LINK Mobility Group Holding ASA (LINK) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to LINK Mobility's Second Quarter 2026 Presentation. Joining me today are CEO, Thomas Berge; and CFO, Morten Edvardsen. Following the presentation, we will open the floor for questions, which can be submitted through the Audiocast at any time during the presentation. With that, Thomas, over to you.

Thank you, Christian, for the introduction, and good morning to everybody listening in. Before going into the quarterly results, I would like to outline how LINK is positioned to capture both today's messaging demand and the next generation of customer engagement. We're still in the early stages of a broader shift toward mobile-first customer engagement as consumers increasingly live their digital lives through their mobile devices. Businesses are recognizing that the most effective way to engage customers is through the mobile phone. At the same time, richer channels, improved technology and AI-enabled capabilities are significantly expanding what can be delivered through these interactions. As a result, the market for mobile engagement will become substantially larger and more valuable over time. With strong operator relationships, extensive channel connectivity, a solid customer base and a broad customer engagement platform already in place, LINK is uniquely positioned to benefit from this evolution. AI is enabling more and new customer engagement solutions by automating conversations, personalized campaigns and content creation, increasing the value of trusted communication infrastructure, channel connectivity and orchestration capabilities. As businesses increasingly deploy AI-driven customer engagement solutions, we see a driver for higher-volume of customer interactions and messaging traffic, creating additional growth for the industry. We continue to see strong demand for proven messaging channels today. SMS remains essential for critical communication, authentication and notifications and continues to be a highly relevant channel for enterprises across markets. At the same time, richer channels such as WhatsApp and RCS are becoming increasingly important for conversational customer engagement. Customers will not only want to send messages, but to create richer interactions with their end users, combining the right channel, the right content and the right timing. This is where we see demand moving towards richer conversations, context-aware engagement, orchestrated journeys, AI-enabled interactions and seamless human handover when needed. LINK is already well positioned to support this evolution through a broad product portfolio and AI-enabled technology platform. We provide customers with access to core messaging channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, Viber, and RCS, supported by broader customer engagement solutions, including MyLINK Engage, MyLINK Marketing Platform, MyLINK Studio and MyLINK Connect. These products address several of the key trends we see in the market, including context-aware engagement, channel orchestration, AI-enabled interactions, trust and compliance, all supported by LINK's underlying platform and connectivity capabilities. These products are used by customers today. Later on in the presentation, we are going to go through a recently won contract with one of the world's largest fashion retailers, using LINK's products to create an advanced customer engagement experience, validating LINK's ability to meet the needs of some of the most advanced enterprises in the market today. We see multiple long-term tailwinds supporting the continued evolution of mobile customer engagement and believe LINK is well-positioned to benefit from these trends. LINK is uniquely positioned within the competitive landscape. LINK occupies an attractive position between smaller local providers and larger global platforms. Rather than competing purely on local presence or purely on technology, our strategy is built around combining the strengths of both. Smaller local providers often have strong customer relationships and local market knowledge. However, they frequently lack the technology investments, scalability and product breadth required by larger enterprise customers. On the other hand, large global platforms often have strong technology and scale, but typically lack the local presence, customer intimacy and market-specific expertise required in many of the countries we serve. We believe LINK has a unique position in the middle. We combine local execution and deep understanding of market-specific requirements with an AI-enabled technology platform, broad channel connectivity and increasingly sophisticated customer engagement capabilities. This allows us to help automate communication, orchestrate customer journey and deliver more personalized engagement at scale while maintaining the local expertise and trusted relationships that differentiate LINK in our markets. To sum up, we believe LINK combines the strengths of both local providers and global platform. Our AI-enabled technology platform, deep messaging expertise, local market presence and trusted delivery creates a unique position in the markets. LINK's competitive positioning is not only strategic, but also visible in the P&L. By combining advanced technology with strong local execution, we