Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to today's conference call following the publication of GFT's financial results for the first quarter of 2026. My name is Andreas Herzog and I'm the head of Investor Relations and CSR Compliance at GFT. Joining me on the call today are Global CEO Marco Santos and our CFO and Deputy CEO Dr. Jürgen Kitz. Marco will start with an overview of the key developments highlights of the first three months, followed by Jochen, who will walk you through the financials in more detail. Marco then will conclude the presentation with some key strategic takeaways. Afterwards, we will be happy to answer your questions. Already a spoiler. To do so, you simply need to raise your virtual hand that you should find at the bottom of your screen. But I will come back to that later. As always, the full presentation materials are available for download on our website. And last housekeeping remark, please be reminded that this conference is being recorded. After that, I would like to hand over to you, Mark.
Thank you, Andreas. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us today. Let me start with our highlights for the first quarter and our full year guidance. We delivered a solid start of the year with profitable growth and improved margins, in line with our full-year guidance. Our focus remains clear, driving profitable growth by scaling our AI-centric five-year strategy and transforming GFT operational model into a global AI-mating powerhouse. In the first quarter, we achieved 230 million euros in revenue, representing 5% of growth in constant currencies. At the same time, we improved profitability with adjusted EBT margin increasing from 6.8% to 7%, and a strong increase of EBT margin from 4.5% to 5.2%. Those results demonstrate that our AI-centric strategy is contributing into measurable financial results with improving earnings quality driven by disciplined execution of our strategic initiatives and a shift towards high-value-added services and offerings. Our main growth market shows strong momentum, Brazil with 33%, Colombia with 20%, and Spain with 9% revenue expansion. We recorded growth across all sectors, with industry leading with a strong 15% of expansion. Overall, this first quarter shows that we have been successfully executing our AI-centric five-year strategy with discipline. The first three months confirmed improving margins, stable growth, and operational control. We therefore confirm our full-year guidance of €930 million in revenue, 7.6% EBT adjusted and 6% EBT margin. We continue to make tangible progress on our AI-centric five-year strategy, driving measurable impact across our key clients, our next-generation technology brands and positioning, our high-value-added offering portfolio, and artificial intelligence across the board. First, I would like to highlight that GFT UK increased its EBT margin significantly in the first quarter compared to the previous year. This is a direct proof that the measures we have implemented are taking effect, including new leadership governance model and closer integration with GFT's global and regional operations. Second, we continue to win and expand strategic client engagements. Through our recent company acquisition mega work, we secured a new major SAP implementation contract with a tier one banking group in Brazil with contract value of approximately 18 million euros, further strengthening our position in high value-added and SAP transformation programs. This engagement highlights the synergies created through the mega-work acquisition, combining deep SAP expertise with GFT's proven track record in delivering large-scale transformation programs to highly regulated sectors. Third, we continue to scale up Winx, our AgenteKAI orchestration platform, which is now active in 11 countries and serves 105 clients. The total influencer contract value exceeded €104 million, representing 48% growth compared to Q4. Compare, powered, and leveraged mainly by Entropy, Claudette, Gemini, and OpenAI large-nobed models. This demonstrates that our AI-centric strategy is delivering financial results with sustained growth and increasing commercial traction driven by AI in large-scale enterprise software development and legacy modernization programs. At the same time, we are expanding a strategic AgenteKI platform for credit risk operations for a Tier 1 bank in Europe. This contract extension reflects client trust and GFT differentiation in AgenteKI business offerings. We are also committed to significantly scaling our AI capabilities with an accelerated and strong training program across GFT. In conjunction with the expansion of our AI native software development center of excellence, especially around Anthropical Decodes and GitHub co-pilots. This strengthens the foundation of our AI native operating model and enables us to industrialize AI native enterprise software engineering across clients and markets. And finally, our next-generation technology brand and positioning and strategic initiative continues to produce global recognition in the markets. We are proud to have been awarded the 2026 Google Cloud Partner and of the year in cloud modernization. This is an important recognition from one of the world's leading hyperscalers and confirms the strength of our cloud and AI modernization capabilities, offering differentiation leveraged by our Winx legacy transformer intellectual property. Moreover, we are not limited to one single cloud platform. GFT is a multi-cloud and cloud-agnostic partner with the mission to help our clients select, design, implement the best cloud architecture for their needs, including sovereign clouds and data requirements in Germany and whole Europe. As the sovereignty topic is becoming a strategic priority across the board, and especially in highly regulated industries, GFT is well-positioned to help clients modernize mission-critical environments with leading cloud technologies, while guaranteeing security, privacy, and control over data modules and regulatory obligations. Taken together, these highlights show that our strategic initiatives are delivering, and we are transforming GFT into an AI-centric digital transformation company, reinforcing our next-generation technology brand, expanding through targeted M&A in high-value-added services and ISVs, and improving our high-value-added services offerings and differentiation. With that, I will now hand over to Johan for a detailed review of the financials.
