NFON AG ($NFN)

[Audio Gap] by our management team, Andreas Wesselmann, our CEO; and Alexander Beck, our CFO. Let me guide you briefly through today's presentation. Andreas Wesselmann will walk you through the strategic and operational developments, including our progress in AI and product innovation. He will then hand over to Alexander Beck, who will present the financial performance in detail. Afterwards, we will open the floor for your questions. [Operator Instructions]. And now I'll hand over to Andreas to start the presentation. Over to you.

Yes, a warm welcome to everyone, and thank you for like let me start by putting the year 2025 into a broader perspective. So what we are currently seeing is not just a cyclical slowdown but a combination of a short-term macroeconomic pressure and at the same time, the structural shift in the software and communications market. On the one hand side, the macroeconomic environment remains clearly challenging. So especially in the SME segment, customers are acting more cautiously. Investment decisions are taking longer. Projects are being prioritized more strictly. And in many cases, we see a stronger focus on the immediate return on investment rather than a long-term transformation. And as a result, demand is not disappearing, but is becoming less predictable and more delayed. At the same time, we experienced a fundamental technological shift driven by AI. So what we are seeing is that the role of software is changing. So customers are no longer looking for stand-alone tools, but increasingly integrated solutions that deliver measurable outcomes, automate processes and directly improve productivity. This is leading to a reevaluation of existing systems and also changing expectations towards vendors. In that sense, AI is not just an additional feature, but a structural driver that is redefining the market. And the third important dimension is the growing relevance of digital sovereignty. Especially in Europe, customers are placing increasing importance on where the data is processed, how systems are operated and how dependencies can be managed. Regulatory developments and geopolitical considerations are reinforcing this trend. As a result, trust, compliance and control over data are becoming key decision criteria. So overall, we are operating in an environment where short-term visibility is reduced, but at the same time, long-term structural demand is clearly increasing. And this is exactly where NFON is positioned. So we combined AI-driven value generation with a strong European footprint and a clear focus also on data serenity. This allows us to address both the innovation and the efficiency needs of our customers and the increasing requirements in terms of compliance and control. Now let me move from the market environment to what we have actually executed in '25. The key message here is that we are not just adding AI features, but we are fundamentally transforming NFON into a scalable, AI-driven solution and platform business, while at the same time, remaining strict remaining strict operational discipline. Starting with the product side, our focus is clearly on translating AI into tangible business value. So we are embedding AI directly into our core communication solutions, enabling automation across, for example, both check and voice and supporting use cases such as 24/7 service availability and more efficient handling of customer interactions. What is particularly important is that we are making this value measurable. Features such as analytics and usage transparency allow customers to clearly understand how AI contributes to productivity increases and efficiency gains. This is a prerequisite for monetization. And at the same time, we are expanding our platform capability. So we're integrating different AI components and continuously enhancing our technology stack. We are building the foundation for more advanced, increasingly autonomous use cases over time. The second important step is the commercialization of these capabilities. So we have established a dedicated AI focused sales organization to ensure that our solutions are not only developed, but also effectively brought to market. In parallel, we are evolving our commercial model towards more modular and flexible pricing structures. This allows us to better monetize AI use cases, support upselling and cross-selling opportunities and align pricing more closely with customer value. At the same time, we are becoming much more focused on how we sell. So this is a clear shift towards use cases with tangible ROI, which improves conversion rates and supports long-term customer value. The third pillar is our go-to-market transformation. We are strengthening our partner ecosystem as a key lever for scalable growth. The launch of our Nexus partner program is an important step in this direction, providing structured enablement, training and closer collaboration with partners. What we are seeing is that the adoption of the AI solution requires a much more hands-on approach. This is why we are focusing strongly on real use cases on co-creation and our partner activation as this makes AI more tangible and accelerates the adoption. At the same time, we are improving the efficiencies of our sales processes, including more targeted marketing approaches and an increased use of automation, particularly in the SME segment. Let me now make this more concrete and show how it translates into our product offering. So with NFON [indiscernible], we have defined a clear strategic direction and execution is already well underway. At the core of our product, evolution is one core principle. So AI is not a separate layer but it's embedded directly into our existing solutions, making it immediately usable for our customers. This means we are not just asking customers to adopt entire new systems [indiscernible] we enhanced the tools they already use and deliver immediate value without adding complexity. You can see this across our 3 solution areas. So in the business telephony, we'll enhance our cloud communication offering with various AI-driven features immediately improving productivity and efficiency in daily operations. In the area of the intelligent assistance, we enable automation across chat, voice and AI bots, including several Agentic AI capabilities to automate workflows, ensuring fast return on investments. And in customer engagement, we support omnichannel service environments with AI-driven workflows and specialized AI agents that help customers to scale service quality and availability. Where additional capabilities are required, for example, to ensure 24/7 customer service, we provide, for example, with Nia FrontDesk and end-to-end AI solution that is only integrated into the existing and for business telephony environments and third-party applications. So for example, outlook for appointment scheduling, and this can be configured within minutes. This makes AI not only powerful, but also highly practical and easy to deploy. What connects all of this is our platform approach. So we operate a unified platform that integrates telephony, AI and customer engagements with a seamless connection to CRM, ERP and collaboration tools. This module and scalable architecture is key to supporting future growth and increasingly advanced use cases. And importantly, this is built on our own AI platform, which offers own models, integrates different third-party models and allows for flexible deployment. And this gives us the ability to continuously innovate and expand our solution offering over time, particularly in the direction of more autonomous Agentic AI use cases. So overall, what we are doing is turning AI into a real and accessible productivity layer, embedded, scalable and ready to deliver value today. Now let me take a look at how our transformation is being validated in the market. So with Nexus Connect '26, which happened in January this year, we brought together more than 200 participants across from our partner ecosystems, from our core markets and moved into the next phase of execution. So the event also marked the operational rollout of our new Nexus partner program and our modular licensing model, both key elements of our transformation towards a more scalable solution-based business. What is particularly important here is the level of engagement we are seeing from our partners. During this so-called [indiscernible], our partners worked hence on real end-to-end AI-driven use cases. So including concrete business cases and monetization logic. So one important observation from this is how accessible these solutions already are. Even without deep technical expertise, our partners were able to configure and apply eye driven use cases across our whole solution portfolio. And this is the key point. We are no longer talking about potential, but about solutions that can actually be deployed, sold and implemented in customer environments. At the same time, a strong participation and engagement clearly shows that our partners are fully aligned and strongly support this transformation. They are actively engaging with our portfolio and helping to bring these solutions into the market. However, it is also important to be clear why we have built a strong foundation the scaling and monetization of these solutions is still in an early stage. Our focus is on increasing adoption, translating use cases into revenues and making our partner-led model more repeatable and scalable. And with that, let me hand over to you, Alexander to walk us through the financials.

