Proact IT Group AB
STO:PACT
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Proact IT Group AB
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All right. Welcome to our conference call. And my name is Jonas Hasselberg, I am the CEO and I also have Linda Holjo with me, our CFO. We will just wait 30 seconds for the last people to dial in and in the meanwhile, I'll ask you to mute your microphones until you want to speak or ask a question. Thank you.
All right. Welcome, everyone. This is our Q2 video call. We are recording this call, and we will be publishing it on our website. As I said already, my name is Jonas Hasselberg, I'm the CEO, and I have Linda Holjo as well with me here, our CFO, and will go through the Q2 results, and we will also allow for questions as we go through at the end of the presentation.
Again, the wise, it's our standard agenda. We will give you a bit of an introduction to the company for those of you who are new, talk a little bit about our market at a high level and some key developments in the quarter, and then we'll dive into the actual financial results of the quarter and will sum it up at the end. And like I said, we we'll make sure there's enough time for questions as well at the end.
So this is -- we are almost 30 years old with -- turning 30 next year. We're operating in 13 countries across Europe, and we're serving midsized and large-sized enterprise customers throughout Europe. We are turning over on a rolling 12 basis SEK 5 billion. We employed 1,200 very skilled and dedicated people or employees across our different businesses and across our footprint here in Europe.
We operate in the IT business, of course. And when we look at the IT business, there are 4 main drivers that we build our strategy around. You recognize this if you've been with us for a while. Clearly, the primary business -- the primary driver, I should say, for our customers is to transform their business. And a lot of our customers are driving, what we call, a digital transformation. They're using IT to make sure that they are more effective, smarter or better in their business operations. So that means that the dialogue we're having with our customers is very much around how do we get business involving their IT investments.
A lot of this is about getting value out of data. We obviously have a legacy and an expertise very focused on data. So storing data, accessing data, securing data and ultimately getting value out of data. So this is very much aligned with our area of expertise.
The second key trend in the marketplace is a technology trend, which is all-around cloud. Of course, this is nothing new. This is a trend that's been going on in the market for quite some time. And more specifically, something we call hybrid cloud. So the mix of multiple cloud deployments and cloud vendors. And these cloud technologies allows our customers to be more quick to market, more flexible in how to use your IT and also high degree of availability, less support quality, better quality and better access to the applications and to the data.
The third trend, which is maybe equally important but not as fun is the constantly increasing threat of cybercrime. So ensuring high degree of cybersecurity protection and compliance is a very important trend among our customers.
And last but definitely not least, we're seeing a rapidly increase in the focus on sustainability and IT as an enabler of our customers to become more sustainable. So not only do we as a company at Proact want to be very and believe that we are already a very sustainable company, but we are helping our customers to be more sustainable as well, which is great.
Obviously, there are some micro dynamics or market dynamics on a macro level, I should say, that are impacting us, and we do see that a little bit here in the quarter that inflation and risks of recessions are putting a little bit of a slower purchase cycle and a little bit less of a demand in our products and services due to the uncertainty of the near-term macro future or macroeconomic future. So those are a couple of trends in the marketplace and we base a lot of our strategy and a lot of our priorities on this, which takes us very quickly into our value proposition.
Obviously, we are incredibly customer focused, and we try to always work very closely with our customers to understand their business needs and adapt our offerings and our delivery to them. We break our offerings down to 5 core value props -- value propositions.
There's an advisory piece where we help our customers on the overarching architecture of their IT, how to transform their IT from whatever legacy our customers may have to modern architecture and the actual migration from one IT infrastructure to another. There's a lot of on the consulting side here. We have a lot of core propositions, of course, around storing the data, and then obviously to connect to the data. So wherever the data is stored could be up in the cloud, could be close to your premises, far away from your premises, connectivity becomes very important. And then security making sure wherever the data is, it's secure and can be recovered in case of disasters.
