Austriacard Holdings AG ($ACAG)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I am Maria, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Austriacard Holdings conference call and live webcast to present and discuss full year 2025 financial results. [Operator Instructions] and the conference is being recorded. We are joined today by Mr. Manolis Kontos, Group CEO; Mr. Markus Kirchmayr, Group CFO; and Mr. Dimitris Haralabopoulos, Group Investor Relations Director. They will take you through the presentation and discuss the full year 2025 results. [Operator Instructions] At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Dimitris Haralabopoulos, Group Investor Relations Director.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Austriacard Holdings full year 2025 financial results conference call and live webcast. Before we start, I'd like to remind everyone attending today's event that during the course of the call, we may refer to forward-looking statements and certain non-IFRS financial measures. The relevant definitions, reconciliations and disclaimers can be found in the results press release, the results presentation as well as the 2025 annual financial report, which have been posted on our corporate website. We encourage you to review these for additional details and explanations. With that, I'll now hand over to Manolis Kontos, Group CEO, who will take you through the highlights of the group's financial results. Manolis, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Dmitry, and welcome, everybody, to our conference call that we are organizing with the opportunity to share with you some more insights and highlights on how the year performed and also give you a bit of a perspective as far as how the new year has started and the implementation of the plan that we have already into play. So there is a lot of information that we have shared with you. So I will mainly focus on the main points, and I want to give time at the end to answer any questions that you might have as far as the performance of the group. So as an introduction for people that maybe have not joined in the past, I would like to say that Austriacard is a global applied technology company, which means that we focus on providing secure data management solutions, which is in the center of all the products and solutions that we offer. So we are headquartered in Vienna in Austria, but we have quite an extensive footprint that spans from all the way to U.S. to Turkey and Africa. So we have been growing in the course of the last few years in increasing our presence and our solution offering in order to be able to address properly the changing demand of our clients and being able to continue being relevant throughout the years since the group has a very strong history of more than 130 years being around and being able to continue being evolving and being relevant. So with that, we will use the presentation as a guideline. I'm sure you are able to see the slides as I'm presenting. So I'll give you a highlight of how 2025 closed, and we will have for each and every main operating financial KPI, specific elaboration in order to give you a bit more information around the main revenue line items and the profit line items. So 2025, it was a year that had, let's say, a mixed picture. So the year started with some challenges that we strongly overcame as we went through the second part of the year. So we -- what I want to say is that we always remain focused in implementing our strategy and continue investing behind the development of new solutions. And this is in the back of a lot of R&D investment in the space of solutions and services in order to be able to continue evolving our product offering. So the main challenge that we faced as far as the first part of the year had to do with the Turkish payment card market, where we had some cyclical and macro-economical factors affecting the business performance there. What I want to highlight here is that this was -- had nothing to do with losing market share or not being able to continue serving our extensive clientele base. It was more an adjustment of the inventory levels that the clients had. And this was a onetime effect that we are happy to say that is behind us because we continue having a very strong presence in that market, and continue enjoying the fact that the customers continue seeing us as the main, let's say, provider of services in that quite significant market for us. And the second part had to do with the fact that we had a very large launch of a metal card program for a fintech from Europe, which also caused a comparison issue between 2024 and 2025. So both these events were practically recorded and affected the first half of the year. When on the second part of the year, as you can see also in the slide that we have in front of us, we showed a very strong comeback, both in the third and fourth quarter. And as such, we see that the second part of the year as far as the revenue is concerned, we managed to grow not only the sales, but also the EBITDA very strongly, showing 23% EBITDA growth versus the year before. This enabled us to offset part of the gap that we had from the first half of the year and managed to close the year with a single digit, let's say, decline in terms of both top line and bottom line, which is in line with what we had given as a guidance at the middle part of the year. So where we are continuing investing, and this was the case also for 2025, is on the expanding our offering in the Digital Technology space. We have a lot of projects that we are running that have to support the Greek public sector digitalization where all the ministries and public administrations are looking to get into the situation where they are able to access all the information through platforms and not being -- needing to go through archives and retrieve information, and we are there to support them in this transition. We continue implementing security printing projects in the African markets, which has been a priority area for us, and we have been successful over the course of the last few years to create a proper reputation and being one of the main suppliers in that part of the world when it comes to complex security printing