can create market demand and growth. Starting on the left-hand side, we see strong momentum on LINK's advanced conversational solutions labeled CPaaS on the slide. CPaaS gross profit growth has a 39% CAGR from 2023 to Q2 this year, reaching NOK 148 million on an LTM basis. CPaaS solutions generate significantly higher gross profit margin than traditional SMS with approximately twice the gross profit margin. As customers adopt richer and more advanced engagement solutions, LINK benefits from both growth and improving margins. Conversations take place on also key channels like RCS and WhatsApp. In Q2, RCS billable events increased by 112% year-on-year, while WhatsApp billable events increased by 194%. The right-hand side of the slide shows the other part of LINK's advantage, which is our local presence. LINK has 30 offices, local presence in 21 countries and a strong installed customer base of 68,000 customers. This gives us customer proximity, local market understanding and the ability to work closely with customers as they adopt increasingly sophisticated customer engagement solutions. This becomes more important as use cases become more advanced. Feature-rich channels like WhatsApp and RCS, together with customer journey orchestration and AI-enabled interactions typically require a higher degree of customer onboarding, advisory support and ongoing optimization. In our experience, customers increasingly value a partner that can help them identify use cases, implement solutions and maximize value from the more advanced engagement capabilities. LINK combines advanced technology with local execution, allowing us to support customers throughout their journey. To sum up the last three slides, they show why we believe LINK is well positioned for the next phase of customer engagement. We see attractive long-term tailwinds in personalized conversational messaging. LINK has a differentiated position in the competitive landscape, and this position is already translating into results. Strong CPaaS momentum and rapid adoption of richer messaging channels show that our combination of advanced technology and local execution is enabling us to compete effectively and convert market demand into growth. Moving over to the Q2 numbers. Overall, we are pleased with the development in Q2. As communicated following Q1, our priority was to return to organic gross profit growth, and we delivered on that commitment with 2% organic gross profit growth for the quarter. This is a clear improvement from previous quarters and fully in line with targets. It marks a return to growth and reinforces our expectations of a stronger second half of the year. We continue to see strong momentum across the business. Customer demand remains healthy with new contracts reaching an all-time high of NOK 53 million in the quarter, while LTM contract wins increased to NOK 184 million, up 16% year-on-year. Growth was driven by both SMS and CPaaS, demonstrating healthy demand across our portfolio. We continue to see a gradual shift to higher margin and more advanced engagement solutions, which will support long-term value creation. LINK delivered the highest ever reported adjusted EBITDA of NOK 272 million, while generating NOK 192 million in operating cash flow. Reported EBITDA came in at NOK 252 million, also record high. This demonstrates both the earnings power and the cash-generative nature of the business. Pro forma adjusted EBITDA, as displayed on the slide, was NOK 286 million, including full quarterly effect of acquired entities. Disciplined capital allocation remains an important part of LINK's value creation strategy. During the quarter, we completed two accretive bolt-on acquisitions, KPM Solutions in Italy and Web2SMS in Romania. These acquisitions strengthen our market position and demonstrate continued execution of our disciplined M&A strategy while maintaining a strong balance sheet. Turning to the outlook for the second half. We are reiterating H2 expectations with reinforced confidence based on Q2 performance. In H2, LINK is expecting mid- to high-single-digit gross profit growth. Growth expectations for H2 are based on the growth indicators we see across the business. Record high new contract wins improve visibility into future revenue and gross profit development with the LTM contract wins up 16% year-on-year. At the same time, conversational solutions through OTT channels continue to scale, supporting future gross profit growth. We're also observing continued growth across the broader customer base with net retention improving to 101%, close to the target of 105%. Taken together, these factors reinforce our confidence in delivering mid- to high-single-digit gross profit growth in H2. Contract wins reached an all-time high of NOK 53 million in Q2, representing the strongest quarter in LINK's history and reflecting healthy customer demand across both SMS and CPaaS solutions. SMS contract wins reached NOK 31 million during the quarter, representing a 29% increase year-on-year. At the same time, CPaaS contract wins reached NOK 22 million, making Q2 the second strongest CPaaS quarter on record, only surpassed by the same quarter last year, which included several extraordinary large OTT contract wins. CPaaS represented 42% of total contract wins, highlighting the continued shift to richer