Operator
Good morning, and welcome to Link Mobility's second quarter 2026 presentation. Joining me today are CEO Thomas Berge and CFO Morten Advalsen. Following the presentation, we will open the floor for questions, which can be submitted through the audio cast at any time during the presentation. With that, Thomas, over to you.
Thank you, Kristian, for the introduction, and good morning to everybody listening in. before going into the quarterly results i would like to outline how link is positioned to capture both today's messaging demand and next generation of customer engagement we're still in the early stages of a broader shift over mobile first customer engagement as consumers increasingly live their digital lives through their mobile devices businesses are recognizing that the most effective way to engage customers is through the mobile phone. At the same time, richer channels, improved technology, and AI-enabled capabilities are significantly expanding what can be delivered through these interactions. As a result, the market for mobile engagement will become substantially larger and more valuable over time. With strong operator relationships, extensive channel connectivity, a solid customer base, and a broad customer engagement platform already in place, Lync is uniquely positioned to benefit from this evolution. AI is enabling more and new customer engagement solutions by automating conversations, personalized campaigns, and content creation, increasing the value of trusted communication infrastructure, channel connectivity, and orchestration capabilities. As businesses increasingly deploy AI-driven customer engagement solutions, we see a driver for higher volume of customer interactions and messaging traffic, creating additional growth for the industry. We continue to see strong demand for proven messaging channels today. SMS remains essential for critical communication, authentication, and notifications, and continues to be a highly relevant channel for enterprises across markets. At the same time, richer channels, such as WhatsApp and RCS, are becoming increasingly important for conversational customer engagement. Customers will not only want to send messages, but to create richer interactions with their end users, combining the right channel, the right content, and the right timing. This is where we see demand moving towards richer conversations, context-aware engagement, orchestrated journeys, AI-enabled interactions, and seamless human handover when needed. Link is already well positioned to support this evolution through a broad product portfolio of an AI-enabled technology platform. We provide customers with access to core messaging channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, Viber, and RCS, supported by broader customer engagement solutions, including MyLink Engage, MyLink Marketing Platform, MyLink Studio, and MyLink Connect. These products address several of the key trends we see in the market, including context-aware engagement, channel orchestration, AI-enabled interactions, trust and compliance, all supported by Lynx's underlying platform and connectivity capabilities. These products are used by customers today. Later on in the presentation, we're going to go through a recently won contract with one of the world's largest fashion retailers, using Lynx products to create an advanced customer engagement experience, validating Lynx's ability to meet the needs of some of the most advanced enterprises in the market today. We see multiple long-term tailwinds supporting the continued evolution of mobile customer engagement, and I believe Link is well positioned to benefit from these trends. Link is uniquely positioned within the competitive landscape. Link occupies an attractive position between smaller local providers and larger global platforms. Rather than competing purely on local presence or purely on technology, our strategy is built around combining the strengths of both. Smaller local providers often have strong customer relationship and local market knowledge. However, they frequently lack the technology investments, scalability, and product breadth required by larger enterprise customers. On the other hand, large global platforms often have strong technology and scale, but typically lack the local presence, customer intimacy, and market-specific expertise required in many of the countries we serve. We believe Link has a unique position in the middle. We combine local execution and deep understanding of market-specific requirements with an AI-enabled technology platform, broad channel connectivity, and increasingly sophisticated customer engagement capabilities. This allows us to help automate communication, orchestrate customer journey, and deliver more personalized engagement at scale, while maintaining the local expertise and trusted relationships that differentiate LINK in our markets. To sum up, we believe LINK combines the strengths of both local providers and global platform. Our AI-enabled technology platform, deep messaging expertise, local market presence, and trusted delivery create a unique position in the market. Link's competitive positioning is not only strategic, but also visible in the P&L. By combining advanced technology with strong local execution, we can create market demand and growth. Starting on the left-hand side, we see strong momentum on Link's advanced conversational solutions labeled CPAS on the slide. CPAS gross profit growth has a 39% cater from 2023 to Q2 this year, reaching $148 million on a LTN basis. CPAS solutions generate significantly higher gross profit margin than traditional SMS, with approximately twice the gross profit margin. As customers adopt richer and more advanced engagement solutions, link benefits from both growth and improving margins. Conversations take place on OTT channels like