Banqup Group SA (BANQ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our H1 financial update. We're delighted to have you joining us online this morning. I'm Alex Nicoll, Investor Relations at Unifiedpost. This morning's presentation will include an update from our CEO and CFO, and then followed by a Q&A session at the end. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin the presentation this morning, I would just like to draw your attention to Slide 2 of the presentation, which sets up the legal framework under which this presentation must be considered and which I'll assume you have read. I'll now hand you over to our CEO and Founder, Hans.

Hello, everybody. Welcome on this update session. Today, of course, we talk about the first half year and the half year figures. But of course, we announced last night an important deal for us. So I will guide you also a bit more through the essence of this deal. So let's zoom in now on the results of H1 '24. First of all, like I mentioned during the Investor Day, we have a focus this year on the rationalization of our portfolio, getting -- given the digital transformation that is coming very fast to our business, we need to be able to focus on our core business. That's why we have to rationalize our business and focus on what's the real core. We had -- last year, we had already signed the FitekIN/ONEA divestment. It took a little bit longer, but finally, beginning of July, the deal was closed. And all is set together with the partnership that we signed with the guys from FitekIN/ONEA. So it's actually always a combination of signing a partnership and divest. We did the same with the divestment [ rate ] from 21 Grams, which is in the meantime signed and now is under revision by the competition authority, but it comes together with the strategic partnership with PostNord. Of course, PostNord has access to the whole -- the great access to the whole Nordic market. They serve a lot of services in their core business of communication, paper and hybrid to all Nordic companies. So for us, it was a huge opportunity to have them as our sort of franchise solution for our B2B digital platform. So what we agreed with them is, of course, the sale of 21 Grams on one hand, but also the partnership to access -- to bring our product to the Nordic market with our integrated e-invoicing and e-payment solution for SMEs on one hand, but also, on the other hand, delivering international e-invoicing to the Nordic larger businesses. So last night, we also signed a partnership with the company Your.World for selling the business of identity access management in the Netherlands. I'll zoom in, in the next slide after this one. So on the current business, we have a steady growth of 12.8%, which is to my opinion, okay, given the fact that the digital -- the real kickoff of our market is still in front of us. If we look to the e-invoicing mandates which will be, for sure, a catalyst for exponential sales, they all kick off '25, '26, '27, 1st of January '26 in Belgium, '26 in September, France, and Germany, '25 to '26. So we need to be ready. We need to be ready in a good shape and that's what we are working on technological level, on operational level and on a financial level. In the meantime, our existing customer base is constantly growing, and we reached now already 1.3 million customers. Additionally, we have a continued focus on costs. We reduced our OpEx with 7%. This will be an exercise which stays ongoing. Of course, with this divestment phase and related costs that come together with -- we will -- this can even go a bit faster once we are in a phase that the divestment phase is behind our planning. So on the CapEx level, we maintain a constant level of EUR 16 million. That's absolutely necessary to implement all what's needed on our platform. And let's take the next slide who actually shows what we presented on the 30th of April. This is our strategy. This is the integrated solution set that we built on one platform. And it's all driven by regulation. Of course, we need to give an extra dimension on it that it's also an opportunity for our customers, not only an obligation. But regulation is a real drive. We always talk about ViDA around e-invoicing. We extended a bit more to e-document, but we have local regulations on the e-invoicing. We have international EU regulation, ViDA. So we need to be compliant in all these triangles with the upcoming regulations. And I must say that it's a long list of regulations but it's a very coherent regulation set that clicks in each other, and it's really the right strategy to have one platform that can act as the one-stop shop for compliance and on the other hand, to become a real booster for your digital transformation. It's all based on a strong identity. That's for sure. And that's why identity is important for us, but we have a particular strategy for that. Let's go to the next, Alex. So why are we divesting previous ones? So why are we divesting a very important business? That's a very important question. Let's -- that's what I -- let's take back the slide again from the Investor Day, where we decided to zoom in on each triangle particularly, and actually analyze and identify the opportunities on their own. Just to have a sort of a bridge of growing business towards the full platform based on e-invoicing, but with a dependency on kicking off regulations. So that's why we looked at it separately and defined what can we do and what is our strategy for each particular triangle without dropping the triangle. That's very important to stress here. It is -- the combination makes it strong. On the other hand, you also need to be flexible and each triangle can have its own business model. So that's why we identified different models and with our modularity of our platform, we have different options to activate different business model. Remember the caretaker model on payments level that we explained to you during the Investors Day. So let's zoom in now on the identity and purely on the identity part. So identity is a business model that is -- will be