Enea AB (publ) (ENEA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

This call is being recorded. Welcome to the Enea Q2 presentation for 2023. [Operator Instructions]. Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Anders Lidbeck. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to this presentation of our second quarter. My name is Anders Lidbeck as I said, and some of you might remember that I had this role for 8 years between 2011 and 2019. And since then, I've been the Chairman of the Board. So my last interim report was actually Q1 2019. And at that point, we had some SEK 240 million in revenues. That was a 41% nonorganic growth. We had north of 25% operating margin and a healthy cash flow of almost SEK 100 million. I left the CEO overall after that quarter and was elected Chairman and the new management team presented a great second quarter 2019. And in the beginning of the third quarter, we closed a large deal valued up to EUR 2 million with a large European accounts. So we were off to a good start. And during these 4 years, the company has developed very well from a strategic perspective, and we have significantly improved our footprint in the cybersecurity market. And if you compare... [Technical Difficulty]

This is the operator. We seem to have lost the connection with the speakers. We'll back again shortly. This call is being recorded.

All right. So we told that the conference lost us. I'm not sure when the conference lost us, but let me start all over again and it is a bit like Twitter and the nominations in the U.S. But we start all over. I would like to say good morning. My name is Anders Lidbeck and I'm the new CEO of Enea, the New Acting CEO of Enea. And some of you might remember, I had this role in 8 years or during 8 years from 2011 to 2019. And since then, I've been the Chairman of the Board. My last interim report before this one was Q1 2019. We called it the new year, new records, and we had SEK 240 million in revenues. We had operating margins north of 25%. We had 41% nonorganic growth. And we had an operating cash flow in the quarter of SEK 100 million or to be precise, SEK 93 million. So it was a great quarter to end with and when the new management team was off to a great start with a good Q2 number 2019 and closing a deal with a large key account in Europe valued up to EUR 2 million. It felt good to be in the Chairman position. And during the last 4 years, the company has also developed well from a strategic perspective. We have established ourselves in the cybersecurity market, and our footprint there is significantly stronger than it was in 2019. And if you compare Enea to the Enea I started with back in 2011, the changes are dramatic. It's a completely different company and the things that remain the same is the name and the headquarters. And those changes, I will come back to later during the presentation. But today, the numbers are very different. And it is with mixed feelings that I'm sitting here in this role. So I am proud and I feel good about the changes that we've done with Enea during the last 10 years. Without these changes, no one would be dialing in to this call. It's questionable if we would have had this call at all if the changes wouldn't have happened. But I don't feel good with the lackluster performance of the company during the last period. We're not happy with that at all, and I feel very bad for the shareholders that have supported us down to this point. But I also feel a bit sad about the changes that the Board was forced to do at the beginning of Q3. But more so, I see a huge responsibility, and that's a responsibility I share, we're feeling I share with the rest of the Board, to start taking steps to put Enea back on track again. And to be frank, I actually feel enthused to start doing that as soon as possible. And with that, I would like to walk you through some of the key events during the second quarter. And we were off to a rough start in Q2. That project that we closed third quarter -- beginning of third quarter [indiscernible] we got the information from the customer beginning of the second quarter that they would wanted to discontinue that project. It came as a big surprise to us in the beginning of this quarter. It's of course, in these economic environment, not a huge -- it's not unheard of that things are discontinued. And this is part of doing global business with innovative software. So things happen, but this had quite some dramatic effect on Enea and on our numbers in Q2. First of all, we had to take a reservation of already booked revenues of SEK 41 million that hurt the quarter. And with that also, with the discontinuation of the project, we lost some expected revenues in Q2 and going forward. And the expected revenues in Q2 from this project was around SEK 30 million. I'm talking Swedish now. And so with this news, it was clear that the business case for this product line was changed. And -- but before just taking a few days to change the business case that would have impact on the operation, we wanted to do a thorough strategic review of our telecom operations. And we started that early Q2, and we informed the market about this when we informed about the fact that we would take this reservation. This strategic review focused on the market opportunities and the outlook within this space of our portfolio. We focus on our own product development, our own road map as well as our go-to-market capabilities within this space. And we knew we had to do an impairment test on the intangible assets and capitalized R&D we kept on the balance sheet for this product. We did this together with the management team or the management team did this, and we spoke, obviously, with our accountants, and it became