and higher-value customer engagement solutions. The strong CPaaS results were supported by continued momentum in OTT channels such as WhatsApp and RCS. Overall, record contract wins provide further evidence of healthy customer demand, strong commercial execution and improving momentum across the underlying business, supporting our confidence in a stronger second half of the year. This slide highlights a recently won contract with one of the world's largest fashion retailers. We believe this customer is particularly interesting because it is an advanced enterprise and an early mover in AI-enabled customer engagement. Customers like this are often ahead of the broader market and can provide valuable indications on how future customer demand evolves over time. The contract also demonstrates that LINK already has the capabilities, platform and expertise required to deliver those more advanced customer engagement solutions today. The customer relationship is already building on successful existing use cases, including digital receipts and basket recovery through WhatsApp. The new use cases take this customer engagement journey to the next level. It starts with an AI assistant as the first point of contact where end users contacting the brand through WhatsApp are initially met by an AI-powered assistant. This allows the customer to automate part of the interaction while still keeping the experience relevant for the end users. When needed, the conversation can be handed over seamlessly to a human agent without forcing the customer to leave the channel or restart the interaction. Advanced customer engagement is not only about automation. It's also about combining automation, messaging and human support in a way that improves customer experience. From a commercial perspective, these type of solutions represent a significant long-term opportunity for LINK. They are increasingly software-driven and value-added with materially higher margin potential than traditional messaging revenues. The contract is also important because it does two things. It provides a concrete example of where future customer demand is heading, and it demonstrates that LINK already has the platform and capabilities required to deliver advanced AI-enabled customer engagement solutions today. SMSPortal is a highly attractive business and the market leader in South Africa. As stated last quarter, the second quarter reports lower growth momentum due to high comparables same quarter last year. We expect to return to growth in H2 as the business continues to show positive development, a growing commercial pipeline and a highly efficient technology platform that customers can rely on for high-quality and cost-effective messaging. At the end of Q2, new customer contracts under implementation had reached an annualized run rate of approximately 450 million messages with a further 770 million annualized messages remaining to be ramped up. In addition, SMSPortal added approximately 200 million annualized messages in the quarter from new contract wins to be implemented. Based on this development, we expect SMSPortal to deliver growth in H2. In addition, WhatsApp is ready for launch during H2 with volumes expecting to start scaling from Q4 and continue through 2027, adding another potential growth driver over time. Creating long-term shareholder value remains the core objective of LINK's capital allocation framework. We continue to allocate capital where we see the strongest value creation opportunities per share while maintaining a disciplined balance sheet and a financial policy. M&A remains a core part of this framework. Over time, LINK has built a strong track record of identifying, acquiring and integrating businesses across our markets, having completed close to 40 acquisitions and integrations. We continue to evaluate a healthy pipeline of opportunities. In the near term, our priority remains targeted bolt-on acquisitions. We believe these opportunities can provide attractive returns, strengthen our local market positions and be integrated efficiently into the existing platform. During the quarter, we completed two accretive bolt-on acquisitions, KPM Solutions in Italy and Web2SMS in Romania. At the same time, shareholder returns are expected to grow over time, in line with our policy, and we continue to maintain flexibility to scale M&A activity if market conditions and opportunities align with our return requirements. We expect mid- to high-single-digit organic gross profit growth in H2. As I mentioned earlier, improving business performance, record high new contract wins and continued OTT momentum all support this expectation. LINK's business model remains highly scalable with significant operational leverage. As gross profit growth improves, we expect adjusted EBITDA growth to develop faster than organic gross profit growth over time. Capital allocation remains focused on maximizing long-term shareholder value. Accretive M&A continues to be our first priority, supported by a strong pipeline of opportunities and a proven acquisition playbook. At the same time, we continue to maintain a disciplined leverage policy of 2.0x to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA. With that, I will hand over to Morten, who will take you through the financial performance for the quarter in more detail.