RCS and WhatsApp. In Q2, RCS billable events increased by 112% year on year, while WhatsApp billable events increased by 194%. The right-hand side of the slide shows the other part of link's advantage, which is our local presence. Link has 30 offices, local presence in 21 countries and a strong installed customer base of 68 000 customers this gives us customer proximity local market understanding and the ability to work closely with customers as they adopt increasingly sophisticated customer engagement solutions this become more important as use cases become more advanced feature re-channels like whatsapp and rcs together with customer journey orchestration and AI-enabled interactions typically require a higher degree of customer onboarding, advisory support, and ongoing optimization. In our experience, customers increasingly value a partner that can help them identify use cases, implement solutions, and maximize value from the more advanced engagement capabilities. Link combines advanced technology with local execution, allowing us to support customers throughout their journey. To sum up the last three slides, they show why we believe Link is well positioned for the next phase of customer engagement. We see attractive, long-term tailwinds in personalized conversational messaging. Link has a differentiated position in the competitive landscape, and this position is already translating into results. Strong CPAS momentum and rapid adoption of richer messaging channels show that our combination of advanced technology and local execution is enabling us to compete effectively and convert market demand into growth. Moving over to the Q2 numbers. Overall, we are pleased with the development in Q2. As communicated following Q1, our priority was to return to organic cross-profit growth, and we delivered on that commitment with 2% organic cross-profit growth for the quarter. This is a clear improvement from previous quarters and fully in line with targets. It marks a return to growth and reinforces our expectations of a stronger second half of the year. We continue to see strong momentum across the business. Customer demand remains healthy, with new contracts reaching an all-time high of $53 million in the quarter, while LTM contract wins increased to $184 million, up 16% year-on-year. Growth was driven by both SMS and CPAS, demonstrating healthy demand across our portfolio. We continue to see a gradual shift over higher margin and more advanced engagement solution, which will support long-term value creation. Link delivered the highest ever reported adjusted EBITDA of $272 million, while generating $192 million in operating cash flow. Reported EBITDA came in at $252 million, also record high. This demonstrates both the earnings power and the cash-generative nature of the business. Reforma adjusted EBITDA as displayed on the slide was $286 million, including full quarterly effect of acquired entities. Disciplined capital allocation remains an important part of LINQ's value creation strategy. During the quarter, we completed two accretive vault-on acquisitions, KPM solutions in Italy and Web2SMS in Romania. These acquisitions strengthen our market position and demonstrate continued execution of our discipline M&A strategy while maintaining a strong balance sheet. Turning to the outlook for the second half, we are reiterating A2 H2 expectations with reinforced confidence based on Q2 performance. In H2, Link is expecting mid to high single-digit gross profit growth. Growth expectations for H2 are based on the growth indicators we see across the business. Record high new contract wins improve visibility into future revenue and gross profit development, with LTM contract wins up 16% year-on-year. At the same time, conversational solutions through OTT channels continue to scale, supporting future gross profit growth. We're also observing continued growth across the broader customer base, with net retention improving to 101%, close to the target of 105%. Taken together, these factors reinforce our confidence in delivering mid-to-high single-digit gross profit growth in H2. Contract wins reached an all-time high of 53 million in Q2, representing the strongest quarter in Lynx history and reflecting healthy customer demand across both SMS and CPAS solutions. SMS contract wins reached 31 million during the quarter, representing a 29% increase year-on-year. At the same time, CPAS contract wins reached 22 million, making Q2 the second strongest CPAS Porter on record, only surpassed by the same quarter last year, which included several extraordinary large LTT contract vids. CPaaS represented 42% of total contract vids, highlighting the continued shift toward richer and higher value customer engagement solutions. The strong CPaaS results were supported by continued momentum in LTT channels such as WhatsApp and RCS. Overall, record contract vids provide further evidence of healthy customer demand, strong commercial execution, and improving momentum across the underlying business, supporting our confidence in a stronger second half of the year. This slide highlights a recently one contract with one of the world's largest fashion retailers. We believe this customer is particularly interesting because it is an advanced enterprise and an early mover in AI enabled customer engagement. Customers like this are often ahead of the broader market and can provide valuable indication on how future customer demand evolve over time. The contract also demonstrates that Link already has the capabilities, platform, and expertise required to deliver those more advanced customer engagement solutions today. The customer relationship is already building on successful existing use cases, including digital receipts and basket recovery through WhatsApp. The new use cases take this customer engagement journey to the next