influenced very, very strongly in the coming 1, 2 years by the upcoming eIDAS regulation. That means that eIDAS, it implicates that every country must provide legislation and a solution for private persons for -- to have a digital identity on your mobile phone and the capability to sign transactions. That's law. That's upcoming law. And that's also related, of course, to business identities because private persons are mandated to act for a business. Business identities are exactly what's in our interest because we deliver B2B services on our platform. So we need to be able to rely on a strong business identity. That implicates that if you want to cover EU, in the past, we built up our own identities and our identity database. But now with the regulations, everywhere in the EU, business schemes, IDPs, identity providers show up and cover different regions in the EU. So for us, it's a lot smarter to focus on integration to all these different IDPs instead of building up our own identity database. And that's why it's very logic that we divest our IDP solution and bring it together with another party, make a partnership with this party to access their common database. Your.World is typically experienced in web hosting and also webshop hosting. All these customers must go to, let's say, compliant business, compliant webshop business. So they must buy, somewhere in the coming years, a solution like our Banqup platform. So it's a logical evolution to on one hand, divest the buildup of our own identity database, but on the other hand, connect with all identity databases, which are present in EU. Otherwise, we can't have a scaling business. Of course, having this, implementing this strategic move to scale our core business of invoice and invoice payments and related financing proposition. It has, of course, a side effect. We have a partnership with a strong partner, Your.World, serving more than 1 million customers. So that's access to this customer base is a real asset for us. At the same time, we received an amount of cash that makes our balance sheet stronger. That's for sure. It's actually a fastened track towards our, let's say, debt free cash breakeven phase. It was let's say, a unique opportunity to speed up this process because it has always been the target to be ready, again, in a good financial shape and an operational shape before the real market kicks off and when regulations come in place. So this is a momentum that we can take to speed up this process and make our balance sheet a lot stronger. So let's zoom in on the Identity business. We have on one hand, we see that wallets come up. We have, in the middle, you see that different IDPs are available in the EU. And so our next step is to integrate in these countries the different IDPs so that we can have, let's say, the KYC and the KYB process a lot more automated than, let's say, a manual process in the past. So this evolution of eIDAS 2.0 is a real opportunity for us. But again, we don't have to make our core business of being a proper -- our own IDP. All right. Let's go to the next. So what we see now is that our model is rolling out towards the whole EU, Europe, even global, and it's all backed by strong partnerships because that's the only way how we can scale business, business that where we need to serve millions of companies. PostNord, a very strong partner for the Nordic market. We have signed up a partnership with [ develop ], a German partner coming from the former Crossinx company and serving 15,000 midsized and larger businesses in Germany. Of course, we have for France, Je Facture, which with our collaboration with the accountants, step-by-step, we onboard new accountants. It's a bit early. September 26 is still some months or 2 years from here. But step by step, we build our ecosystem in France together with the Accounting Association. We have also vertical approaches and [ Grarix ] sector, LTO. In the Netherlands, we have and built the construction sector in Belgium. So vertical solutions becomes more and more dominant in proposing the right solutions to their industry because the more digital you go, the more you need to talk the language of the business. Data exchange must correspond with the specific needs of an industry sector. And finally, I have mentioned here is for all clarity, this is not the only partner list that we have. It's a bit of a snapshot of important partnerships that we build up and where we rely on. There are, of course, more. But it gives you an idea of what type of partnerships that we cover. In Germany, we have for a while now our partnership with Munich Re where they want to fund receivables, invoices that go over our platform and our payment network, and they want to prefinance these receivables. However, it was quite a challenge to get this -- to be able to serve this without [ intermediance ] of a bank. But with -- we worked hard on this. And actually, we got -- that's what we announced at the beginning of August. We got the approval from the National Bank of Belgium and it's passportable to the whole EU that we, without the intervention of a bank can act as the platform for funding invoices. So accounts receivable financing, so selling invoices, let's say. And with funders like Munich Re can be served on our platform without the intermediance of a bank. So the revenue stream from invoice payment finance is now one way, one road -- on one platform that we can serve fully integrated. And so that makes that, again, the platform is not only there for your compliance reasons, but it's also available for boosting your business because you can optimize your payment flows. Of course, this is all work in progress. That's not -- and all this, that's why we constantly need to invest and spend R&D. Remember the EUR 16 million a year that we had to set up all these possibilities and all these services in all countries that we want to cover. But the platform, the fundamentals are there, the approvals are there and the partners are there to serve this business. So let's go to Koen who will review -- will guide you through the figures.

