Verve Group SE ($VRV)

Good morning to our guests joining from America and a warm welcome as well to everybody joining us from Europe. My name is Ingo Middelmenne, Head of Investor Relations of Verve Group. I'm pleased to welcome you to our Q1 2026 earnings call. [Operator Instructions] As usual, we have prepared a presentation to provide you with some additional insight and transparency on our performance in the last quarter. After the presentation, we will, of course, take the time to answer your question. Please note that the entire call, including the Q&A session will be recorded and made available publicly on our website after the call. If you have already a question in mind, feel free to queue at any time during the call by clicking the Q&A button. With that, I'm handing you over to our CEO, Remco Westermann, to guide you through the first part of today's call. Remco, please go ahead.

Thank you, Ingo. Dear investors and listen other stakeholders. I would like to welcome you to the presentation of the first quarter 2026. As usual, I will present the headlines and the latest developments, followed by Christian, our CFO, who will present the financials. Let me start with the presentation. Q1 was a good quarter with solid organic growth, a smoothly running platform and investments in further growth that are already starting to show positive results. I will now present our financial headlines. Merch Christian will cover this in more detail in his part of the presentation. Q1 had a like-for-like overall growth of 3.7%, reaching EUR 137.2 million, with underlying 6.4% organic growth and 6.9% nonorganic growth, we showed good growth numbers. But by far, the majority of our revenues in U.S. dollars, we had to overcome the foreign exchange headwinds with 9.6% in the first quarter. Go to the second point. Looking into the underlying KPIs, our client base remains strong. Our net dollar retention rate was lower at 90%, showing that old customers base was overall spending less based on, amongst other impacts from customers of our latest acquisitions and optimizations of lower-margin customers. that we were able to generate more revenues was based on the strong overall customer growth, adding 9% of new customers. Number three, based on efficiency from our unified platform and the use of AI, we were able to show a continued improved pro item at 41%. Number four, we continued our investments into adding additional sales force and sector focus. This led to higher cost and as a result of 2.2% lower EBITDA. Number five, after a weak cash generation in Q4, we had a very strong cash generation in Q1 with cash flow from operations reaching EUR 45 million. And the last point on this slide, based on expansion of our business, efficiency uplift from AI, allocation optimizations and yields of our investments we confirm our full year 2026 guidance. Please speak to the next page. Now getting to our position as a leading mobile ad tech company. via our ad tech platform, we are connecting advertisers with publishers. Mobile represents 93% of our revenues out of that InApp is approximately 95%. We remain heavily North America and especially U.S. focused with 74% of our revenues in that region. The advantage of that is, it's the largest advertising market of the -- its largest advertising market worldwide with a low scale opportunities. There is, however, on this advantage, the U.S. dollar corus our reporting in euros, which we'll later cover in the presentation. We work with well over 1,100 software clients. Those are clients with over $100,000 of revenues per year. We have over 65,000 app integrations. We serve over 2.5 billion consumers. And we are one of the largest platforms in the market with 1.2 trillion at delivered in the last 12 months. Coming to the next page. Jumping into the headline overview of our revenue, gross margin and EBITDA development, and I'm covering headlines. Christian will do the details. Net revenue increased year-on-year, 4% and reaching EUR 137 million for Q1 2026, taking into account, as I mentioned before already, the 9.6% year-on-year negative currency effect from a much weaker U.S. dollar, we are happy with this number, especially taking into account that last year, Q1 was also a very strong quarter. Our profit margin has structurally improved based on optimizations and improvements following our platform unification, but while profit gross profit margin was up by 2.7%. Our adjusted EBITDA was down by EUR 2 million, respectively, [indiscernible] lower than last year, which is based on our increased cost base based on our investments in our sales team buildup and the retail media area as we mentioned, but also impacted by the U.S. dollar because more of our costs are in euros. And the majority, as mentioned already, the revenue is in dollars. Coming to our main underlying KPIs. We were able to increase our ad impressions to 25% versus Q1 last year, and we're even able to keep it at the same level as Q4 last year. This, while Q4 seasonality wise is the strongest quarter, but Q1 is the weakest quarter 1. Our net dollar retention rate, the graph on the left bottom side for the quarter is 90%. The net dollar retention rate shows how revenues of the customers from Q1 last year developed versus Q1 this year. The lower percentage versus previous year results largely from new acquisitions as well as from optimizations of low-margin customers. Our revenue growth came from adding new customers. And as you can see on the upper right side, while the large over USD 100,000 per year customer number was stable, we were able to increase our total number of customers by 34%. And while we came new customers, we are also showing a very good retention rate of 98%, also in line with previous quarters. which is on the loyalty of our customers and approved for delivering good results. Now getting to a selection of some further key indicators. We continue to remain our strategic focus on engineering product and AI. While in the past years, we focused on underlying -- sorry, on unifying our platforms, we now benefit from strong, stable and scalable platform. We are, however, still working on migrating the last bits of traffic. Related to CTV, we still have to do 2% of the migration. So 98% of our traffic now of our revenues have been migrated up from 96% in end of Q4. We are further continuing our focus on growing and improving our ideal solutions. While Androids is still relaxed on privacy, Apple, which has approximately 50% of the market in the U.S. [indiscernible] the application of its identifiers. We were able to grow our iOS revenues year-on-year by 24%. Also, we continue our strategic focus on commerce and market expansion. We have been growing our clients by 34%. On the supply side, we are connecting more and scaling our publishers and on the demand side, which is becoming more substantial, but still smaller than our supply side. We are further