clear to us that we also needed to increase WACC due to the increased interest rates. So the business case, whatever the business case would be would have to carry an increased WACC and the WACC we're using in the case now is 11.5% for the impairment test. The new long-term business case, we did. And pretty quickly, it became clear or evident to us that the only thing we changed in the business case that's supporting the goodwill we have is this 1 product, 1 product, all the rest is unchanged. And this 1 product we have, the only thing we've done is to sharpen the focus of this product to go after the handful of customers and prospects we have in midterm that would like to buy this 5G product we call the NDL or Network Data Layer. So it's a huge change from a numbers perspective, but it is 1 product of the portfolio of roughly 10 products that we have in our business at this very point in time. This product or the portfolio -- the telecom portfolio is developed in many different R&D sites with the leading sites being Belfast and 1 in Croatia, and before this change, we also had a site in India. We have 2 sites in India. The 1 is for our security products and for our security services. That's untouched. But the R&D side developing this product, we have closed during the first half year. And we're now -- we might have to change some locks and give away some keys. But all in all, the change has happened. And the reason for that is that we actually started this late last year as a initiative to improve profitability and margins in the company based on the fact that we were not pleased with the results of 2022. So that was something we already started. The changes we've done, the changes we already planned and the changes related to the fact that this project is discontinued, will impact some 70 positions within the company, around 50 of our own employees and 20 consultants have been forced to leave the company. But these changes have happened in good order. And the beginning of Q3, we also changed the CEO of India. The financial impact of these changes are, as I said, significant. In Q2, we have taken SEK 65 million in reservations. That's the SEK 41 million I discussed on the last slide. And also a SEK 24 million reservation for bad debt. It's actually not related to the discontinuation of the product. It's related to a deal we've done with a customer in Northern Africa, and we have difficulties to get dollar out of that country. So to be conservative, we've made a reservation of SEK 24 million of that. That doesn't mean we're not going to try to get the money, and we're still carrying some of it on the balance sheet, but again, good order and in discussions with the accountants, we have agreed to do that. So SEK 65 million in reservations in the quarter. We've also added SEK 20 million in nonrecurring costs for these changes in the quarter, and we have said that we will take another SEK 10 million in Q3 to facilitate the programs that I've discussed. The impairment based on the new business case is a huge amount, is SEK 522 million, of which SEK 450 million is goodwill and SEK 107 million is CapEx. But let's also be clear that this is noncash items. So none of the above is impacting cash. What is more so you can argue impacting cash going forward is that this project, we expected more business from this project. So Q3 is hurt from expected new business that didn't come through with approximately SEK 13 million. So this has -- the program has actually a SEK 60 million positive cash flow full year starting 2024. We will see some positive cash flow effects already in 2023, but the SEK 60 million is the full year number that we expect from 2024. But very important note here is that while this program has a SEK 60 million positive cash flow effect, it actually has a SEK 13 million negative effect OpEx in Q2. And the reason for that is that we've taken down our own employees with -- 50 people and consultants with 70 -- with 20 people. So in total, 70 people, we're not anymore paying salaries for. But some of the people we are still having on this, and we do have some 100-plus people working on our telecom portfolio going forward are now in the OpEx. Some of them were actually before in CapEx. So SEK 30 million increase of OpEx due to the fact that we have lower capitalization of R&D. So it's good news from a cash perspective, and it won't show on the EBITDA results going forward, but it will show on EBIT going forward. So with that, I would like to introduce another new person to you is our new acting CFO, Ulf Stigberg. I would like to say a few things here also before I give you the word -- so it's not new to Enea. Ulf has been within Enea now for some 4, 3.5, 4 years. He was the former CFO of one of the acquisitions we've done, and that is a pattern that's very prevailing within Enea. We don't do acquisition and get rid of the management team from the acquisitions. We get it. We do the acquisitions, and we try to slowly integrate the acquisitions, while priority #1, taking care of the revenues that these experts are generating within their own company. And then gradually, we're integrating and taking the best talent from these acquisitions and making them part of our management team. So just in the management team today, we now have Ulf from one of the acquisitions. We have Roland Steiner, running R&D. He's from another acquisition. We have Jean-Pierre Coury running another piece of our organization. He's been 10 years with the company coming from an acquisition. And then we've mixed that with some new talent. So it's not complete changes in the management team. It's an evolution of people that really know the business well. So with that, Ulf, I would like to hand over to you.