Thanks, Marco. And let's directly move forward all the way to slide number seven. Before we dig into the details, let me talk about our revised segment reporting. In our internal management, we have moved the responsibility for the GFT UK under our group executive board member, Manuel Lavin. Manuel now oversees all European entities of GFT. Before moving the UK, he was focused on continental Europe. Now he focuses on all of Europe. This leads to a reclassification of our business segments. We're moving the UK out of the former Americas, UK, and APAC segment and into the former continental Europe segment so that the new business segments are called Americas and APAC and the second is called Europe. makes life a bit more easy. All prior year data has been restated. So whenever you see data for Q125, we're showing UK and the Europe now. Detailed disclosures are in the backup material. And that said, let's go to slide number eight and look at the growth rates and the profitability margins in detail. Marco already mentioned solid revenue growth of 3% in euros and 5% in constant currencies to 229.5 million euros. The order book has benefited from the SAP deal that Marco just mentioned, but overall order book was good at the end of Q126. It's up 11% versus a year ago. EBIT adjusted is up 7%, reflecting improved personnel efficiencies, but at the same time ongoing strong AI and sales investments. We saw lower office lease expenses, something we focus on in our profitability engineering. We saw reduced FX losses, and this overall led to an EBIT-adjusted margin of 7.0%. The EBT, the earnings before tax, grew by 20% versus Q1 of last year. Main drivers on top of the EBIT adjusted reasoning is lower capacity adjustments, only $2.5 million, and positive virtual share price effects. The EBIT margin increased to 5.2%. Tax rate, let's mention it here, stood at 29%, pretty much the same as last year. And this is the tax rate we are expecting for all of 2026. Let's move to slide number nine. driving scale growth across all sectors. On the left side, let's look at the sectors first. Marco mentioned already the 15% growth in our sector industry and others. We saw 6% growth in our insurance business, and we saw 1% growth in our banking business. The banking business is impacted by the UK reduction. I will come to that in a second again. If the UK would be eliminated, we would be growing banking by 4%. On the right side, we see our client portfolio in our tier ones and the clients above 25 million euros. We do see a reduction to 26%. We had two of our biggest clients have global CIO changes. And this usually leads to some cost containment mode for at least two quarters. So probably lasting until the end of Q2. And we saw that in our revenue numbers of Q1. And it is especially on the back of our tier one clients. All other client groups increased by one percentage point. This brings us to slide number 10, comparing over the quarters. And let's start on the left side with the revenue changes. Revenue growth already mentioned, 3% in euros, 5% in constant currencies, mainly driven by Brazil, Spain, and Colombia. When we compare quarter over quarter with Q4 of last year, we do see a small reduction, mainly due to seasonality effects. Let me explain the seasonality effects briefly. Two reasons. First, our clients usually have 12 months budgets following calendar years, and often Q1 is the budget that is not used by one-fourth of the year, especially if there is some macro challenges like the Iran war at the moment. So that is seasonality number one. And number two, we do one third of our total revenues in South America. January, February are the summer holiday months in South America. Us Europeans tend to forget. So our July, August in South America is January, February. Therefore, revenues and billable days in Brazil, Colombia, are the lowest of the year in the first quarter. And that is the second seasonality effect I want to mention. On the right side, even adjusted, comparing to last year, we're up 7%, mainly driven by personnel efficiencies and some cost management items. Margin increased to 7%. When we compare to Q4, well, that's kind of an unfair comparison. Q4 is always the best quarter of the GFT year with all fixed prices coming to an end. Q1 has the seasonality effects, therefore hard to compare Q1 to Q4. Let's move to slide number 11 and look at the segment analysis for revenue first. Let's start at the top. Europe shows a reduction of 4% when it comes to revenue to 112 million euros. Particularly noticeable in Germany, where we're down 10% versus last year. One of those CIO changes I refer to happened with a big German client. But at the same time, Spain is up 9%. UK still in decline. And we talked about this since nine months, that the UK business will go through the lowest