined where you combine and say with single sign-on between, et cetera. So I think all that is really what we said when we acquired the company, and we see that come through, and we're really happy to see that such a good acquisition into our books.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Stefanie Zimmermann for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. Thanks, everyone, for attending. We are looking forward to catching up with you next quarter. It is just around the corner. If you have any further follow-up questions, so please do not hesitate to contact Patrick or myself. So let's conclude our call for today. Thanks again for joining.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.

Hello, everyone, and a warm welcome. Thanks for joining our earnings call today to discuss the results for the third quarter and the first nine months 2025 with us.

With me today are our CEO, Yves Padrines; and our CFO, Louise Ofverstrom. Today's conference call is being recorded. A replay of the call will be available at our website after the call. Additionally, you will find the quarterly report, the presentation and the press release on our Investor Relations website as well.

But now let's get started. So I would like to turn over to our CEO, Yves. So go ahead.

Thank you, Stefanie. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Q3 and nine months 2025 earnings call. As usual, we have prepared a short slide deck that our Chief Financial Officer, Louise Ofverstrom and I will briefly walk you through so that we have sufficient time for your questions afterwards.

As usual, I would like to begin the presentation with our key messages on Page #3. Q3 2025 was another very successful quarter for our company. This success once again highlights the resilience and strength of our business model and strategy. Growth remained very strong, mainly driven by our two largest segments, Design and Build. The Build segment continued with its extremely strong development in the third quarter, even despite the expected moderation of growth due to the fading temporary transition effect of the subscription transition of Bluebeam and the higher associated comparison base. The Design segment also delivered another very good quarter. In addition to a healthy underlying demand, the segment continued to benefit from very strong momentum in its subscription transition, including an additional tailwind from multiyear contracts. As we communicated previously, these contracts are used strategically and only temporary to accelerate the transition of existing maintenance customers to a subscription-based model, mainly at our Graphisoft brand.

Reflecting our performance over the first nine months of the year, we are proud of what we have achieved. Main growth driver was once again the recurring portion of our business, in particular, the very strong increase in subscription and SaaS revenues, which is clearly reflected across all our key performance indicators.

When looking at the development of our EBITDA margin, it's important to keep in mind that the profitability in the first half of the year was impacted by an extraordinary nonoperating effect in the low teens million euro range, resulting from the unexpected insolvency of a service and payment provider. The foundation for this strong operational performance is the continued progress we have made across our key strategic focus areas, whether that is in agentic AI, the successful transition to subscription and SaaS or the ongoing internationalization of our business. These investments are not only paying off already today, they are also making sure the Nemetschek Group is able to show a high and profitable growth in the future.

Lastly, as a result of the very strong development in the first 9 months, we fully confirm our already increased guidance and outlook for the financial year 2025.

On Page #4, you see how this key message translates into the developments of our most important key financial indicators. In a nutshell, we continued the great momentum from the first half of the year also into the third quarter. The result and in line with our key strategic priority, the transition to a subscription and SaaS-centric business model, our reported annual recurring revenue recorded an increase of plus 22%. If we adjust for the strong FX headwind we had in the third quarter, mainly steamed from the weaker U.S. dollar, our ARR even increased by plus 26.4%. Thanks to this substantial growth in our recurring revenue base, we were able to strongly increase our revenue in Q3 by plus 15.8% on a reported basis and even by plus 20% on an FX-adjusted basis. We also delivered no promise increase in profitability, plus 25% on a reported at plus 34% on an FX-adjusted basis.

The EBITDA growth clearly outpaced our revenue growth in the third quarter. The corresponding EBITDA margin reached a high 32.5% despite the ongoing transition to subscription and SaaS model in the Design segment. Last but not least, our earnings per share for the quarter increased by a very strong plus 40.7% despite the acquisition-related effects, GoCanvas.

Coming to Page #5. Before I hand over to Louise, who will provide a deeper dive into our financial results, I would like to take a moment to address what is currently one of, if not the most important topic for us. I'm, of course, talking about the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence. Let me state is very clearly upfront. At the Nemetschek Group, we are deeply convinced that AI represents a tremendous opportunity for us as a vertical software company that is deeply embedded in the processes and workflows of our customers. And we have, as you know, over seven million users of our different portfolio of products across the globe. It's mainly data. Of course, artificial intelligence also plays a key role in optimizing our internal operations. For example, in software development, services and support. However, today, I want to focus on the three main levers through which we are continuously enhancing and expanding our product portfolio with AI-driven functionality to capture this huge opportunity.

Starting with our R&D and product development activities in-house. So Nemetschek Group has been working with and developing AI technologies for several years already. However, over the past year, we have clearly doubled down and significantly increased our investment in AI to further accelerate our pace of innovation. Our deep domain expertise and close customer relationship enable us to develop cutting-edge AI products and features. At the same time, it is equally important to us that all AI activities are grounded in ethical and trustworthy principles that place the human or customers or fans at the center. And we are here to help them to become an augmented architect, an augmented engineer and augmented program managers.

As a result, we have already introduced several truly value-adding AI features across all our segments over the past quarters. In our Design segment, for example, we launched new features such as the AI visualizer and our groundbreaking agentic Nemetschek AI assistant, one of the first of its kind in our industry. And also across all other segments, we are making strong progress. For example, in the Build segment, recently announced Bluebeam Max, Unbound, where we had over 1,200 Bluebeam fans in Washington, D.C. and Bluebeam Max is combining the AI developments from Bluebeam with the innovative technology of our latest acquisition, Firmus AI. Integration of Firmus agentic AI-based platform into Bluebeam's PDF workflows enables early risk detection during preconstruction design reviews, increasing efficiency and helping to minimize costly work.

In addition to our strong internal R&D capabilities, we are also accelerating our AI road map through targeted M&A and venture investments. The already mentioned Firmus AI acquisition, along with Manufacton are strong examples of how we are using technology-driven M&A to further strengthen our position in AI-driven innovation and to complement our portfolio with leading-edge capabilities.

