Banqup Group SA (BANQ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Unifiedpost Group Full Year 2023 Financial Results Analyst and Investor Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Hans Leybaert. Please go ahead.

Hello, everybody. Welcome on the annual presentation of our financial results 2023. So I'll start with a business update, business update where we go through the phase where we are in today, and Laurent will follow me by presenting the financial results. So first, we will zoom in on a what's the situation of our market. Then we will define and guide you in where we are in our journey and what place we can take in this market; and we will zoom also -- we also zoom in on our platform during this presentation. So let's start with the market situation. So more and more digitization becomes very dominant and actually very prominent on the radar because of regulation on a European scale, on a global scale. And regulation in, let's say, primarily 4 domains; e-invoicing and e-reporting, which is strongly related to the e-invoicing regulation. So governments want to install a strong reporting rules to get an insight in all transactions that happen in the economy. Of course, when we go to e-invoicing, it comes together with a digital e-report. Integrated with that, we have our e-payment. You know that Unifiedpost has invested a lot over the past years in payments. Payments is a natural part of this digital flows. If you are in the invoice to cash flow, payments are, of course, inevitable in this process. And there is also a whole reporting popping up around payments. Why? Just to have the full control over the invoice flows on one hand and the e-payment flows on the other hand. So e-invoicing, e-payments, e-reporting go really hand-in-hand. And together with that, that it's all based on strong identities -- strong identities, no digital communication without a digital identity with a level of security, which is what I always say, comparable to bank levels of security. Regulations are created in all of these domains. This -- the e-identity is the eIDAS 2.0, which becomes mandatory next year. E-payments is from, evolving from PSD2 to PSD3, and on e-invoicing, we have local regulations, like you see here. We have Peppol is quite dominant, but we have in France, the PPF and PDP platforms. So a lot of countries are installing a local e-reporting and e-invoicing model or it's based on Peppol. And yes, actually, they want to fulfill to -- once Europe clear -- the EU clearly defining these days is the ViDa regulation, which will be the common regulation over whole Europe. So we are confronted, on one hand, a diversity of regulations; and on the other hand, there is a common denominator on the -- on European scale. So what is a challenge here in this? That regulation is coming, it's created. It creates quite some activity in the market. On the other hand, there can be some delays. And that remember, when we started our IPO, it was -- it was planned to go live in France by July '23, July '23 became July '24, and now it is postponed by -- until September '26 -- December '26. However, the opportunity stays the same, it even increases because the processes are defined and offer a lot of opportunities. But on the short-term level, there is some delay. We have the same -- we experienced the same in Poland. Poland planned to go live by the first half of '24. But with the change of government in Poland, this is put on hold. However, this is the way forward in our market, and we should really stick to this -- to stick to plans and try to anticipate on these fluctuations and putting regulation in practice. So we call this our famous triangle because it's based on the 4 triangles where regulation is created in. How are we approaching this market? You remember, we did an IPO. We expanded our company towards many countries by doing an acquisition round. We have a focus on small business also through the Crossinx acquisition, we focus on larger businesses. But to have that local coverage on one hand, and on the other hand, that international scale, we extended our platform towards an European scope, and we did that through some acquisitions with the proceeds of the IPO. That was a timeline, 2022 -- '21-'22, and then we came -- we arrived in a next phase where we had to start to integrate all these acquisitions towards one company. So on the market itself, pan-European scope, every type of business. So we really made that we are taken back the regulations I just explained. We have the full solutions in all these countries served by local entities in these countries, covering on one hand the local needs of smaller businesses and the global needs of larger businesses. So as said, we stepped in this integration phase. Integration phase to, on one hand, create one platform. The one platform is necessary to act as, yes, let's say, not with a lot of platforms coming from these acquisitions, but really from one integrated platform serving all these local needs, global needs. Of course, not surprisingly, through acquisitions, a number of platforms, a number of capabilities that we had to join in one integrated platform, again covering also the payment needs, also the identity needs in this local and global context. That's what we did in '22 -- half of '22 and '23, creating actually a completely new platform, of course, based on the technologies that we have acquired. But it brings us now to a level that we have a platform, which is fully self service, which is absolutely necessary for exponential growth, a platform that is fully data-driven. Also very important, a lot of platforms are still in the mix between document-driven and PDF-driven communication