revenues of its transition in Q1 and Q2, 2026. So this is what's currently happening. The UK is 5 million behind previous year's numbers. If we would exclude the UK from Europe, the rest of Europe is plus minus zero. Now let's look at Americas and APAC. Here we saw a strong development on the revenue side, 12% growth, 15% in constant currencies, mainly driven by our organizations in Brazil and Colombia. Yeah, again, for sure, seasonal effects, but they are the same seasonal effects in Q1 this year and last year. So the growth is absolutely valid. Let's move forward to slide number 12. This time we are looking at the profitability, EBIT adjusted on the left, EBT on the right. Let's focus on Europe first. So the main improvements for Europe are in the UK and in software solutions. The two pain points we reported about last year, the UK is back to a mid-single-digit EBT, EBIT-adjusted margin, so the comeback as we had anticipated. Revenue will follow. Probably growth is coming in the second half versus the previous year. On the profitability side, we are already ahead of 2025. So the improvement in Europe is mostly €3 million allocated to UK and software solutions. But we also saw better profits in Germany, Italy, and Spain. When looking at America's lower profitability in Q1 is burdened by the already mentioned seasonal effect of summer holidays, which is the same in every Q1, 25 or 26, but it leads to the lowest EBIT adjusted contribution of the year from that region every year. Now, when comparing these two years explicitly, we see that the reduction in the segment relates to our Mexican organization, where one of those clients reduced due to a CIO change on a global level. And in Mexico, it hit us harder. Therefore, the reduction in Latin America or in the Americas APAC region is mostly related to our Mexican organization. This is true for EBIT adjusted and EBT. We believe Mexico will normalize in the second half of 2026. Now, going forward, slide number 13, breakdown of growth by regions. And now we're still showing UK separately just to give you a bit more flavor of where the revenue growth is coming from. So we keep continental Europe, which is the biggest region we're showing on this slide, down 1%, mainly due to Germany, down 10%, Spain growing by 9%. It's kind of offsetting to only minus 1%. Latin America is up 25%, with strong growth in Brazil, 33%, and Colombia with a 20% growth. North America, down 8%, and most burdened by FX in this quarter. The Canadian business is down 12% on the euro basis or 5% in local currency. At the same time, the U.S. is down 1% on euro basis, which is an 8% growth in U.S. dollars. Total of the combined is a minus 8% on euro basis. UK down 17%. I already mentioned roughly 5 million. The trough is in Q1 and Q2. And then we see growth again. But the pipeline is heavily changing from a more onshore business in 2025 into the already often mentioned more smartshore-oriented business in 2026. And last but not least, APEC and others growing by four percent, mainly in the Emirates and Thailand. Yes, we do have a client in the Emirates in Dubai who has been working continuously throughout the whole war. There was never a stop with that project. This leads to slide number 14, income statement. Let me do this quite briefly. Mention cost of purchase services up 6%. Main reason here is that our newly acquired Megawork organization with GFTs in September is mostly working with freelancers, and therefore the cost of purchase services have grown stronger than the overall revenue, fully linked to Megawork. And at the same time, our personnel expenses are only growing by 2%. And now let me be a bit precise, because we're using rounded numbers here. Revenue growth is not 3.0, it's 3.4%, and personnel expense growth is 1.7. So, revenue grew double the speed of our personnel cost expenses. And all this leads to, and we always commented on the right side, it's in the fourth bullet point, and improved personnel and purchase services cost ratio, which now improved to 84.6%. That said, I think the other parts of the slide is already mentioned. Let me move to slide number 15, cash flow statement. We started the year at $55.2 million in net debt. In the first quarter, we have added operating cash flow of plus 4.4 million euros, comparing to minus 4.3 million euros in Q1 last year. So a far better working capital position than 12 months ago, as already expected. We have small cash outflow for investing activities. Then we have paid back debt in our cash flow from financing activities, leading to an overall net cash of 53.7 million negative. The free cash flow adjusted stood at roughly 1 million euros, which is again roughly 9 million improved versus last year. Slide number 16, very shortly, the balance sheet, no major effects. We reduced the