projects. And last but not least, continuing serving the fintechs in the Western Europe space and U.S., where we have been able to continue increasing our market share. We are already one of the main providers of the fintechs and the neobanks, and we continue building strong on that, not only in the course of 2025, but you will hear me saying that also as far as 2026 is concerned. If you look at the hard financials of operating cash flow, very strong performance, reaching EUR 40 million, growing strongly from the year before at 17%, and also free cash flow generation significant. So regardless of the softness, let's say, as far as the top line and EBITDA performance, you see that the fundamentals are there. And also as far as the leverage is concerned, we managed to close at 1.6x EBITDA level on sales, which is slightly improved from the level of '24. And also there was a net debt reduction of 15%. I will not spend time on the outlook, I will come to it at the end. So let's now go to the next slide that has some key financial metrics, namely revenue and EBITDA and net profit, where you'll see what I said in the beginning that the full year landed at EUR 360 million as far as the revenue is concerned. If you exclude from that comparison, the impact of the Turkish market and this large-scale launch program that we had in fintech in Europe, the growth would be, on a comparable basis, around 4%. What I want to say on the metal cards business, we continue believing on this part of offering. We see a lot of customers seeing this offering of the metal cards being one of a very key way of attracting new customers and motivating loyal customers. So we believe that the metal cards will continue contributing strongly, not only in the fintech space, but also even on the regional banks, we see more and more how we can leverage the metal cards in attracting and retaining key customers. As far as the EBITDA performance, although we see the 8% reduction in the top line, we managed to grow the EBITDA margin from the levels of 14.1% to the levels of 14.4%. And let's not forget that a few years back, this group was in the 10% margin. And over the course of the last few years, we have managed to continuously improve our margin profile and move from the 10%, 11%, 12% to the 14.4% level that you see here, despite the challenge that we faced in 2025. This also translated into net profit generation. So the net profit generation is landing at EUR 16.2 million, obviously reduced versus last year. But if you look at the variance, you will see it's less than the variance that we saw on the EBITDA line, which means that the rest of the items below EBITDA line, we managed them properly and that's why we have only EUR 3 million shortfall on an absolute basis level from 1 year to the other. I will now go a bit more because there was a lot of discussion about what's going on, how did the year start last year, how did we end the year. So we thought of sharing with you a bit on a quarter-by-quarter level. Although I want to say as a disclaimer, let's call it, that we should not be looking at this group on a quarter-by-quarter basis and not -- this is not a group that has a linear performance. It has peaks and valleys, let's call it. So we always have to judge the performance of the group on a more, let's say, midterm projection level. And if you look at the history of this group, you will see that the CAGR growth has been strong, both in the top line and the bottom line. And this is the way we should be assessing it over time and not quarter-by-quarter. Nevertheless, you see that there was a strong comeback in Q3 and Q4 of 2025, where we managed to get the revenue line increasing significantly compared to the previous quarters. This is in the back of the accelerated implementation of the contracted digital projects that we have in the Greek public sector. So we are now also in full implementation in 2026, but the big buildup started happening from the second half of the year. We continue being able to secure projects that have to do with public administrations in the African market. So this was also something that we recorded in the latter part of the year in 2025. And all the investments we have done in expanding our footprint in the U.S. Also, we recently announced that we opened a new personalization center in Salt Lake City in order to be able to credibly offer our solutions and service across the North American market. So all this investment and focus is paying off, and it will even strongly contribute in the year 2026 onwards. And last but not least, the investment that we did recently in the identity -- holistic identity solutions, mainly for the African markets. We already have a project that we are implementing as we speak, and we have a good pipeline of initiatives in front of us to, a, secure and, b, implement. If you look at how this performance also translated in the EBITDA performance, you see that a very strong growth comparing first half to second half from the EUR 19 million, which was the actuals of the first half of 2025, we managed to get to EUR 33 million, but even more impressive is the EBITDA margin, where you see that on the low levels of 12%, which was the first part of the year, we managed to go to 16%, which helped us land at the level that we landed at 14.4%, as I showed in the previous slide. What is behind this? This is, again, the focus of having a revenue mix that is towards higher-margin solutions and services. So we are gradually but consistently moving more from having just product dependent to a product portfolio that has a mix of product solutions and services. This comes with a better margin profile. And that's why you see this performance also recorded in the second part of the year. We continue, obviously, working on improving our operational cost base in terms of operational efficiency, rationalizing our costs, negotiating with suppliers as far as the key components of the group as far as the cards business is concerned, but always making sure that we continue investing in R&D. R&D for us is important. We have the mentality that even in the year that was challenging, we didn't cut investments. We cut investments in other places, but we didn't cut investments in R&D