Our venture approach, we are also investing in highly innovative and potentially disruptive start-ups, for example, Handoff, Reconstruct, or Document Crunch and many more, as you know. These investments give us early access to emerging technologies and also help foster and broader innovation ecosystem around the Nemetschek Group.

Our ambitious AI road map is further strengthened with strategic partnerships, both on the commercial and also the academic side. On the commercial side, for example, we are partnering with Google Cloud to further enhance Nemetschek's position as an AI-first industry leader and to create a strong platform for continued market expansion. On the academic side, we have already been collaborating for many years with the Georg Nemetschek Institute for Artificial Intelligence for the Built World at the Technical University of Munich, TUM. We are very pleased that we announced recently in addition, we have signed strong partnership with prestigious universities such as Stanford University in the U.S. and also with NTU in Singapore.

All of these partnerships is to jointly advance R&D and innovation in the field of AI and to strengthen knowledge transfer between research and practice, thereby also helping to define international standards for our industry.

You see a lot has already happened, and this is just the beginning. We will continue to use all available levers to position the Nemetschek Group to benefit maximally from this major opportunity.

And with that, I will now hand it over to Louise.

Thank you, and a warm welcome to our earnings call for the third quarter as well as for the first nine months of the financial year 2025 from my side as well.

Yves has already briefly touched on some of our key financial figures. I would therefore now like to look in more detail at the most important financial aspects of our Q3 and nine months results as well as at the underlying drivers.

As usual, we will begin with an overview of the key financial highlights of the first nine months of our financial year 2025 on Page #7. And I would really like to underline Yves's assessment that we had a very successful first three quarters of this year with continued strong and profitable growth. And this is especially encouraging and mentionable given our ongoing transition to a subscription and SaaS-centric business model in the Design segment and the associated short-term accounting burden on our financial results of this during the transition.

So let me start with our accumulated revenue for the period from January to September, which grew by 22.9% on reported and even 25% on an FX-adjusted basis to EUR 866 million. And apart from the inorganic contribution from GoCanvas acquisition in the first half of the year, the recurring part of our business once again proved to be the main growth driver. And this clearly demonstrates the strong progress we are making in executing our strategic road map towards a subscription and SaaS-based business model. And consequently, the revenues in this category increased by an impressive 61.3% to EUR 614.7 million. And our reported EBITDA increased by 28.4% to EUR 264.3 million, and that is corresponding to a reported EBITDA margin of 30.5%.

And please allow me to emphasize here that if we adjust for the extraordinary nonoperating effect due to the unexpected insolvency of a payment and service provider from the first half of the year, the underlying profitability would have been at a high 31.8%. On the right-hand side of this slide, you can also see our strong cash generation with a high cash generation up 111% as well as the continued very high quality of our balance sheet.

If we turn to the next slide, Page #8, you'll find an overview of the development of our four segments in the first nine months of 2025. Let me start with our Design segment, which primarily serves architectural and engineering customers throughout the globe. In Q3, the segment continues its strong growth momentum from the first half of the year. This is driven by a very strong increase in the segment subscription and SaaS revenues due to the continued successful ramp-up of the subscription transition at our Graphisoft brand. And in addition to this, growth was also partly supported by three-year contracts, although at a slightly lower level compared to recent quarters. And these contracts are being used strategically and only temporary to accelerate the migration of existing maintenance customer to a subscription-based model, mainly at the Graphisoft brand.

For the first nine months of the year, revenues accumulated to EUR 389.3 million, a plus of 13.1% year-on-year. And the reported EBITDA margin of 27.5% remained stable year-over-year despite the associated short-term accounting-related dampening effects of the subscription transition and the extraordinary nonoperating effect from the insolvency of the service and payment provider in the first quarter. When adjusting for the extraordinary service and payment provider effect only, the underlying EBITDA margin would have been above the prior year level despite the ongoing transition to subscription.

So let's continue with the development of our Build segment, which once again delivered a stellar performance in the third quarter. This was driven by sustained strong customer demand, particularly at Bluebeam. And in addition to this, GoCanvas, which has now been fully consolidated into our Build segment since Q3 2024, continued to deliver as planned. And as expected, we saw slight moderation in growth, reflecting the fading temporary elevated effect after Bluebeam's successful subscription transition and the resulting higher comparison base.

So after the first nine months of the year, reported growth stands at 47.2%. And adjusting for the quite strong FX headwind in the third quarter that stems from the weaker U.S. dollar, growth even reached 51.1% on a constant currency basis. The EBITDA margin on the reported level came in at a strong 35.7%. This is an increase of around 350 basis points year-on-year. And despite the dilutive effect of the GoCanvas acquisition as well as our continued investments to support the future growth of this highly dynamic segment, amongst other, as Yves said, the acquisition of the Firmus AI.

Let's move on to our Manage segment, which recorded only a modest growth in the first half of the year. Now we saw a clear reacceleration of growth momentum in the third quarter with a plus of 7.3%. The growth in Q3 was driven by a positive momentum in new large customer orders and is clearly an effect of the measures taken to refocus and restrengthen this segment. Year-to-date, the cumulative growth now stands at 3%. And importantly, and despite continued investments into this segment's product portfolio and future growth opportunities, the margin expanded significantly to 10.5%, up from just 7.3% in the prior year.

So, last but not least, our Media segment, which continued to be impacted by mixed market dynamics, particularly in the important U.S. market, including somewhat cautious customer spending in some areas. The segment is also still feeling the effects of the missing subscription sales in the first half of the year following the insolvency of a payment and service provider, as we alluded to earlier in this year as well. In total, revenue in the Media segment, therefore, increased only moderately by 1.3% to EUR 89.8 million during the first 9 months of the year. However, when adjusting for the special one-off effect of the service and payment provider, the revenue growth in the first nine months would have been in the mid- to higher single-digit percentage range.

And thanks to very good cost control in addition, the margin in the third quarter remained at a very high level of 37% and in line with last year. However, due to the extraordinary nonoperating effect in the first half, the reported EBITDA margin after nine months remains below the prior year level at 31.1%. And without this extraordinary nonoperating effect in the first half, the EBITDA margin would have been at the prior year level.