balance sheet total because we paid back some of our loans, which then led to an equity ratio increase by 5%, mostly because of the balance sheet reduction. But on top, currency helped us here as well. Translation effects improve the equity by 2 percentage points. Let's move to slide number 17, the people slide on the left, beginning with employees. We've reduced by roughly 130 FTEs in the first quarter versus the end of 2025. This reduction took place mostly in Mexico, where we indeed adjusted the team size. I already mentioned that was the most challenging market in the first quarter. Besides that, we had small reductions in Canada and Brazil, while at the same time growing in Spain, Poland and the U.S. The external contractor number went down a bit to 1,400. Overall, this number is up versus previous year, 12 months ago, because Megawork, as I stated, mostly uses freelancers for their SAP implementation business in Brazil. Utilization, the middle block of the slide, at a quite high rate, 92.2% versus 91.6% a year ago. We're fine with this number, and we believe it will stay above the 92 for the rest of the year. On the right side, the attrition reduced by one point, which is quite a lot. We saw a major reduction in our European markets, Germany, Poland, and Italy. And on top, we saw a reduction in Colombia, leading to this reduced attrition. This brings me to my last slide, slide 18, the additional performance indicators. We're expecting a free cash flow adjusted. We only adjust for M&A effects of 40 million euros, higher than last year, and a debt of 0.2 times EBDA and utilization of 92%. and all three KPIs unchanged to our guidance from March of this year. With that, back to you, Mark.
Thank you, Johan. Let me conclude with a few key messages. First, we delivered a solid start to 2026 with profitable growth, improved margins, and increased EBT, confirming our full-year guidance. Second, we are seeing growth across all sectors and strong momentum in key markets, particularly in Brazil, Colombia, and Spain. The major SAP implementation contract secured through the mega-work acquisition is a clear proof point of our M&A integration capabilities and our ability to scale high-value-added transformation programs. Third, our AI-centric strategy is translating into tangible commercial traction. Winx continues to scale as a core enabler of large-scale software development and complex legacy modernization. AI modernization is gaining strategic relevance, and our AI-native software engineering services are becoming increasingly important for client transformation programs. Importantly, our disciplined execution is improving the quality of our revenue and profitability with strong EBT margin improvement in the UK and a continued focus on efficiency and delivery goals. In short, we are delivering on our strategy and building momentum. The IT market is shifting quickly. Companies are moving beyond AI experimentation and are integrating AI systemically into large-scale modernization programs. This is exactly where GFT is positioned. at the intersection of AI, modernization and highly regulated industries, combining technological excellence, deep industry expertise and AI-native delivery capabilities. Thank you very much. Now, Johan and I will be happy to answer your questions.
Thank you very much, Marco and Johan, for sharing the details of the first quarter and the further view into 2026. Ladies and gentlemen, Marco has already invited you to ask your questions. To do so, please raise your virtual hands that you will find at the bottom of the screen to ask your questions. I see we have already some in the queue. The first questions we will get from Simon Keller. Please ask your question.
Hi, Marco. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a couple, starting with the CIO changes that you mentioned at Tier 1 clients. Do you think they could risk or these could risk that they move more into in-house delivery? Secondly, on Wings, you have mentioned that there is 104 million in contract value that was influenced. How can we understand this number? Does it mean that 104 million of revenues in Q1 were influenced by Wings? or does it relate to order backlog can you elaborate a bit more please and then on order backlog it developed really strongly also when excluding the sap contract what's your implement your view on this is it for example driven by the improving market or is it based because of longer dated contracts that have you have signed and my last question is on nutrition which we saw is declining marginally, what's your read on this? Because to my understanding, historically declining attrition was rather accompanied by a declining market sentiment, wasn't it? Yeah, a couple of questions, but I'm happy to follow up if there's anything that I need to repeat.