because this is our fuel in order to be able to continue growing the business, especially on the digital services and solutions. So with that, we managed to land quite strong in the second part of the year and bringing the average of the group at a very decent level. If you look at the balance sheet and cash flow also because at the end of the day, it's all about what is the cash flow that the group is generating. You see a very strong operating cash flow generation, reaching around EUR 40 million. Working capital has been a challenge for us. As I have mentioned in previous calls, we have been faced, us and our competitors, with a lot of semiconductor stock that came our way because we wanted during the crisis situation of -- to secure our customers and our business. So we ended up having contracts that we absorbed a lot of inventory as far as semiconductor stock is concerned, and we are digesting it, and we have been digesting it in the course of last year. And this digestion, let's call it, will finish in 2026. So -- but nevertheless, even with that, we did get some pressure on the working capital, but this is not any more related to the inventory of semiconductors, but mostly on what we call contract assets. What this is about is all these public sector projects that we are implementing in Greece, the way the model works, and this is not for us, but it's for all the companies that are engaged in this type of business, you end up taking, let's say, an advanced payment of 30% or 40% of the project, depending on the project. And then you have to deliver practically the work and then invoice and get paid at the end of the implementation. So this has put pressure in '25 as far as the working capital is concerned and will continue putting pressure in the first half of this year in 2026, and this will normalize, this contract assets, as we call it, will normalize in the second part of 2026. So if we look at exactly that, there is a slide that shows exactly that what I just said. So you see that from an inventory point of view or trade and other receivables point of view, we have an improvement as far as the cash inflow is concerned, the green colors that we see here. But there is a cash outflow, which is financing all the effort and all the work that needs to be done, especially for this digitalization project, which is significant, the amount that you see here, it's EUR 14 million, which has caused the pressure on the working capital. But this is temporary, as I said, because this will be normalized in the course of 2026. If you look now at the comparables on a year-on-year level, we see that the net debt as a percentage on EBITDA has -- first of all, the net debt reduced significantly from EUR 96 million to EUR 81 million, EUR 81.6 million and as a ratio from 1.7%, a slight reduction to 1.6%. As far as the leverage and equity, we see again that we are at 41% versus 38%. So all in all, I would say that we have managed both the balance sheet items and the debt quite nicely. And this is in the back of strong performance that especially we had in the second part of the year that enabled us to create more operating cash flow and also have a lower net debt amount in absolute terms versus the year before. We have now a slide to give a bit more flavor around the key regions that we operate. So Central and Eastern Europe, let's not forget, this is the more mature cluster for us. This is a cluster that we have been around for a number of years, and we have quite established footprint and quite a strong customer base. And this is the one that I have said also in the past that we are focusing more on the solutions and services side, especially on the digital transformation side because as far as getting more market share in this part of the world, we already are market leaders in most of the markets that we are here. The reason that you see this decline in absolute terms on the revenue line is because that is the intersegment, as we call it, sales from the Romanian factory, which is the main factory of the group as far as the payment card is concerned. Because of the lower demand that we had from the Turkish market, this impacted the intersegment sales, it's EUR 20 million, the impact. So practically, this decline that you see there, it's purely this. And this also had an impact on the margin, unfortunately, because this under-absorption of capacity, let's call it, means that our site in Romania was not utilized at the level we would like it to be utilized. And there is a fixed cost that is associated with operating sites. And that is the reason that you see this slight decline in the EBITDA margin from the levels of 13.2% to the levels of 12.1%. What is interesting to notice is in the Western Europe and U.S. and the Middle East and Africa regions, despite the fact that we've had a decline in the top line, we have an improvement in the EBITDA margin. So you see that in the region WEST in the middle that we see here, we managed to improve the margin from 15.7% to 17.4%. Despite the fact that we had a 6% reduction in the top line, we had a 4% increase in the EBITDA line. And this is in the back of the fact that we have managed to onboard new customers with good margins and that's how we were able, even with different product sales mix, because the metal cards, we are not manufacturing metal cards, we are reselling them, so they have a lower margin for us. And we recovered, let's say, that part of the metal cards revenue that we were missing from sales that had to do with products that we produce, and we personalize and we distribute, and that's why we managed to improve the margin as far as the region WEST is concerned. And as far as the Turkey and Middle East Africa region, again, this decline that you see there is purely from the Turkish market, which has lower margin profiles, but we managed to get more business in the Middle East and Africa region, where we have better margin profile and better product mix. And that's why we see this impressive increase from 11% that we had in 2024, which Turkey had a big weight in that performance there, moving to a 15.1% as far as EBITDA is concerned. And this is in the back of the new projects that we're implementing in the citizen identity