Let's turn to Slide 9 that comprehensively summarizes the financial results of one of our key strategic priorities, which is, of course, the transition to a subscription and SaaS-centric business model. Already alluded to the fact that our recurring revenues were once again the main growth driver in the first nine months of 2025. That is really confirming the good progress of the transition we see from a license-based model to a fully recurring, and therefore, subscription-based model. As you can see on the right-hand side, this exceptional development continued also in the third quarter with an ARR growth of 26.4% and a subscription and SaaS growth of 46.4% on a currency-adjusted basis. Therefore, and fully in line with our strategy, license revenues declined by 38% year-over-year in Q3, and that is reflecting the continued shift from perpetual licenses to subscription models. As expected, this more volatile and less predictable revenue stream now accounts only for approximately 5% of our group revenues.

But looking at the longer-term picture at the left-hand slide of the slide here, you can clearly see the speed and the scale of our progress in building up our recurring revenue base. Over the last four years, we have seen an almost sevenfold increase in subscription and SaaS revenues, representing an impressive CAGR of over 60%. And as a result, the recurring revenues now represent 92% of total revenues. And this is a new record high for the Nemetschek Group after the first nine months of the year.

To conclude our review of the results for the first nine months of 2025, we provide a more comprehensive overview as you are used to, of our key P&L and cash flow items on Page #10. And as we have already discussed during the H1 call, the effects from the GoCanvas acquisition and the insolvency of a payment and service provider were clearly visible in our reported results for the first half of this year, not only in our key KPIs such as revenue growth and the EBITDA margin, but also, of course, across the main OpEx categories.

In the third quarter, there is no longer any bad debt impact from the service and payment provider insolvency. And the effect from the GoCanvas acquisition is now starting to normalize as we have fully consolidated the GoCanvas business for a year. And that is, of course, resulting in a more comparable base. As a result, we are now seeing a clear normalization across our main OpEx categories in Q3.

Let me start with the largest component of our overall cost base, which is the personnel cost. We saw a reported year-on-year increase of 24% in this category in the first half of the year, and that was mainly driven by the GoCanvas addition and of course, smaller effects, as we alluded to also in the H1 call, such as reevaluation of stock appreciation rights, et cetera. And as announced already in our last earnings call, we began to see a normalization in the growth rate of personnel cost in the third quarter with an increase of only around 10%. So this underlying run rate despite our continued high top line growth reflects our healthy operational leverage and our consistent focus on operational excellence, even as we continue to invest strongly in strategic and organizational resources for our future strong growth.

The nonoperating effect was also the main reason behind the strong increase in other operating expenses in the first half of the year, which is clearly well above a normal level of our business. And with the growth in the mid-teens only in Q3, the growth rate came down materially versus the first half. So without the aforementioned negative payment and service provider effect and on a more comparable base in terms of additional amortization charges related to the GoCanvas acquisition as well as reduced interest cost due to our very strong deleverage after the acquisition, our earnings per share grew clearly over proportionally in the third quarter by almost 41%.

Our underlying free cash flow generation in the third quarter was again very strong and additionally supported by favorable tax cash flows resulting from changes in the U.S. tax regime that eliminated the mandatory capitalization of development expenses for tax purposes. So looking at the development over the last nine months of -- the first nine months of the year, the very strong increase of 44.5% in our free cash flow before M&A once again underlines the very high quality of our earnings.

Finally, and thanks to our very strong operating performance, Nemetschek maintains a strong balance sheet with an equity ratio of 44.1% and a net debt-to-EBITDA ratio again below 1x. This gives us the flexibility to both continue to delever quickly, but also retain significant financial headroom for future M&A and continued investments in our business and into innovative start-ups, et cetera.

And with that, I'll hand it back to you, Yves.

Thank you, Louise. To wrap up our presentation, let's turn to Page #12 and to take a look at our outlook for the financial year 2025. As a result of the very strong foundation we have laid over the last three quarters, we continue to be very confident to again achieve all our financial targets for the current financial year. We, therefore, fully confirm our financial outlook for the year 2025, which we already increased with our Q2 reporting in July. In particular, that means that from today's perspective, the Executive Board expects a currency-adjusted revenue growth for the Nemetschek Group in a range between plus 20% and plus 22% for the year 2025, including an M&A-related revenue contribution from the acquisition of GoCanvas of around 400 basis points. And we, therefore, also clearly are targeting the upper end of this range for 2025. The EBITDA margin, including the dilution effect from GoCanvas, is expected to be around 31% reflecting, among other things, the extraordinary nonoperating effect from the unexpected insolvency of a service and payment provider.

Based on our very strong fundamentals, we expect to continue our very strong path with a very attractive strong growth at a high profitability this year as well. So even despite last year high comparison base and the ongoing subscription and SaaS transition of our business model. And in the coming years, we are very confident to continue to deliver a very attractive average organic revenue growth in the mid-teens.

And with that said, I would like to thank you for your attention, and we are now ready to take your questions. So operator, please, back to you.

We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Nicolas David from ODDO BHF.

I have two. The first one is relating to the Media segment. Just trying to understand better the Q3 performance. Was it still impacted by the insolvency of your supplier which is behind us and now it's just a tough underlying market environment, which is affecting the business? And what do you see for Q4? And do you have an action plan to revise the growth of this segment? And maybe more broadly, could you consider a strategic review for this asset, including maybe a disposal as it's not really 100% core business for you?

And my second question is regarding the U.S. construction sector, construction market. As we see a deterioration of some leading indicators there, should we expect that it can affect your business, the Design segment in the U.S. in the coming quarters? Or are you still very confident?

Thank you, Nicolas. So, first of all, regarding media, clearly, yes, Q3, we had a tough of a recovery in the second half. But the growth, as I said, without the insolvency of the payment service provider would have been year-to-date more in the higher single digits.