Yes. Thank you, Andreas. So let me start with the key financial figures for the full year 2025. Overall, our performance reflects a business that remained resilient in a challenging market environment, delivering a stable growth and a solid profitability despite muted demand, particularly, as Andreas said, in the SME segment. Revenue increased by 2% to EUR 89.1 million, while adjusted EBITDA grew by 2.4% to EUR 12.6 million. This demonstrates our ability to maintain profitability while continuing to invest in our strategic priorities. Looking at the quality of our revenues. Recurring revenue increased to EUR 82 million and continues to represent a very high share of 92.1%. And at the same time, we saw a small decline in our seat base of 2.7% and mainly driven by lower order intake and customer consolidation in a still subdued market environment. However, this was offset by an increase in ARPU to EUR 10.1, supported by pricing and product mix. This clearly reflects our focus on value over volume. So overall, this means that muted volume development was compensated by pricing mix and continued cost discipline. At the same time, we remain realistic about the environment, growth in our core SME business has been slightly below expectations, reflecting longer decision cycles and a more cautious investment climate. However, our fundamentals remain solid. We have a high recurring revenue base, stable profitability and a clear strategic direction. So with this, let's now take a closer look to the developments which are behind these figures. Let me build on the figures we have just discussed and provide a bit more color on the drivers behind our revenues. As mentioned, total revenue increased by 2.0% to $89.1 million. The composition of revenues developed positively. In particular, we saw a strong contribution from our project business, especially by [indiscernible] with nonrecurring revenue increasing to $7.1 million, reflecting growing demand for more solution-oriented use cases. At the same time, our recurring revenue base remained very robust, increasing to EUR 82 million and representing over 92% of our total revenues, which continues to provide a high level of stability and visibility. Looking at the underlying KPIs, the decline in seats by 2.7% to around 647,000 and reflects the still cautious market environment and the lower order intake in the SME segment. However, this was offset by improvements in ARPU, which increased to $10.1 driving by product mix, pricing and underlying our focus on value over volume. So overall, the key takeaway is that revenue development in '25 was driven less by expansion -- less by volume expansion and more by a stronger mix, pricing discipline and portfolio diversification. Turning to our profitability and cost structure. Our material expenses remained broadly stable at EUR 12.9 million, increasing only marginally compared to the previous year. This reflects lower hardware volumes and more favorable cost mix. As a result, gross profit increased by 2.3% to EUR 76.2 million, demonstrating a continued improvement in the quality of our revenues. The material cost ratio improved to 14.5%, supported in particular by a higher share of margin accretive project revenues, especially from Botadio. At the same time, other operating expenses decreased slightly to EUR 28.5 million, mainly driven by lower consulting warranties, foreign exchange-related costs and so on while we continue to invest in IT and software and in our growth initiatives. So overall, the adjusted cost ratio remained broadly stable at around 32%, reflecting continued cost discipline and operational efficiency, while at the same time, supporting our strategic initiatives. Let me now turn to our cost, personnel expenses. Personnel expenses increased by 4.6% to EUR 36.5 million compared to EUR 34.9 million in the prior year. This development reflects targeted investments, particularly in product development, in AI capabilities and in sales as well as the continued integration of [indiscernible]. At the same time, the average number of employees increased to 425 from 410 in the year before, supporting our strategic focus on innovation and growth. Adjustments amounted to EUR 1.0 million, mainly related to management restructuring, legacy migration and stock option expenses. Important, after these adjustments, personnel expenses remained fully in line with our expectations. So overall, this reflects a deliberate and controlled investment into