solutions and in the security documents in the Africa region, which have a much better margin profile, and that's why we had this impressive increase of the margin profile reaching 15.1% in the Middle East and Africa. So I would not spend more time on this. It's just a graphical way of showing where the decline came as far as the region is concerned. CEE, as we know, is the Turkish intercompany. WEST was this metal cards, but we offset it. Big part of this was offset from new business that we brought. MEA is mainly the Turkish market impact because the rest of the region, identity, for example, had an impressive increase. Of course, we're starting from a low base, but the identity business is quite promising for us, the citizen identity solutions. So we had a strong growth in the Middle East and Africa region, and we have a good pipeline of initiatives that we are looking to qualify and implement. We continue having a very good business coming from the Africa region as far as security document printing is concerned. We are one of the few companies that have the ability to provide solutions in that space that is combining data management and security documents. So this is the strength that we have, and we are leveraging this in order to be established as one of the main suppliers in the market there as far as the solution is concerned. And the Turkish market, although, as I said, the costs are a bit of a headache for us in the -- especially in the first half of the year, the good point is that we see a lot of recovery, let's say, in the second part of the year because what we monitor is the card that we personalize, as we say, the card that reach the final consumer, and we saw a significant increase of 26% versus the first part of the year. So the Turkish market has normalized, let's say, and we anticipate that in 2026, it will not show significant growth. It will have some growth, but we will not face the challenge that we faced in 2025. So we are quite more optimistic as far as the Turkish market is concerned in 2026. As far as how this was reflected on a group EBITDA level, we see that we closed at EUR 52 million, around 7% below, but what is interesting here to see except see, except CEE, which faced the issue of the under-absorption of the capacity of the production site we have in Romania, the rest of the geographical clusters showed an improvement both in absolute terms, but also in EBITDA margin terms as we saw before. I think this is -- okay. So if we now look at from a solutions point of view, which is important. So the impact in 2025 is purely on the payment side. So the pillar that we see here, EUR 43.6 million is practically the EUR 22 million and EUR 26 million, the EUR 48 million, which means that excluding these 2, the rest of the business grew on both the identity and payment side, except this onetime effects that we have there. And the other 2 solutions, as we report, the Document Lifecycle and Digital Technologies, have shown a growth in absolute terms and in percentage terms. When it comes to the Document Lifecycle Management, this is in the back of the growing share of the distribution of the cards that we personalize. So you might be wondering why we call this out because don't forget that to send a card by courier sometimes costs more than the actual card that you produce. So the fact that we have many more cards that we are personalizing and distributing, it's also showing an increase in the revenue of this distribution service that we offer because we offer a holistic service. So we also make sure that the card is ending at the hands of the consumer. So we also take care of that part. And the Digital Technologies side, strong growth, 65% in the Greek public sector, and this has continued also in '26, and I will also elaborate a bit on what's the future going forward beyond '26 as far as this segment is concerned. One point here. The inner circle shows '24, the outer circle shows '25. So what we want to highlight here is that the focus that we have in the recent years of increasing the contribution of the digital solutions is showing already from year-to-year. You might say, okay, 2% is not much. But if you look at the total turnover, it is a significant increase to get 2 points on the digital services. And also, we are working into balancing a bit more the geographical segment allocation where we expect the Western and U.S. region, together with Middle East and Turkey, to start increasing their contribution going forward and not have this big, let's say, percentage sitting in Central Europe. So we are looking in the areas that we have decided to invest, which is the U.S., Africa and Western Europe. You will see that they will continue being strong contributors going forward. And the benefit we have in these regions is that we are not that over-presented, so we have room to grow compared to competition. And this is what I wanted to say as far as the growth performance over the past few years. You see that with the exception of 2025, which I explained what was behind this, we continue having a strong EBITDA growth of 16% as far as the CAGR growth in the recent years and the net profit 50%. So this is another vote of confidence that our strategy that we decided, which is focusing into new markets with new service and solution is paying off on the margin improvement profile where, as I said earlier, 10% was the margin of the group in 2022, and it already has reached 13.6%. And as I will share with you shortly, our intention is and our plans are such that we should be seeing a further improvement of this margin profile as we move forward. On the dividend side, we are going to be proposing, as you know, this is a proposal, this has to pass through the appropriate corporate bodies and the general assembly, we will be proposing a dividend per share of EUR 0.10, which is in line with our dividend payout target that we had communicated between 20% and 25%. You see it's 24%. So this is the intention as far as the proposal when it comes to dividend, in order to keep a balance between what we are distributing to our loyal, let's say, shareholders, but also making sure that we continue investing mainly behind the growth of the group. So we have taken this