And then last, but definitely not least, our fifth value proposition is all about helping our customers getting that value out of the data. It could be compute platforms, artificial intelligence platforms, analytics and automation solutions, of course, through applications. Ultimately, this is where the data comes into play. You'll hear us speak a lot about hybrid cloud. We're going to explain that a little bit as we'll go through the slides here. It's all about the ability to allow our customers to mix and match different cloud worlds and really kind of doing cherry picking, pick the best of all the different worlds and we're looking at and the mix of keeping some of their IT solutions in their own data centers, in their own premises because it could be more cost effective, it could be regulatory reasons, they could be just business reasons to keep data and the applications very close to their premises.
And on the other hand, they want to leverage some of the hyperscalers, power of innovation like Microsoft or Google or Amazon and put things in the public cloud. Simple things like all our office applications are typically already in the public cloud. A lot of the application development happens in the public cloud. So we want to allow our customers to mix and match different types of cloud solutions. And in the middle of this is something we call the private cloud among which Proact providing cloud services to our customers.
So I'll try to just visualize this in a little bit more detail because for those who doesn't work on this on a daily basis, it's not always easy to understand. Typically, the infrastructure of our customers is located in 3 different places. That means that the data and the applications are located in 3 different places, to begin the customer data centers. This is the way it's been for the past many, many years. That's what we call on-premise. They can be, at the other end of this picture, in what we call the hyperscalers data centers. So the Microsoft and the Google and the Amazon of the world in their data centers. And then in the middle, we provide our own services to our customers, and we run them out of our data centers. So the data and the applications and the infrastructure can be in a Proact dataset.
So this would be the typical choices that our customer can choose from. And in any case, the important here is to get all of these 3 to coexist and work together in data to be able to flow between these different types of hosting. And the thinking here is, of course, you pick a cost-effective deployment referencing the old data center and you leverage the scale or the speed of innovation in the hyperscaler, you leverage the expertise that some of the Proact has around backup, storage, security, but you can still have a very seamless experience for your end users in terms of getting access to data, their applications and their workspaces. So this is what we call hybrid cloud, the ability to mix and match, the best of all 3 cloud deployments.
We have a very structured way of helping our customers to embark on this journey, which we call the hybrid cloud journey, and it starts, of course, by helping them on the strategy and advisory path. So effectively map out their existing environments, design what a future target environment look like, and then design and migrate and transform their business into that hybrid cloud world.
So we have a whole journey, if you will, that we have our customers on. And this could be a journey that takes, in some cases, quite a bit of time, could be a year or even multiple years depending on how much they want to transform their infrastructure and their IT and how complex their environments are. But we help our customers all along this journey all the way up until we actually manage and run the IT infrastructure for them so that the customer can focus on their business and their customers and their, let's say, their business-specific applications.
That's a bit of a background on what we want to do. We've launched a couple of new products over the recent quarters, that are all mapping into these different categories of cloud deployment. So obviously, on the far left of this picture under the customer data center are very traditional portfolio of storage, equipment, networking and compute solutions and our service -- management services on top of that, so we manage it on behalf of our customers. So this is pretty much a traditional deployment, a traditional IT solution.
In the middle, our own cloud services, our infrastructure service of Proact hybrid cloud, our relatively new managed container platform. We have what's called immutable storage. So storage solutions that are disconnected from the Internet to protect them from ransomware.
Other security services includes firewall services and manage detection and response. So we have a range of Proact cloud services that enables our customers to leverage the expertise we have so that they can focus their own expertise on their end customers and their own business. And then the most recent products in our portfolio just launched this past quarter.
We have 4 new, what we call cloud ops or cloud operations services, where we help our customers with their workloads in the Microsoft cloud. So this is a service management for Azure, service management for Workspace, service management for virtual workspace and then for detection and response, Microsoft's detection and response service [indiscernible].
So this allows our customers to put a lot of their work in the public cloud, but allow Proact to manage it for them in the case they don't have the expertise and the staffing themselves or if they want to put their focus on application development or helping customers.
So we believe we have a very broad portfolio now that helps our customers to, like we said, cherry pick the best of all these 3 worlds and they can put their effort on where they add business value themselves. So hopefully that helps understand what we do and how we execute on our strategy.