Thanks Anders. Let's get into the financial figures. Net sales for the quarter was SEK 208 million compared to SEK 217 million last year. The 6 months net sales was SEK 456 million compared to SEK 427 million last year, a slight increase over the 6 months. If we look at the currency adjusted growth, it was negative 10% for the quarter. And for the 6 first months, it was positive 1%. And between the Network Solution and OS, we see a decrease of minus 8% versus minus 18% for the period. Okay. Next slide. EBITDA margin in quarter 2 was 24% compared to 33% last year. This was affected mainly by nonrecurring cost items in Q2 that amounted to SEK 84.6 million related to restructuring costs and allowance for debt that Anders described earlier. As a result of lower share software, we also see a lower gross margin of 3% in the quarter. Operating margin -- operating expenses increased mainly due to less capitalization and impacts of foreign currency changes. But the real spend has decreased with SEK 9 million for the quarter, which is important to point out. Let's jump to the next slide, please. So 1% adjusted EBIT margin in Q2 compared to 13% last year. And the impact of the SEK 607 million item included the goodwill and the CapEx write-downs affecting these figures greatly. The earnings per share was a negative SEK 28.7 for the quarter, which is of course, a very, very low figure but explained greatly by these nonrecurring items for quarter 2. Next slide, please. Looking at the growth in or -- the Network Solutions category, we can see a great support and maintenance growth. This shows the loyal underlying customer base. We are increasing the support or maintenance value year after year and this shows a very stable customer base for these network solutions, important for the company going forward. And also, we can see on the license, it showed the importance of having a new larger customer project in the period.

So thank you for that Ulf. I wanted to show you these 2 slides, the first -- the last one that we talked about, and this one that I would just spend some time on. It's coming directly from the interim report. And I think it's really important. On the earlier slide, you saw a growth in support and maintenance. So based on the deals we've done in Network Solutions, based on the software we have and the usage of the software, we're seeing an increase in that, and per year or per quarter, the percentage of recurring revenues i.e., support and maintenance in this case, is growing. On this slide, and please note that the scale is different. It's a smaller -- we've increased the size, but the numbers are smaller. You see operating system. This is the business we had in 2011. And on top of this business, we had Global Services that we did a very successful sale of last year on good multiples and to further focus Enea on software. So this is a software we had in 2011. It now represents only 13% of net sales on a sliding scale. And what's happened here is exactly what we predicted some 10 years ago. That operating systems are shrinking, and we need to increase the portfolio with new things. And we have the decision to make, okay, do we do this organically to develop new product? Or do we do it through acquisitions? And the very easy decision for us was we don't want to invest everything in on product development and bet on the fact that we can develop a great product and have the capabilities to sell it. Instead, we wanted to acquire successful smaller companies, put them together and develop a stronger company. And that's exactly what we've done, and we've come a long way doing that. The 1 good news on this slide, beside the fact that this is exactly what we predicted is that with the contract and the deal we did in Q2, where we took a big chunk of future license revenues in a deal that secured the long-term support and maintenance. So we now have with this customer a very long but secure tail of support and maintenance for our operating system. So it continues to be a good element in the operation because it's a profitable element in our operation, but surely, it's not something that we can build our future business on. So back to you, Ulf.