level. It starts with an AI assistant as the first point of contact, where end users contacting the brand through WhatsApp are initially met by an AI-powered assistant. This allows the customer to automate part of the interaction while still keeping the experience relevant for the end users. When needed, the conversation can be handed over seamlessly to a human agent without forcing the customer to leave the channel or restart the interaction. Advanced customer engagement is not only about automation. It's also about combining automation, messaging, and human support in a way that improves customer experience. From a commercial perspective, these type of solutions represent a significant long-term opportunity for Link. They are increasingly software-driven and value-added with materially higher margin potential than traditional messaging revenues. The contract is also important because it does two things. It provides a concrete example of where future customer demand is heading, and it demonstrates that Link already has the platform and capabilities required to deliver advanced AI-enabled customer engagement solutions today. SMS Portal is a highly attractive business and the market leader in South Africa. As stated last quarter, the second quarter reports lower growth momentum due to high comparable same quarter last year. We expect a return to growth in H2 as the business continues to show positive development. A growing commercial pipeline and a highly efficient technology platform that customers can rely on for high quality and cost-effective messaging. At the end of Q2, new customer contracts under implementation had reached an analyzed run rate of approximately 450 million messages with a further 770 million analyzed messages remaining to be ramped up. In addition, SMS Portal added approximately 200 million analyzed messages in the portal from new contract wins to be implemented. Based on this development, we expect SMS Portal to deliver growth in H2. In addition, WhatsApp is ready for launch during H2, with volumes expecting to start scaling from Q4 and continue through 2027, adding another potential growth driver over time. Creating long-term shareholder value remains the core objective of Lynx Capital Allocation Framework. We continue to allocate capital where we see the strongest value creation opportunities per share, while maintaining a disciplined balance sheet and a financial policy. M&A remains a core part of this framework. Over time, Link has built a strong track record of identifying, acquiring, and integrating businesses across our markets, having completed close to 40 acquisitions and integrations. We continue to evaluate a healthy pipeline of opportunities. In the near term, our priority remains targeted bolt-on acquisitions. We believe these opportunities can provide attractive returns, strengthen our local market positions, and be integrated efficiently into the existing platform. During the quarter, we completed two accretive bolt-on acquisitions, KPM solutions in Italy and web to SMS in Romania. At the same time, shareholder returns are expected to grow over time in line with our policy, and we continue to maintain flexibility to scale M&A activity if market conditions and opportunities align with our return requirements. We expect mid-to-high single-digit organic gross profit growth in age two. As I mentioned earlier, improving business performance, record high new contract wins, and continued auto-team momentum all support this expectation. Link's business model remains highly scalable with significant operational leverage. As gross profit growth improves, we expect adjusted EBITDA growth to develop faster than organic gross profit growth over time. Capital allocation remains focused on maximizing long-term shareholder value. A creative M&A continues to be our first priority, supported by a strong pipeline of opportunities and a proven acquisition playbook. At the same time, we continue to maintain a disciplined leverage policy of 2.0 to 2.5 times adjusted EBITDA. With that, I will hand over to Morten, who will take you through the financial performance for the quarter in more detail.
Thank you, Thomas, and good morning, everyone. The second quarter results were strong, with improved quarter-over-quarter organic growth momentum, solid customer demand demonstrated by record-high contract wins, all-time high adjusted EBITDA from M&A add-on, and continued strong cash conversions from operations. We also concluded our 300 million share buyback program in May with a total of 13 million shares acquired and subsequently we have canceled 20.9 million shares for approximately 7 percent of total outstanding shares. Before moving on to the quarterly results I will start by highlighting an important characteristics of Link's business model namely the diversified customer base and industry exposure. The contribution from Link's top 10 customers has remained consistent over time at around 15 percent of total gross profit, while remaining 85 percent is generated from the broader customer base. This demonstrates that Lync is not dependent on any single customer and that our earnings are supported by a large and diversified set of customer relationships across markets and industries. Banking, insurance, technology, software platforms, telecommunications, retail, and e-commerce represents our largest industry verticals but no individual sector accounts for a dominant share of total gross profit. We believe this diversification is an important strength of the business as it supports resilience across different economic environments. This also provides exposure to several industries that continue to benefit from structural digitalization trends, and growing demand for customer engagement solutions. Our commercial strategy remains focused on increasing wallet share with