increasing the number of [indiscernible] entities. There's a lot more growth potential in the U.S. market with over 4,000 agencies, big holdcos and many data customers. For this reason, we decided to increase our sales team as communicated earlier. We were able to more than double our sales team, growing it by 117%. [indiscernible] a strong strategic focus on efficiency and financial where we also are seeing good progress. Our gross margin improved by 2.7% and our interest coverage improved to 4.5x. Coming to the next page, going more into detail with regards to the main events on the commercial side. Starting with the first bullet point here, we accomplished a unified work for advertisers. All demand side offerings are now under one umbrella, uniting June Group Gaptify, Ferrand on Agency as well as data set DSP. The joint offering is strong and combining the strengths also makes us more efficient. Number two, we are making good progress with our improved marketplace. After unification focuses now on optimizing margin management data and AI-based targeting effectiveness as well as pruning less efficient and low margin supply. We are also focusing on further future development of our STK solutions. As we released earlier in the press release, we are creating a strong moat with integrating LLM signals into our targeting. We are the first open market ad platform that is activating conversational intent from lean and combining it with other data such as first search intent, so party and Adelis data. We're also further working on expanding our leading privacy-first position. We're focusing on product development and proven performance. And as published earlier, linked in validated first privacy-first performance and was extremely happy with 38% lower CPIs and 39% lower cost per activation. We're doubling down on Retail Media. While Retail Media and CPG already were a focus segment for work. We are now extending our focus on this segment. We have been able to establish a first closed-loop offering at scale in Germany. We're linking mobile advertising with retail in-store advertising and with point-of-sale purchase data. We are now ready to expand our offering into other markets, including the U.S. In Q1, we also further focused on increasing organizational efficiency. On one hand, by focusing on our investments into the opportunities like us and Retail Media and on the other hand, by streamlining operations and creating efficiencies based on strong implementation of AI. A few words about the markets. We experienced a resilient U.S. market. While we see shorter agency booking cycles and some isolated middle East and travel-related negative effects, the overall U.S. market is stable. On the margin side, we see stable net margins in line with user seasonality. However, CTP margins are under pressure. Coming to the next page. Yes, we are pursuing a relocation to Ireland that has been communicated earlier. We see this as a strategic move to align were with our global ad tech peers, and we think this is a big opportunity. Why are we doing this? Or what are the reasons for this? First of all, Ireland is an EU-based -- sorry, it's an EU common domicile. This enables for us to align its constitutional framework with international technology and advertising peers particularly in the U.S., while remaining within the European Union, so getting the best of both world. Ireland enables us to report in U.S. dollars instead of euros. As I mentioned before, the, let's say, the weak U.S. dollar is really showing -- yes, showing our euro revenues a lot lower than the effect we would have been able to show in dollars. So reporting in U.S. dollars better reflects the global nature of the digital advertising improves comparability with peers and could materially reduce our foreign exchange volatility and reported results. We are currently evaluating this option. Ireland will also enable greater capital market flexibility. It would increase our accessibility for international investors, but it also creates the optionality for Verve to do a future direct U.S. listing. This is currently under evaluation, no decision or time line has been established so far. And important to mention, there will be no operational disruption. The relocation relates only to the registered office and the corporate dollar sale, first operational footprint, existing listings, bonds, shares remains unaffected. With our strong U.S. focus and the majority of our revenues in the U.S., we believe that the relocation to islet represents a big opportunity for Verve and its shareholders. For the redomiciliation, we need approval from the AGM, which is planned for June 5. Then I'm getting into the AI topic, which is discussed everywhere at the moment. Yes, consumer behavior is undergoing a structural change. LRM start eliminating the middle web at [indiscernible] app traffic. There's a strong disruption in the market. AI overviews on search page results lead to a sharp decrease of click converts to the open web. So web owners see a lot less clicks on the pages. Also, traditional search volumes are dropping, being partly replaced by AI chatbots commercial agents. In the meanwhile, we have seen increased usage of special interest apps, amongst others, avoiding AI-generated noise. Open web is losing its role as primary discovery layer traffic is heading into 2 distinct layers, and we show them here. The AI insulin layer, quick factual and information grades are resolved within the LLM zeroing basically. The special interest app layer, high-intent transactional utility-driven fast, they mitigate 2 dedicated apps. Verve is well positioned to profit from this disruption with our strong in acquisition. And with our strong position, we can profit from in-app deep utility mode as we show you. It's about tooling and integrating a functionality. It's about verified branded environment. it's about proprietary real-time data and live inventory signals that they cannot grow. And it's about first-party data community features that create high in-app customer retention. The changes based on AI are a big opportunity for growth. I would like to also put focus on our receivables securitization program. We have shown part of this slide also before and as mentioned earlier, our strategic priority is working capital management. For that, our receivable securitization program plays an important role to bridge the gap between typical 90-day advertiser payments to us while we paid publishers after 45 days. While we did not optimally use this program in our last quarter, in Q1, we had a strong focus on it. We are able to return to the optimal levels and secured a maximum amount of EUR 100 million. Overall, this helped our store cash flow momentum. In Q1, we generated an operational cash flow of EUR 45.2 million, which is significantly up from last year. That's brings me to the point where I hand over to Christian for the next slide.

