STRONGPOINT ASA (STRO) February 2026 Capital Markets Day Transcript

Good morning, and welcome to this Q4 presentation by Strongpoint. My name is Jakob Tverabak, and I am the CEO of Strongpoint. With me to present the Q4 results, I have Marius Drevelin, our group CFO. In today's session, I will share some highlights from the fourth quarter. I'll provide a short update, an overview of Strongpoint. in particular for the convenience of any new potential investors and I will round off with some customer success stories before before this quarter before handing over to to minus after Marius's review or financials for Q4 I will run off this session with our view on the outlook for stronghold we had a flat fourth quarter in terms of revenue with 1% growth to 342 million kronor. For 2025 as a whole, we grew by 4% to approximately 1.35 billion Norwegian kronor. Recurring revenue in the quarter grew by 7% on a 12-month rolling basis. And for EBITDA, we reported in the fourth quarter, minus 5 million Norwegian kroner. Whilst adjusted for EBITDA, for one-off effects, this was 2 million kroner in EBITDA. The difference, so the 7 million Norwegian kroner one-off effects in the quarter, are related to structural processes of our product portfolio, which were not completed. And Q4, as of last year, had an EBITDA of 5 million Norwegian kroner as such. For the year as a whole, we improved our reported EBITDA by 24 million Norwegian kroners to 26 million Norwegian kroner. And then, of course, it improved the EBITDA for the full year by 31 million Norwegian kroner, excluding the 7 million one-off costs in Q4, to 33 million Norwegian kroner for the full year of 2025. Cash flow from operations was plus 2 million in the quarter. With regards to customer success stories, I'm going to talk more about our success with ECO and ShopFlow Logistics Solution, our progress in the UK with VentSafe Solution, and lastly, explain what our shelf-verified order-picking cooperation with Vusion means. First, about Strongpoint. So, Strongpoint is a retail technology company focusing on serving grocery retailers with efficiency-saving software and products. We have an annual revenue of around 1.35 billion Norwegian kroners, and around 30% of that is recurring revenue. More than 80% of our revenue stems from grocery retailers, and we have around 500 employees across Europe, where our software solutions are developed in-house by our very own development team. In short, StrongPoint's purpose is to make grocery retailers more efficient and sustainable. sustainable. So, what about our technology solutions more concretely then? Well, we tackle five challenges and opportunities that grocery retailers face. Firstly, e-commerce. We have an end-to-end e-commerce platform that is truly world-class. We provide everything a grocery retailer needs for e-commerce from software to pick pack and process online orders to last mile solutions I must say we are in particular proud of our proprietary order picking solution the world's most efficient in-store picking solution that is getting traction with some of the world's most esteemed grocery retailers. Additionally, we provide other picking and last mile solutions aimed to ensuring the highest level of efficiency and profitability for grocers in a sustainable manner. Secondly, theft and shrink. We have multiple anti-theft solutions, many of which are AI powered. This includes vent-safe select and collect, AI-powered weighing scales and AI-powered theft detection in store and at checkout. Thirdly, store efficiency. We provide our proprietary self checkout solution. Shopflow logistics, our proprietary SaaS based inventory order management and task management solution AI powered age verification and AI powered shelf monitoring solution with Vusion fourthly pricing and promotions we provide digital solutions for pricing and promotions as a proud partner of Vusion the world's leader in in-store digitization and the largest producer of electronic shelf limits and fifthly handling cash even with the low single digit percentage of cash cash usage in Norway and Sweden the share volume of transactions in grocery stores mean that cash needs to be efficiently handled we're doing this through our cash guard solution. Furthermore, we are developing CashGuard Connect, a unique closed loop cash automation solution, making cash handling as easy as handling card payments, which I will talk more about in a minute. So that was about our technology solutions. So where do we operate? We have nine core markets, which we focus on these markets are the Nordic region the Baltics Spain the UK and Ireland these countries are countries where we have our own teams on the ground to manage the entire value chain from sales to installation to service and to support and why is that well because we believe that the way we can build deeper customer relations customer intimacy and sees a larger revenue share of our customers technology spend is through exactly that customer intimacy is extremely important as wrong point it is through deepening these relationships with grocery retailers that we over time allows us to become and be a trusted partner. However we are not only limited to these nine countries. We serve grocery retailers in over 20 countries with support from our partner network. And specifically with our award-winning order picking solution we're able to showcase that we can serve customers well beyond our nine focus countries and this is a very important part of our strategy forward building ever more recurring revenue base from our order picking solution across the world now coming back to the fourth quarter success stories with customers I want to point out three of the customer success stories that we had in the fourth corner. Firstly, Eco. Eco is a retailer in Sweden and we're proud that they have chosen to roll out our proprietary SaaS based digital in-store logistics solution called Shopflow Logistics for all their stores. We are proud of this for three reasons. Firstly, it demonstrates the growing relevance of software solution that we at Strongpoint build ourselves. Secondly, it is