our strategic priorities while maintaining a high cost discipline. Turning to profitability. EBITDA increased by 5.1% to EUR 11.4 million compared to EUR 10.8 million in the year before. On an adjusted basis, EBITDA increased by 2.4% to EUR 12.6 million from EUR 12.3 million in 2024. This reflects improved operational performance and cost discipline on the other side. Adjustments amount to EUR 1.2 million in total compared to EUR 1.5 million in the prior year and mainly related, as I said, to restructuring measures and ongoing harmonization initiatives. Important, the adjusted EBITDA margin remained stable at 14.2%, demonstrating our ability to maintain a solid level of profitability while continuing to invest in strategic growth areas. Let me now turn to cash flow and liquidity. Our operating cash flow amounted to EUR 8.4 million compared to EUR 9.4 million in the previous year. This slight decline is mainly driven by timing effects in receivables and in provisions in net working capital positions and does not reflect any structural change in our cash generation. The investing cash flow totaled minus EUR 6 million compared to minus EUR 12.9 million in the prior year. While the prior year was significantly impacted by the [indiscernible] acquisition, the current year primarily reflects ongoing investments in development and IT as well as an earn-out payment. Our financing cash flow stood at minus EUR 2.5 million compared to plus EUR 4.2 million in the year before. The year before included loan inflows and related to the [indiscernible] transaction. And in '25, this many reflects scheduled loan repayments on the one side and these payments on the other side. So overall, our cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period are solid at EUR 12.9 million, providing us a strong liquidity base. Importantly, free cash flow reached EUR 4.3 million, demonstrating our ability to fund ongoing investments from our operating business. Let me now turn to our outlook. Our guidance overall reflects 2 things: First, the continued external headwinds, which we are seeing. And at the same time, the progress we are making executing our strategy. On the one hand, the short-term environment remains challenging. We continue to see muted demand in the SME segment, longer sales cyclings and a generally cautious approach to IT spending. In addition, AI adoption in the market is accelerating, but it still requires time to translate into broader and more visible revenue contribution. At the same time, we are making solid progress in our execution. We are expanding our AI portfolio, increasing the monetization of AI use cases and further strengthening our partner and indirect sales model. In parallel, we remain focused on efficiency with strict cost discipline, improved sales effectiveness and targeted investments with a clear return focus. What is important, however, is how this translates into our growth drivers. The first, we expect an increasing contribution from partner-driven scaling. As we expand our indirect sales channel and rollout programs such as Nexus, allowing us to grow without a proportional increase in fixed costs. Second, AI monetization will become a more visible driver as we scale AI-enabled use cases, move from innovation to revenue contribution and realize additional cross-selling and upselling potentials. And third, we see further operating leverage from our model, supported by a more modular commercial setup, improvements in the customer journey and customer retention and increased sales specialization. So overall, our outlook reflects a combination of short-term headwinds, clearly defined growth drivers that we expect to become more visible over time. Based on this, for 2026, we expect to grow in the low to single -- in the low to mid-single-digit percentage range. At the same time, we expect adjusted EBITDA to exceed EUR 12 million, reflecting continued cost discipline and operational focus. Looking beyond 2026, our midterm ambition remains unchanged. At the same time, we continuously review our assumptions in light of the market, in light of the developments and the pace of AI monetization. So we continue to expect a return to double-digit growth rates and an adjusted EBITDA margin above 15% over time. supported by increasing AI monetization, partner-driven scales and improved operating leverage. With this, for the moment, thank you very much. And with this, I will hand back to Friederike to open up the Q&A session.