Okay. Thanks. Despite the challenges we had in the products and described earlier in the presentation here, we have very strong financial position. The cash flow from operations in quarter 2 was SEK 77 million compared to SEK 73 million previous year. The net cash flow after investments and financing activities was positive SEK 20 million for the quarter compared to SEK 67 million last year. The cash balance has improved to SEK 291 million compared to SEK 218 million last year. And the net debt SEK 220 million compared to SEK 359 million last year. And we have an unutilized credit facility of SEK 380 million. This gives us a good financial KPI with equity ratio of 64% and a net debt-to-EBITDA of 0.89. The Board has initiated a buyback program based on the facts and situation we have, a buyback program of own shares. We are using the mandate from the AGM and the program has a mandate of 10% of the outstanding shares. And this program starts now and runs until October 25 this year. And the program will be carried out by a credit institution following the safe harbor regulation.

All right. Thank you, Ulf. And now it's my turn to say something about our way forward and the financial outlook. And I would like to take -- to start with a screenshot of our website. If you go into our website and you click on Solutions, this will pop up. And no surprise, that's Our Solutions. That's what we're doing business on every quarter and what we're trying to do new business on every day. One of these solutions is called Network Data Layer. One of this solution of super interesting products is what we ran into problems with in the beginning of the second quarter. And also, if you would look at our customer base, we have more than 100 customers. One discontinued the project. And this product that we still keep, that we still invest quite a significant number of R&D hours in, we have a handful of prospects going forward. It's also so that we say if you would look at our website and you look at our material and you would ask me, what's the focus of Enea? I would say it's telecom applications and cybersecurity, telecoms and cybersecurity. What drives the growth, the traffic growth in telecoms? The growth that is more than 20% annually according to Ericsson, and this is a late report from this year, it's video. Video drives the traffic growth in the telecom network. And what's one of the #1 products or one of the top 3, 4 products in Enea from a revenue perspective, it's something we call traffic management. It helps operators to increase speed in the network without investing in new hardware. So it's a software from Enea that helps increase traffic in the network without buying new hardware. So it's a great product. It's part of -- this slide is also really interesting to come back 4 years later because this is the same type of picture that we saw 4 years ago. And it's the same type of slide that we used when making the decision to go into traffic management. Video is driving our traffic management is the best product out there to scale traffic based on video. Sometimes I've heard that some of our investors are asking, we are saying 5G is late, and you're looking at your phone and saying, hey, but I'm on 5G. And it's very clear that if you go into some major cities today, you have 5G on your phone. And the realities are that both those statements or both of those perspectives are valid. When we're talking 5G and saying that 5G is late, we are saying that the 5G core network is late. That's the network or the engine of the network. So when you're seeing 5G on your phone today, it's because you're connecting to 5G radio network system that is connecting to a 4G core network. That's 80% of the case. Only 20% of the operators out there have changed the core networks to 5G. And we have not only the network data layer product that's focused on the 5G core. We also have 5G applications focusing on 5G. And 80% of that market is still ahead of us. The other piece of Enea. It's now some 40% of our business is focusing on cybersecurity. And it's very clear to most of you that cybersecurity is very important in this day and age. It's important in the war in Ukraine, it's important in your everyday life because in your everyday life, the risk of being -- fraudulent behavior has increased significant. And both those 2 aspects of cybersecurity, both the consumer side or the messaging side as well as the signaling side or the more threat-type cybersecurity, we have solutions to help handle. And this is not just a screenshot from the website or some words on -- based on a couple of slides. This is actually guiding our everyday life. So this is some snapshots from activities we've been doing during the last quarter or 2 and we have been awarded the best security product by Cyber Defense Magazine. And on this picture here is one of the gentlemen I discussed earlier, it's Jean-Pierre Coury, who works out of our Paris office. He's been with us for 10 years and is running our DPI operations. So a person that knows Enea very well, been with us for a long time and knows the cybersecurity product base so well that we've actually been awarded best product. We work with Telenor on telecom issues. We've worked where we've been part of the Financial Times article on international investigation into mobile security. We've been expert speakers in South America. And we've been invited by an EU initiative to work on cybersecurity matters within the telecom space. And would the EU take the decisions that were discussed during these meetings, that would significantly increase the opportunity for us doing business going forward. So if with little hesitation, I can reiterate the long-term ambition of Enea. And that is clearly to generate double-digit growth within these parts of our business. The business we call Network Solutions. And it is a pure software business. We are selling the same software, even though we have 10 different products, but it's not solutions that is unique per customer, it's the same software sold over and over again to new and more customers. That generates healthy gross margins and for us to have the ambition of doing a 35%-plus EBITDA margin remains unchanged. The 1 thing that is very similar from a financial perspective is cash flows in 2011, we had SEK 93 million in operating cash flows. This quarter, we have SEK 70 million in operating cash flow. So a well-run software company is generating healthy cash flows. Based on capitalization, based on depreciation, these things might change the EBIT margin, but a well-run software company delivers great cash flows. Having said this, it is clear that Q3 will be challenging. We've had a lackluster performance during the first 6 months, we're working in a difficult economic environment. And so we say that Q3 will be challenging in terms of growth and profit but we do expect strong cash flows for the year 2023. So with that, I would like to say thank you and open up for potential questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Jesper Von Koch from Redeye.