Clearly, what we see in the market that there is an ongoing mixed market dynamic in Q3 and also the last quarters, including cautious customer spending. But what is very interesting is that the revenue that we are doing or business, which is direct with larger customers or also with channel partners, we are in a strong double-digit growth with this type of customers. We are even close to mid-teens potentially in some areas, especially outside the U.S. And where we have more issues is clearly with our tailwind of customer, which are coming from the web store.

So the revenue in Q3 is still impacted also by the missing subscription sales in the first two quarters of the year. And this will continue at least until the beginning of next year. So, with Maxon, so for media in Q4, we expect a slight recovery next quarter or this quarter. And clearly, we see more low double-digit growth next year. But we should come back to double-digit or around low double-digit growth for media next year. And we are not planning any disposal for the moment of this business.

Then your second question regarding the U.S. construction market. Well, clearly, we do not see any slowness there in the market. In fact, it is still very, very strong when you look at Q3, especially with our U.S. brands such as GoCanvas and Bluebeam, but also others. And so far in October, we do not see any deceleration for these businesses in the U.S., and there are still very good and strong growth.

All right. That's very clear. And just on the Media segment, no action plan, specifically, you just believe that you are going to recover with the market? Or do you want to put more focus on those large customers and distributors to mitigate the weaker part of the market?

So we are clearly working more internationally, and we have very, very strong growth, for example, in Asia Pacific, including in India, of course, coming from a lower base. And here, we are working mainly with distributors and channel partners internationally for Maxon. When I say internationally, so more in high-growth region, especially in Asia. We have still a very strong business with large customers, but also these larger customers are cautious, but we have a strong double-digit growth with them, as I said.

What we have done also is that we have turned our dynamic in terms of digital lead generation. We are adding more resources and more expertise in our online marketing power, et cetera. But clearly, we see that overall in the media market, the customers are very cautious, and they are very cautious, especially on spendings overall.

I think maybe just in addition, of course, we also continuously also in the Media segment, as you have seen, we have very strong products here in this segment. And of course, we are continuing to enhance our product offerings as well to the market and expanding that as well. So I think that's also what you will also see is, of course, remain very attractive to the users in the market. And that will, of course, also as part of, of course, capturing that growth. And that's also one of the reasons why Maxon is also our Media segment is growing in general also with this extraordinary effect at a higher pace than the underlying market.

And we launched, for example, some new AI features with, for example, Cinema 4D with AI search, but we are also now planning to launch in the coming weeks a new AI [indiscernible] generation. We are also planning in the coming months to launch further AI compositing capabilities, especially on scene lighting and relighting, et cetera, et cetera. So have more and more AI features coming up.

On our current product line, we're also planning to launch a new iPad version for Cinema 4D. As you know, we launched an iPad version of ZBrush over a year ago. That was in September 2024, which has been a great success. We even have more -- even now more ZBrush iPad users than desktop iPad users, so very successful. And in addition to all of that, as we mentioned already, we are going to do a commercial launch of a new rendering solution for architects based on Redshift Maxon solution, which is first deployed with Vectorworks. So that will be more towards end of Q1, early Q2 2026 when we launch it commercially. And then we are planning to have this new [indiscernible] rendering solution for architects also deployed with other ordering tools and BIM solutions, first of all, from, of course, the Nemetschek Group, such as Archicad, from Graphisoft and Allplan. We are also planning to have that deployed with Revit and Autodesk and other ordering solutions and CAD solution from third party.

The next question comes from Alice Jennings from Barclays.

I've just got a couple, if that's okay. So, just firstly, you spoke about the mid-teens growth profile in the medium term. But if we think about the multiyear deals that have been signed this year, kind of how does that leave us for next year? So how should we think about growth in 2026? How are you kind of going to manage these multiyear deals next year? And then what are the other things that we should think about there?

And then my second question is just on AI. I'm just wondering about the monetization of that. How does that work? Or does it really kind of depend on the specific products that you're offering? Like is adoption voluntary? Or is it included automatically in a subscription? And then what kind of impact will that have on pricing?

Sure. Thank you, Alice. So, first of all, regarding our outlook, and of course, we are not yet giving a guidance for 2026 and beyond. But clearly, what we are saying is that we are very convinced and that we are going to have an average revenue growth in the mid-teens in the coming years.

So how we are going to manage that next year, for example, is your question. So, clearly, yes, we are going to continue to have high growth in the Build segment in 20-plus percentage points here for the Build segment. Clearly, in Design, we are expecting to be in the higher -- high single-digits growth. And then we are expecting Media to be now back to around the 10% or to the low double-digit growth and clearly having operate and manage back to double-digit growth in 2025.

So we are very confident that we can, therefore, reach this mid-teens growth in 2026 despite the fact that, yes, but that has, again, a very, very, very small impact that we are still going to do a little bit with Graphisoft, for example, some of these multiyear deals to support the migration from our existing customers on maintenance to push them to subscription model, but it has a very small impact, and it's not going to impact the growth for next year versus this year. So we're going to continue to do that temporarily based on specific actions, and we are going to continue to do that while we are migrating the Design segment to subscription, especially at Graphisoft and Allplan, and this will continue at least for the next probably around two years more or less. But clearly, we are highly confident in this mid-teens average growth for the coming few years and definitely also for 2026.

And I think just to add to what you said also on the Design transition, which is the last part of the business that we are transitioning to subscription, we will be at the year-end already over 50% of the Design business also already on subscription. So we're also there -- we have a very good amount that is already done. And of course, the blend would Build and the other segments that are already on subscription, of course, getting -- I could say getting stronger. So the piece of that is also getting smaller and the traction is very good, as you can see as well.

Yes. Then Alice, regarding your second question related to AI and the monetization around it. So, first of all, AI, well, it's fully part of our road map. So it's really depending which features we are talking about and which brands. So, to the extreme, you have products like in energy management, where AI is part of the core product. So it's de facto there. So when you buy Spacewell Energy, for example. Then if you look at other AI features, especially in our Design brands, they are de facto part of the basic subscription package because we want to force adoption, and we also want to make sure that we have some return on the return on investment and the productivity gain that it has, and therefore, we need volumes and we need a lot of data, and we need to make sure that everybody who is on subscription has the capability of having these features. But then, of course, we have then additional other type of AI features, which we are then targeting to have only in higher packages. So therefore, we will use that to increase our average revenue per user.