Thank you, Thomas, and good morning, everyone. The second quarter results were strong with improved quarter-over-quarter organic growth momentum, solid customer demand demonstrated by record high contract wins, all-time high adjusted EBITDA from M&A add-on and continued strong cash conversion from operations. We also concluded our NOK 300 million share buyback program in May with a total of 13 million shares acquired. And subsequently, we have canceled 20.9 million shares or approximately 7% of total outstanding shares. Before moving on to the quarterly results, I will start by highlighting an important characteristics of LINK's business model, namely the diversified customer base and industry exposure. The contribution from LINK's top 10 customers has remained consistent over time at around 15% of total gross profit, while remaining 85% is generated from the broader customer base. This demonstrates that LINK is not dependent on any single customer and that our earnings are supported by a large and diversified set of customer relationships across markets and industries. Banking & Insurance, Technology & Software Platforms, Telecommunications, Retail & E-commerce represents our largest industry verticals, but no individual sector accounts for a dominant share of total gross profit. We believe this diversification is an important strength of the business as it supports resilience across different economic environments. This also provides exposure to several industries that continue to benefit from structural digitalization trends and growing demand for customer engagement solutions. Our commercial strategy remains focused on increasing wallet share with existing customers, winning new customers and expanding across products, channels and use cases. This allows us to continue building a broader and more diversified gross profit base over time. Turning to the quarterly results and firstly, the revenue development. Reported revenue increased 17% year-over-year to NOK 2.1 billion for the quarter. A significant part of the growth came from acquired businesses and especially SMSPortal in South Africa, while organic revenue growth improved quarter-over-quarter to 3% in stable currency. Organic revenue development was supported by continued improvement within the Enterprise segment, where organic revenue growth increased 2 percentage points quarter-over-quarter to 6% in stable currency. Growth improved across all enterprise regions compared to the previous quarter, supported by healthy demand for customer engagement solutions and continued strong momentum in CPaaS. Increased adoption of CPaaS solutions contribute positively to quality and hence, margin profile of our revenue base. Within Global Messaging, revenue declined 3% year-over-year. As previously communicated, this was mainly driven by lower traffic volumes from four large customers, while the broader Global Messaging customer base continued to develop positively. The bridge chart below illustrates the quarterly development. Enterprise contributed with NOK 75 million in growth, partly offset by the Global Messaging decline of NOK 14 million. This resulted in the organic revenue growth of 3% in stable currency. Foreign exchange had a negative impact of 5 percentage points or NOK 89 million in the quarter, while acquisitions contributed with NOK 320 million to reported revenue. The acquisition contribution mainly relates to SMSPortal, which contributed NOK 280 million of revenue during the quarter. In addition, the U.K. acquisitions contributed NOK 31 million, while KPM Solutions in Italy and Web2SMS in Romania were consolidated from June and contributed with NOK 10 million. Looking at the revenue retention and churn development on the next slide. This slide illustrates the continued normalization in LINK's net retention rate, reflecting the improved growth momentum across the customer base and low level of churn. Enterprise churn declined to 2.2% from 2.9% in the previous quarter. As highlighted in previous quarters, enterprise churn continues to reflect the impact of a higher-volume SMS customer that churned in Q4 last year. As the strongest comparable revenue quarters relating to this customer have passed, the headwind will ease going forward. At the same time, we continue to see strong customer stickiness across the broader enterprise business, supported by increasing adoption of CPaaS solutions. Global Messaging churn was also reported at 2.2% in the quarter and is within the normal range for this segment. We are pleased to see net retention strengthen quarter-over-quarter by 5 percentage points to 101% in the quarter. We believe this reflects the continued strength of the broader customer base and supports our view that customer trends remain healthy. As highlighted previously, the impact from a small number of share-of-wallet customers in Global Messaging has weighed on the net retention metrics of recent quarters. With this headwind now fading and Enterprise revenue growth improving, net retention metric is developing in line with our expectations towards our medium-term target of 105%. Turning to the gross profit development. Reported gross profit increased 16% year-over-year to NOK 492 million for the quarter, including a negative currency effect of NOK 21 million. Organic gross profit returned to positive territory with 2% growth in stable currency. Enterprise gross profit continued to improve and grew 3% organically during the quarter, contributing NOK 9 million in incremental