If you look at this quarter, in brief, a quarter where we definitely see a bit of the microeconomics affecting us. So the revenue growth was a little bit slower than the previous quarter. It's about 4%. Good growth, however, in our services business and in particular, in our annualized recurring revenue, ARR. So the combination of our cloud service revenue and our customer support services revenue, which grew by 19% year-over-year to almost SEK 1.7 billion on a yearly basis.
Good stable gross margins, which is great. And we have, and this is important, I will speak a little bit more about this. We have done a lot of cost measures and rightsizing of our business, both to align with a lot of the inflation pressure we saw in Q1, but also to make sure that we can invest in areas of growth for the future. So we'll come back to be here in a second and give you a little bit more details. Cloud sales landed at SEK 116 million, which is measured in TCV, total contract value and the EBITA declined a little bit down to SEK 81 million. And organically, we did see revenue decline. So that 4% was driven by currency effects and the acquisition of Sepago, which we did in Germany in July of last year.
So let's just briefly the quarter. Linda, let's talk a little bit more about the cost program specifically since it's important.
Yes. So we mentioned or we communicated around in our first quarter report, where we did see our costs increasing more than we were able to offset in price increases. So we started the execution already in Q1 and then did most of it now in the second quarter.
So the majority of the activities have been executed now and all of the restructuring costs that are connected to the program have been recognized in this quarter amounting to around SEK 20 million. The activities range across all of our different business areas, primarily it's administration costs and service delivery costs to ensure that we have a good cost base, competitive cost base. It's around all types of costs as well, some personnel costs, but also some costs related to external providers and cost of goods sold.
We have done activities that take our cost base down by between SEK 45 million and SEK 50 million compared to where we were in the first quarter this year, and that will happen this year. A few million of those we already saw in Q2, but the majority of the cost savings will occur in the third and fourth quarter. If we look at where we -- with the savings end this year and also offset with some of our known cost increases, we see that in total, our cost base will be, on an annual basis, SEK 60 million lower in -- going into 2024. So this -- we see ourselves as well positioned to offset some of the inflationary cost increases we've seen since last year.
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In the areas where we continue to see good demand and where we're well positioned and where we see the market growing. So to summarize, SEK 45 million to SEK 50 million in-year savings and the restructuring cost of about SEK 20 million. That has all been recognized as nonrecurring items or items in this quarter.
Then yes, over to the financials. So the highlights, total revenue growth, as Jonas said, of 4% to SEK 1.2 billion in the quarter. System sales is where we see the declines, a 6% decline, where Services is growing strongly, 20%. The adjusted EBITA is more or less flat with ending at SEK 81.4 million and a margin of 6.8%. The profit before tax where we have then the nonrecurring items of SEK 20 million and also some increases in interest costs is down by 45% compared to last year and at a margin of 2.9%.
So as usual, I will go through the details. We'll start with revenues and profitability, then the business units, then cash flow and balance sheet at the end. So of this revenue growth then, 2% was the organic decline. A few reasons for that. Generally, our second quarter last year was a record quarter. So it was a strong comparison quarter. In a lot of places, we continue to see good demand, but a few markets, there is some slowing demand, and I will talk about it on the business unit slides.
Acquisitions. So Sepago here contributed by 2% and currency effects accounted for a positive 4%, given that the weaker Swedish krona we have seen. New cloud contracts, as Jonas mentioned, at SEK 116 million. We don't feel yet that this is due to a significantly weaker market rather that these numbers are always impacted by some larger deals, and we had a little bit fewer of those this quarter and last quarter compared to some of the quarters last year. So that's our current estimate.
Then if we move to the Services side of that 20% growth, 9% is organic growth. And we can see that the cloud revenues here increased by 19%, of which 8% organically. And that revenue as well as the Support services revenue is, of course, connected to when -- how we've won contracts over the past few quarters. And we see the Support also then growing fast, 19% total growth, and that's then when we've taken those Support contracts earlier in the quarters with the strong System sales we've seen that's impacting the numbers now.