Hi, gentlemen, and thanks for the clear presentation. All right. So just to start with the Q3 that you mentioned just here in the end, that will be challenging. Is there anything that you refer to specifically except for the one-off SEK 10 million?

So thank you for the question. I am saying that 2023 will be challenging. When we add up the numbers for 2023, it will not look pretty and the reason for that is a bad first half year and a bad economic environment. The bad economic environment, macroeconomic environment is not changing in Q3 and I cannot predict that environment better than you probably not -- I cannot predict that better than anyone else. So we are working in a headwind when it comes to that, that is impacting a large portion of our customer base, mainly the operators. And it makes new business more difficult and it takes time. Also, we are going through some changes in the company. And I don't think we will -- with a snap of a finger, all of a sudden start generating great revenues and bottom line expectations -- bottom line numbers up to expectations. That will take some time to see in the results -- in the quarter. But it's not based on the fact that we are having a change in the product portfolio or change in the road map. It is based on small operating -- it's based on the macroeconomic environment. That's not good. Let's face it. It's not good, and you can read it from all our competitors that have also read these numbers, they are not producing great quarterly numbers. But it's also, from an internal perspective or a micro perspective, we've done some significant investments in new sales in Enea. If you look at our sales and management OpEx, it's up quite a lot since the same period last year. That new team of people need to be trained. They need to be managed. They need to be guided and they need to be incentivized in a way that they, in this tough macroeconomic environment can do great business from a micro Enea perspective. This will take some time.

Clear. Thanks for the good answer. And yes, I was also wondering about like what actions do you see needed to get the organic growth going for a network solution you mentioned these -- yes, the significant investment in the sales organization and like the training management and incentives for them. But anything more that you'd like to add?

No. So I think a company our quarter results and a full year result is dependent on the magnitude of small daily decisions. You can -- I've been here now in this role for not -- a bit over 2 weeks and I've taken a multitude of decisions already. Every day, we're taking decisions, and some of these decisions will eventually lead to a result at the end of September, that we will present in October. Now we're also living on a multitude of decisions that we've taken before these 14 days. That's also part of the results in Q3. But now when we're taking maybe slightly different types of decisions, we will gradually see a change during the quarters to come. And the changes here, you've already seen an example of. So this, I'll speak again about the NDL product. It is 1 of 10 products. It has less than a handful of customers, and we have a handful of prospects, including the existing customers. But what we're doing now is instead of taking the approach, let's increase R&D spend further and let's go after an even stronger, bigger market, we're saying, okay, facts of the matter is we have low evidence of new immediate sales. We have evidence of 1 customer pulling away from a project. Let's lower the capitalized R&D on this product and go after the ones that we have a bigger chance of winning. The same with the sales team that we will manage going forward. I don't want to see huge pipelines and lots of offers sent out to random customers where you're saying, "Oh, I have a great pipeline, and I think I can win a lot." That's a waste of time. It's eating resources within the company. It has a negative effect on the efficiency of the company. I want to see a smaller pipeline. I want to see a list of smaller prospect list, and I want you to win 5 or 4 out of the 5 offers you're sending out. That's the only way to get efficiency in the organization because the cost of making an offer, the cost of interacting with the customer and then losing the deal is huge and the same cost and the same things in winning the deal creates 70% to 95% or 75% to 95% gross margin that goes directly down to the EBITDA line. So sharpening the focus, taking away a lot of work that's completely unnecessary, doesn't lead to anything as the initiatives we've taken. And it goes also for headquarters, headquarters that are eating time from the organization, working on things that has nothing to do with the actual result of the company, but just is good to have. We're going to stop that. We're going to take it away, and we're going to accept the fact that we are a company with revenues north of SEK 900 million and with employees around 600. That's not a big company. We don't need big company processes. We need small company processes for an agile, highly profitable software company. And those are the types of initiatives you will see going forward.