Thank you very much, Remco. Yes. Coming to the financial performance of Q1. I think the 3 headlines of the performances. We see accelerating organic growth, reaching 6.4%. This quarter was really a turning point in our operational cash flow generation, where we've generated EUR 45.2 million. Whereas we saw also that EBITDA profits and margin are impacted by the planned strategic investment phase. I will now dig into some of the details of those headlines. So on this slide, combining kind of our key highlights for the quarter. If we first focus on revenue, you'll see we booked EUR 137 million in revenues for Q1. That should be compared to EUR 132 million for Q1 last year and resembles 3.7% like-for-like revenue growth. I think Q1, in terms of FX headwinds was quite extraordinary. We -- depreciation of the U.S. dollar meant that we had currency translation headwinds of 9.6 percentage points. So of course, you need to isolate that factor out to see what is the actual organic growth, and we come to a number of 6.4% when we normalize for currency translation and for M&A. That's actually a slight acceleration from Q4 where we noted 5.3 percentage points and really marks a return to growth if you go back and look at the Q2 and Q3 the past year where we were more challenged on the top line. So it's very comforting to see kind of the acceleration continue. I also want to remind you that when you look at the quarter results for this quarter, keep in mind that Q1 last year was our strongest growth quarter with 16% growth. And therefore, it's a bit of a more tough comparable. This will change a bit going into Q2. On the adjusted EBITDA, we booked EUR 28 million for the quarter. That is granted EUR 1.9 million lower than we had in the comparable quarter last year. And I want to mention here, there's a couple of dynamics going on. Firstly, we are actually looking quite a lot around our -- on our cost structure and our efficiencies and doing different initiatives to optimize our overall efficiency. We did that already from August last year and continued into Q1. But we have also made a dedicated commitment to invest in the amount of EUR 10 million for expansion this year that covers both and by mainly sales force expansion in the U.S. but also some investments in retail media and we're committed to do that. And therefore, you will see a drag on our quarterly performance here in terms of profits and also our margin, which lands at 20.6%. And -- we should expect that we will continue to have a drag going into Q2 and then a reversal as we go into second half of the year. As I mentioned, one of the highlights of this quarter is the operating cash flow generation, which equated to EUR 45.2 million, and that compares to EUR 300,000 for the comparable quarter in 2025. And -- this was comprised of EUR 11.5 million of operating cash flow before net working capital and then a contribution from net working capital of EUR 33.7 million. We continue to invest in our product and development at the level of EUR 10.2 million, which is roughly the level that we have seen in previous quarters. Turning now to gross profit margin, which is a key KPI indicator for the business. We're very pleased to see that the structural lift we saw in gross profit margin in Q4 has carried into Q1. You will see here in the dotted box, all Q1 numbers, and we landed at 41% gross profit margin, which is 2.7 percentage points up compared to same quarter last year. We look at it and should compare it on a quarter within a quarter year-on-year as there are significant seasonal effects that can influence the different quarters. So that's why these it's important to look at and compare quarters. The contributing factors were mainly the same, as I mentioned and went through in some detail last time. So we have clearly a better structural margin optimization possibilities with the unified platform. And we are also doing a better job in optimizing our infrastructure cost and cloud hosting costs. The addition and new part is that we are actually using quite some effort to go through and look at our more low-margin inventory and ad requests and look at the long tail and are there any of the a request and the inventory that we can kind of prune out to give us overall better profitability. So we're using quite some effort to do that this quarter and also next quarter. Turning then to operating cash flow, which really was a reversal of the situation that we saw in Q4 last year. On the left-hand side, you see the development in our operating cash flow. We had, on an LTM basis for March, we had operating cash flow before net working capital of EUR 105 million and after net working capital of EUR 94 million. And this is actually good because the 2 bars are roughly equaling out, which means we are in a balanced situation. On an LTM basis, we therefore invested EUR 11 million in net working capital compared to operating cash flow before net working capital. And that's a good situation to be in. You will also see that it's in stark contrast to the balance that we saw end of 2025. And it's really a result of better