choice that we will continue investing behind bringing new products and solutions, and we will continue this strategy, but we need to be mindful that there is also some return on the shareholders. That's why we also make sure that we stick to what we gave as a target as far as dividend payout is concerned, which leads us to the outlook. We want to give a first projection and direction as far as our strategy going forward. What I want to say, first of all, is that we are confident that the choices that we have taken in the recent years as far as the strategy -- strategic focus is concerned are paying off. Even in a challenging year like 2025, we made sure that we continue investing behind new products and solutions development, namely on the Digital Technologies, making sure that we are evolving as an organization, as an applied technology provider, which is integrating solutions like we recently launched GaiaB appliance in collaboration with Dell where we are practically using artificial intelligence, let's say, integrated in the product portfolio that we have. So not like a stand-alone solution necessarily, but also integrating and bringing costs down and bringing efficiencies for our customers. So this is one of the directions that we have been focusing. We invested, we acquired a company that had expertise in this space, and now we are looking to commercialize this and roll this out strongly in the year -- in the current year that we are in, but also in the years to come through collaborations, through partnerships because we recognize that we don't have the necessarily always the reach and the depth to get to the full extent. So that's why we look to do this in collaboration with large companies like Dell, and we are happy to see that they are supporting this and they are also working with us to deploy this broadly. We're going to have also the rollout of the card-as-a-service for -- especially for the fintechs and neobanks. Why fintechs and neobanks? Again, this is a segment that we have a very big market share, as you know. We have more than 50% of the European fintechs that we are serving. And they are a very good, let's say, segment for us to build many more services and not just offer the cards and personalization, but offer the whole journey from becoming a customer, enabling them to fast-track their programs. And we are one of the go-to partners because they know that we can do it with credibility, and we can help them get their program launched and also offer all the services that they need in order to do so. So this will be another initiative that we are looking. We continue building on the holistic citizen identity solutions. This is something that we started recently. We have been doing, historically, all the citizen identity solutions supporting, let's say, countries like Austria in enabling them with the products and solutions that have to do with verifying citizens, but we are looking to do this, especially in the Africa region, where there's a lot of need and necessity to get all the citizens registered and being able to verify themselves. So we see a lot of potential in that space, and that's why we invest again to have a holistic end-to-end solution as far as citizen authentication is concerned. And all this is in the back of initiatives that we have been investing in order to have the internal IP in order to be able to have not just the product, but also the whole solutions and service around it, and this will support the growth of the group going forward. We obviously want to do a proper cost management. So we have invested in bringing the right people. We also have brought new, let's say, senior people in the organization as far as operations, technology, HR in order to be able to invest in having the proper structure, having the right focus on managing our costs and improving our efficiencies, so that way, we are able not only to drive top line but also improve our margin profile. So this is the logic of investing in this direction. We have a solid backlog of customer onboarding we have done, especially U.S. and U.K. have been very strong contributors. In the course of 2025, U.S. showed significant growth, and we have a very strong pipeline of initiatives that are coming into life, I would say, Q2 onwards. So this is another thing I want to manage as far as expectation is concerned that a lot of the initiatives that we have are going to be contributing strongly from the second quarter of this year forward. And we are very confident that this is not just going to be the start of -- this will continue in the years to come. So what I want to highlight is that all these investments we have done in getting our footprint expanded, in getting our product portfolio enhanced will show results and fruits, not in the course only of 2026, but beyond. We continue having focus on the working capital. As I said, working capital is going to be still a topic to discuss in the first half of the year, especially for the financing of the public sector, as I said, of Greece. But the second part of the year, our projections are that we will further improve this -- the assets that we have available and the working capital that we have committed in order to show an even better improvement as far as our operating cash flow is concerned. So in a nutshell, 2026 will continue -- we will continue to target markets that align with our strategic vision. We will continue driving innovation in order to be able to fuel the growth. We will integrate technology in the solutions that we are offering. And we are very optimistic that this will continue showing results that are going to makes us one of the key players as far as the space that we are operating, which is in the citizen identity solutions and the payment solutions and expanding our footprint, not just in the European, let's say, marketplace, but namely, I would say, in the African and Western Europe and U.S. space. So that's what we had prepared to share with you. Now we would be more than happy to address any questions you might have. So Dimitris, I don't know if we're going to open the lines for any questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question is from the line of Grigoriou George with Wood & Co.