an example of spillover effects that for our solutions that are predominantly designed for grocery retailers are also relevant for general merchandise or general retail. And thirdly, this is also a customer relationship which is expanded. Eco is already a cash card customer. Secondly, our Ventsafe pilots in the UK. So they continue. We have to date five leading UK grocery retailers with proof of concept with our Ventsafe solution. And we believe that the Ventsafe solution has a real potential, with theft and shrinkage being a severe and growing concern to grocery retailers in the UK to alleviate our customers' and customer prospects' theft concerns. Two of the grocery retailers running proof-of-concepts now are currently reviewing the results of the proof-of-concepts as part of the evaluation. And we are, of course, excited about the opportunity that this constitutes for us in the UK. Now, before I take my last point on customer success stories, I want to just take a couple of minutes to explain our multifaceted partnership with Vusion that we announced at the end of 2024. So regarding the partnership, there are three points I would like to make. Firstly, moving from Pricer, which was our longstanding and earlier supplier of electronic shelf labels, or ESLs, So moving from them to Vusion, we're essentially going from providing only ESLs, electronic shelf labels, to providing a portfolio of solutions to really digitize the store, including ESLs, but a much broader portfolio. Vusion is the world-leading supplier of electronic shelf labels and also boosts an extremely broad range of stored digitization solutions including the next generation ESLs with battery free tags labeled edge sense to captana shelf edge cameras to retail media solutions and more secondly with vision we are de facto increasing our geographic presence and coverage from only the Nordics to all StrongPoint countries. The value-added reseller or VAR partnership with Vusion not only allows StrongPoint to sell the entire Vusion portfolio in all StrongPoint countries, but Vusion is also positively contributing to StrongPoint doing exactly that. I would say it contributed to what was the case in the past. And then to my third point, we are also an independent software vendor, an ISV of Fusion. And that means two things. A, we are mutually promoting each other's solutions with new and existing customers. And B, we're working together on a joint technology roadmap that allows for deeper integration with StrongPoint's order-picking solution specifically. this means that we are stronger together we're finding ways to integrate our technologies so customers can reap the efficiency rewards of our solutions working together which then leads me to our third customer success story this quarter in December we announced and launched what's called shelf verified order picking the solution integrates Vusion's shelf edge camera captana into our order picking solution so grocery retailers know exactly what are on the shelves in the store real-time what does this mean for retailers well in a e-grocer e-commerce setting until now when you have done order picking from a grocery order the moment the only moment you have known whether an item is on the shelf or not has been when the picker actually stands in front of the shelf. But now with shelf verified order picking the grocery retailer will in advance know what items are on the shelf and ensure that member of staff can restock that specific item before the picking starts. Or in the case of not only shelf out but stock out also automatically redirects the picker to a substitute product. This means more efficient picking and it is also an opportunity for grocery retailers to capitalize on the growing quick commerce trends allowing for monetization of data. We believe this is a small step towards continuing to cement our position as having the world's best in-store picking solution both now and for the future i would like to stress that this is just the first example of our technology collaboration with usn we have several other exciting ongoing projects that i'm very much looking forward to and reeling soon now on to an update of some of our strategic projects. Firstly, our order picking partnership with UK's second largest grocery retailer, Sainsbury's. As we previously shared, the first Sainsbury's stores with our order picking solution went live third quarter 2024. And at the end of this year's or last year's Q4, the order-picking solution was live in a double-digit number of stores. And we're working closely with the customer to ensure a successful rollout of our solution over the months and quarters to come. Then, as for our CashGuard Connect solution, in Q3 2025 we ended the in-store pilot which had been running for many many months after not obtaining the necessary commitment from our original or initial pilot partner a major Spanish grocery retailer. However, since then I am pleased to say that we have received several inquiries from multiple grocery retailers both inside and outside of Spain who are interested in the solution and in-store pilots. And on the manufacturing side, we are progressing well in addition. The project is run by StrongPoint CashTech SL, a company controlled by StrongPoint. And in this process, we also have a local partner, Heart Automation, which have a minority stake in StrongPoint CashTech SL. They have helped with the expertise to get the project started. Now, in 2025, Heart Automation went into insolvency proceedings. And of course, following this, we've taken legal steps to ensure that we as StrongPoint maintain the exclusive, perpetual and global rights within retail to utilize the IP developed for the solution. We believe that CashGuard Connect has the potential to become a defining solution for the Spanish market. We also see a much wider potential. This is relevant, or this is a relevant solution for many other countries where cash is still used by a large volume of customers and the cost of involving processing cash is substantial. Now I'll hand over to Marius, our CFO, to provide more details on the financial performance.