Yes. Thank you very much, Alexander, for the insights. We will now open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And first in line is Stephane Beyazian.

Yes, I've got a couple of questions. The first one is regarding the first quarter. Have you been able to return to seat growth in the first quarter? Or does it require a little bit more time in order to return to a growth in the number of seats. My second question is regarding the modular pricing. I was just wondering if there are some parts of what customers are paying today, which you think that they may not be paying anymore because they will have more flexibility in the way they take products from you and therefore, that could also have some headwind impact on ARPU. And finally, my third question is a bit more conceptual. With AI, many companies can sort of try to replicate what competitors are doing. So what I'm trying to understand with my question here is, what part of what you're doing is possibly replicable. But what part is you think not replicable, is more physical or is something that Al cannot just replicate of phone straight from a prompt.

Thank you very much, Stephane, for your questions. So we will split it up. I will start with your first question, talking about the seat growth, yes? So -- before coming to Q1, let me say one word to the seat development last year. So first of all, yes, the seats have been declined slightly, 2.7% over the year. In the last quarter, they were -- in Q4, they were almost rather stable, not really stable, slightly negative, but not so much reducing any longer. And we also saw some countries already where we saw a growing number of seats. So in Austria and Italy, for instance, Australia, our second biggest country after Germany, we saw growing seat numbers. So this is on one side. On the other side, a general word about the seats. Andreas mentioned in his presentation, our 3 product portfolio categories. I remember I repeat it for a moment. So the first one is our core business around the business telephony, our strong fundament around our core business around the cloud telephony. The second was the customer engagement, which contains contact center solutions, call centers for bigger customers with bigger inbound volumes and so on. And the third one was the intelligent assistant part. This stands for automatization for AI and contains besides [indiscernible], all our new AI solutions. So when we talk about the seats, we actually only reflect our core business. We only reflect our business telephony. We try with our strategy as well -- so we want to win new customers without a doubt, and we want to win new seats. But we also try, with our strategy, to monetize the existing customer base with our new AI solution portfolio. And this, we will see and we see it already by increasing ARPUs. So for instance, a user -- a seat is a user at the end which in the past only used the classical business telephony and in the future, we'll use also AI functionalities with transcripts, with Nia, with voicebots, whatever. Then we do not see increasing seats, but we will see increasing sales. We are increasing ARPUs. So yes, we want to gain new customers. But on the other side, we also want to monetize our existing customer base. And the second and third product portfolio areas, customer engagement, for instance, with our contact center solutions, here, we do not even reflect our seats because here, we count the users as agents -- this is a new KPI that we are starting to measure right now. And here, we're in a very, very good way because here, we see high growth rates, but this does not count into the seat base. And the third, the biggest growing pillar, our intelligent assistant part is the same. We do not talk about seats. And therefore, yes, as I said, the seat number is a very important number, and it was the number, and now it's still important, but it's not the only number so much maybe to the for a general information around the seats.

And do you think that you, therefore, may change your KPIs in the future, therefore, just to align with what you just said, for instance, and move away from seat or keep it and add, for instance, number of AI subscriptions? Or something like that?