utilization of our securitization, but primarily also all the money that we have built up from high season in Q4 that is coming in now in Q1. As we guided and referred to, we see the money coming in and it's a very good picture for the cash flow development. In terms of CapEx, we have repeatedly said that we are -- we need roughly between EUR 40 million to EUR 45 million. It's quite stable over the time for investment in our expansion and maintenance CapEx. We estimate that we will be using something in the same vicinity in 2026, which is the gray area here in the stack bar. And then we have acquisition CapEx totaling EUR 34 million, now this is acquisition CapEx for existing M&A, so companies we've already bought June Group Ocado, Vivento, we have EUR 34 million this year. EUR 23.8 million of those have already been paid out to in the last deferred payment for June Group. And what is remaining is deferred payments for Ocado and Vivento in October tolling EUR 9.9 million. So all in all, that will sum up to around EUR 74 million to EUR 79 million as an estimate for the year. so slightly below what we saw in 2025 and significantly basically half of what we saw in 2024. Digging a bit more into our cash position because there's a number of dynamics going on. And I thought it would be helpful for -- to show some of the key dynamics in our development in our cash position. You'll note that we have improved our cash position quite significantly between the EUR 89 million that we ended 2025, and also compared to where we ended Q1, which was EUR 147.2 million. So EUR 58.2 million increase. I think both would also expect quite an increase because we did a further tap on the bond. Nominal EUR 50 million in net proceeds. You can see here that it brought in EUR 48.2 million. Then we actually also work quite hard to increase our utilization of our securitization program, which brought in EUR 17.8 million in funding. We had interest rate -- interest payments on the bond totaling EUR 7.8 million, which is a minus and then a deferred payment to [indiscernible] Group of EUR 23.8 million for the final payment which leaves a change in operational cash position of EUR 23.8 million. So a quite nice development. And again, we saw the money that we had built out in Q4 come in, and this is very helpful for the situation. We are now in a situation where we are utilizing the [indiscernible] almost fully and by that, we are therefore also correcting for the macro utilization in Q3 and Q4 last year. I'm also happy to report that we have just received approval to add 2 operating units further to the securitization program. We will be -- it takes a bit of time to migrate because customers need to pay into new bank accounts, and you have to get customers used to that, but that will help us also going forward as we grow some of these businesses. And then ending on the last slide on the financial update, touching on balance sheet structure for the company. You can see here adjusted leverage ratio here on the left, largely unchanged. We -- from 3x to 3.1x, we had a net interest-bearing debt of EUR 448 million. It's also largely unchanged since the end of 2025. We did, as I mentioned, have slightly lower adjusted EBITDA for the quarter compared to last year. And therefore, you see a slight uptick in the net leverage ratio to 3.1x. Overall, being at the level of 3x or thereabouts, is a result of mainly acquisition-driven debt that we've taken on board to do the acquisitions through 2025 and also back to '24. It's encouraging to see that our interest coverage ratio is increasing. It's increased from 4.3x to 4.5x, and this is because we refinanced the bond overall in better terms. And that is now getting a full year effect as it rolls out -- it rolls out, we did the bond in Q1 last year, and therefore, we're now getting the full effect of the better terms into our interest rate costs. For those that are interested in interest rate exposure, I can say that we do and might be thinking about if interest rates would increase. We actually have a hedge on EUR 300 million out of the EUR 550 million nominal value of the bond. So EUR 300 million is fixed with -- through an interest rate swap. And thereby, we think we have a balanced hedge versus any spikes in interest rate coverage. So with the financial performance that we see good uptick in growth -- on organic growth, but also a very encouraging level of gross profit margins and with cash to fund our investments for the year. We are comfortably affirming our outlook for 2026 and so that means revenues in the range of EUR 680 million to EUR 730 million and adjusted EBITDA from EUR 145 million to EUR 175 million. I should perhaps mentioned that we recently -- very recently announced the expansion of our Retail Media business and that expansion is, so to say, not included in this guidance. We have not updated the guidance for any significant expansion initiative in that sort also because it's too early to include it in the form of guidance, but I just wanted to make that clear. And with that, I hand over to Remco for the closing remarks.