existing customers, winning new customers, and expanding across products, channels, and use cases. This allows us to continue building a broader and more diversified cross-profit base over time. Turning to the quarterly results and firstly the revenue development. Reported revenue increased 17% year-over-year to $2.1 billion for the quarter. A significant part of the growth came from acquired businesses, and especially SMS portally in South Africa, while organic revenue growth improved quarter-over-quarter to 3% in stable currency. Organic revenue development was supported by continued improvement within the enterprise segment, where organic revenue growth increased 2 percentage points quarter over quarter to 6% in stable currency. Growth improved across all enterprise regions compared to the previous quarter, supported by healthy demand for customer engagement solutions and continued strong momentum in CPaaS. Decreased adoption of CPaaS solutions contribute positively to quality and hence margin profile of our revenue base. Within global messaging, revenue declined 3% year-over-year. As previously communicated, this was mainly driven by lower traffic volumes from four large customers, while the broader global messaging customer base continued to develop positively. The bridge chart below illustrates the quarterly development. Enterprise contributed with $75 million in growth, partly offset by the global messaging decline of $14 million. This resulted in the organic revenue growth 3% in stable currency. Foreign exchange had a negative impact of 5 percentage points, or 89 million in the quarter, while acquisitions contributed with 320 million to reported revenue. The acquisition contribution mainly relates to SMS Portal, which contributed 280 million of revenue during the quarter. In addition, the UK acquisitions contributed $31 million, while KPM solutions in Italy and Web2SMS in Romania were consolidated from June and contributed with $10 million. Looking at the revenue retention and churn development on the next slide, this slide illustrates the continued normalization in Lynx's net retention rate, reflecting the improved growth momentum across the customer base and low-level churn. Enterprise churn declined from 2.9% in the previous quarter. As highlighted in previous quarters, enterprise churn continues to reflect the impact of a high volume SMS customer that churned in Q4 last year. As the strongest comparable revenue quarters relating to this customer have passed, the headwind will ease going forward. At the same time, we continue to see strong customer stickiness across the broader enterprise business, supported by increasing adoption of CPAL solutions. Global messaging churn was also reported at 2.2% in the quarter and is within the normal range for this segment. We are pleased to see net retention strengthen quarter over quarter by 5 percentage points, 201% in the quarter. We believe this reflects the continued strength of the broader customer base and supports our view that customer trends remain healthy. As highlighted previously, the impact from a small number of share of wallet customers in global messaging has weighted on the net retention metrics of recent quarters. With this headwind now fading and enterprise revenue growth improving, net retention metric is developing in line with our expectations towards our medium-term target of 105%. Turning to the gross profit development. Reported gross profit increased 16% year-over-year to $492 million for the quarter, including a negative currency effect of $21 million. Organic gross profit returned to positive territory with 2% growth in stable currency. Enterprise gross profit continued to improve and grew 3% organically during the quarter, contributing $9 million in incremental gross profit. Improvement was supported by stronger growth momentum across both Northern and Central Europe, and seed-bar solutions continued to contribute positively to growth. Increasing adoption of higher-value engagement solutions support both gross profit growth and quality of revenue mix. Within global messaging, gross profit decline narrowed quarter-over-quarter to 3% year-over-year, corresponding to a modest 2 million decline, reflecting the impact of the mentioned share of wallet customers. Combined, this resulted in an organic gross profit growth of 2% in stable currency, or at three percentage points, improvement in growth quarter-over-quarter. As mentioned, foreign exchange had a negative impact of 21 million due to strengthening of the NOC, while acquisitions contributed $83 million, whereas $77 million related to SMS portal. Turning to the margin bridge below, enterprise margin declined 0.8% at the point year-over-year, primarily driven by stronger growth on larger, lower-margin customer contracts. The same time, continued growth in OTT solutions contributed positively to margins, offsetting 0.3% of the negative mix effect. Acquisitions contributed positively to gross margin development, primarily reflecting the higher margin profile of SMS portal at 28% in the quarter. As a result, reported gross margin remained stable at 24%, despite the mentioned customer mix effects. Takeaway is clear. Organic gross profit growth has returned to positive territory, supported by strengthening enterprise momentum and stabilization in global messaging. while the revenue mix continues to improve through OTT solutions and margin-accreted acquisitions. This positions Lynx for stronger organic growth in the second half of the year. Moving on to development in adjusted EBITDA. Lynx reported an all-time high adjusted EBITDA of $272 million in the quarter, representing an increase of 28% year-over-year driven by acquisitions. While organic adjusted EBITDA declined 1% in constant currency, profitability trends continue to improve during the