and data-driven communication. We have created our platform with the mindset of the future, which is fully data-driven. And also a very important aspect here is the modular approach. Larger businesses will select one solution of the platform. Smaller businesses want to have it all integrated. So any type of business, from small to the largest ones, can be served by this platform, because it's created as a modular approach. Focus on the core business, that's very normal, that also means that we have to do -- we had to do some divestments. We announced the divestment of FitekIN, which is now in a closing phase. So stick to the core business is very important to focus on the right capabilities and on the right needs of the market. So that's -- and that's clearly the scope that we focus on. Together with that one platform, one focus. Also, we switched our company from, let's say decentralized organization after the acquisitions towards a centralized company. Why? Just to profit from the synergies over the different countries. When you have one platform, when you have one structure, it creates a real cooperation model between, on one hand, product, other hand sales. And sales stay in the country, P&Ls stay in the country. But on the other hand, there is a close cooperation and a close coordination from headquarters. That created on one hand, yes, a lot more -- that creates a lot more efficient company, and that also created some synergies. The number of FTEs is reduced from more than 1,500, 1.5 years ago, towards 265 at the end of '23. So that makes that we are, on one hand, executing cost reductions. And on the other hand, through this focus, one platform, one company, one organization, and we also become more optimal on the cost level. Of course, it is -- we always talk about compliance regulations, obligations driven by the governments. However, we want to turn compliance into an opportunity and we actually extend this model with a full-digitized way of working of our customers. And things like the full order to cash, and not only that invoice, but also quotes, orders, delivery notes on the procurement side, on the sales side are in scope. You are not digitizing only for the invoice, but everything what you do as a company needs to be digitized. Opportunities like embedded payments, embedded financing are incorporated in this model. And together with compliance, more and more -- it's all data-driven. Product data management becomes important. Identity as the base of everything, of course, and we do this for any type of business from the most micro businesses. Everyone who has a VAT number will be confronted in the coming 5, 7 years with the change to full digital. That's a fact. That's regulation coming to us, and actually we want to serve any type of business. Again, a modular approach, larger businesses will probably choose one of these capabilities. Micro businesses will pay us a subscription fee for having a simple or a less complicated integrated solution to serve their needs. But of course, there are a lot of companies in between, small business, medium-sized businesses who can connect through this platform. I also mentioned governments. Our Serbian colleagues, for instance, have installed an e-invoice platform and sold it to the Serbian government in actually one month's time from going live, 200,000 businesses were onboarded on the platform. And now all businesses in Serbia work in a full digital way. It shows that once the obligation is there, every company switches to this way of working and it supports the onboarding challenge or the onboarding opportunity once a regulation is put in place, and when it becomes mandatory. So compliance into an opportunity. Opportunity becomes even bigger than on the moment that data in the platform can be transferred into knowledge through AI, through analysis capabilities, and so on and so on. It's very logical. Everybody talks about AI, but once you are in a platform, in a network, there is a huge information of data available for AI purposes. In our new platform, we have encapsulated, incorporated also the principles of data lake, data marts to enable our customers to do AI on our platform. So once we go through this, we have the different steps. We expanded, we integrated all these markets towards the company what we are today. And now we are '24. We're going to make the step towards the future; and two, what we hope massive onboarding on the -- of new customers, '24 will be still a year where, on one hand, the existing business needs to be migrated to the new platform because our existing customer base has also the requirements to change. So it's not only new business that we target here, but also it's the transfer of our existing customers towards the new regulations. So -- and at the same time, we migrate them to our new platform with all these new capabilities on top of it. So upselling becomes there a very important revenue driver in the future. And on the other hand, there is -- we can expect a massive onboarding evolution. We have, on one hand, this is recently approved being on the 1st of January '26 in Belgium, B2B e-invoicing will become mandatory. That's 1 million -- more than 1 million VAT numbers that must select a solution from us, from our competitors, of course, but it's only 22 months from here, every business must be compliant with the legal e-invoicing regulation. That's what is approved by the Belgium parliament. Of course, there is a risk and there is a delay. That's what we have seen -- that's what we have seen in France. That's what we have seen in Poland now. But at the end, it will come. And we have -- we are confident that more and more countries are stepping in this