Consulting services growing by 25%. And here, we have Sepago, which we acquired in Germany, is primarily a consulting company. They also have some systems and cloud revenues, but primarily, it's the organic or the Consulting revenues that contribute to. But even excluding that, we do see a little bit of organic growth in Consulting and it's primarily in NOBA and Central. But also here as well as with the Systems revenues, we do see in a few markets somewhat slower demand impacting revenues in the quarter. And in total, Service revenues accounted for 45% of our total revenues.
On the right-hand side, the bottom slide, you see the recurring revenue development that's continuing to grow at a steady pace, 19% and 10% organic growth as a very healthy demand and healthy growth there, and the annualized level is now SEK 1.7 billion almost. And then last but not least, we have our Systems business, as you know, that is significantly more volatile than our Services business. And we see that a few quarters last year were really high, and this quarter, then slightly lower, 9% organic decline. We do see a few markets, in particular, Germany with slightly -- well, impacted by the demand. So not only the strong comparison quarter, but overall, it's still good demand.
Okay, then profitability wise, we have the adjusted EBITA that you see on the right-hand side, it's around where we were last year or decreased by 1%, which with the increase in revenues means that the margin is declining. When we look at the details, our gross margins are increasing, which we were very happy about. The Systems margins, we're able to maintain pricing so that the margins are unchanged. Services, which is where we've seen a little bit of margin pressure with cost inflation in a few quarters. Now we see the margins increasing. We've done efficiency measures in NOBA. We also see on price increases. And then, of course, this is where we're also expecting to see some of the effects of our cost program coming in. So we're happy to say that the margin is increasing.
Our SG&A costs are increasing, a lot of it due to acquisitions and currency, but also organically by 2%, and it is that cost inflation we're seeing also in some areas, the sales related costs are growing. The impact from the cost efficiency program will be seen here as well, a limited impact so far. Just generally then the EBITA decrease is due to that organically, the revenues are decreasing, while the SG&A costs organically are going up. That's the main explanation for that reduction in EBITA margin. And earnings per share then decreasing with that flat EBITA, also impacted then by the nonrecurring items and increased financial costs.
If we then go into the different business units, we see business unit, Nordics and Baltics, a little bit of organic decrease here. And it's the Systems business, but you can see on the right hand here that it was a very strong second quarter last year. And so that's -- we continue to see good demand in this region.
Good growth in Services in all areas, so both Consulting, Cloud and Support services. And the EBITA margin is then increasing, the EBITA as well. It's primarily due to the lower sales and administration expenses although also the efficiencies we've done in the Services organization here, which we talked about a few quarters back, is now showing results here. So the Services gross margin is also increasing.
And then we have U.K., here is the region where we do see quite a good organic growth in revenues, primarily in Systems. It's an organic increase of 48%. And here, as you can see on the right-hand side, it's primarily a weak comparison quarter. So they had some deals that were taken in Q1 last year and fewer in Q2. So generally, there is no big difference in the market demand here compared to other business units. Services also growing here, primarily cloud services growing fast. We have won some big contracts that are now generating revenues. U.K. is one of the areas where the Consulting services is decreasing organically with somewhat lower demand in a few areas.
The EBITA margin increases, that's primarily due to the increase in revenues, partly offset here by higher sales and administration expenses. Then we have West here, there's an organic decrease in revenues, primarily in Systems, 11% organic decrease. It's a slightly slower market here. Services is growing 2% organically. It's primarily -- or good growth in Support services primarily. Consulting revenues here is a second region where we're seeing Consulting revenues impacted by lower demand in a few areas. But a little bit complex in some areas. We have strong demand for specific expertise that we're still having a problem recruiting at the pace we want. So that's also impacting revenues negatively, but for a completely different reason.
Here is the region with the lowest EBITA margin, close to zero. And it is one of the regions where we've seen the biggest impact from cost increases. So it's impacting both gross margins and the Services, in particular, with increased costs that we haven't been able to completely pass on to customers and also increased SG&A due to inflations. The external staff that we forced to use when we are not able to hire enough people also is more expensive, so that's still also impacting margins negatively.