quarter, linked to improved gross profit growth. This demonstrates the operating leverage in the business, where improving gross profit growth increasingly translates into stronger EBITDA performance. The limited decline in organic adjusted EBITDA of 3 million reflects two offsetting developments. The return to past organic gross profit growth contributed to 7 million increase, which was offset by an organic 10 million increase in operating expenses. The organic increase in OPEX was 5% year-over-year and was primarily driven by salary inflation, growth-related investments, and 3 million from higher bad debt recognition. Turning to the margin bridge below, organic adjusted EBITDA margin declined 12.1% to 11.5%. This was mainly driven by the lower enterprise gross margin discussed on previous slide and a slightly higher OPEX to sales ratio as OPEX grew faster than organic revenue during the quarter. Foreign exchange contributed positive by 0.1 percentage points while acquisitions added 1.7 percentage points to adjusted EBITDA margin. SMS portal was the largest contributor given its accretive adjusted EBITDA margin of 24%. As a result reported adjusted EBITDA margin increased from 12.1% to 13.3% year-over-year. Overall, the quarter demonstrates the scalability of LINK's business model. The improvement in organic gross profit growth during the quarter contributes to stabilizing organic adjusted EBITDA. As we expect organic gross profit growth to strengthen in the second half of the year, we also expect adjusted EBITDA growth to continue to improve. Touching on the P&L, I will focus on the items below just the EBITDA. Non-recurring costs amounted to $20 million in the quarter. The largest component was M&A-related cost of $16 million. Approximately $7 million related to SMS portal, and primarily reflecting the retention program we have, while $4 million related to the acquisitions of Web2SMS and KPM solutions. The remaining amount mainly reflects run-off costs and ongoing due diligence activities. In addition, restructuring costs amounted to $3 million, and option-related Social Security tax expenses amounted to $2 million in the quarter linked to non-exercised options. Depreciation and amortization amounted to $129 million during the quarter, of this $69 million related to amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets, about 54 million related to intangible assets mainly from r&d as we have highlighted previously acquisition related amortization is non-cash in nature and does not impact dividend capacity net finance expenses amounted to 64 million during the quarter this consisted of 22 million net interest expenses with 31 million in bond and rcf interest offset by 3 million in reclassification effects related to cross-currency swap interest to other financial items, and interest income on cash deposits of $6 million. Other financial expenses total $40 million, primarily related to the cross-currency swap, associated with the side euro financing structure, where $29 million was related to non-cash fair value adjustments, while interest payments equated for $10 million, where of $3 million is related to the reclass related to the first quarter.
Net currency effects were close to neutral during the quarter.
Profit from continuing operations amounted to $49 million in the quarter, while total profit for the period was $104 million. The difference relates to discontinued operations, where we recognized the $55 million reversal of tax accrual following the finalization of U.S. tax returns related to the sale of message broadcast. Finally, we are pleased to see adjusted profit for the period from continuing operations increased by 87% year-over-year to $118 million compared to $63 million in the same quarter last year. We believe this metric provides a more representative view of the underlying earnings and dividend capacity of the business as it excludes acquisition-related amortization, which is non-cash in nature.
Then I look at the balance sheet.
LINK continued to maintain a solid financial position with financial flexibility to support both future inorganic growth opportunities and shareholder distributions. Non-current assets increased year-year, primarily reflecting completed acquisitions with the largest contribution related to SMS portal. Trade receivables and payables were both impacted by acquisitions and currency movements during the period. receivables include $178 million of acquisition-related effects, while payables include approximately $198 million from acquired businesses. Cash and cash equivalents amounted to $764 million at the end of the quarter. The reduction compared to last year reflects the completed share buyback program, and M&A-related payments combined totalling $1.5 billion in cash outflow in the last 12 months. Equity amounted to 5.4 billion at quarter-end, corresponding to an equity ratio of 52%. This continues to reflect a strong balance sheet and substantial capacity. Long-term debt consists of 225 million euros in outstanding bonds, and currently 20 million are drawn under the revolving credit facility, with a total frame of 65 million euros. The bond financing carries an average interest rate of three-month reward plus 2.53%. Net interest-sparing debt amounted to $2.1 billion at quarter-end. Reported leverage increased to 1.9 times adjusted EBITDA during the quarter, reflecting cash outflow related to acquisitions and the concluded share buyback program in the quarter. Just for these capital allocations leverage remains stable quarter over quarter and continues to remain below LINX target leverage range of 2.0 to 2.5 times adjusted EBITDA. The cash generation in the business supports strengthening financial capacity going forward to execute on our disciplined capital allocation strategy, combining M&A and growing shareholder distributions.