execution phase. If we look to France, on the conference of Accounting Association in France, it was announced by the French Minister of Finance that '24 becomes the implementation year, '25 the rollout year, and the full adoption for the last part who are quite reluctant to change then the mandatory aspect starts to play in '26. In France, we have further elaborated our partnership with JeFacture, the joint venture we have with the Accounting Association. They covered 3 million businesses. And actually, we make -- we have integrated our platform -- with the French platform, with all software in France. We have made several partnerships around this JeFacture in France. So the opportunity is bigger than ever. But yes, we are waiting for this regulation to be put in place. France 4 million businesses. Germany will come a bit later, 5 million businesses. So you see 25 million businesses on the EU level and 25 million self-employed people. So this is the scope we are in for the coming 5, 7 years, all directed by the ViDa regulation that should be agreed between the EU members in the first half of this -- of '24. So a very important aspect here is, how can we onboard all these businesses, and that's very -- I talked about the platform capabilities, self-service, modular approach. So if you handle them in a traditional approach with a traditional sales approach with an implementation phase, then you are, as a company, far too slow in rolling out. So our platform is fully self-service. Integrators can go to our developers portal, download APIs and connect customers to the platform. And around this, we built an ecosystem of partners, different type of partners can be consulting firms, because they are the advisors of the larger businesses. We have accounting -- of course, accountants are our preferred partners since years. They promote the solution -- or the ambassadors due to smaller businesses. But we have also sector associations where we can fulfill their specific sector needs in the digitization phase. We have software firms, of course. So a lot of partner types that actually reflect to our -- and promote to their ecosystem, the solution of Banqup, which is our brand name these days towards their customers to enable them and to propose them a solution for digital communication with all their stakeholders, buyers, suppliers, government, banks, accountant and so on. So that's brought together in a in a Banqup suite, let's say, where we have a Banqup for the small businesses. Connect is actually the API box where companies can go -- can use to select typical APIs to connect to the platform and every ERP, CRM, every software can connect to it without interference of us. And if there is specific needs and development needed, there is a developer's portal where IT integrations -- integrators can rely on to connect to the platform. And we translate this and sell by the procurement process, the sales process with the payment capabilities and what we also realized in '23, the tax compliance capabilities. Because digitization also means that invoices need to be correct, the tax applications need to be correct. So tax becomes more and more dominant in this e-reporting capabilities. So that's -- as a wrap up, we have that market opportunity driven by regulation. We are now in a phase that we have created that one company in this international market with the right platform. And so now we are really ready to take the market when the market really kicks off because of mandatory regulations. So this is a bit where we come from, where we go to. And so I'll hand over now to Laurent for guiding you through the financial results of '23.

Okay. Thank you, Hans, and good morning, everyone, from my side as well. Thank you for joining this call and taking the time to listen to this update on the business and on the results of Unifiedpost. I suppose that most of you have already seen our press release. For those who haven't, it is available on our website. And I refer, of course, to the press release because in the press release, there are many details about the financial results, whether that is P&L or balance sheet or the cash flow of the company. Purpose of my explanation is, of course, to zoom in on a number of the financial figures, explaining them if needed. And after my explanation time, we'll be available for Q&A, of course. Q&A can be done either written -- either by dialing in. Going to my presentation on the first slide, a summary of a number of financial metrics we use. I think 2023, the company continues with its plan because, of course, the plan that Hans just explained, which we developed in phases. What is important for us is we're a bit in between like Hans said, there is new regulation coming up. Today, the market still continues with the development. As announced, we are pleased with our organic growth. We can present you the 13.2% on our core business. It's -- we use the word core business, what is core to our company is develop the revenue that comes from recurring digital. So really, the platform business, 13.2%, taking out the exchange rates, to be clear, but that is what we performed in a year where we were not supported by any government or any legislation going live. So that is quite all right. In another part of our business, we saw in the nonrecurring digital, we saw a small decline compared to 2022, which is not worrying for us. It's a bit expected why Project business is running well. We saw that last year, but we're also in that category of our revenue depending on the license business. And of course, license business, when we talk about license business, Hans was talking also about the Serbian government. Other governments are also