A clear answer, Stephane, maybe yes. No. I mean we are changing -- Andreas mentioned it, we are changing the complete -- we are in a heavy transformation from a classical business telephony towards an AI company. And a lot of things are changing. A lot of new products are coming and a lot of new business models. And we are steering them differently. And over the time, we are also starting reporting them differently. So I -- please do not ask me when and what and what exactly, but yes, a clear yes.

let me continue with the other questions. So it was about -- Stephane, thanks for the other 2 questions. The first was about the modular pricing and its impact. So I would see it from the perspective, the modular pricing enables us to be more flexible in the sense to offering customers choice. So with that, we are able to, for example, also enter an entry level that we could not serve before. We are able to combine different packages with one customer. So what does that mean? If you, for example, say, for 5 people. I would like to try out your new AI capabilities. But in addition, it would be great if I have additional 5 just for core-based telephony, et cetera. This is now possible. It's also possible to combine different contract length there, which is also giving the customer more investment security on the one hand side or choice for more flexibility, and included in that is a very easy upsell path so that within the tools you just with a click of a button, can activate the new capabilities, where we make it also more attractive to up- and cross-sell in that environment. That's the one thing. And maybe I go ahead with the second question and then back to you for any further questions. The second question was essentially about what is all possible to be replicated with AI in the sense of what is unique in our case. So I think overall, the one thing is the availability of the technology? And then maybe the first point is where do you also have your own IP or your own differentiation. And our focus is clearly on communication. So the services of how you transform text to speech and speech to text, so this TTS and SST. This is absolutely essential and there due to the acquisition of [indiscernible] and the knowledge. We really have models that are from our perspective, not only on par, but better than what you have there because the especially [indiscernible] speech is not so easy. It's not so easy if you do it in European language, if you do it with dialect, if the quality of the tone and the -- how you express yourself is important, and this is our experience that partially the customers do not like this, still a little robotic or still a little more perfecting speech working. So that's the one thing. The other thing is that the application of AI is, from our perspective, extremely key. Because just giving you an example from the other side. Now you deploy, let's say, AI agents and the question is, okay, then a new version comes. Is it still the same? Is it something new? Is it still under control? Does it have still the right things? Or does it start hallucinating, et cetera, et cetera. So that's, I think, another important ingredient. And our core competency is close to the customers and partner understand the needs and really bring it into productive usage. So that's still the gap a lot of others struggle with between what is theoretically possible and the application. Maybe that gives you some insights why we believe that this is a combination we differentiate also in the market. And -- this is something that not is easily to be replicated just with purely applying the new technology things coming up.

Okay. Next in line John Karidis.

I'm John Karidis from Deutsche Bank. I take on board everything that you've said about seats not being the only important metric. But I have a few questions around the seat category, if you like. So I'm trying to understand whether in Germany. Specifically, the total number of seats is likely to decrease again in 2026. I note that you said that there was next to no decrease in the fourth quarter. But you also said that the decrease last year was because of the competitive environment -- sorry, because of the economic environment. And that hasn't really changed nor to my knowledge, is it likely to change this year. So should we expect stable seat numbers in Germany in '26 or another loss? Secondly, I see that the seat loss in the U.K. was quite chunky, about 11% year-on-year. And I'm trying to understand not only what to expect going forward. But really, if there was any -- it was more aggressive, the loss, than it was in Germany. And ultimately, I sort of wondered, do you need to be in the U.K.? And then thirdly, you talk about partner-driven growth. Of course, the question is growth of what? And as you increase the number of metrics, we have to sort of move beyond seat numbers. But just sticking with seat numbers, it would be interesting to figure out what proportion of gross seat growth came from partners in 2025? And how do you expect that to change going forward? And I now push my luck, so I'll push it even more and say, ask you the other metrics that you're talking about, intelligent assistant and customer engagement, how easy is this to export outside Germany.

First of all, thank you very much for your questions, Sean. Do you hear me?

Yes, sir.