gross profit. The improvement was supported by stronger growth momentum across both Northern and Central Europe and CPaaS solutions continued to contribute positively to growth. Increasing adoption of higher-value engagement solutions support both gross profit growth and quality of revenue mix. Within Global Messaging, gross profit decline narrowed quarter-over-quarter to 3% year-over-year, corresponding to a modest NOK 2 million decline, reflecting the impact of the mentioned share-of-wallet customers. Combined, this resulted in organic gross profit growth of 2% in stable currency or a 3 percentage point improvement in growth quarter-over-quarter. As mentioned, foreign exchange had a negative impact of NOK 21 million due to strengthening of the NOK, while acquisitions contributed NOK 83 million, whereof NOK 77 million related to SMSPortal. Turning to the margin bridge below. Enterprise margin declined 0.8 percentage points year-over-year, primarily driven by stronger growth on larger, lower-margin customer contracts. At the same time, continued growth in OTT solutions contributed positively to margins, offsetting 0.3 percentage points of the negative mix effect. Acquisitions contributed positively to gross margin development, primarily reflecting the higher margin profile of SMSPortal at 28% in the quarter. As a result, reported gross margin remained stable at 24% despite the mentioned customer mix effects. Takeaways here, organic gross profit growth has returned to positive territory, supported by strengthening enterprise momentum and stabilization in Global Messaging. While the revenue mix continues to improve through OTT solutions and margin accretive acquisitions. This positions LINK for stronger organic growth in the second half of the year. Moving on to development in adjusted EBITDA. LINK reported all-time high adjusted EBITDA of NOK 272 million in the quarter, representing an increase of 28% year-over-year driven by acquisitions. While organic adjusted EBITDA declined 1% in constant currency, profitability trends continued to improve during the quarter, linked to improved gross profit growth. This demonstrates the operating leverage in the business where improving gross profit growth increasingly translates into stronger EBITDA performance. The limited decline in organic adjusted EBITDA of NOK 3 million reflects two offsetting developments. The return to positive organic gross profit growth contributed to NOK 7 million increase, which was offset by an organic NOK 10 million increase in operating expenses. The organic increase in OpEx was 5% year-over-year and was primarily driven by salary inflation, growth-related investments and NOK 3 million from higher bad debt recognition. Turning to the margin bridge below. Organic adjusted EBITDA margin declined from 12.1% to 11.5%. This was mainly driven by the lower enterprise gross margin discussed on the previous slide and a slightly higher OpEx to sales ratio as OpEx grew faster than organic revenue during the quarter. Foreign exchange contributed positively by 0.1 percentage points, while acquisitions added 1.7 percentage points to adjusted EBITDA margin. SMSPortal was the largest contributor given its accretive adjusted EBITDA margin of 24%. As a result, reported adjusted EBITDA margin increased from 12.1% to 13.3% year-over-year. Overall, the quarter demonstrates the scalability of LINK's business model. The improvement in organic gross profit growth during the quarter contributed to stabilizing organic adjusted EBITDA. As we expect organic gross profit growth to strengthen in the second half of the year, we also expect adjusted EBITDA growth to continue to improve. Touching on the P&L, I will focus on the items below adjusted EBITDA. Nonrecurring costs amounted to NOK 20 million in the quarter. The largest component was M&A-related costs of NOK 16 million. Approximately NOK 7 million related to SMSPortal and primarily reflecting the retention program we have, while NOK 4 million related to the acquisitions of Web2SMS and KPM Solutions. The remaining amount mainly reflects runoff costs and ongoing due diligence activities. In addition, restructuring costs amounted to NOK 3 million and option-related social security tax expenses amounted to NOK 2 million in the quarter linked to non-exercised options. Depreciation and amortization amounted to NOK 129 million during the quarter. Of this, NOK 69 million related to amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets and NOK 54 million related to intangible assets mainly from R&D. As we have highlighted previously, acquisition-related amortization is noncash in nature and does not impact dividend capacity. Net finance expenses amounted to NOK 64 million during the quarter. This consisted of NOK 22 million net interest expenses with NOK 31 million in bond and RCF interest, offset by NOK 3 million in reclassification effects related to cross-currency swap interest to other financial items and interest income on cash deposits of NOK 6 million. Other financial expenses totaled NOK 40 million, primarily related to the cross-currency swap associated with euro financing structure, where NOK 29 million was related to noncash fair value adjustments, while interest payments equated for NOK 10 million, whereas NOK 3 million is related to the recast related to first quarter. Net currency effects were close to neutral during the quarter. Profit from continuing operations amounted to NOK 49 million in the quarter, while total profit for the