Moving on to my final slide, where I will cover some key aspects of the cash flow development.
Link generated $192 million of cash flow from operations during the quarter and $732 million on an LTM basis. After adjusting for non-recurring M&A-related cost, cash flow from operations amounted to $211 million in Q2 and $822 million on an LTM basis. Working capital had a negative impact during the quarter due to normal fluctuation in payments related to larger customers, while remaining broadly neutral on a LTM basis. Taxes paid of $17 million were broadly consistent with the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA cash conversion remained strong at 89% on a LTM basis, demonstrating the underlying cash-generative nature of the business. Capex amounted to $46 million during the quarter and continues to primarily reflect investments in CEPA solutions and platform development. We continue to expect total Capex in 2026 to be lower than in 2025 as optimization initiatives are implemented across the group. At the same time, we are seeing encouraging early customer demand for AI-enabled solutions and expect this demand to accelerate over time. We are therefore actively reallocating investment capacity towards AI initiatives, ensuring that LINK remains well positioned to capture this emerging growth opportunity. Interest paid and lease payments amounted to $31 million during the quarter and relates to bonds and net interest costs associated with the Euro-SAR cross-currency swap, established in connection with SMS portal acquisition. I would note that we made a correction in Q2 related to overstating the cash effect of the cross-currency swap in Q1, while cash effect is correct on a year-to-date basis. After CAPEX interest and lease payments, LINK generated $134 million in cash flow during the quarter. Despite $47 million negative working capital effects, cash generation remained strong, demonstrating the resilience of the business model and providing continuous flexibility to fund organic investments, pursue bolt-on acquisitions and support future growing shareholder distributions. Looking at the cash bridge at the bottom of the slide, the business generated 192 million operating cash flow during the quarter after CAPEX and lease payments cash flow amounted to positive 142 million. The reduction in cash the quarter was driven mainly by share buyback and M&A. Share buybacks represented 169 million in cash outflow while acquisition related payments amounted to 209 million. This included acquisitions in Romania and Italy as well as the first conditional payment related to SMS portal of 160 million. These outflows were partly offset by financing activities including a 20 million euro draw on the revolving credit facility. As a result, cash and cash equivalents amounted to 764 million at quarter end. With that, I will hand the word back over to Christian for the Q&A session.
Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Morten. We will now move on to the Q&A session. Questions can be submitted through the Audiocast platform. We already have received some questions We will start with some questions from Halvo Dybdal from Artic. Very interesting to see the AI-enabled contract with a large fashion retailer. Can you elaborate more on the partnership? And in general, how is demand for such solutions developing across your customers?
I can respond to that. It's a great question. The partnership with this client has been in place for years. the customer has always been very active on how they approach customer engagement and customer communication and as I said we have several existing use cases with them already which are quite advanced and then we have taken it to the next level now together with this customer to sort of put in place an AI an agent to help with incoming requests and customer support and the demand for these solutions are building momentum so it's not the only customer would deliver such a solution to so it's building momentum we see more demand in less penetrated countries actually in southern europe compared to the nordics the nordics is lagging a little bit behind on these new solutions but the the more populated countries in southern europe has a strong demand for these solutions great moving on to some questions on sms portal growth and sms portal has slowed since the acquisition do you see any large change in the market dynamics in south africa and what needs to change for sms portal to deliver on the growth you previously expected um first of all there the market dynamics in south africa is very very good uh and in favor of sms portal uh they have a state-of-the-art uh a technical platform that delivers cost-effective uh messaging with the highest throughput and lowest latency in in in that country um the reason for the decline in the current quarter is exactly what we informed on previous quarter in in q1 and we see that we have high comparables uh same quarter last year meaning second quarter 2025 uh we had millions of additional messages due to a few customers uh wrongly templating the messages so instead of sending one or two messages they send uh several more um so that is the reason for the the softness in the current quarter um when we acquired sms port we also said that the growth here is going to be more chunky meaning that is going to on average be high single digit that is what we expected but it will vary a little bit more so some quarters it might be double digit other quarters it might be mid low single digit and this is the reason for this is is sms portals ultimate selling point in the local market which means that they are getting in bigger contracts so when the contracts come in then the growth momentum increases and then it slows down again when you have quarters where this is not the case we have also seen that the implementation of new contracts and also signing of new contracts has been slowed by the transaction so we're catching up now yeah so one answer to a very good question yeah great If we can keep on SMS Portal, SMS Portal faced some delayed new contract volumes.