Yes. So overall, coming back to the seats again, yes, it's as I said. So I did not say that we were stable in Q4, we were almost stable, but we did not use the 2.7% in Q4. So Q4 was really slightly better already. When you talk about Germany, yes, in total, we lost 2.5% more or less seats in Germany. And look, mathematically, what is the reason why we lose seats. So on the one side, we have a churn rate. This is not so high, and the churn rate is stable. On the other side, we have new business. And at the end of the day, we have to see that the new business came in a little bit less than expected, and the churn rate was stable, but was even a little bit higher than expected. So at the end of the day, we lost a small number of seats -- for a competitive environment or not only the competitive environment, also the macroeconomic environment, you're completely right. It did not really change in Q1. It's becoming even more complicated with not only the war in Ukraine, with a new war in Iran with the energy prices with a really -- low investment climate in the moment. So for the moment, we do not expect any very short-term turnaround of this situation, let's say. And at the end of the day, and this is what I want to tell you. So what is decisive for us is, yes, it's Obviously, we do not like to lose seats. So we want to maintain our seat bases at least stable, in best case, even grow slightly. But again, our strategy is very clear. We want to enhance our product portfolio and not only gain revenues of new seats, but also over a higher quality per seat or per user when we talk about new metrics. One word that you asked about the U.K. This is right in the U.K. We lost more than 10% seats in the last year. So here, we have yes, unfortunately, this is the situation because U.K. is also a big country for us. It's the third biggest country. So we have a very special economic situation there on the one side as in every country, but we also have a very special competitive situation there in the U.K. with a very aggressive competition. And yes, we were not that successful in maintaining our seat base there. And the third question, now I have to look again. Are you talking about partners and proportion of growth in partner base and so on. So first of all, also our partner yes. So you're completely right. The biggest part of our revenues is organized in an indirect way of our partners. If you ask me for numbers, we do more or less 10% or 11%, we do by our own, so direct sales and the rest is coming by partners. And the partners, there's also a switch in the method or not in the method, but in our model, let's say. So we have different types of partners. On the one side, we have our classical regional partners, which are smaller companies also as partners, and they address usually smaller customer segments as well. And on the other side, we see our wholesale partners like -- the big players like Deutsche Telekom, like Telefonica, like 11 Versatel and so on, and they address more bigger customers. And yes, in this partner base, we see a small switch already in the last year. So we saw in the in-house shares of this partner base. We saw a small decline in the regional partner base and nice increase in the wholesale partner base because at the end of the day, these big players, they also have access to bigger customers, and this is one of our strategic direct trends. I think Andreas mentioned it in one sentence. One of our strategic directions is as well to address not only the SME, not only the small companies as customers, but also the bigger ones and the enterprise customers. And with this, partner approach within the partner landscape from purely regional partners towards more wholesaler and bigger partners, we also underline our strategic directions to attract bigger customers also in the enterprise segment. I hope I take all of your questions, john, if not, please.

I just sort of wonder at the end of the day, when we look at our forecasts for seats, specifically in Germany and in the U.K., should we expect the same of broadly the same year-on-year change in '26 as that in 2025. So that's the follow-up on your answers, your kind answers, and thank you for those. And then the remaining questions -- question is regarding intelligent assistance and customer engagement. Those areas, can you take those outside Germany? Or is that more difficult?

Yes. John, thanks for asking. I was anyhow going to pick up the other questions that were left. So let me maybe start with U.K. again, and that comes also to your question to export, so to speak, the AI capabilities. Yes, U.K. is a very significant market. And as you see also overall in the market with the other companies that are very active in U.K., you also saw that this is currently a challenging market. What we clearly see there and now coming to your question on the Intelligent Assistant adoption, we were just recently in [indiscernible] a quite big event, and there we got a lot of proof points that the customers really would like to take up our opportunities on the new solutions. So we got very, very positive feedback. And technology-wise, it is quite easy to scale this across Europe because it's not limited as in the telecommunications area, and we can base it on the broad telecommunication footprint we have in the different countries as well. So that's on the positive side. And then one word also to the bigger customers and partners. We're also more engaged there because we want to accelerate the adoption also of these bigger customers. And then a closer relationship to the vendor itself in cooperation, partly with our bigger partners is of absolutely key importance that you drive them faster to adoption and to success. So that maybe complements what Alex said. And hopefully, that answered your question. If not, John, please let me know.

At the risk of our taking you further, could you answer the question about net losses on net gains in '26 versus '25 on the seat front.

So you asked me what I would do for your forecast. I would be cautious turn. So you ask me if you should do the forecast with the same trends as we saw in '25, maybe to be on the safe side, yes, we will do. But one is what we want to achieve. And obviously, again, we do not want to achieve seat loss. But to be on the safe side, and to see how the year started, we should be cautious. And again, this is not purely negative because our strategy is clearly to expand a second and a third business besides the seat and to increase the value per seat.

Next in line Philipp Sennewald, NuWays.

You can hear me well. As we are already well into the call, we'll try to make it quick here. I would like to follow up on the recent question like you mentioned, we might see another 2.5% seat loss in this year. Is that baked into your guidance, especially your EBITDA guidance? And a follow-up in what scenario would your EBITDA drop below the targeted EUR 12 million.