Thank you, Hans. Thank you, Alex. Dear participants, welcome from my side to this investor session. I hope you all had a longer night and a better sleep than I had. I refer to our midnight announcement. Finance is presenting figures, and this confirms the accounting principles applied by the company. In case of UPG, it is conformed IFRS and some specific rules derived from IFRS as described in our accounting manual. I told and I was learned that IFRS makes things more simple, to prepare and to read. Well, I have to admit that today, I'm no longer convinced. Today, I'm confronted with a difficult task to guide you through the complex mechanics of IFRS and the impact it has on the UPG figures. Dear all, please do not misunderstand me. I do believe you all have sufficient IFRS knowledge and respect this. But to get right understanding on the presented figures, I remind you on some rules we have to apply in preparing our financials. The slide shows bars or some bars and it presents the different movements due to different transactions Unifiedpost successfully closed or initiated or announced so far. The size of the bars shows the impact the transaction has compared to the figures presented at year end 2023. Note this is purely indicative. First, we had the divestment of 21 Grams, which is a strategic one signed on July 5, which is presented in our figures as an asset held for sale in the financial position and which is qualified as discontinued operations, which means that it is a discontinued operation from January 1 onwards. It has a significant impact on the presentation of our figures. The figures presented in our press release and in the half year report correspond with the blue-colored background bar and are defined as continued operations. 21 Grams appears in one line item of our income statement qualified or defined as discontinued operation. So that's a major change in presenting our figures, please be aware of that. Other transactions we have concluded during first half year or just after was a deconsolidation of new image in Serbia only with an impact on our traditional communication service business. It is still in our figures till end of June as we had control over that activity, but will no longer impact our figures from July 1 onwards. The announced transaction FitekIN/ONEA was finally concluded, signed, closed on July 5, and thus is a post balance sheet event. The assets and liabilities are presented as assets held for sale in our financial position but are still included in our income statement as we had control of these activities so far till end of June 2024. And last but not least, of course, transaction announced this night about Your.World is still in our figures end of June. We control these figures, we control this business, but will disappear from our income statement before year-end. So at year-end, we will show you continued operations, which look quite different than those we have presented to you end of 2023 and those presented to you today. At the right, you can see two bars or some bars reflecting the gross margin. You can notice that gross margin for our Digital business is growing from 53% to a level of 67%, excluding the 21 Grams activities. On the next slide, I dig it a bit into the revenue split. In the bars, you may read the split per type whereby we had defined digital revenue coming from transactions, digital revenue coming from subscriptions. Others are mainly licenses and project revenue. Overall growth in digital revenue is 10.9%. In case we are excluding the divested activities, FitekIN/ONEA, we reached 12.8%. Note that the divested activities FitekIN/ONEA were quite stable and were impacting our growth figures in a negative sense. The recurring portion of our digital revenue business amounts to 92%. The traditional service revenue, this no longer include the revenues from postage and parcel optimization in the Nordic area and represents today only revenues from print activities and hybrid digital products. We see there a decreasing trend in traditional communication services, and this is due to 2 main factors. One, and this was an objective, a clear objective we have announced, it is due to conversion of hybrid digital activities into pure digital activities. So there's a shift from traditional to digital and we had an expired contract in managed services, which is impacting negatively our revenue. Looking at all these graphs, I start at the top bar left, total digital revenue, 10.9% growth year-on-year, even 12.8% growth, excluding FitekIN/ONEA, I just explained that one. Remind that Q4 '23 because the bar is a bit -- yes, above all the average bars that Q4 2023 was impacted by important project sales in the Balkan related to the product, eFaktura, explained during our session in end of April. Subscription revenue grew with 8%, driven by growth in Banqup sales in the Netherlands and Belgium and driven by identity sales in the Netherlands. The transaction revenue grew by 9.7%. Our customer base is continuously growing and exceeds the 1.3 million paying customers. Over half year 1, the number of paying customers direct or indirect grew with more than 100,000 over the last 12-month period. The paying users for subscription business grew with 13.4% year-on-year. After a decrease in Q1 compared to year-end in the ARPU, so I think we decreased from 6% to a level of 5.6%. That was mainly due to the product mix earlier explained, we again saw a take up to a level of 5.8% for Q2 2024. On average, for the half year, we end up with a figure of 5.7%. On the next slide, I zoom in on the gross profit or gross margin by quarter and it's important, I already explained it a bit, but it's important to look at each of the bars. So we presented in the bars or in the lines the gross margin, gross profit, inclusive 21 Grams, as you were used to look at these figures in the past. And we showed -- these are more or less the gray-colored bars. And we show the gross margin and gross margin percentages, exclusive 21 Grams, these are more or less the blue-colored bars and the blue-colored lines. So you notice that in digital service, our gross margin is going up to a level of 67%, and it shows that with our Digital Service business, we may target the level of 70%. Also, the