Thank you, Christian. That brings me indeed to the last page of the presentation. Yes, Feras shown strong growth in the past years with revenue and EBITDA CAGRs cost consistently over 30%, and we are now building the next phase of our scalable growth. And Q1 confirms our strong platform foundation, target investment priorities and disciplined execution. That brings me to the 3 pillars that we've shown here, first of all, to start with our skilled platform economics. Our unified platform keeps performing flawlessly, supporting scalable growth better than ever. We have managed to get a sustainable structural gross margin uplift, which confirms our improved operating leverage. And we are using the potential of AI to enhance our bidding and bring targeting and efficiency with data signal debt on an hold new level. We also continue to expand our commercial positions, expanding our sales team is well on its way and proceeding as planned. While ramping up takes time and requires a pre-invest, the expansion target of future revenue conversion. Our sector focus on Retail Media adds a strong targeting and metering mode. The substantial CPG and retail advertising market, we achieved our growth -- we achieved our proven concept and are now ready for further growing our position. And furthermore, our focus on idealist targeting gives us a strong moat as well as our integrated tech stack with data and AI at scale. And last but not least, a strong focus on cash generation, we continue our organic growth path with improved margins. This delivers a strong basis despite FX headwinds, and we are significantly improving our cash flow with liquidity providing flexibility for future growth. Our H1 sales force and retail media investment phase will translate into increased revenues in the coming quarters. Further positive effects will come from organizational focus and AI-based infrastructure and team cost savings. So that brings me to the final sentence of the presentation, with our performance unified scalable platform, we are now opening the next growth chapter of work, further focusing on building and extending our USPs such as Adelis and LLM based targeting. Our sector-focused offerings such as Retail Media and CPGs and not to forget our strong position as one of the leading mobile in-app exchanges with proprietary data assets and an extensive network of demand and supply partners. I would hand back to Ingo for the questions.