Thank you very much for the question. So for the first question, if the CIOs on those global organizations change is going to accelerate in-house, right, internalization. We don't see that acceleration of internalization. I think internalization of resources are there in the industry, so it's been there for years, and we have been managing that process. We managed that last year and previous years. And I think that, I believe that now that a combination of AI, agentic transformation and internalization and also really capability to deliver enterprise software with AI for highly regulated companies. I think that combination, that intersection, I think that companies are exploring and designing their way to go, I mean, banks and financial services organizations. And again, as I concluded, I think that we are in the intersection of that and we can produce value. We can do things that our clients cannot do. And that's the differentiation. That's the differentiation I want to go forward. and that is going to, I say, differentiate ourselves into the agentic transformation and also internalization. That I believe that you always have internalization. So, okay, in a nutshell, answer your question. No, I do not see an acceleration internalization of those chains. Sorry to be too much longer on the answer, but it's a topic that we are on top. The second question is the 100 million euros of influencer contract revenue. So that's the contract, the total contract revenue that we sold with projects and services that we utilize Winx to the max, that we utilize Winx as an AI, authentic AI platform, and we brought competitive advantage. We won those deals because the competitive advantage of Winx, otherwise we would have lost it. So that's the whole revenue that we closed with projects and services with Winx. And then specifically on the Q1, on the Q1 number, we grew in terms of contracts sold with Winx in Q1 as the number that I mentioned to you. it is there and just to be precise yeah what is it uh which is um i'm gonna i'm sorry please i found it sorry 48 percent in q1 i just wanted to be precise on the number so that was exactly the growth q1 this quarter uh of 2000 the first quarter of compared to the first quarter of 2025.
Picking up the other two questions, order backlog. Yes, indeed, 11% is good. Even taking out the SAP deal, we are learning that the SAP projects we are gaining in Brazil are more, longer term, but the volume is not driving the overall order book number of GFT, so most of the improvement is simply a good order book for 2026, full stop. Nothing more than that. The one that is standing out is the tier one SAP implementation at the Brazilian Bank. Marco mentioned the rest is mostly 2026 is well balanced on the order book. Attrition. Yes, you're right. It's always a laughing and a crying eye when attrition is moving down. Well, first of all, I need to hire less people, replace less people by hiring somebody new if attrition reduces. But at the same time, if people stop moving, move less between companies, it's mostly an indicator that the market is not moving very fast. In other words, probably not growing very fast at that moment in time. And that is especially true for the European nutrition reduction. I believe in Colombia, it's more a normalization. We are now two years into our Colombian entity. We now have the team, the skills, the levels that we want. and that is why it has stabilized somewhat. So there's a mix of these two elements for the nutrition program.
I hope we answered all four questions. Yes, thank you very much and well done and best of luck for the remainder of the year. To all of us, yes.
So thank you very much. The next question we will have from Wolfgang Specht-Berenberg. Just a second. Now you're in.
Yes, hello. So good afternoon and congrats from my end as well. I have a follow-up on the order book. Is there for sure an effect from Megawork included? So like for likes, the Q1 last year did not have any, let's say Megawork was not consolidated yet. So we have a move from Megawork. Is that right? Exactly right.
And then the duration of the order book, is this usually, let's say, six to nine months? Or are there also parts moving definitely into 2027? That would be interesting. So the duration is somewhat longer than it used to be.
Let me take the answer directly. Yes, the duration is a bit longer because of the SAP deals. So the whole Megawork business is a bit longer order book than classic GFT. But let's not get too heated about it because it is anyway a small entity. So basically the good order book indicates we have a good pipeline and safe business for the year 2026.
Okay. And so let's say the AI angle of the order book has improved. We can calculate that, let's say, the 104 means that 45% of your current business has at least some parts of AI with the inclusion of Wings.
Right. And the other book that is Wings-related follows the same logic as GFT. It's mostly six to nine months that we can look forward for.
Okay, thanks a lot. And then to other markets, UK and Canada. So UK, you're more or less guiding us with some caution to Q2, but saying that the turnaround will be visible in half year two. So that means Q3 could still be, let's say, a rather weak development in the UK.
Exactly. As I said, you're right. I think we've been saying this indeed all of last year, right? That we have to turn the pipeline from a very onshore to a smart shore pipeline. This is a change. And in this time period, we will see the trowel of the revenue. And this will happen in Q1 and Q2. In Q3, we already see higher revenues in 26 than we were able to show in 25. So the change pipeline will already improve revenues in the second half.