Perfect. And just regarding your financial targets, you maintained the 35% EBITDA margin despite the low share of capitalization. I mean could you just comment on your thoughts regarding target? I know that you've only been working like 2 weeks with this. But yes, any thoughts?

Yes. So there are 2 things to increase EBITDA margin in a company like ours. It's actually not that difficult. You have an organization that can handle the business that you have. And then you invest a bit more in future business and you make sure that you win new deals that covers the cost and the things above that will create the margin. So revenue growth and new business is key to generate the EBITDA margin. I don't think that -- can you hear us?

Yes.

I don't think we've got black here. So I'm not -- I'm worried about making sure that we have a solid pipeline that can generate new business. As you saw in the presentation, we have a growing -- sales and marketing in our Network Solutions is growing. It's very healthy. It's actually very good news that you can see that trend there. So that's working. We now have to make sure that we win new deals. From a cost perspective, which is the second part then, we're now taking decisions that will generate 60% -- SEK 60 million on the cash flow line. It will lower the cost. The OpEx will be low with only SEK 10 million based on the decisions we've taken. But already now compared to the same period last year, we have SEK 8 million lower OpEx from a spending perspective. So based on the knowledge we have at this point, based on the 14 days, based on the knowledge I had as the Chairman of the Board, we have now taken the decisions we want to take to lower the OpEx. But going forward, if we're not seeing revenue coming, we will continue to make the organization more effective, i.e. lower the OpEx. That's what I can say. And for us to reach a 35%, it is clearly within reach when we're doing planning and I intend to make sure that execution will support those plans that we agree in the Board.

Clear. And just also regarding the repurchasing program. Is there any terms or are there any terms regarding the minimum use of this program? And any and maximum share price also?

There is no minimum terms. There's a maximum term of 10% and SEK 25 million during the third quarter. So it's quite regulated what we can do and in what spread and what number of shares we can trade. We've agreed with a credit institution to do this, our bank to do this. And so it's on a discretionary basis, but the terms are pretty clear. I think it's better if we go through that offline, but no minimum, just a maximum. And within the rules and regulations, we will buy back shares.

Okay. Good. And then just -- I mean, you obviously commented on it also. You say that the Network Data Layer product is just 1 of your 10 products. But what is your view on your remaining portfolio? Are you happy with the market position that Enea is currently in?

Well, it's a bit -- this is -- thank you for that question. It's the most important question I would argue at this point in time. And given the fact that the share price of the company is down this dramatically over the last couple of quarters. It's difficult to say I'm happy with the product portfolio. But I am happy with the product portfolio. And I think that the reaction from the market based on this 1 product is 1 customer has been confusing. The deal we did in the beginning of the quarter was traffic management. Much of the pipeline we're going forward with is in cybersecurity. Much of the activities we're doing in the company is cybersecurity. The DPI product is very much on par, super solid and been solid for the last 8 some years. In cybersecurity, we have both the signaling product and the messaging product. We're winning on both. The WiFi product we have, we're winning in Europe. We're winning in South America. We're winning in many parts of the world, and we have a solid development. So I'm very pleased with that. The things that I'm less pleased with is the -- what -- it's easy to say, but the overinvestment in the NDL product and over the expectations, the 2 big expectations on the NDL product. And also the 5G applications we have are something that we have invested in, but that the market has not yet adopted. Having said this, also Jesper, and I know you've been interested in this NDL product before, it's a pretty interesting product once the market will go to 5G core. And we have invested, and it's clear on the balance sheet, and it's clear on the impairment we've done. We've invested a huge amount of money in this product. We have a very good product sitting there and we're not going to waste a lot of sales resource trying to sell this to companies that doesn't want it, but the companies that do want this and comes to us and ask for a competitive bid on an NDL product, we have a very good product. So I'm absolutely happy with the portfolio of Enea.