preparing to take a decision to buy a platform like Unifiedpost. But when the legislation is postponed for mandatory e-invoicing, of course, decisions for new license deals are also postponed. That means that there is, for us, a delay. That's something which we need to accept, but it doesn't mean that there is a cancellation of the revenue. It's -- in the contrary, we are still very well placed in a number of deals we are working on, and we'll continue with that to conclude those deals also in the future. EBITDA is also marked on this slide. You can look at financial results from different angles. We have been stressing that cash. Cash is very important for us. It starts with EBITDA. Of course, we need to take into account also our CapEx. EBITDA slightly negative. But of course, if you look at where we are coming from, that is in the year, an improvement of EUR 6.3 million, showing that we are on track with what we said to the market that we would work on that to improve what, in general, we call cash flow. A last one I want to mention on this slide is the EUR 26.3 million. That's cash and cash equivalents on the balance sheet on the 31st of December at year-end important that we don't, of course, we show this metric to show that we are not running out of cash and that there is some headroom available with cash we have in the group and of course, combined with our focus on improving cash flow in the past year, but that will also continue in this year. In the non-financial metrics, I'll skip the number of customers and all of that. What I want to address here is the number of FTEs. Those of you following us for a couple of years will know that we come from more than 1,400 FTEs working for us on a daily basis to bring this company to where we want it to be. Compared to last year, that is 189 FTEs less -- so we achieved an organic growth of this company in our core business with 13% -- plus 13%, with close to 200 people more. So that is really a proof of our dedication to manage and to control the costs in the company. Of course, not all the cost reductions are fully realized in 2023. So you also see a part of that coming back. And of course, unfortunately, with reducing the number of people working for the group, that means also that we have layoff costs, also taking into cost in 2023; 424 FTEs, people were worried about, okay, they are cutting costs. They are doing the same and much more with less people, but are they also reducing their R&D team? The answer is no. You see it clearly on this slide, 424 of our colleagues are still working on a daily basis on the future of this company. We can't compromise on that. It is lower from a relative point of view compared to the past. It is still a huge team we have here in place with very competent people so that we can take that market that will start to develop in the coming periods and in the coming years. Another one, which typically I don't comment. So I've chosen 2 other ones on this slide. The rest could sound familiar. Connected Software Solutions, we are -- we have a platform. We are in a network. We create a network between companies. We are not on the market alone by ourselves. We have 150 software providers that integrated already with our platform and that are in this race to change the way a lot of companies work in Europe in the coming years, something we are also working on to really, yes, for the onboarding of so many companies in the coming years that we are ready to do so. On this slide, some information about the revenue. You see that the top line, of course, there is an increase from EUR 191 million and a bit more. Important here is to look at the business we are really here doing the digital part of the platform. And like I said, that is growing with 13%. In license business, we are awaiting a few deals that will surely follow. And in Postage & Parcel, what is logic also, that is a market that is a bit declining, but we are working hard there on keeping the contribution from that business up to speed. The trend to more digital will continue in the next couple of years. So for us, less and less -- and for our customers, less and less paper and everyone will go for the 100% digital model, 100% digital means also that is less expensive for our customers, more volume for Unifiedpost, more contribution, but it impacts also part of our revenue. So that means that where we are focusing on, and that's the reason why we focus on that recurring digital revenue that the platform generates, and then certainly also on the contribution. In the quarters itself like, yes, every year, we have some seasonality in our business. You will probably know that, that the first quarter is a good quarter for us, second and the third quarter is always a little bit less. And then we end the year typically with a very strong fourth quarter. And once again, that is also what we realized in 2023, if you compare the different quarters. On this slide, it's -- by the way, the presentation will be put online, of course, so you can -- you don't need to write everything which is on there. It will be after this call together with the explanation also available on our website. Here on this slide, of course, we run a stable business, which is typical for SaaS. So there are not many -- that many changes. We still have high recurring percentage of our business. It's a sticky business. We almost have no churn or limited churn with the model we run. Split between subscription and transactions, you see that slightly the subscription business is moving up. Subscription business, we think of SMEs that pay a small subscription every year. Like Hans also said in his presentation, and we saw the evidence in Serbia, what we