Thank you, Jacob. I will now go through the key financials for the fourth quarter and the full year 2025. Starting with revenue, the Q4 revenue was $342 million, an increase of 1% compared to last year. Although this was a flat development overall, there was significant growth in our international operations with year-on-year growth of 58% in Spain, 36% in the UK and Ireland, and 14% in the Baltics. This includes new Vusion ESL revenues in the UK and Spain, as well as continued growth in Autostore in the UK. In the Baltics, the growth was driven by self-checkout deliveries. We are pleased with the positive development, particularly in the UK and Spain, as these are key growth markets going forward. However, in Q4, we also had revenue decline in Norway and Sweden, offsetting these increases. This is mainly due to fewer ESL rollouts compared to last year. So, whereas we are seeing positive development in the UK, the Baltics and Spain, we are working equally hard to mitigate the revenue declines in Norway and Sweden. Overall, for the full year, revenues increased by 4%, with solid growth in the international operations and a decline in Norway. Continuing on to recurring revenue, 12 months rolling. This increased by 7% year-on-year to $385 million. This growth is mainly due to license revenue from the order picking, as well as growth in service agreements on cash guard, Vennsafe and self-checkout. Now, to Jacob's point on the transition from Pricer to Vusion. At the end of 2025, we had $52 million in recurring revenue relating to licenses and service agreements through Pricer. This will diminish from January 2026. From a rolling 12-month perspective, this will gradually be reduced to zero towards the end of this year. Considering that it took us many years to establish this recurring revenue base with Pricer, replacing this through Vusion will take time. Having said that, we have already seen substantial revenue on Vusion installation work. And in comparison, although this is not quite the same quality of revenue, the gross profit generated through Vusion's installation work for the second half of 2025 is almost the same as the gross profit generated from the 52 million in recurring revenue from Pricer. If you move on to EBITDA, this declined to a negative 5 million in Q4, a reduction of 10 million compared to last year and this includes the 7 million in one-off costs that we have talked about relating to M&A advisory work for potential strategic projects in our product portfolio which were not successfully completed without these costs EBITDA would have been positive 2 million Still, we are not, by any means, happy with the results for this quarter. This is the result of the overall flat development in revenue, and that we didn't announce any major wins in the quarter. While having said that, looking at the full year for 2025, EBITDA ended at $26 million compared to $2 million in 2024. And by excluding the same one of costs, EBITDA was $33 million. Now, this is, after all, a significant improvement. And with the transitions that we are going through, fluctuations between the quarters must be expected. For the full year, we capitalized 32 million in development costs, mainly related to the CashGuard Connect project in Spain. So these were the main P&L items. Now let's look at the cash flow moments. We started the year with 82 million in cash and ended the year with 99 million. We had positive contributions from the operating result of 26 million and changes in working capital of 29 million. And during the year we increased the interest bearing debt by 20 million. On cash outflows, we spent $41 million on CapEx relating to the development of the CashGuard Connect project in Spain and our own POS solution in the Baltics. Now let's move further into the key components of the working capital development. Overall for the year, working capital decreased by $16 million. This is due to a reduction in accounts receivable and inventory. We have been focusing particularly on reducing the inventory for the last few years. These reductions were partly offset by increases in accruals and other short-term liabilities, mainly deferred income. To conclude on the financial section, let's look at the development in net interest bearing debt. During the fourth quarter, the net interest bearing debt increased from 45 million to 61 million because of the negative profit after tax and the capital expenditure. Disposable funds ended at $99 million, down from $112 million the previous quarter. Finally, the equity ratio at year-end was 47%, which is well above our equity covenant of 30%. Now with this, I will hand it back to Jacob for some final remarks.

Thank you, Marius. Now, outlook. I should start by restating that we do not provide short-term guidance. What I can say is that our path to sustained and robust profitability will have its ups and downs. In the short term, there are opportunities to reap and there are challenges to tackle. For the medium and long term, the general expectation is for grocery retailers to invest more in technology. This is positive for us. And we're working to build and sustain customer intimacy, getting grocery retailers trust in bringing our diverse solution portfolio to the market. We plan for international growth, especially with our global SaaS e-commerce opportunities. At the same time, we must be clear on the need or the needed rejuvenation in our traditional Nordic and Baltic markets. We need to both of these markets flourish with a new set of solutions coming into these markets. so let me conclude with the following the sustained interest in our broad and growing solution portfolio and the continued trust in us make customers and us believe in the positive long-term success of stronghold so we aim for a healthy revenue growth and the EBITDA margin of more than 10% which is what we have also concluded and communicated earlier as for our next presentation we have our q1 2026 presentation and annual general meeting on april 29 in addition prior to this we will also invite to a short investor update on march 12 to provide more information regarding our shift from Pricer to Vusion, the e-grocery market, how we work with improving our customary intimacy, and StrongPoint in general. For any questions related to investor relations, please contact Marius directly. His contact details are shown on the screen and, of course, on our web page I would also like to invite you all to our Q&A audio session today at 11 o'clock and with that I'd like to thank you all for listening and have a great day