Two questions since we're running for time. One is regarding your working capital and free cash flow outlook for 2026. You mentioned something at the beginning of the call of the presentation that there will be some pressure on in the first half of the year. But I was wondering if you could elaborate on how we should actually see the full year evolving after the good performance in terms of free cash flow in 2025? And my second question relates to your guidance for 2026. You say you're guiding for improvement in the EBITDA margin. I was just wondering why shouldn't we simply extrapolate from the good performance of the second half of 2025 into 2026?

So let me take both questions. So the first one, as far as the working capital and free cash flow generation of 2026. The reason I mentioned before is that the first half of the year will still need our support, let's say, is because we are implementing the Greek public sector digitalization projects, and these will still need, let's say, investments from our side in order to deliver these projects. And most of the projects are going to be completing and paying out the remaining balance in the second part of the year. That's why I said that there will be some additional needs in the first part that will normalize in the second part of the year. As far as the projection is concerned, once this is settled, we should be seeing a further improvement in the operating cash flow and free cash flow, obviously, on a full year basis. So this is our projection as far as full year of '26 is concerned. And then as far as the guidance and as far as the margin profile that you mentioned, yes, it is true that the second part of the year showed a significant improvement as we saw in the slides that we showed before. So that's why we are confident that also on a full year 2026 level, we should be seeing an improvement in the EBITDA margins, which, if you consider that we are mentioning here a high single digit in top line, this means that we will be getting in a double-digit practically EBITDA margin -- EBITDA absolute improvement on a full year basis if you translate this margin improvement. So we can work in the direction that we have given also in the previous guidance that we will be working in moving in the 14%, 15%, let's say, area, so we want to move from the level that we are now to add another point or so as far as the EBITDA margin is concerned, and this will be in the back of the movement as far as the having more products and solution -- more solutions versus products, which come with a better margin profile.