Will these volumes convert in Q3? And how does that factor into the H2 guidance?
The short answer to that is yes. It's also contributing to the Q2 numbers. So we see underlying the growth momentum when you sort of exclude the high comparables it's it's uh it's uh not that bad uh it's pretty good actually and uh in line with the the forecast we gave for for for h2 so we expect more customer contracts to be implemented and scaled uh during the second half of 2026 improving the growth momentum in sms portland as we showed on the slide there's a good uh backlog and also a high signed contracts that are under implementation and then last question on SMS portal do you still expect SMS portal to deliver high single digit organic gross profit growth over time I've already answered that, that is still our expectation South Africa is a good market and we see potential here for a good potential to deliver high single digit gross profit growth But as I said, it's a little bit more chunky in SMS portal due to the size of the contracts they're getting in.
And then another question on isolated decliners. Can you share how much isolated decliners declined this quarter?
I can take that one. Christian, we see the isolated decliners, they are performing in line with the previous two quarters. So it's in line with what we expected. So the sort of decline from the decliners is significantly less in the second quarter than it was in the first quarter. But there is still a drag there, which is expected to fade out in the second half, as we communicated previously.
We have a question on number of shares in the company following the cancellation, and that is 285 million shares. and then also a question on the fx effects in the quarters which were quite large could you elaborate on the fx effects yeah we so when we do reporting we're basing it on average rates for for the months uh when we do reporting and we see that knock has strengthened towards several of the the foreign currencies that we are operating in and that gives a drag and on on gross profit it is a 21 million drag meaning the sort of if you apply the same FX rate as last year the reported gross profit would be 513 million so there's a significant impact in the quarter from FX Thank you Given your expectation for accelerating growth in H2 is this mainly driven by easier comps and technical factors or are you also seeing a genuine improvement in underlying market demand?
We are seeing an increased market demand for the more advanced solutions, conversational messaging solutions on RCS and WhatsApp, and that is being documented by the numbers we're reporting with more than 100% growth in volumes for those two channels and also a much higher growth on the growth profit. market itself it's pretty stable as i've said the last three years it's it's a little bit tougher than normal but it's pretty stable i am happy with the commercial execution the last couple of quarters we have we've been able to to close a lot of new one contracts significantly over
our targets uh so the the commercial execution i'm i'm happy with good could you elaborate on the contract mix overall gross profit contribution from new contracts increased while cp has declined by around 15 year over year to 22 million are customers shifting towards simpler messaging solutions or was this mainly a timing and mix effect in the quarter and i could take that one as well.
New CPAS contracts was the second highest quarter ever, only surpassed by the same quarter last year. Same quarter last year was unusually high due to timing impact of several larger CPAS contracts sort of hitting the same quarter. So no, we are seeing the opposite. We are seeing that the more advanced products and solutions are increasing in size, both in the P&L and when you look at one contracts.
Could you speak a bit about the higher margin software revenue opportunity you mentioned and when you expect this will be a more meaningful portion of group revenues?
It's a meaningful portion today. As you saw on the slides, there is a good increase in gross profit from these more advanced solutions that we call CPaaS solutions. looking at it's 148 million on an LTM basis in the current quarter. So it's growing in size and it's becoming more and more meaningful. This, we expect, is going to gradually continue happening going forward as well.