And then as you may have heard and as I said earlier in this call, we announced the launch of Bluebeam Max, which is going to be available commercially sometime in Q1 2026. And Bluebeam Max is a purely new package for Bluebeam, purely AI-driven with new features coming from in-house development that we had at Bluebeam, plus also some features which will be integrated and embedded in Bluebeam Max coming from the acquisition of Firmus AI. And that will be an additional fee per month or per year that Bluebeam user will have to pay to get Bluebeam Max.

Then in addition to that, so that's still a per user type of pricing. As we are moving more to agentic AI solution with our Nemetschek AI Assistant and the road map, you can see that over time, we are going to shift more and more also with the business outcome type of pricing and to really monetize more the agentic piece of our AI as they are going to help a lot on the productivity gain over time and not being necessarily purely user-driven. But for the moment, short term, our AI features and AI monetization is very much user-based and more midterm, you will see a shift to business outcome type of pricing model for the Agentic piece in particular.

The next question comes from Deepshikha Agarwal from Goldman Sachs.

I just -- first of all, I just wanted to delve a bit deeper on the multiyear deal dynamic. So, basically, like it is indicated that Design is going to be high single digit next year. Can you just like tell -- throw some light on what exactly are the puts and takes there as in how much is the underlying growth? And then how much is subscription transition and how much would be the multiyear deal like adding to it next year? And what does that mean for this segment in terms of when we look at it on a normalized level, like once the transition is almost behind in this segment?

Second is basically like the cost dynamics. Clearly, like it seems, as indicated, margins were a bit better than what like Street was expecting. So how do you think about like -- especially with like growth improving over the next year, how should we think about investment versus operating leverage for the business for next year and over the medium term?

Sure. So, as I said, these multiyear contracts are still going on. And we are using the three-year contract to bring existing customers from maintenance to subscription, and it's mainly driven in Graphisoft and partly also at Allplan.

The growth without this three years contract in Q3 would be for the Design segment in H1, it was a tailwind of 4%. And in Q3, it's slightly lower. It's around 3% tailwind for Q3 2025. And the impact at the group level is a tailwind of roughly slightly below 2% year-to-date. So, I mean, yes, it is slightly below 2% year-to-date, but it's only slightly 2% year-to-date, where we are expecting to reach the upper range of our new guidance, which is a 22% revenue growth FX adjusted for 2025.

So, clearly, when you look at Q4, we expect the Design segment to be in the mid- to higher single-digit growth. And this is really depending also on the renewal business that we have at the end of the quarter. And please remember that we have also this higher comparison in mind from Q4 2024. And we are expected also to have growth that are including some last time sales of perpetual license in Q4 of 2025.

Now if you look at 2026, here, clearly, we are still expecting a growth, which is around at least in around higher single digits or probably also in the low double digits after the subscription and three-year contracts over time. So over time, this should be a business design when we move and when we finish to the move to subscription, it should be a low double-digit business growth when we are more normalized in general.

Then I'll take your second question on the margins overall, if I understood it. And that's what you say. So, yes, we a very strong margin contribution to our business, and we should not forget that this is during a time when we are going through the subscription transition. I think that's always also important to bear in mind. I think that's rather unusual. That's also how we build the whole transition to the subscription model in our group as well that we take it by a stage approach and make sure also to grasp that. But it's not only that. It's also that we are working very, very strongly with our operational excellence and also shifting to say, our investments into the priorities that really have a high return on investment, and that's what you can see here coming through as well.

So, but going forward, so, yes, we see a strong growth scenario to continue as well. So we will continue also to see the leverage. And you have heard us say that before, and that is we will not optimize our revenue growth at the expense or optimize, let's say, our margin at the expense of our revenue growth, right? So we clearly see that there is such a strong revenue growth still to be had in the market, so much opportunities, and that's really where the value creation is coming from. And that's why you will see very, very attractive margins still going forward, and you will see increased leverage. But we will not optimize the margin at the expense of our revenue growth.

So whilst you should also -- I said, we haven't guided for 2026 yet. But yes, with increasing growth, you should also see a part of that and of course, combined with our operational excellence that you see a higher leverage, so say, a slightly increasing margin. But that is net of the investments. And as I said before, we are investing strongly into our business into that future growth because we don't see that this continued strong growth will end anytime soon, right? So that's why we are really investing into the business in all our areas and especially as well in the very, very strong growth momentum that we also have into our Build segment. So that's why.

To make a long story short, yes, you should expect net of investments due to also our strong operational excellence, you should expect a little bit of higher operational leverage there, but you should also not expect us to now just go for margin optimization because that would maybe put more focus on the margin and on the revenue growth, and that's something that we should not do.

The next question comes from Balajee Tirupati from Citi.

Two from my side, if I may. One question -- the first one on the U.S. Your key peer has sounded quite positive about the momentum from the data center and reshoring of manufacturing into U.S. Could you remind us your exposure here? And how do you see demand evolving?

And then second question on the growth in home German market, where the quarter seems to have witnessed one of the strongest growth in years. Could you share how sustainable this return to double-digit growth in Germany is?

Just -- I'm not sure I understood properly because the sound was not great, but let me try to answer.

So, first of all, our exposure to data center building in U.S., I mean, yes, it's great. I mean it's not only in U.S., by the way, the data center exposure. We see great momentum on data center across the globe, everywhere in the world. And we have different solutions around that. Clearly, a strong dynamic for dRofus, strong dynamic also for Bluebeam, GoCanvas. Strong dynamic also for Design brands, if you look at ArchiCAD, of course, if you see at Solibri. So, clearly here, very positive and strong dynamic for quite some time, and it will continue, as you know. That's not going to stop in the short or even midterm. Clearly, it's a long, long growth trajectory.

Then if you look at Germany, I mean, clearly, the debt package in Germany is not yet meaningful. It's too early to say what will exactly be the effect on the demand in Germany, especially in infrastructure. The mood and the sentiment has improved, but we believe that we will not see really any impact even next year. It might be more towards the end of next year potentially, but probably more in 2027.