have been saying for many years subscription and SMEs are today growing step by step. What we saw in Serbia is what you see in other markets that close to the deadline for digital invoices, everyone goes online, everyone goes to work digital. Serbia, 200,000 of the companies in the economy went fully digital and connected to the platform of the government, which is, as you know, run and operated by Unifiedpost and by our great colleagues in Serbia with very good results, and I will come back to that later in my presentation. The split, just to show that we run a European business. That was our ambition. That is our ambition. We are of the opinion that, that is necessary to be the winner of the future. You can't provide e-invoicing in one country. There are so many cross-border transactions in Europe and we need to help every company to work on an international scale. That is really the goal and our promise to every entrepreneur in the European Union, whether he is self, he or she is self employed, or whether that is an SME, we are there to help their international business. That's our coverage. We cover the full European Union and beyond that also, and other countries just outside the European Union. As you can see, top 3, not many changes, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, #4, performing very well, Serbia. I know that there are probably a few of our colleagues, customers here in this call from Serbia. For the other people that do not know how that country and how the local economy is running there, it is -- they are really setting, and I'm not talking -- well,I'm talking also about Unifiedpost, but I'm also talking about Serbia as a country. And the government, they are really setting an example. They already installed, they are running ahead of most of the European countries, EU. They have a platform which we delivered to them. They made B2G e-invoicing mandatory, they made B2B e-invoicing mandatory in the economy. Great results, 200,000 companies that work online reduced their costs fully transparent with government, 10 million invoices run today over our platform in Serbia, helping those companies perform better and also in the future, work in a very international context. That's a great result. But as I said, we also saw that in Serbia, that until it becomes really mandatory, there are only the companies that really are into digital that follow the new rules, and then in the end, everyone will follow and with good results. Like for example, in Serbia, it's now the government that can propose the VAT calculation with all data they have on their platform. And we of course hope that now, in the coming periods, a lot of other countries will follow. And we are in the market not only to help, because we're talking always about SMEs and Corporates we will be helping, but we're also there to help if needed, and if we are asked the government with a platform to transact all those data. On gross profit operational efforts, you see an important trend there that we are improving. We are really focused on costs. I have been talking about reduction in the number of FTEs, but of course we focus on every costs. We are not really helped by external factors like inflation, mandatory indexation of salaries, but that is something we need to cope with. And we can show that quarter-by-quarter, we are improving the results here on gross profit and gross margin, so it's important to see the trend. Of course, on Postage & Parcel, you -- like I mentioned earlier, we have with change in the market slightly, the revenue is going down. We're focusing also there on costs so that the contribution from that business line is kept up to the level we want it to be. Below the line of gross margin contribution cost development in R&D, G&A and S&M, perhaps first R&D, indeed more than 400 people still working on a daily basis on that platform. There are so many things changing from legislation and government and developing of the whole market, that we really need a team to secure our future growth. That is the first thing we do. We have a large team. On the other hand, in the past, while we grow our revenue, that's also what I always said. Remember that 2 years ago, 30% of our revenue, of our digital revenue was invested in R&D. Of course, if you grow the revenue and you keep your R&D team quite stable, that goes down, as shown on this slide, we are now at 20.2% of digital revenue that we invest into our R&D team. That percentage will continue to go down. As we, as Hans mentioned, now have one platform where we focus upon. Saying that one platform, if you go to the CapEx/OpEx, a bit more financial, we are focusing on the one solution, the one platform which is customized for every country. And that is our core development. That is the only cost we are capitalizing on the balance sheet from R&D. And that means that if you look at this figure, 2023 capitalized cost from on development, it has gone down. On the other side, while we put -- you also know that we have from the past, other applications we still support. We will continue to support those. But in the mindset, those are in a maintenance mode, which means that we take all of the costs directly into the operational expenses. And that means also that, yes, on the downside, from a finance point of view, from a strategic point of view, this makes 100% sense. It's logic. We focus, we integrate. We have one platform. From a cost perspective, that means that if you look at financial result of 2023, this has a negative effect. It has no cash impact, whether it's capitalized or operational expenses, the expense is just the same. But we expense more, having in the year itself a more negative impact on our