What kind of investments are you making to invest in the platform for context, automation, and AI-driven engagement? we are making more investments on engagement solutions and AI Martin do you sort of want to touch upon it as well because you mentioned you had some comments on that in the Capex yeah basically so we're seeing given the demand we're seeing in the market on this more advanced solution and especially on the AI side we communicated earlier that we are doing optimizations on the capex side so we expected it to come down 10 we are seeing a need to sort of reinvest even more into these solutions this year so we're reallocating some of those savings that we did on the investments side into into these solutions so we still expect capex to be below 2025 but we are reallocating more into these solutions which is we're starting to see demand on especially as Thomas exemplified with this customer that we're sending a deal with it's seeing those demands accelerating and we also put some more investments behind it good do you expect further adjusted EBITDA margin progress in H2 versus what you achieved in Q2 we typically see uh of course when you look at the gross margin the q4 is a softer quarter and so my take is that it will be a tad higher than overall than we've seen so far in the first half but um fairly stable i would say but maybe slightly higher and then on h2 guidance you guided mid to high single digit organic gross profit growth in age two what are the key swing factors that could push results toward the high versus low end yeah i can take that one that is it's typically three three factors to it it's uh we have a strong contract backlog we are of course dependent on on the implementation of these uh these contracts coming true uh to realize effects in the P&L we see that mainly is linked to the sort of on the customer side that they are able to put the necessary resources in place and put it into a roadmap to actually be ready on their side so there is always a an uncertainty for us and then it's of course the development of the existing customer base and q4 especially and a little bit more difficult to have full visibility especially on retail campaigns um so that is is one factor which uh which is sort of impacting whether it's going to be in the low or high end um and then it's of course the uptake on cpass and and ott contracts which is we have a significant backlog with with high margin solutions it's also linked to the first for my first point how fast we're able to actually scale those contracts um i think those are the three main factors thank you then for estimation on acquisition related expenses is q2 a reasonable near-term run rate i would say q2 is elevated we had some runoff costs on on the larger targets in in the quarter so we would see around six million coming from the the retention program in sms portal and then beyond that it will be uh costs linked to to due diligence processes and eventually closing of smaller bolt-on targets mainly so um i would say it should be um eight to ten million is my my take on it but it fully depends on uh actually deals coming through and activity that we will see yeah hi could you please give some comment on the dividend policy is this something valid in the near near term future yeah so on the overall dividend policy and we launched that in the q3 last year and we said that for the fiscal year of 2025 we would have a we're targeting a distribution of 300 million and we did that through a share buyback program which was closed in in second quarter and we also did the subsequent cancellation of those shares as mentioned in the call so basically for for this year we have utilized the distribution capacity we have under the the bond agreement and so we're targeting this distribution to grow over time. So we started off with approximately one knocker per share and then we expect that to grow over time. And then the sort of normal next distribution would then be in 2027 following the annual general meeting.
Are you seeing or expecting to see any effects from the new marketing regulations in South Africa?
No, not at all. They're completely material and we have that functionality already today and it's been in place within SMS Portal for the last two years.
Of your customers and gross profit excluding SMS Portal, what share uses the MyLink suite versus legacy platforms from acquisitions?
And their exact percentage points varies a little bit, But you can sort of look at the license fees that we are generating and then the amount of revenue that we are, or the amount of gross profit that we're reporting on the OTT channels, and you can get a sense of it. Yeah, going into further details there, it's probably not productive here. Okay.
Does the decentralized structure make it challenging to upsell more advanced products?
Not really. If you want to sell these solutions, you have to have people on the ground in the local markets selling it so that it's independent of having a centralized and decentralized structure. it's a slightly more hassle when you want to implement it because then you will have some use cases on legacy or local platforms and then you will have the new use cases on the centralized platform but I wouldn't call it a problem it's more like a detail Good Do you believe sales channels and the importance of local support will change over time as AI tools to a larger degree
can be used by enterprises for implementation?
What we see is the opposite, actually, that the more complex tools, including AI tools, the more support they will need, both in the process of selling it and then implementing it. They need a lot of touch points with us in order to do it correctly. so we see the opposite actually if demand is improving which markets and product areas do you expect to contribute most for example marketing platform payments or other parts of the portfolio i would expect all parts of the portfolio to contribute marketing and platform and payments are now contained in the nordics but it's still showing a nice growth momentum. When we launch that in other regions, the growth potential gets higher. What we see is a broader-based growth when it comes to the product portfolio.
And the last question, a bit technical one. Can you give some color on CPAS new contract wins? It looks to be up 6% on an LTM basis, while LTM CPAS cross-profit growth is up 17% from full year 2025. Does that mean current CPAS cross-profit growth is driven by earlier contract converting, and we should expect that to moderate ahead?
No, not necessarily. The P&L effect deviates from the one contract that we report on a quarterly basis because these contracts need to be implemented and scape. So much of the P&L effect is from CPAS contracts that we won in 2024 and 2025. Not that much in 2026. So it's more a reflection of that.
Very good. We do not have any more questions at this time. We will give you 20 seconds before we conclude the session. There seems to be no further questions, so that concludes the Q&A. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Morten, and thank you for listening in. See you next quarter.