So, internationalization, clearly for us is a key element. And we are continuing to focus a lot also of region outside of Europe, where, of course, Europe is still a very important key market for us. And if you look at the strong development that we had in Germany and Europe this quarter, in particular, it was mainly driven by also the Build segment, where Bluebeam had very, very strong traction, but of course, by our design segment, which has recovered, especially with the strong momentum on the subscription move and the transition from existing customers to subscription.

Yes. And I would maybe just add a little bit to that. So the third quarter also as Germany was in focus a little of our subscription or SaaS to subscription move in the third quarter. So you might see a slighter effect in those Q3 numbers driven by that. But as Yves also said, that's also in general because you know that we have now for quite some time, also expanded our Build segment into Europe as well, especially the -- some special markets, including Germany, and we see good traction there as well.

So, and if you look at how sustainable that is, as Yves said, it's also, in general, over time, also the effects of the infrastructure and investment packages also come into the German market, right? So it's definitely say, going in that direction, but you also have some slight effects in the Q3. That was also due to the push that we are having on that market right now for the subscription transition.

The next question comes from Joe George from JPMorgan.

I've got two, please, both of which just on the Build division. So, firstly, when you acquired GoCanvas, I think you indicated that you took a haircut on some of the acquired deferred revenues. And I believe Q3 is the first quarter that this has unwound. So can you talk around how much of a tailwind in millions of euros this was to Build revenues through Q3? And I guess, going forward, how should this effect evolve? Will it be flat next quarter? Will this increase, reduce, et cetera, over time? Just any color would be great.

And then secondly, I just wanted to follow up on the expectation for 20% plus Build growth in FY '26. The last couple of quarters, you've added about EUR 5 million of revenue sequentially versus the prior quarter in Build. And I guess if we extrapolate that trend out through Q4 and throughout FY '26, that would imply a year-over-year growth rate closer to mid- to high teens. So, I guess, I'm asking, are you expecting an acceleration within the Build revenue growth algorithm anywhere through FY '26, maybe on pricing, new logos, net customer retention, et cetera? Just any color on the building blocks here of that 20% plus would be great.

Okay. So let me start with the question that you had on the GoCanvas haircut that you're correct on. I'm not sure that I heard because the tone was a little bit bad. So let me -- if I missed something on that question, please ask again.

So I understood that your question was that we had a haircut on GoCanvas and how much tailwind did we have in Q3. So the majority on that haircut comes into Q1. That's why it was a very, very small effect in Q3. It was less than EUR 1 million in our total revenues. So nothing more or less. No effect, no tailwind due to that.

And I'm not sure, as I said, did you have an additional question to that, the tone broke a bit there? Or was it?

Yes, that's perfect.

Okay. So, and then let's go to the 20% Build growth, which is which is built on, of course, the very strong growth that we see both in the U.S. in the user growth, but also, of course, internationally in the Build segment, right? So we see -- I think, in general, the -- whilst we now have effect from the subscription transition of Bluebeam where you have seen very elevated growth levers, if you may, because of the comparatives, et cetera, comparables that are done with Q4 this year, you still see, say, the underlying very strong growth in the Build segment, of course, very strongly driven by Bluebeam. But also, of course -- expansion of GoCanvas as well. That was also part of the acquisition case. And of course, also that's the smaller part also the Nevaris brand that is also continuing to grow, right? That has also been going through subscription this year and will continue into the next one.

So that's why that's really the building blocks are really user -- strong user growth, both in the U.S. and internationally in all parts of the Build business.

And internationally, we see a strong momentum also in Q3, again, in Europe, very successful growth for Bluebeam, in particular, in Europe. Also GoCanvas is having more and more traction, especially in U.K. now. And of course, now for next year, we are also looking at other regions in addition to Europe, especially in Asia and Middle East for the Build segment, especially Bluebeam.

We really see that in all channels, right? So we see that in the channel and web, et cetera. So we see all the channels showing that growth.

And of course, we've made also the acquisition of Firmus AI. We have Bluebeam Max, and we have all the AI tailwind will come hopefully also next year, but that would be probably even more on upside.

Yes. All right. Can I just follow up on that, please? Just on pricing within Build. I think it's been a couple of years now where we've seen material pricing used to support growth through FY '26. Should we expect more pricing growth within Build and if so...?

There is absolutely no pricing on Bluebeam. So I don't know where we had zero price increase on Bluebeam in 2025.

Except for the legacy, so say, the ones that we took from a very low level that we took back to the subscription pricing. But that's not, say, for the -- that's...

Through 2026, should we expect any change to that, i.e., will you use pricing in '26 or same as '25, where it's flat basically?

I mean the pricing will be more not the fact that we are going to have a big price increase, but we are going to have this new package like Bluebeam Max, which is going to be de facto an average increase of average revenue per user. I mean, over time. Of course, that might not be materialized very quickly in '26 as we are only launching that by the end of Q1, Bluebeam Max, but de facto, as we are going to selling a new package, I mean, it's not a price increase, but it's like an additional pricing for people to have access to these new features.

And remember, I mean, the Bluebeam average price, if you take all our paid users today, it's equivalent to not even the price of a coffee per day. So, clearly, if we are able now to sell extra package with Bluebeam Max, this could have a significant impact over time, probably not necessarily next year. this could be a very strong tailwind for the growth of the Build segment.

Yes. And I think also just to add on that, what you said due to where we are with pricing, we haven't played this card, and we see that there's such an interesting new user growth to expand this incredibly strong mesh and network that we have built with Bluebeam, which really makes this unique, very unique in all segments.

So if your question is if we believe that we would have pricing power, yes, definitely. I think we will have pricing power, but we will continue in the banner as well to add features and add even more functionality to this part of the industry that is in high need of even more functionality. So that's why I think that's how we look at it while we are still seeing that the growth is really coming from the new users and new features future side.

The next question comes from Victor Cheng, Bank of America.