financial result. G&A selling and marketing. We are also, of course, in those categories on the way to work on costs and will continue to do so. So this is not -- we are not at a point where we say this is the end result, and now you need to start to increase that. We'll continue with this company to look at every penny we spent and where we can reduce the cost, we'll continue to do so. One important remark I forgot to mention in the FTEs, we are -- the FTEs we report is without the divestments, there were no divestments closed in 2023. We announced one. As you know, it's also the strategy of the Group to divest noncore businesses. We got a remark that we are divesting. I don't know what, no, it's really a thorough analysis we made that we are divesting things which are not in the strategy of the one European platform where we will be helping the SMEs. We will divest those. The people will, of course, follow in a way, the divestments, it is not included in the cost reduction and the FTE reduction we present here in this presentation. EBITDA by year. Here also, it's the trend, which is important. Improving it on a quarterly basis. You see the result by year, like I said, improvement of EUR 6.3 million. You see the improvement by quarter, of course, we always have a very strong quarter. But combined with the nonrecurring costs over H2, there was indeed a concentration of onetime costs we took also into results. So actually, what you see here is the end result. But if you go one level down, you would see that from an operating point of view, we are already performing better without the nonrecurring costs, and we'll continue to drive that. This brings me to a slide to explain goodwill. I know that it's always difficult in such a presentation, because there are financial people in the presentation that know perfectly well what goodwill is. There are other people that don't know it. You need to be on the balance sheet for the people quickly trying to explain it. Every company has assets on the balance sheet. Goodwill is, for a part, the value that is attributed to something which is above the asset which is on the balance sheet. It's something like reputation, brand value, customer loyalty. So it has a certain value on your balance sheet. You need to evaluate on the yearly basis whether that value is still correct. And here, with this result, we of course do that on a yearly basis. It's reviewed by our Auditor, which is logic. And the result of this year is that we do an impairment. So that is a reduction of the goodwill, primarily goodwill, of EUR 39 million. Where is that coming from? It's not directly related to the business we did in 2023, 2 reasons. One, everyone will know that interest rates has gone up in the last 12, 18 months. We are not impacted by the way, by that because we have a fixed interest rate with Francisco Partners. On the other hand, when you do an impairment exercise, your cost of capital in the exercise goes up because interest rates go up on the market, and we need to take that into account. On the second place, there is also, of course, a business plan to compare to the value of the total goodwill and assets. And in the business plan, we only take into account, actually, the first 5 years we have ahead of us. And, of course, with some delay of new regulation coming into force. That means that there is a delay in the business plan combined with higher interest rates, means that there is a difference between the business plan and the current valuation of the assets and the goodwill on the balance sheet, creating an impairment of EUR 39 million. The EUR 39 million flows directly also into the results of the company. Important we are focusing cash, this is not a cash expense. So one to worry about they need to pay the 39 minutes (sic) [ EUR 39 million ]. It is balanced operation without a cash impact for the company. That's what you see here. Actually, also on this slide, the equity evolution of the company, the EUR 44 million. There are some other changes in the middle. That is the result, impairment loss of EUR 39 million. There are also a reduction of assets which are now gone to assets for sale, bringing now the equity of the Group to almost EUR 76 million. And like I explained already before, we are at a cash level of EUR 26 million at the end of the year. That brings me to key messages and I hope that we have some time left for some Q&A. We are continuing our path that we defined already a long time ago. Of course, with some adjustments in the current market which is awaiting the increased growth. We are still growing at a good pace of the 13%, focusing on the recurring digital revenue that will be the winner and the winning revenue of the future. And indeed, we saw some decline in our license business by a bit of postponement in that business and also in Postage & Parcel, because that's another business driver for us. Key message, we focus on cash. We focus on cash flow. We focus on the result. EBITDA has improved during 2023. And we continue to work on that in 2024, continuing with the trends like we showed that on a monthly basis, on a quarterly basis, we improve the cash flow generation of the company. Now time for Q&A. I don't know if there's any one that that is dialing in or that we have questions here online.

[Operator Instructions] Dear speakers, there are no questions over the phone, please continue with your written questions.

Shall we go to the written questions?

Yes, please.

Perhaps starting a question for Hans with the recurring digital processing in Q4 has a sales growth of 8%. What initiatives are you taking to accelerate the sales growth, recurring digital? Hans, I think that's a question for you.