Okay, yeah. And then on Canada, minus 12 looks somewhat harsh. I remember some important insurance businesses. Is it the fact that some of the important deals run out? Or why is the downturn in Canada so visible now?
No, actually, thanks for the question. So, actually, we have one big client in Canada that we have. That's, I would say, an old client. And it's a government client. It's an insurance, okay, related to insurance. And we have a contract there. That is a contract that is quite related to resource allocation agency. okay so in terms of profitability very low very low and volume very high and this contract has been reducing and we were able by the way last week we had a quite successful win within that client on a different contract smaller in terms of volume but in terms of margin much better because that is related to guide wire okay so in terms of margin much much better but but but in terms of revenue lower so i feel that and we were planning that so it's part of our budget and planning for 2026 so that that was not something that caught us out of the planning and now we are in a journey to let's say to to transform a very low-margin agency staff or business into a more high-value-added services that we expect to be much more profitable.
I remember there were some initiatives to also bring banking solutions to Canada. Have you made progress into this direction?
Yes. we have also quite strategic information we want small services in implementation of a next generation core bank into one of the digital banks of one of the largest banks, I cannot name it right I do not have the approval to name it, one of the large banks in Canada they have a digital bank unit and we were able to start it's a small step implementation of this next generation core banking there and we are now under discussions in order to extend it and then create MSA with this large bank in Canada if you really make this one that can really drive a major growth for us on meet that.
Okay, very helpful. Thanks a lot. I'll go back into the line.
Well, thank you very much for your question, Wolfgang. The next question we will have from Sven Sauer Kepler-Schiffering.
Hello, thank you for taking my questions. Also, I have two. The first one would be on Germany. i was wondering why revenues were down but profits went up what is the reason for this this mix and the second question would be i was looking at an old presentation from a few years ago and i remember that gft used to provide a revenue split by the type of products like smart technologies digital transformation and platform services and i understand that you don't do that anymore today but if we would extrapolate you know this mix to what the business looks like today we we know that smart technologies with the ai is growing a lot um and uh i i i would appreciate it if we could get some color on what the other you know how the growth is in the other businesses like cloud and guidewire and platform services i assume sap is also growing right now um yeah would be would be great if we could get some some color on that let me start with germany um so yes the revenue down as i said it's one of those two cio changes impacting it germany was not suffering so much on the profitability side
from that revenue because it was heavily delivered to SmartShore. And then the impact is shared between the SmartShore country, in this case it was Spain, and Germany. And at the same time, we've done a lot of homework on the efficiency and profitability side in 2025, also in Germany. Manuel Lavin is in charge of Germany since last year, the gentleman who's now also taken over UK. And in Germany, we saw the positive impacts on the cost base already in Q1 this year, weaker revenue, but somewhat better profits. Therefore, a good evolution. Now we want to have both revenue growth and earnings growth. And now over to Marco with your history question from all GFT presentations.
Thank you for that one. So first, why we are not bringing those because information technology has been changing and has been moving very fast and things are moving fast and in the past we had those lines of items that were related to offerings which were very relevant and strategic for us at that time and offerings are something that again that is quite agile right now in terms of with all the transformation that we see. And then what we decided to re-architect re-architect our services and our offerings with the key ones that we project over the next years. And that's why as we are re-engineering we are architecturing these lines of offerings and business and then we decided obviously not to bring that okay but i can give you some numbers okay so we are and also give us some elements that are that are for sure are going to be are going to prevail we're going to be part of our future report which is naturally cloud so that's cloud is a major a major element for us still and and that's combined with clouds with modernization, with all the new offerings that we're bringing. And we have it break down by even the hyperscalers, AWS, Google, and Azure. We also have a line item, which is the Winx line item, specifically the influence of Winx AI. We also have the AI data. and we are going to bring some ISVs. We're going to bring in future Guidewire and SAP Naturally because of the acquisition of Megawork and most probably Salesforce that we're going to highlight. So we are architecting that information and then we are going to communicate that accordingly on the right time when you have that definition.
Great, thanks very clear, thank you So it seems that there are no more questions left at the moment in case of further questions following that call, please don't hesitate to contact the IR team we remain at your disposal of course with that I would like to conclude today's conference call, have a good day goodbye