traditional communication service was, in the past, negatively impacted by the Postage & Parcel optimization business and is now showing gross margins at a level of 27%, 28%, which is far more market -- conformed market expectation and industry benchmark. As announced earlier, during the session of end of April, we are, of course, looking at our cost structure and continuously monitoring the evolution of our cost structure. We try to make the company more cost efficient. A cost-saving program was introduced last year which brought already its fruits in half year 2 2023, but it's really showing results in half year 1 2024. The exercise is still continuing and some planned measures can still be completed since some of the divestments are closed now. Efficiencies in print, outsourcing of some non-core services, mainly in hybrid digital can be done to variabilize these costs. But we also note that the group has a certain complexity and does meet many regulations requirements which means that cost saving opportunities have also some limits. The overall cost structure year-on-year is decreasing with 7%. Excluding the non-cash items, non-cash items such as depreciation, of course, because that's the result of past investments already paid in the past, the cost structure is decreasing with more than 9%. And note that on top, in this cost structure of H1 2024, there are still nonrecurring costs included linked to the different transactions we have discussed and explained for an amount of EUR 500,000. As Hans already told, CapEx is at a level of EUR 16 million on an annual basis. At half year, we spent EUR 8.2 million, which was in line with 50% of our budget that is consumed. So we are on track. Combination of growing volume with cost-saving program should lead to increasing levels of EBITDA. At the bottom, we show the EBITDA levels over the past 6 quarters from quarter 1 2023 until Q2 2024. We mainly compare these quarters on a comparable basis. I do mean we compare Q2 2024 with Q2 2023. Looking at this, we note that for each quarter, we have currently a growth level of EUR 1.9 million to EUR 2 million on quarterly basis. So comparing half year '23 with half year '24, you see an improvement of EUR 3.6 million. The growth is partially coming from the increase in gross margin, volume growth and efficiency improvement measures and is partially coming from the cost-saving program in the indirect cost structure. Another important item from the financial side is, of course, our cash evolution and the follow-up of the current level of available cash. The reported cash end of 2023 amounted to EUR 26.3 million. End of H1 2024, we are at a level of EUR 80.7 million. We generated EUR 5.5 million in our operating activities. We spent a net of EUR 8 million in investing activities. We spent EUR 1.7 million in our financing activities. That's a net. But also, I have to ask your attention for the fact that EUR 3.3 million of our cash position is transferred to our assets held for sale, mainly the 21 Grams position, it's no longer in our cash line but it is in the line assets held for sale. Current cash position of EUR 18.7 million is including a growing level of client money which is restricted cash. But the closing of FitekIN/ONEA increased the available cash beginning of July, on July 5 to be more precise, with an additional amount of EUR 7.2 million, important to note that. Finance is, of course, continuously working on optimizing the cash availability and looking at every opportunity to do so. I refer to the strategic investor session of April 30, where I have explained that we will work on strengthening our financial position. At end H1, I cannot yet show positive results. But you have, for sure, understood that the divestments will support, strengthen our financial position in different ways. First, it will improve our shareholder equity level. Second, it will decrease the level of invested goodwill on the asset side of our financial position. And third, it will improve our net financial debt position. I will anticipate on the question, what will you do with the proceeds from those divestments? I cannot precisely answer the question at this morning, too early after a long night. But I can confirm that we are in very constructive discussion with our stakeholder, [ debtor ] Francisco Partners. The midnight news needs further follow-up with them. And we trust that we will find consent on the future position. I can guarantee that from finance, we will carefully look how to optimize the different positions in our balance sheet, considering the outcome of the announced divestments. We are fully aware that we can only [ spend ] once they're going. Summarizing the key elements. Total revenue half year 1, EUR 50.8 million. Digital service revenue grew with 10.9% excluding FitekIN/ONEA, 12.8%, amounts to EUR 30.4 million. Recurring digital service revenue, 91.2%. ARPU and average for H1, EUR 5.7 a month per user. Digital service gross margin, 67%. Our R&D spend is EUR 10.6 million, which is 34.8% of our digital service revenue. Operating cash flow, EUR 5.5 million positive. EBITDA neutral for half year 1 and our cash position end of June EUR 18.7 million. In the press release, we stated that considering the divestments, our free cash breakeven point is expected for end of 2025. Please note in this context that our level of cash burn is month-on-month decreasing and for sure, no longer at the level of previous years. Divesting activities with positive cash flow has, of course, a short-term negative impact on the free cash flow position. As compensation for these divestments, we substantially increased our cash buffer. We make that the company is already much more healthy. Growing activities still without a regulatory tailwind, stimulated by new and upgraded strong partnerships in the main business regions of Europe and improved financial results will mean that our EBITDA line will further increase. Together with the derisking our financial position, we will bring us step-by-step to this position of free cash flow breakeven. We are very confident to do this, and I do believe these are the right steps at this moment. Hans, I hand over to you again after this financial presentation. Thank you all. Hans, you're on mute, I think.