The next question comes from Simon Granath from ABGSC.

And thank you for the forward-leaning presentation. I just have 1 or 2 follow-up questions. Initially, Anders, I remember some years ago when you were the CEO, you mentioned that 1 step in your strategic transition back then was to grow in size. And as it came from a relatively small size in your Network Solutions, is this still important? Or have you reached the scale you were then talking about?

Thank you, and thank you for reminding me about that. I'm still very -- I think still this is something that's very dear to me, and we have not reached the size that I think is healthy. Instead, we have increased the company, we've increased capabilities, we've increased head office, we have increased plans, we've increased processes. We've increased a lot of things, but we've not increased the revenue of the company. That's an unhealthy position to be in because the only thing that can help you then going forward is either to actually do increase revenues or you have to lower cost. There's no other way. And you don't want to come into a situation where you have the lower cost to improve profitability. So we have built a product portfolio. We have increased -- built the go-to-market organization and now it's the job of the company to grow in size organically to grow into a more profitable situation. And as I answered on the earlier question, I don't expect this is something that will happen. I'm going to use the same English word because it's the only thing I can come up with now. It's not going to happen with a snap of the finger. We have tried many things over the last couple of quarters and been unsuccessful in growing revenues. We're not as successful as we wanted in growing revenues. But I think we're doing many of the right things. We have invested in the sales force, we have started to train the sales force. We have invested in a pretty senior sales force. We have developed great products. We're now scaling back R&D investments in favor of sales and marketing investments. But what we need to do going forward is to also sharpen the focus of this sales force and be less forgiving about not selling. If you have a sales force, we have sales force to sell products. We don't have a sales force to tell you guys that we've invested in the sales and marketing organization. So they need to perform. And that we're going to monitor super closely. And if your question then is about size from a nonorganic perspective, I don't think we are in that position at the moment just to add size from an acquisition perspective. We have done that. We now need to make sure that we get operational efficiency based on the portfolio we have. And after that, and when we're back to the 35% margins when we can see some growth in the portfolio we have, we will again start looking at that, but it's not a priority at this moment in time.

Thank you for a very clear and insightful answer. And just second and final question for me, and that's a follow-up on the NDL project or product. How would you say that, that is progressing with the North American customer that you have historically announced?

As also -- as all questions, that's also a very good question. The -- you called it forward leaning, and I'm not sure about that. I am very -- Enea has a very good position. We have a -- within the Board, we have, in Swedish [indiscernible], in English, a technical committee or product development committee at the meeting yesterday where we talked about artificial intelligence. The Board members come back and are shaking their heads and just saying, this is world-class. And then one of the guys is the former CTO of Sony Ericsson, a humble former CTO of Sony Ericsson, being very clear about the fact that Apple took over, and the things he could have done differently. So but he's very knowledgeable on technology. And clearly, they are impressed -- it was people from Belfast, Enea Belfast and the Enea Paris, both coming from a cybersecurity space in where we could use AI much more. So we have good people and we have a good portfolio. On that specific project, I'm not sure really how to answer that. Saying more than I've already said, we will sharpen the focus of our NDL product. We have taken down the resource that we have in India. We have consolidated in Europe and those of you who are interested in cost, we're actually having the same cost -- a slightly better cost in Croatia than we have in India. So it's not a negative from a cost perspective. It's very good from an efficiency perspective. So I hope and I think that we will have better quality, more robust quality in our NDL product going forward. And I hope that our North American customer and the other smaller European customer we have, will appreciate the more robust quality in that product going forward. So I'm cautiously optimistic. That's the best answer I can give at this point in time.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

All right. Thank you all for giving us this opportunity. Me and Ulf will meet you again in end October, if not before. And until that, all the best and talk to you next time.