So we do not expect exactly a seat loss of 2.5%. So first of all, Philipp, and thank you for your question. So we do not expect especially exactly a set drop in 2.5%. But John asked me what to do in terms of making a cautious forecast. And then yes, we have to take into consideration that it might happen that our core business, especially around business telephony, especially about the seat growth is become -- it's coming under pressure. It is under pressure. This is not in every country the same. Again, we are growing our seat base in Austria, second biggest country. We are growing our seat base in Italy, third biggest -- fourth biggest countries, sorry, and we see a slight decrease in Germany. So if the 2.5% are coming or not, I don't know, we do not have them fully reflected in the forecast. But on the other side, again, our expectation is to boost and to increase our second and third pillar and to realize and monetize these great developments, what we have launched in the last year. And if we do so, they do not count into the seat base, but they bring us a lot of revenue. So this is the idea, Philipp.

so you mentioned throughout the call, execution of your AI cases is well underway. I would like you to help me to paint a better picture you're measuring this an agency said, can you state how many agents you have employed on which growth you target this year? And also what is your, let's say, ARPU on those agents.

Yes. We can -- we are starting these discussions, Philipp. And in the future, we can also lead these discussions here in the broader base. But in the moment, we are starting them. But to give you a little bit of flavor, not in every detail what you asked right now in revenues per agent and so on. But to give you a little bit of flavor, when we look back to 2025, again, our 3 pillars, business telephony, clearly under pressure was negative. We lost a little bit revenues, minus 1%, more or less. In the customer engagement area, where we talk about the agents, it's also -- it's soon because we have 2 products. One is an old one, which runs out. We have a new one which runs fantastically up. But in total, in customer engagement, we are growing double digit wise, more than 10%, 15%, 16% last year. And for the fourth -- the third pillar, sorry, the intelligent assistant part with [indiscernible] and all the AI functionalities. This is incredibly growing more than 100% but on a very low basis, obviously. So this shows -- and this we will see in the future. And yes, we will bring in more transparency therefore, without doubt Philipp. But this shows that we see a deep shift in our product portfolio, maybe faster than we expected. We expected the market to turn into this direction, but maybe now it's turning faster in this director and this year. confirms to be very honest, it doesn't make it more easy for us to analyze and to touch. But at the end, it confirms even more our strategic direction because this is really our strategic focus. And sorry for not giving you every detail in every detail to every driver so far...

I can see that, but I got to ask the question. I appreciate the insight, but I would also appreciate a few guys going forward would kind of split that up also this ARPU figure and the legacy ARPU of the PBX and the up here among the agents. Last question is concerning ARPU. I have seen, and I don't know if I missed it on the call, if you explained it already, but I'm asking it anyway. The ARPU in the prelims was stated at EUR 9.91, if I remember correctly, and it's now above EUR 10. Can you quickly explain the difference or what happened there?

Nothing strange happened, Philipp. The reason is that 1 was the prelims and these were not the final numbers, and now we have the final numbers. So maybe a word to the ARPU in '25, it was -- yes, it was during the year, fluctuating within relatively narrow ranges around EUR 9.7. I talked about -- we see this month by month, obviously. So month by month, it was fluctuating between EUR 9.7 and EUR 10.1. And yes, we had even a small slight dip in the beginning of the year and then in the middle of a year stabilization at the end of the year in the last months, we saw an increase. Obviously, also, again, the link to our strategy. We launched our new product at the end of the year. We didn't sell it or not because we launched them very late, but this helped also to increase the ARPU. And the small difference, we are very we are very precise because this was the only very small difference between our preliminary figures and the final figures. The only small difference was the ARPU. So there is no reason behind it was just prelim and now it's finished.

Next in line [indiscernible].

[indiscernible]. Congratulations for the presentation and taking my two questions. It's the EUR 10 in ARPU milestone, but seats are down from -- by 2.7%. I would like to know if this move is more to gain more margin and erase the low-margin clients in our computing and so for your next target? And the things that you would like to point, it's the new pricing of the ARPU for the coming months and in fact, for the or the 2026. And the second one is on R&D, the R&D grew to 18% in terms of revenue and the guidance is a bit flat in front of the cadence of the top line. The things I would like to know is beyond the [indiscernible] acquisition, what specific KPIs we should track to measure the Nia organic traction in terms of margin and also on the top line.