Sorry for that. So as a wrap up, thank you, Koen. We can say that '24 is quite an intense year through this divestment phase. But on the other hand, it brings us towards a financial shape, which will be very healthy just to attack the digital transformation market when this market pops up. So first important prerequisite to be able to conquer this market. Secondly, we can say that through the focus on core business, also on the operational side, we position ourselves in the right way, doing the right expenses for the right business. Thirdly, over the past two years, we have developed a brand-new platform, which is future-proof for the coming 5, 10 years, supporting and SME business and large businesses on international scales by integrating the acquisitions that we did in the past, for instance, Crossinx and actually integrating that in one integrated platform. At the same time, we build up a list of partnerships, which are real strong partners to leverage on and to create a real exponential sales machine. So last but not least, and that's what we announced also in the beginning of July. We are also reanalyzing our governance and the way how we operate on a Board level, on a management level. And so it's planned for approaching this in Q3. Of course, through this divestment deal over summer, which was an intense summer, we didn't have the chance to take this up already. But it's the clear intention to do so now in the coming days, weeks, now that we have been able to release this announcement of the divestment off to Your.World. So I think this brings us in a really good position for, yes, the future that's before us. Thank you very much. And I hand over back to Alex who will guide you through the questions.

Okay. Thank you, Hans, and thank you, Koen. I see we have a few questions that have come through. Just a reminder for people to submit that on the online chat. But I'll start with what we have currently in there waiting. So Koen, maybe one for you. Can you provide any update on any potential impairments that have had to be made?