Great. Thank you, Remco. And thanks to the both of you for your presentations. So we will now move into the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] The first question now comes from Mat weber, our analyst from Canaccord Genuity. Matt, please go ahead.

1 Great. Can you hear me?

Yes. Loud and clear.

Awesome. Appreciate all the color this morning. I just wanted to ask about the new retail media offering. How should we think about the timing of bringing that to new markets. And then more specifically sort of on the building blocks of bringing that to new markets. Do they change materially based on sort of the composition of and retailers, just thinking about, say, in the U.S. where you have several large kind of dominating big box retailers. So just any additional color you could provide there? And then I have a follow-up. .

Yes, we can take that question. Thank you, Matt, for your question. Good question. We built a position in Germany in 10 months' time, which was, let's say, faster than I ever expected. We hired a great manager for that coming from one of the larger discount retailers actually in Germany and started really building the network. We had several challenges because we didn't want to make it asset heavy because that's not our business. It's for us, it's about data, it's we're targeting and it's, of course, we're showing the ads, which we were able to do and build different building blocks. Let's say, the 2 acquisitions were part -- or there were 2 part acquisitions part of that, 1 more with, let's say, in screen in retail and the other one with couponing and the rest was built via partnerships organically, et cetera. With that, we have really been showing good results for retailers, increasing their revenues as well as for CPGs, where we really are able to lift market shares, which is super important. And we've been able to -- and that was also in the press release to build a quite extensive network of retailers in Germany with Erica raw, which are the 2 large quality retailers but also Mulatogary, which is in [indiscernible], for example, and Confland. So really built a nice network and are seeing extremely good results. And it's very nice to see that we couple our mobile capabilities and we are able with the mobile to drive people to store and have already a lot of data and then in-store are able to influence purchasing behaviors and then are able to prove that it works on the point-of-sale level. So that's on the German market. So that's what we're now starting to scale. And we are, let's say, looking at the U.S. market, of course, where we have a strong position on mobile and which would be the obvious next market to go into. We are running tests there already, but it's too early to, let's say, to get results or even to include it now in our numbers forecast. But U.S. is certainly one of the markets, also some European markets we're looking into. But we still have enough to do us in Germany to really scale there. So I hope that answers your question.

Got it. Yes, that's very helpful. And then just on the guidance reiteration, just given some of the comments you provided around shorter agency booking cycles. Are the underlying components of your guidance still or assumptions, I should say, still the same as last quarter in terms of high single-digit market growth. And then at least 5 percentage points of share gains? Or are you -- have you -- have those assumptions been updated at all?

Yes, good question. We are still standing, as mentioned, with our guidance, so we don't see any reason to change things. I mean things have maybe changed in details, but not substantially. So we are further taking...

Great. Thanks for your question, Matt. Are there any further questions? [Operator Instructions] There is a question coming in from the chat now. Please, can you confirm the amount drawn on your receivable securitization facility at the end of 2025 and the end of Q1 2026. Thank you. For questions. Christian, you need to unmute yourself?

Yes, I was on mute. Yes. So we have now drawn the securitization facility almost to the max. So a couple of million from the EUR 100 million that is our total frame is what we have drawn by end of Q1. And I believe the draw was in the where it's roughly -- if you look at the bridge that I sent to you, we've drawn roughly EUR 17.8 million more than we had drawn at the point in time end of Q4.

Thank you, Christian. So I think that answers the question. And the next question is a live question coming from Olof from Oksut Olof, please go ahead.

Can you hear me?

Yes. Yes, we can.

Just one very simple question. I'm glad about the free cash flow. -- that after the suboptimal usage of the securitization, basically, customers paid in the money there. The question in hand for me following that is I understand the leverage ratio prohibits you from buying back shares, but the bond, which you increased by EUR 50 million, is at about 92%, 93% as -- so are you going to use that cash that now has been on hand by customers just paying instead of securitization to buy back that EUR 50 million at a discount, which you increased before. I mean I understood it's about 3.5% in costs by the issuance, but at the levels right now that would at least be offset to basically bring down the leverage ratio.

Yes, do you want -- should I take that? So we don't have any imminent plans of buyback of the bonds, it is a possibility and we don't want to rule it out. But on the her hand, we also -- we took on board the extra bond funding to have the financial means to really invest and also withstand should there be any troubles in the market. And that's really what the money is planned for. So no immediate plans in that direction, although I would not rule it out.

Thanks, Olaf. And there is another question coming in from the chat from Bharat from Canteras general. What's the structural EBITDA margin for the DSP segment once Captify/Acado are fully integrated and the sales force investment annualizes. Is the 20% to 30% the right range for the full year 2027 and afterwards or does the mix shift to lower-margin data/retail media assets, permanently reset DSP margins lower.

Can you hear me?

Yes. Yes, we can. .