Okay. One last question. Since you mentioned the state funded, if you like, RRF funded projects. How do you see the outlook after 2026, given that the RRF program ends this year? What is your projection? How maybe you can actually -- how will it impact the group?

Yes, that's a very good point. It's true that the RRF financing is coming to an end in 2026, but on the other side, there's been already -- we are already engaged in discussions, and we know that there will be different financing forms that will be put in place in order to continue in the direction of getting new projects being launched, but through a different financing scheme. So our -- a, you need to keep in mind that most of the projects that we have implemented, we have put our own platform and solution, which means that it will continue generating some revenue as well as, let's say, from the usage of the platforms. But b, there will be new initiatives. I cannot quantify them yet, but I know that they are looking into new projects. They are already engaging with us in the preparation of this project and the scope. So we will have more to share, I would say, as we move towards the second quarter of this year, where we'll have better visibility on what's going to happen as far as '27 is concerned.

The next question comes from the line of Vrekos Georgios with Piraeus Securities.

Two questions from my side. In terms of your high single-digit revenue growth guidance for 2026, could you help us break down the key growth drivers across the segments? And which areas do you expect to contribute most meaningfully in the top line? And my second question is given the Middle East escalations and the recent Iran attack and the potential risks to Qatar's infrastructure, which is a key supplier of helium globally, I think 30%, 35%, do you see any risk or higher input costs for the secured chips or other critical components? Have you quantified it into your model and your guidance for 2026?

Thank you for the questions. So I'll take the first one first. As far as the key growth drivers for the current year and beyond, I would say that the main areas that we expect growth have to do with our payment solutions, especially in the Western Europe and U.S. So most of the initiatives that we have been pursuing for quite some time are coming into life in 2026. So we expect a good contribution coming from this part of the world as far as the payment solutions is concerned, which bear in mind that also have quite a good margin profile because the price levels in that part of the world is in better shape than the ones in the, for example, in the Turkish market. So the fact that we have a shift of having more the Western Europe and U.S. contributing in the growth versus the Turkish market is also improving the margin profile that we expect. We continue having a lot of initiatives on the Digital Technologies, which again have quite a good margin profile. So in 2026, as we saw from the second half of '25 and as we're getting in '26 we have a stronger contribution of the Digital Technologies segment, which has a higher margin profile. So this will also enable the margin improvement in 2026. And on the -- last but not least, on the new markets as far as Africa is concerned, we also have some good initiatives that we are securing, which also have quite a good margin profile, and these are in the back of citizen identity solution and security documents. So all these 3 that I mentioned will be contributing to the growth of the top line. But on the other side, we'll also be improving the EBITDA margin of the group. As far as the MEA turbulence, let's say, in the region, first of all, I want to highlight that as a group, we are not that -- let's say, we don't have such a big business in that part of the world as far as the GCC, the Gulf countries and Levant and Iraq and Iran. So Iran, of course, we don't have any business. But in that part of the world, it's not that we don't have any business, but it's not significant, I would say. So we are not that worried as far as -- we are worried as far as what it means for the whole world and the macroeconomics and implications it will have. But as far as the implications for our business, as far as business revenue and profit is not that big. On the supply side, on the other side, it is true that there will be pressure as far as the logistics, especially is concerned and the supplier increases. But what I want to highlight here is the fact that we have this increased inventory levels that we have been talking for quite some time, especially on semiconductors. This is now playing in our favor, I would say, because we have enough stock in order not to need to procure much at this stage, unless it's specific technology that we are missing. So from the -- and when these semiconductors is also a big part of the cost of our payment cards and identity cards, you can understand the fact that we don't need to procure much is safeguarding us from getting pressure as far as the cost increase. The logistic cost, of course, is an issue. But if you look at the logistics cost per se on the total cost of the business is not that big. So we have factored this in our -- in what we are sharing with you here. We are doing constantly exercises to quantify this further and what are the mitigation plans we have behind this. But I would say it's not -- it's not our biggest, let's say, challenge at this stage.

The next question comes from the line of Stibric Rok with ODDO BHF.