Yes. What we have, of course, yes, a constant onboarding of new SMEs on one hand, that's an organic process where we have constant new customers with having -- adding new subscriptions to our recurring revenue. Also higher transactions on e-invoicing for larger businesses that were through the digitization wave that more and more customers accelerate their switch from paper copy that's clear. And they add payment capabilities on top, so we also see that our payment solutions on top of the invoicing business is accelerating. We will also stimulate that in '24, further stimulate that because of the switch to digitization forces customers to move faster in that direction. They have to do the work anyway. So we can really motivate them to accelerate their onboarding of their customers, their suppliers, and make them a part of their digital network. So it's actually working on the customers through the larger businesses, through the direct approach. On the other hand, extending the partnership and motivate the partners to onboard the customers and extend the customer base, create more subscriptions, create more volumes.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you, Hans. I'll take myself a number of questions I see you on the screen popping up. Indeed in the press release, we mentioned 380 people on R&D, 424 was mentioned in the presentation? Difference between those 2 is that 380 at the end of the year, 424 is an average over 2023. So they both indeed rely to R&D, but the highest one is an average, and the latest one is the situation on the 31st of December. Important, if you say why is this going down? We're trying of course to reduce the number of applications we need to support in this Group, so we can bring it out without jeopardizing the development of the core platform. From -- there's also a question on trade receivables and trade payables. Trade receivables, indeed a change in our figures, if you look at those, is that there is an impact from factoring. Factoring, that is a nonrecourse. We changed that to how it is administrated in a nonrecourse way. I think that will be clear for those who following up, I'll not go into detail. And that means that we also have the net trade receivable now in our presentation of the financials, and we included also Sweden in the factoring. Those are 2 changes on trade receivables. Trade payables, we had some -- it's also -- it's typical. It depends a bit. We have some major invoicing in the end of the year, December. And of course, what we also do is what a lot of companies, I think do, is also some optimizing of the working capital at the end of the year, and that is what you see on the trade payables side. Divestment, FitekIN and ONEA is a question I refer perhaps to the press release we issued on the 1st of August 2023. Our strategy is really to have one platform, interconnecting everyone in Europe and outside of Europe, and that we can all share data, share information, work together on one platform. Of course, historically, the world was not fully integrated. So we have a number of applications, solutions, services that for our vision of the future are less relevant for a company like Unifiedpost. So that means that we are divesting that. FitekIN and ONEA are, for us, stand-alone solutions, not in the one integrated concept, and that was the reason why we have chosen those to be divested. There are questions on what other divestments will pop up? We are working on that. I can't go into detail. I will announce that once we come to a binding offer. But of course, with the presentation of Hans, and I can amend we have a clear strategy. We have a clear focus. That will be the core business of Unifiedpost. And then, everything which is surrounding that is an option to be divested in the future. The next question is a question I will pass to Hans. Hans, Unifiedpost is ready when governments are really shifting legislation towards digital. But what is the market and competition doing? I think the question is a bit, yes, we are in lots of ways ahead of the competition with the delays. Is that a risk that competition will close the gap? Or how do you see that?

What we have to make a distinction on competition actually on 2 levels. You have the international players that position their services to, let's say, larger businesses, multinationals with an international scope, which is quite -- these businesses are quite active now because of the fact that they have to be compliant in many countries. So for them, it's mandatory to choose a solution now, although it's only one country where they are impacted in -- on the short term. So this type of competition is, you have probably heard about the Pagero case, these are typically competition in that segment. They are focusing on e-invoicing, e-reporting. What our unique offering there is that we complement it with the payment. Payment requires reporting too, and we see this as an integrated flow, invoicing payments and e-reporting. On the smaller businesses there. There is clearly, of course, also competition. Competition is more on a local base. Extension of software providers or robotic accounting players that also make the switch to e-invoicing services, but that's more on a local base there. However, small businesses can also do international business. So actually the combination of a rich platform with a lot of capabilities and a local approach makes that also small businesses can profit from that more generic and extended scope. So small businesses, local competition, a variety of players, extensions on software, robotic accounting players, and so on. Again, the combination with payments is important there too, because if you can create a full digital experience from sending an invoice, receiving an invoice, execution of a payment in a digital way, whatever type; card, bank transfer, and receiving the money in a fully real-time way, that's yes, that's what makes us towards competition quite unique, I think.