Sorry, I already answered [indiscernible]. Sorry. I hope you can hear me now. So first of all, thanks for your questions. I start with one of the last ones. You asked for the R&D invest what we had in '25 and how we do see this in the future. So maybe one word before. So you are right. We talk about almost 18%, 17.9% invest in R&D. And maybe one word to this. So we are -- with our solid cash position, we are very happy when we talk about the future that this solid cash position gives us the freedom to go on when we want to do investing in innovation and in growth. And this is what we are doing. We are cautious. At the same time, we are flexible, so we can adjust also our investments. We have adjusted them last year. At the end of the year, we will adjust them this year if it's necessary, but this is the way we want to go. So we want to continue investing into innovation and in future growth on the one side. The other side, if you see our cash flow, for instance, or our total investment mode. So we are changing our investment mode. When we see '24 to '25. We are changing the investment mode from investing into acquisition into investing into own developments, not only, but this is what you clearly can see, we had in '24. We had the big investment block, which was the investment for the acquisition of [indiscernible]. And here, we had no acquisition in '25, but we had enhanced investments into our own developments. And this is also reflected in the R&D ratio, if you want, the 18% or 17.9% at the end. So much to the R&D. Andreas, do you want to say something to the [indiscernible] ARPU and pricing.

Thank you, Alex. I think -- not much to add what is okay, not much to add what you said. Thanks for congratulating us to the ARPU milestone. So I think we believe that with the more value we also bring in the classical business telephony, there are opportunities for and cross-sell following also what you said, more increase the margin for high-value customers and with that also standardized on the new margin. And the R&D growth, as Alex said, is clearly outlining also our balance between investing in our future growth, especially in the AI-related solutions, but at the same time also to take a careful look on that we do this operational efficiency.

So last in line Ross Jobber.

Ross Jobber from Edison Group. I'm really interested in what you're saying about FY '27. And I want to get a little bit more understanding, if you like, of how your minds are working around that. In particular, the return of growth that you're seeing or expect and hope in '27, I'm interested, is more of that going to be about in-house revenues or partner revenues. And you're obviously assuming margin increases as well. So I don't know whether or not there's a big difference between your in-house commercial sales margin and your partner margin. So is that growth going to be more in-house of a partner? Is it going to be more service over product as [indiscernible] continues to develop? Is it going to be more Germany over the rest of the world? And is it going to be more new customers over existing customers or the other way around? That's my question.

Yes. Thanks, Ross, for the question. A lot of questions, and let's see how we can condense them in the short time frame. So some answers on your question. So we see growth clearly across the European market. In our core countries, we are actively in. So it's not about Germany. It's also in the other countries. And even strategically looking forward, as you said, we take now the 1-, 2-year perspective. So it's not limited to Germany. And this is due to the portfolio on how we do it. There's also no technical limitation. So that's a clear path forward. the service versus product model. So still, we strive for having a very high degree on recurring revenues, of course, also in the new solutions in the customer engagement and also in the Intelligent Assistant area. But also if we have bigger customers, we see specific bigger projects where we actively go in. So we will also see a little bit more also increase in the services there. Distinction between in-house and partner, I think, is not that. So it's still the same combination, as I mentioned before. The key lever to the market is the partner ecosystem addressing also new and larger partners in combination with an extension of the share we serve directly because it's just in the nature of the products where our customers or the bigger customers require a closer working relationship with us. So they may be shed some light. And of course, as we go through the year, we will also shed some more details how we see them in the next year and the years after that as we go.

Okay. So I see no further questions. If you have a question, you can raise your hand. This is not the case. Okay. So thank you again for your time, your interest and your engagement with NFON. I'll hand back to Andreas for a short closing statement. Andreas back to you.

Yes. Thanks a lot, Friederike. And also thanks to all of you for the very good and constructive and great question. So let me conclude by saying, so the past financial year was shaped as we said, by a challenging market environment, a high degree of change. And at the same time, very important progress for us as a company. So we demonstrated innovation capabilities. We demonstrated operational strength and consistently advanced also our strategic priorities because that's absolutely key to later foundation for the future further profitable growth. And looking ahead, we remain confident despite the very challenging environment that we have. So that means, especially for this year, we will stay very disciplined in execution focused on driving innovation and at the same time, efficiency because we look for creating sustainable mid- and long-term growth for all of our stakeholders. So with that, let me conclude. Thank you very much for your time for the great questions. Looking forward to see you soon. That's it for today. Thank you.