Yes, we had -- end of 2023, we had in our financial figures based on an extensive exercise, we have recorded a quite substantial impairment. As IFRS describes, we had to do the exercise again end of June. We did that exercise again quite extensively. So we have [ not ] to act any impairment and I do believe with the divestments we have announced, yes, what we have explained during these sessions that no experiments should be expected for this year.

Hans, maybe the next one's for you from Chris. Regarding the sale of the Wholesale Access business, you sold one of your jewels. How will that impact UPG in the future?

So it was -- I read this already this morning in the press that we sold a crown jewel. It is very -- it's a very healthy business but the healthy business must be on the right place for the future. And an identity business under the regulation of eIDAS 2.0 is different than what it was in the past. So it is a lot smarter to bring this, to put this in the right place. And -- but guarantee that the leverage on this Identity business that this is still guaranteed and it's even extended through the partnership with your work because if you look back in the past, we did Identity business, to get a secured E-invoice business but our business is e-invoicing, it's e-payment. The business of identities on its own, that was a side effect to get this E-invoicing business done. And that's why it's more logical to leverage on one hand on the business that we divest now, but on the other hand, create a partnership around it, but extend this vision to what are all other schemes in the EU and also all other business of Europe. So this is not -- that can look like a crown jewel on financial figures today. And it is a crown jewel for those who make it as their core business. But for us, it's not core business.

We have another one here from Benjamin. When do you expect to finally ramp up the Digital business? And when will the boost finally [ dependent ] on country rules? Is it dependent on country rules?

It is -- we have to look towards the different services. Again, invoice payment finance is important. We see -- we made good progress now on Payments business. That's for sure. Of course, the integration is the strongest part of our solutions. One platform for your invoices and your payments. And there, we are dependent on, yes, let's say, the momentum of the regulation. On the other hand, if you create already an offering that's so interesting that because of -- yes, it really helps your business then the dependency of regulation is a lot smaller. At the end, it's about being compliant. That's for sure. And that's a huge impact, VAT, taxes in general, ESG becomes very important for us in our business. But at the end, it's also to boost your business. Being digital makes -- lets you do better business. And that's what we have to show to our customers. And there, they don't have to wait for on the popping up of regulation although regulation, we can't neglect that, it's a real boost for massive [ set ] because then it's not an option, you must change, and that creates another momentum. That momentum that has also a challenge because then you must be able to onboard massively customers because if you don't have a platform that has the capability to onboard hundred thousands of businesses in 1, 2, 3 months, then there is also a problem. So being ready on a technological level to embrace all these opportunities is also a challenge that we need to be prepared on.

Thank you Hans. Koen, maybe one for you. Can you remind us of the details around the [ San Francisco Partners ] loans and the potential penalties included on the loan documents?

Yes. Well, the details of our San Francisco partner loan is reported in our annual report on a yearly basis. So we have a EUR 100 million loan in a senior facility. We do not have any penalty anymore. So during the first year, there was a penalty paying back that loan amount. Today, there is no penalty anymore. But as said, we are in a constructive discussion with Francisco Partners on the future outlook and how to deal with that.

Hans, maybe one for you now. Have there been any changes in the time line starting the start of country regulation in Europe since the last update?

No, let's say that more and more mandates are added to the list so even outside Europe. So -- but the dates are quite stable now. So we are looking forward to the kickoff in Belgium, which is only 8, up 16 months from here. And of course, the momentum for France will also be in '25 because being ready by September '26 makes that everyone will make his choice in '25. Of course, that goes together with a strong certification process, which is not the case in Belgium. Of course, with Je Facture and the joint venture we have with the Accounting Association. We are very well placed to them. We have done together with [ ACMA ], all the investments for being compliant with the regulation. And especially focused, not surprisingly, on the SME market because, of course, there is a list of parties that serve the French market, that there will be other PDPs, it's called in France. But PDPs are mainly focusing on the larger businesses. We have a special focus on the mass market of the SMEs. And of course, we have a very strong sales channel through 20,000 accounting firms, which are connected to the Accounting Association and will be able to distribute Je Facture in France.