period was NOK 104 million. The difference relates to discontinued operations where we recognized a NOK 55 million reversal of tax accrual following the finalization of U.S. tax returns related to the sale of Message Broadcast. Finally, we are pleased to see adjusted profit for the period from continuing operations increased by 87% year-over-year to NOK 118 million compared to NOK 63 million in the same quarter last year. We believe this metric provides a more representative view of the underlying earnings and dividend capacity of the business as it excludes acquisition-related amortization, which is noncash in nature. Then I look at the balance sheet. LINK continued to maintain a solid financial position with financial flexibility to support both future inorganic growth opportunities and shareholder distributions. Noncurrent assets increased year-over-year, primarily reflecting completed acquisitions with the largest contribution related to SMSPortal. Trade receivables and payables were both impacted by acquisitions and currency movements during the period. Receivables include NOK 178 million of acquisition-related effects, while payables include approximately NOK 198 million from acquired businesses. Cash and cash equivalents amounted to NOK 764 million at the end of the quarter. The reduction compared to last year reflects the completed share buyback program and M&A-related payments combined totaling NOK 1.5 billion in cash outflow in the last 12 months. Equity amounted to NOK 5.4 billion at quarter end, corresponding to an equity ratio of 52%. This continues to reflect a strong balance sheet and substantial capacity. Long-term debt consists of EUR 225 million in outstanding bonds and currently EUR 20 million are drawn under the revolving credit facility with a total frame of EUR 65 million. The bond financing carries an average interest rate of 3-month EURIBOR plus 2.53%. Net interest-bearing debt amounted to NOK 2.1 billion at quarter end. Reported leverage decreased to 1.9x adjusted EBITDA during the quarter, reflecting cash outflow related to acquisitions and the concluded share buyback program in the quarter. Adjusted for these capital allocations, leverage remained stable quarter-over-quarter and continues to remain below LINK's target leverage range of 2.0x to 2.5x adjusted EBITDA. The cash generation in the business supports strengthening financial capacity going forward to execute on our disciplined capital allocation strategy, combining M&A and growing shareholder distributions. Moving on to my final slide, where I will cover some key aspects of the cash flow development. LINK generated NOK 192 million of cash flow from operations during the quarter and NOK 732 million on an LTM basis. After adjusting for nonrecurring M&A-related costs, cash flow from operations amounted to NOK 211 million in Q2 and NOK 822 million on an LTM basis. Working capital had a negative impact during the quarter due to normal fluctuation in payments related to larger customers, while remaining broadly neutral on an LTM basis. Taxes paid of NOK 70 million were broadly consistent with the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA cash conversion remained strong at 89% on an LTM basis, demonstrating the underlying cash-generative nature of the business. CapEx amounted to NOK 46 million during the quarter and continues to primarily reflect investments in CPaaS solutions and platform development. We continue to expect total CapEx in 2026 to be lower than in 2025 as optimization initiatives are implemented across the group. At the same time, we are seeing encouraging early customer demand for AI-enabled solutions and expect this demand to accelerate over time. We are, therefore, actively reallocating investment capacity towards AI initiatives, ensuring that LINK remains well positioned to capture this emerging growth opportunity. Interest paid and lease payments amounted to NOK 31 million during the quarter and relates to bonds and net interest costs associated with the EUR/ZAR cross-currency swap established in connection with the SMSPortal acquisition. I would note that there we made a correction in Q2 related to overstating cash effect of the cross-currency swap in Q1, but the cash effect is correct on a year-to-date basis. After CapEx, interest and lease payments, LINK generated NOK 134 million in cash flow during the quarter. Despite NOK 47 million negative working capital effects, cash generation remains strong, demonstrating the resilience of the business model and providing continued flexibility to fund organic investments, pursue bolt-on acquisitions and support future growing shareholder distributions. Looking at the cash bridge at the bottom of the slide, the business generated NOK 192 million in operating cash flow during the quarter. After CapEx and lease payments, cash flow amounted to positive NOK 143 million. The reduction in cash during the quarter was driven mainly by share buyback and M&A. Share buybacks represented NOK 169 million in cash outflow, while acquisition-related payments amounted to NOK 209 million. This included acquisitions in Romania and Italy as well as the first conditional payment related to SMSPortal of NOK 160 million. These outflows were partially offset by financing activities, including a EUR 20 million draw on the revolving credit facility. As a result, cash and cash equivalents amounted to NOK 764 million at quarter end. With that, I will hand the word back over to Christian for the Q&A session.

Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Morten. We will now move on to the Q&A session. Questions can be submitted through the Audiocast platform. We already have received some questions. We will start with some questions from Halvor Dybdahl from Arctic. Very interesting to see the AI-enabled contract with a large fashion retailer. Can you elaborate more on the partnership? And in general, how is demand for such solutions developing across your customers?

I can respond to that. It's a great question. The partnership with this client has been in place for years. The customer has always been very active on how they approach customer engagement and customer communication. And as I said, we have several existing use cases with them already, which are quite advanced. And then we have taken it to the next level now together with this customer to sort of put in place an AI agent to help with incoming requests and customer support. The demand for these solutions are building momentum. So it's not the only customer we delivered such a solution to. So it's building momentum, and we see more demand in less penetrated countries actually in Southern Europe compared to the Nordics. The Nordics is lagging a little bit behind on these new solutions, but the more populated countries in Southern Europe has a strong demand for these solutions.

Great. Moving on to some questions on SMSPortal. Growth in SMSPortal has slowed since the acquisition. Do you see any large change in the market dynamics in South Africa? And what needs to change for SMSPortal to deliver on the growth you previously expected?

First of all, the market dynamics in South Africa is very, very good. And in favor of SMSPortal, they have a state-of-the-art technical platform that delivers cost-effective messaging with the highest throughput and lowest latency in that country. The reason for the decline in the current quarter is exactly what we informed on the previous quarter in Q1, and we see that we have high comparables. Same quarter last year, meaning second quarter 2025, we had millions of additional messages due to a few customers wrongly templating the messages. So instead of sending one or two messages, they send several more. So that is the reason for the softness in the current quarter. When we acquired SMSPortal, we also said that the growth here is going to be more chunky, meaning that it's going to, on average, be high-single digit. That is what we expected, but it will vary a little bit more. So some quarters, it might be double digit. Other quarters, it might be mid- to low-single digit. And the reason for this is SMSPortal's ultimate selling point in the local market, which means that they are getting in bigger contracts. So when the contracts come in, then the growth momentum increases and then it slows down again when you have quarters where this is not the case. And we have also seen that the implementation of new contracts and also signing of new contracts has been slowed by the transaction. So we're catching up now. Yes, a long answer to a very good question.