My first one is related to the public sector project in Greece. So at 9 months, you were mentioning that roughly EUR 30 million are still to be booked, and I was just wondering how much out of this is attributed to '26? And how much have you already realized in '25? And the second question I have is related to the strategic '25-'27 plan. So if I take '24 year as a base and then grow individual business lines at the lower range of the guided growth rates, I get the revenues slightly north of EUR 470 million in 2027. Now given that '25 was weaker for well explained reasons, and you're guiding that you expect to return to growth momentum, I was just thinking how realistic is it for you to still achieve this EUR 470 million in sales by end of '27?

So as far as the public sector is concerned, there is still quite a significant part to be delivered in '26. So I would say there is at least EUR 15 million to EUR 20 million, if I'm not mistaken. Guys, Markus or Dimitris, correct me if I'm wrong, on that part. So there's still quite a significant part to be recognized in '27 -- in '26. As far as your next question, it is true that based on the performance -- the actual performance of '25, the EUR 470 million, we need to rework it by '27 if this will be the target. But what I can tell you is that if you continue projecting this growth, especially on the top line and the margin improvement on the bottom line, I believe strongly that the EBITDA performance will not be compromised. Maybe on the top line might be coming shy of the EUR 470 million. But I believe with all the initiatives that we are running and the improvements that we have in the cost base and the product portfolio, we should be able to stick on the EBITDA performance guidance that we have given.

Manolis, if I may step in, with regards to the RRF-related revenues. Rok, there is an explicit mention in the results press release suggesting that, to date, until the end of 2025, the total approximate revenue of the contract signed is EUR 71 million, of which EUR 35 million has been cumulatively received and recognized until the end of 2025, which leads us to a remaining amount of approximately EUR 36 million revenue to be recognized from Q1 2026 onwards.

Yes, that's very helpful. If you allow, I would just have then one follow-up question. Related to CapEx, you were mentioning around EUR 22 million in the presentation. I was just wondering which line in the cash flow statement I should still add to the roughly, was it EUR 14 million, I think, in the investing cash flow to get to the EUR 22 million that you are referring to in the presentation?

Dimitris or Markus, can you take this question, please?

Markus, can I take the first one? The total number for the CapEx is EUR 17 million. And Markus, can you suggest the reconciliation?

Can we -- I need to look, to be honest, to -- EUR 17 million number, again, I confirm the EUR 17 million, it's correct.

Rok, let's take it offline, and I will guide you through the cash flow reconciliation, please. The EUR 17 million is the number you have.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from the line of Aravani Evangelia with Euroxx Securities.

One question on my end. Could you please clarify what percentage of cost corresponds to secured chips?

Dimitris, I think you have the answer on this one.

Sorry, apologies, I don't have it handy. Markus, can I have your help, please? Sorry.

The question was what percentage of cost is secured chips you said, correct?

Yes, correct, correct. So we can get a sense of the potential impact that you discussed earlier?

Because as far as the chips cost is concerned, we don't see a major issue because, as I mentioned, we have already inventory on hand to deal with it. So even if there isn't going to be an increase in the component, this will not be impacting us in the midterm because we already have enough inventory on hand to manage this. So as far as the cost of the chip on the total cost of the card, it is a significant part of it. It's north of 60%, I would say, as far as the -- if I'm not mistaken. So -- but nevertheless, as I said, this is not going to be causing an issue because we already have inventory to cover this potential increase in prices. By the way, the prices have not really yet been communicated as increased. There are discussions with suppliers that they are also monitoring to see how the situation will evolve in the course of the next few months. So it's not an affirmative, let's say, decisions that they have taken that they're going to increase the cost.

About 1/4 -- it relates to about 1/4 of our total COGS.

Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now pass the floor over to Mr. Kontos for any closing comments. Thank you.

So thank you all again for having taking the time and giving us the opportunity to share with you the performance of 2025, but also most importantly, the direction we want to take the group going forward. What I want to say is that we continue having this ambition and target to continue growing the company in the direction of being the preferred supplier as far as holistic service and solutions and become a future-focused company, which also drives a lot of motivation from the team that is working with us in order to be able to succeed because at the end of the day, the companies are the people that are driving all the performance. So thank you again, and looking forward to reaching out to you at the next opportunity we will have.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good afternoon.