Koen, two questions for you from Ben. What is the revenue related to the Dutch Identity business in scope? And second part, can you share pro forma of the 2023 P&L, excluding all announced divestments?

On the first question, yes, as the announcement is very recent. And also based on a clear request of the buyer, we agreed not to disclose the revenue level of the business at this moment. So I cannot enter into this in respect of request of the buyer. The second point, can you give us pro forma 2023 P&L excluding. You will have already a lot of information in our half year report, which is an extensive report where we comment on each of the divestments with a separate income statement. So I think using this kind of information or this kind of information will help you already out. But should you have a more detailed question on that one, of course, we can help you in providing more detailed insights. We will have to do so. We have to prepare comparative figures '23, '24. So that is also a job on our action list. With the half year report, you will have a lot of information.

Hans, the next one is from Philippe for you. How is UPG positioned versus its competitors? For instance, could [ ODDO ] be considered at threat?

So we have to make a distinction between parties like ODDO, like others who services to businesses to manage their company. And actually, we see them as partners. So that means that we are the communication hub between businesses. We need to create a network, network where we interact with our colleagues in France, other PDPs, internationally with other service providers, where we have customers who are connected to our own network. But we are in a network business, and we are making the bridge to what solutions like ODDO. So we don't see them as competitors, but as partners to connect with and to integrate with. So we make our system open. We deliver a number of APIs, which enables ODDO to connect with our platform and to offer integrated e-invoice and e-payment services to their businesses on an international scale. And that's how you have to see us as towards the software ERP, CRM world, we see them as colleagues, as partners, and certainly not as competitors. They can do some overlapping business on a domestic level, sometimes a little bit on e-invoicing probably because everybody is jumping on e-invoicing, but the integrated platform of e-invoice, e-payment, e-finance, yes, that's the extra value that we give and make it interesting for them to serve to their customers.

Hans, we've got a little bit of time left, and there is another question here for you. So from looking at your portfolio, the next component is payments. Given the speed of innovation and high cost of regulation, in this area. Isn't it better to divest your Payments business and partner up with a bigger player?

That's -- B2B payments are a relatively new market. If you look to the big players, it's of course, the Stripes, the [ IDNs ] of this world. They are massive and massive companies. But we step in the niche of B2B payments, which has its particular needs. And we invested a lot over the 10 years over the past 10 years in payments especially our license as a payment institute. And we explicitly wanted to build up a proper payment network. We have today approval of -- in 19 countries to roll out local [ IBANs ], local payment accounts, that not one like Revolut business, one type of payment account for all businesses. But actually, FR IBANs in France, BE IBANs in Belgium just to serve it as a normal bank account that acts on a local level. That's important for compliance reasons, for AML reasons and just to do -- to act as a local bank account, fully integrated with the invoice flows and the invoice approval flows between buyer and seller. Additionally to that, we see that -- we expect, it's planned instant payments in the near future will come to us. Of course, as a payment institute, we need to be compliant with this which is absolutely a game changer in the B2B payments. So being independent from any instance on payment is an absolute asset to enable the full flow of integrated documents and payment flows because we get a full payment flow from sending an invoice, reporting an invoice to government, accepting the invoice by the buyer, executing the payment, reporting, for instance, in France, and the invoice acceptance and executed payment. So it's a full flow fully reported transaction by transaction to the government. If we needed to integrate this with third-party solutions, we should never been so flexible than we are today. Of course, that's the future because these integrated flows will show their relevance once e-invoicing really kicks off. But we see that as a real game changer for us and as a total service. So no, not at all plans to divest payments and fall back on traditional payment flows.

Thank you, Hans. Thank you, Koen. We've run out of time now. Thank you, everyone, for joining us online today. That concludes our H1 financial update. If you have any further questions, please do reach out to me. Otherwise, we'll say goodbye. Thank you again, and have a great rest of the week.