Happy to take that. As we are working -- thanks for the question, and it's a good question, but a little bit more difficult to answer. -- as we are, let's say, running as much DSP activities or as much demand activities, let me say it in that way. On our supply, we cannot talk about a separate, let's say, demand EBITDA and a separate supply EBITDA. But if I look at overall EBITDA or on margin, there are a few things that play a role there. First of all, of course, our investments. If we are investing in more salespeople, that are not immediately, let's say, generating revenues or let alone margin. That is, of course, let's say, gains going against our EBITDA percentage, everything basically that we ramp up that accounts for. On the other hand, we have, let's say, possibilities to further -- apart from the investments coming with -- I'm sorry, revenues coming with the investments, we have, of course, the possibility to further optimize costs, and we have some really good examples of that already. With AI, you can automate processes a lot better. As an example, media plans that are made on the demand side, they took 1.5, 2 days for a single person to do that. Now with well trade AI, it on purpose. You can do that with some, I would say, feedback and optimization looks, you can do that in a few hours, so less than 2 offers actually. So we see efficiencies that, first of all, enables us to grow without adding extra people for that. But on the other hand, also allows us, of course, to do gain efficiencies with that. Same is, let's say, now with the unified platform with improving our AI, we can save on infrastructure cost. So there's a lot of things where we still have potential to decrease our cost and on the other hand, of course, by scaling itself, we also get better because the gross margin, as you have seen, is up, and we actually think that we have further room there. That means that, let's say, overall, we will get more -- yes, more profitable and that our EBITDA margin will go up. With -- if you look historically because we had to change our I'd say, revenue recognition because of the migration, it looks lower now the EBITDA margin than it was before and of course, a lower revenue base. But overall, we are confident that we will further be able to increase our EBITDA percentage. So sorry, no answer, but I hope it answers your question.

Thanks for Ramco. So I think we've got to come back to receivables questions. So there was the -- no, I think we answered that. That's fine. The next question comes from Vincent Atom from Part securities via the chat. Reasonable to assume growth and gross margin gains in Q2 will be offset by OpEx investments leaving EBITDA at similar levels as Q2 last year?

Yes, I can answer that one. We're not giving individual guidance on quarters to just say that. But what we expect, yes, we will further, how to say, invest in the salespeople, et cetera. But of course, if you look at a normal development, the ones that we have hired in Q1 are already last year, of course, start to generate more and more money because maybe to show the cycle, if you get a new seller, we hire experienced sellers who have done sales before. They are not always take old customers, of course, but they can, let's say, bring new customers in and it takes time with a new customer to scale the customer. So in that sense, we expect Q2 to how to say it, already to start showing a bit of that, but the main effect of it will be in the second half year. Q2 so far also has not a strong dollar to euro negative effect for us. So that also should help -- so yes, we are looking forward to, let's say, staying within our guidance for this year. I think that's the best I can say overall, but there is a positive trend in the whole business.

Also just add to that question. I think it's better to think about Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4 in the light of the guidance we have given. -- given that when you look compare back in time to Q2 and Q3 last year, the business was impacted by the platform unification. So I would recommend to more look around the our guidance and how that would lease out through the quarters.

Thanks, Christian. So the next question also comes via the chat from Axel Johan and also from Pareto Securities and probably goes back to Remco on the market. Ad volumes grew a lot in Q1, but revenue growth lagged somewhat behind, how do you currently view pricing CPM dynamics? And are you seeing any pricing pressure?

Thank you for the question. Yes, as in the presentation, we see that CPMs in certain parts of the market, especially connected TV, but also in web under pressure. We don't see that effect on the, let's say, in-app side, but I have to mention 1 important point that is seasonality. So CPMs are always lower in Q1 than in Q2 than in Q3 and Q4 as the highest that has to do with the demand. There is more demand in Q4 than there is in the earlier quarters. And so as a result of that, it's a simple supply-demand mix thing. So if there's less demand and supply is similar, then of course, you get lower CPMs. So that explains maybe a bit of that effect. We're also working on some optimizations in it. On top of it, there is, as you saw, our Asia part has increased also as a percentage of our total revenues. Asia in general also works with a bit lower than the U.S. does. So that is -- in the end, it's a mixed combination. I would say that but observation is correct. Our delivery increased faster than our revenue.

Thank you, Remco. So again, are there any further questions for the moment. [Operator Instructions] So it seems there are no further questions at this time. Thank you very much again for participating in this Q&A session. Should any additional questions come to your mind later, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Investor Relations team. With this, we have reached the end of today's call. Thank you for joining us and have a productive rest of the week, and we look forward to staying in touch with you soon. Bye-bye.