Just going back to Bluebeam again, there are a couple of growth drivers currently. And just thinking going forward, can you help us break down kind of what is the mix of growth drivers? Is 1/3 from the user growth in U.S. and versus expansion into other regions versus the maintenance pricing catching up to subscription with the transition? How should we think about the drivers of growth and obviously, Bluebeam Max as well going forward?

And then second question on M&E. I guess we've talked about this before, but any kind of color on the industry maybe adopting AI and kind of the use case for it. I think the other talks about Hollywood using it for drafting, using Gen AI for drafting. Do you see that happening? How should we think about demand there going forward?

Yes. So, clearly, if you look at media M&E, the impact on AI, I mean, we have AI embedded features in our product portfolio, as I said. So we shipped AI search, for example, and other AI features on Cinema 4D. We have this AI depth generation, which is coming up in the next few weeks and also some new further AI compositing capabilities. So clearly, we see that all customers who are artists here are really welcoming this type of features, which is helping them to be more productive and to automate more tasks and to be also quicker.

Overall, I would say that the fact that market has mixed demand, it's not linked to AI. I'm not saying that there might be in the future some AI impact. But clearly, for the moment, it's not coming from that. It's mainly coming from the fact that the customers, the media companies are spending less. They are very cautious on their spendings. Some of them are not in a very good economical situation, as you know. And therefore, the impact is mainly on this long range of freelancers and artists who are more impacted because there is probably also less job for them.

And this is a kind of a long tail of customers that we have, especially with our web store because, as I said, when we look at our direct touch customers, so the bigger type of customer, larger media companies or game developers or if we look at our reseller business, it is growing very strongly, double-digit plus.

Yes. And maybe on the Bluebeam growth again. So the growth driver is clearly now in this year is really the new user growth. So the impact of price, including that maintenance price, let's say, is marginal in our growth in Bluebeam. So -- and that's also how we see it to continue. And why you see that, that's also, I think, something -- although we have such a huge base in the U.S. for Bluebeam, you could think that, that growth at some time should go down a little bit in relative growth, but it's still very, very strong. At some point of time, of course, the absolute basis, it will start to -- in absolute figures, it will continue to grow, but we will have less relative growth. But it's still very, very strong. But what we really see now that APAC and Europe is really catching up at a very strong range. So that's why they are growing so much stronger, of course, from a smaller base.

The 2025 numbers in the U.S. growth in Bluebeam is, of course, also including GoCanvas. So -- but if you see that, I would say that, yes, APAC and EMEA is growing very, very strongly at equal strong rates as the U.S. and even ticking up now stronger. So you -- will your question comes to where does the growth come from as the base is still so much larger in the U.S. that still has a significant portion still in both '25 and '26 for Bluebeam, but the international growth in both EMEA and APAC is adding to that, and that's why it's coming to a very attractive growth, but price remains a marginal piece or the smaller piece of the growth.

Yes. And again, just to add on the U.S. with a very, very large customers that we have there for Bluebeam, all large construction companies in the U.S. are Bluebeam customers. But as an average, they are not even 40% penetrated. And the main reason was that we didn't have so much direct touch with this customer, no key account management. And now the last couple of quarters or three quarters that we are engaging much more with them, we are signing enterprise license agreement and definitely increasing our penetration with these accounts, but there is still a lot of work to do there because this is something we can do across all the large customers in the U.S., which, of course, is not representing the majority of the revenue of Bluebeam, but it's still a significant size. And then you have this long tail of small, medium general contractors or subcontractors, et cetera, where clearly some of them are not using Bluebeam yet and a lot of them are not using Bluebeam.

So, interestingly, the potential growth in the U.S. is still there for some time. And then as said, internationally, huge, huge opportunity of growth for Bluebeam.

Yes. And in the U.S., you can really see that Bluebeam is the industry standard. And that's why you have this, as I said, the measure, the network effect that we see continue at a very, very high pace. So, to say, as is the industry standard, more and more of the subconstructors and the smaller players need to have a Bluebeam license in order to work with the rest of the network, right? And we really see that in all areas. And that's, of course, also contributing very, very nicely to our growth also in the U.S., that's something a pattern that there's no reason why that will not continue then internationally.

And this network effect, the consequence is that now Bluebeam is even becoming more and more a in the U.S. construction market, especially when we're talking about collaboration tools.

The next question comes from Nay Soe Naing from Berenberg.

Apologies if there is a bit of background noise, I'm traveling at the moment. Hopefully, two quick questions for me and maybe one -- the first one for you, Louise. On the multiyear contracts, I just want to understand how much longer will these contracts be available for customers to purchase? And also just to confirm, there are no favorable commercial terms on these contracts, i.e., that you do not offer a discount for customers to choose these multiyear agreements?

And the second question is on the -- maybe one for Yves. I think you had packaged GoCanvas product into Bluebeam as of last quarter or maybe the quarter before that. So I was wondering if you could give an update on the upsell, cross-sell opportunities between the two products? And how much of the revenue synergy opportunities you have expected in your mid-teens medium-term growth outlook, please?

So maybe just quickly on the multiyear contract, as I said, we are planning to use that only for Graphisoft and slightly for Allplan, but only during the transition to subscription for these two brands, which will be probably for the next 2, 2.5 years around that. And clearly, there is no favorable terms, clearly not. I mean -- and there is no discount. And that's why you have a big part of the existing maintenance customer who are only moving to a 12-month contract because there is no advantage to move to multiyear in terms of pure pricing.

The only advantage is to have more visibility of what could be the pricing for the next three years because the price increase is very small from one year to another year. It's only linked to some small indexation in some cases. And so it could give the confidence a little bit to customers that, okay, we are not going to increase suddenly the price significantly after one year. So that we're not going to do a plus 25% or plus 30% price increase suddenly from one year to another. But yes, so there is no favorable or discount linked to this type of multiyear deals.

It's really -- it's more of that type of customer that goes for this contract. So that's more maybe the customer who have just bought a license who is a bit more conservative as well in the way they look at that. So it's not to get -- that's also not a negotiation to get more favorable conditions. It's really to say, for them to start to think in a new subscription model, right?