Yes. Great. We can keep on SMSPortal. SMSPortal faced some delayed new contract volumes. Will these volumes convert in Q3? And how does that factor into the H2 guidance?

The short answer to that is yes. It's also contributing to the Q2 numbers. So we see underlying the growth momentum when you sort of exclude the high comparables, it's not that bad. It's pretty good actually and in line with the forecast we gave for H2. So we expect more customer contracts to be implemented at scale during the second half of 2026, improving the growth momentum in SMSPortal. As we showed on the slide, there's a good backlog and also a high signed contracts that are under implementation.

And then last question on SMSPortal. Do you still expect SMSPortal to deliver high-single-digit organic gross profit growth over time?

I already answered that. That is still our expectation. South Africa is a good market, and we see potential here for a good potential to deliver high-single-digit gross profit growth. But as I said, it's a little bit more chunky in SMSPortal due to the size of the contracts they are getting in.

And then another question on isolated decliners. Can you share how much isolated decliners declined this quarter?

I can take that one. Christian, we see the isolated decliners. They are performing in line with the previous 2 quarters. So it's in line with what we expected. So the sort of decline from the decliners is significantly less in the second quarter than it was in the first quarter, but there is still a drag there, which is expected then to fade out in the second half as we communicated previously.

Good. We have a question on number of shares in the company following the cancellation, and that is 285 million shares. Then also a question on the FX effects in the quarters, which were quite large. Could you elaborate on the FX effects?

Yes. So when we do reporting, we're basically done on average rates for the months, when we do reporting, and we see that the NOK has strengthened towards several of the foreign currencies that we are operating in, and that gives a drag on gross profit, it is a NOK 21 million drag, meaning the sort of -- if we apply same FX rate as last year, the reported gross profit would be NOK 513 million. So there's a significant impact in the quarter from FX.

Given your expectation for accelerating growth in H2, is this mainly driven by easier comps and technical factors? Or are you also seeing a genuine improvement in underlying market demand?

We are seeing an increased market demand for the more advanced solutions, conversational messaging solutions on RCS and WhatsApp and that is being documented by the numbers we're reporting with more than 100% growth in volumes for those two channels and also a much higher growth on gross profit. Market itself, it's pretty stable. As I've said, the last 3 years. It's a little bit tougher than normal, but it's pretty stable. I am happy with the commercial execution in the last couple of quarters. We've been able to close a lot of new won contracts, significantly over our targets. So the commercial execution, I'm happy with.

Good. Could you elaborate on the contract mix? Overall gross profit contribution from new contracts increased while CPaaS declined by around 16% year-over-year to NOK 22 million. Are customers shifting towards simpler messaging solutions? Or was this mainly a timing and mix effect in the quarter?

I can take that one as well. New CPaaS contracts was the second highest quarter ever, only surpassed by the same quarter last year. Same quarter last year was unusually high due to timing impact of several larger CPaaS contracts sort of hitting the same quarter. So no, we are seeing the opposite. We are seeing that the more advanced products and solutions are increasing in size, both in the P&L and when you look at won contracts.

Good. Could you speak a bit about the higher-margin software revenue opportunity you mentioned? And when you expect this will be a more meaningful portion of group revenues?

It's a meaningful portion today. As you saw on the slides, there is a good increase in gross profit from these more advanced solutions that we call CPaaS solutions, looking at -- it's NOK 148 million on an LTM basis in the current quarter. So it's growing in size and it's becoming more and more meaningful. This, we expect, is going to gradually continue happening going forward as well.

Good. What kind of investments are you making to invest in the platform for context, automation and AI-driven engagement?

We are making more investments on engagement solutions and AI. Morten, do you sort of want to touch upon it as well because you mentioned you had some comments on that in the CapEx.