Okay. Thank you, Hans. I got a question on R&D. R&D costs, it's indeed not always easy to follow, my apology for that. Question states. R&D is mentioned EUR 27.6 million. However, if you add EUR 16.6 million CapEx to EUR 23.7 million in OpEx, you come to EUR 40.2 million. That is indeed correct. The difference between those 2 is a depreciation of EUR 12.5 million. So when I'm talking about R&D costs really in the year 2023, that's really what we pay to R&D, that is CapEx, OpEx, but exclude the depreciation of costs in the past. So it's more really, like I said, focus on cash, EUR 27.6 million is what we spent -- and then, of course, when you capitalize, you depreciated, and depreciation of our R&D in 2020 through 2023 was EUR 12.7 million. Impairment question, indeed, it's a good summary. Impairments due to lower provisions -- not due to lower provisions, my apology, but due to higher cost of capital and the timing effect that is indeed the case for the person who asked the question. Next question is on anticipated cost savings of the current employee reduction. Are there plans for future reductions? I can say, yes, our business is moving to a full digital platform business, and that means that we have now still things that need to be done manually. I'll give one example. Today, still physical invoices, they still exists on paper, but more often PDF invoices. We need to extract data out of those invoices. To do that and to do validation of the data, that means that you have a cost related to that. The future, in a couple of years time, most of that, if not all work will be gone and we will have lower cost. So that will be a constant evolution to really adapt the company. It's really -- it's exciting to be in this world where a lot of things are going to happen, but of course the company of the past is not the company that we want to be in the future. So that is a constant change. Hans explained that also a bit with really the steps we are following, acquiring companies, increasing our addressable market to the full European continent, integrating cost reduction, that's a phase we are in. And now, we are really gearing up to the phase of increased growth. And of course with increased growth, low revenue, it is very simple to see that cash flow will also be improved. A consolidation in the sector, Hans, that is a one for you. We are not in a strong position today. It is mentioned, I think true and not true from a consolidation point of view, but I think a company is strong. But perhaps, Hans, you can comment on that.

Yes. There is a consolidation going on some -- quite some private equity were active in the past months, year. Tungsten has bought -- buy Kofax. Behind Kofax there is TA Associates. We have Basware, who bought -- who is bought by Accel-KKR. And now there is an industrial acquisition of Pagero by Thomson Reuters. Yes, indeed. There is quite some moving around in this business because of the clear huge opportunities and yes, the necessity to have all the necessary capabilities in this, let's say famous 4 triangles. So yes, quite some activity, quite some different industry sectors interested in this domain. What Unifiedpost goal is to stay that independent company. And actually by staying independent, we have the capability to work with whatever partner and to combine our services with their customers and their customer base. So building a network through establishing and elaborating partnerships is our goal. And if you want to elaborate this with a lot of different partners, also different in nature, then it's very logical that you stay an independent company. That's for us. Our strategy for today.

Okay. Thank you, Hans. I will take the last couple of questions. I see that it's already close to 11:10. A question on the divestment of FitekIN and ONEA, completion H1, 2024. We said in the press release that this is in the near period. And so we are working on that. It takes indeed a bit longer. There are -- there is more complexity and steps to be taken, but we are working on that and to close the divestment in short time frame. A question on guidance. Guidance for growth of recurring digital? The short answer is, we don't give guidance at this point in time. Why not? Well, there are 2 things. We see a huge market which is opening up, where it's thrilled to work on that market, and we see a lot of potential, 25 million SMEs in Europe, 25 million self-employed people. That is 50 million VAT numbers in total. That will need to change the way they do business in the coming years. That's a huge market opening up. We are well placed to capture a part of that market. The only thing we do not know is what are governments to decide. I refer back to the Serbian government, where you see that before a government imposes that, that only a few companies or people are shifting to the digital. And in our press release, also the growth because of France, for example. Okay, there are some early adopters, but you don't see exponential growth that is close to the deadline. And we are of course not in the driving seat to decide when it needs to be mandatory. So we are too dependent of external factors and we know that there is growth. We know that this is coming, we see it in different markets, but we don't give clear guidance when it will come. Okay. That brings us, I think we've handled all the questions. It might of course be that people in this call still have other questions. I think, I can say, please send us a mail and Hans and myself, we'll do our best to facilitate a call with you to answer the questions in more detail. If you would like that. There is information online and it will be -- all other topics will be added to our Investor Relations website of Unifiedpost. So thank you all for taking the time and listening to our explanation and participating in this call and asking the questions. And of course, we hope to see you back in the future. Thank you.

Thank you.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.