So -- and you also know that many of these customers, they also sit in Europe, right? So -- and the European market, especially in some areas of the European market has been more conservative into moving into subscription. And that's why it's a bigger change for them than it was, for example, in the U.S. or whatever. And that's why it's a little more this conservatism so that they can start to believe in the subscription model, and that helps them to have that clarity on what will happen in the next three years. And that's why it's not even a negotiation about favorable conditions.

Yes. And then on Bluebeam and GoCanvas and the synergies, so clearly, as said, we see very strong synergy on the go-to-market, especially linked to indirect channels. So, as you know, Bluebeam is working with large resellers and GoCanvas had only a direct go-to-market business. And so we have now more and more large Bluebeam resellers who committed to sell GoCanvas, and it's working very well. First of all, in the U.S. But now also this is going to help GoCanvas internationalization with some of these very large resellers who have -- some of them have a real global presence, such as ARKANCE, for example, but also others.

Then also, if you look at the synergies, there are some cost synergies that we are still working on also too. I mean, we already had some in 2025, but more to come in 2026, where we are integrating even more and more both company, Bluebeam and GoCanvas on different functions.

So I would really -- I think also to say how much of those synergies that have come what we have planned. I think we are very happy with that. We can clearly see that the trajectory is coming and that we are also -- that we can see even slightly more than we would have thought. So it's definitely confirming the case.

The next question comes from Michael Briest from UBS.

Just coming back on Bluebeam, I think there are currently three SKUs between basics, core and complete. Will Bluebeam Max replace complete or be a further additional one? And can you give a sense of how much higher than the $440 per user per year it might come at? And then more broadly, looking at the Bluebeam user base today, how do they break down between those SKUs? And have you got a program to try and move them up the ladder, if you like?

And separately, just on headcount, it was flat quarter-on-quarter. And given all the comments about investments, that seems a bit odd. Can you maybe talk about what happened in Q3 and plans for the rest of the year?

So, first on Bluebeam, yes, we have currently three packages. And we still have around -- a majority of the people are moving to more the core and the complete packages. So these are clearly the two packages which have the most traction. So, one, as you may know, core is around USD 330. Complete is at USD 440. And then you have the basic package, which is at USD 260. So -- but when we look at the new users and the new logos, they are really going more to core and Complete more than basics.

Bluebeam Max will be an additional package. So it's not going to be included in complete. Bluebeam Max is completely new. It will be priced completely differently, and it will be an add-on to what you have. So we have not yet disclosed any pricing yet. It's still under work internally, and we will do that in Q1 of 2026.

Yes. So, let me take the question on the headcount. So you say, yes, you're correct with the flat development of the headcount. I think you need to look at this holistically. So whilst we are also investing into new human resources, we're also investing a lot into systems and structures, digital demand generation, et cetera, et cetera. We, of course, also get more efficient internally by internal use cases, by AI, but not only by AI, by harmonization and alignment of our global process is something that we have been working with now quite some time is also to streamline through between all the brands, et cetera, our operational excellence, et cetera.

And with that, we also repurpose a lot of our headcount. So there, we have savings because we had -- if you look at the Nemetschek Group, how we were run in the past, we would have less systems and automization and more heads due to the structure that we had. Now as we have been combining a lot of that, investing into systems and structures, we can repurpose some of that what you could say maybe would have been excess headcount in a different model, we can repurpose that into our growth. And that's why we really also have a very nice leverage in our numbers as well.

So it's not that we are not investing into new headcount. We definitely are, but the investments are also in all other areas of structures, tools and demand generation, et cetera, it's not only people and the people they are more repurposed into new areas, et cetera, where we can have savings in one area because we have automization and also AI support, we repurposed that kind of headcount into where we really need more talent. You should not expect...

Specifically on GoCanvas, did it grow faster or slower than Bluebeam this quarter? I mean the deferred income benefit would have helped, but I'm just curious.

No. Bluebeam is growing stronger than GoCanvas, yes.

The next question comes from Richard Nguyen from Bernstein.

I have a quick follow-up on the Gen AI strategy, please. I know that it is still very early days, but have you seen any kind of pull-through effect with the Gen AI availability? Does that incentivize the customer to move faster to the subscription package? Or is this not yet the case?

So I'm not sure I understood properly your question, but our AI features, as I said, are depending on which one, some of them, they are included in our basic package subscription. Some others will be or are in higher tier type of packages. And some other, they are stand-alone price or will be stand-alone price like Bluebeam Max AI -- purely AI packages.

But I was asking about how the customer perception about the availability of those solutions. Are they more incentivized today to acquire the products, et cetera, because of that? Or it's not yet the case?

Now clearly, there is more and more adoption of AI features overall in the market. I mean if we compare 2024 to 2025, there's been clearly a nice uptake. We just did a survey, for example, recently, and AI is most commonly applied in design, so around 48% and in planning around 42%, and we see that over 70% of the companies which are using AI allocate up to 25% of their budget more in this type of capabilities. But clearly, it's still very, very, very early stage.

So AI-driven collaboration and cross-platform integration is clearly one of the key topic. We are doing a lot of new AI features, which are facilitating real-time cloud-based collaboration. That's clearly the fact with Bluebeam and enabling also integrated workflows with other potential third-party platforms. And construction professionals, Bluebeam AI capability is promising to continue to transform the industry, but also enabling smarter decision-making and greater project success in general.

So, yes, we see an uptake in the usage and adoption. And of course, these users, they need to see a clear AOI and they use this type of AI features. If not, they are not going to move to a higher package or even pay extra a new AI purely package such as Bluebeam Max. In general, there is clearly more and more usage. And if you look at architects, for example, what they really like it are really solutions around generative design and Gen AI, which are helping them to automize more the work, and therefore, be more productive and to replace and automate all these repetitive task, for example, that they have to do a lot.

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Stefanie Zimmermann for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everyone, for attending. We are looking forward to catching up with you soon. If you have any follow-up questions, so please do not hesitate to contact Patrick or myself. And let's conclude the call for today. So thanks again for joining.