Then we have our last business unit, Central, which is Germany and Czech. Here, we did see, as we mentioned in our report, Germany, quite some impact on from customers being hesitant to place orders in the macroeconomic uncertainty. Systems revenue decreasing organically by 47%. We have the acquisition of Sepago contributing positively to the revenues though. So in Services, there is good organic growth, and that's especially in Support services and Consulting services. So a little bit different from some of the other business units. The EBITA margin and EBITA are decreasing, and it's primarily that organically decreasing revenues that are impacting combined with the sales and administration expenses are increasing organically. So that was all of the business units. So a little bit of different impacts in different places. But as we said, the cost efficiency program we're doing in all of the business units expect it to have a positive impact across the group in the third and fourth quarter.
If we go to cash flow, strong cash flow in the quarter. We had a positive change in working capital with our payables increasing more than what our receivables increased. No major investment activities, and if you look at our financing activities, we have the leasing liabilities. We pay off -- the dividend was paid out in the quarter of SEK 51 million, and then we actually repaid parts of our recurring credit facility due to the strong cash flow of SEK 109 million. So we ended the quarter at a strong cash position of SEK 443 million.
Year-to-date, if we go to the next slide, it's a similar story, the negative -- a small negative change in working capital of minus SEK 17 million. Not a lot of investments in fixed assets and the cash flow from financing activities, the same trend here, more or less same repayments of loans, some repayments of leasing liabilities and the dividends.
And then if we go to the next slide, that's the balance sheet. We see how this translates into their equity ratio of 23%. Our net debt if we include the leasing liabilities is SEK 199 million. So we've generated cash flow during the last 12 months to finance both acquisition of Sepago and our dividends. We have strong financing position or financial position. We have unutilized overdrafts of SEK 155 million. We have SEK 240 million unutilized of our 3-year rolling credit facility, which we extended after the closing of the quarter. So it's now, in total, 5 years. And we've also closed an additional facility after the close of the quarter of EUR 20 million. So we now have a very good position to do acquisitions in line with our strategy and generally invest in our business.
The next slide then shows where we are in terms of our financial goals, which we look at on a rolling 12-month basis. So as you know, we've had strong growth for several quarters, and this was the first one with slightly slower growth. And so that 12-month rolling sales growth is 25%, so quite significantly above our targets. Our EBITA margin for the 12 months going down a little bit to 6.4%, which, of course, is one of the reasons we have initiated our cost program. Net debt to EBITDA at a low there, 0.41, so continues below our target. Return on capital employed, decreasing slightly from end of last year to 16.2%. If we adjust for the nonrecurring items, which are included here, it would actually be increasing a little bit. But of course, something we expect to have a positive impact from the cost program on.
And our dividend, we paid out SEK 1.85 per share in May, which is 27% of our net income, so right in line with our dividend policy. So that was the quick summary of the financials.
Thank you, Linda. And just to wrap up then, I think it's important to understand the cost efficiency program is done and implemented, and we expect good impact here for the rest of the year. We see a good healthy growth in our services, which is perfectly aligned with our strategy, of course. And then just to highlight as a part of that, the annualized recurring revenue continues to increase at a good pace. So thank you for listening. We'll open up for questions.
Fredrik, you are first. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Can You hear me?
We hear you loud and clear.
Yes.
Nice. I want to start with administrative expenses. I mean, they declined quite sharply relative to last quarter. Is that an early effect of the cost savings program? Or is there anything else you want to highlight?
So it's -- some of it is the cost program, but it's also one of these areas where we have things like our share programs, incentive programs and the vacation effects that effect. So it is a little bit volatile from that aspect. So that's why we're not highlighting the impact from the cost saving program yet because it's not fully that.
Okay. So we -- everything else equal, we could expect some further declines given that you succeed with your cost savings program then?
Yes. But as I said, it is a seasonal -- some seasonal variations in it as well.
Yes. Okay. And also, you mentioned efficiency measures in the Nordics and Baltics business area, and they seem to have paid off, at least in this quarter. And that business unit has been the best performer, margin wise for long. So -- I mean what can you do over the long run in the other business units to approach the margin we see in the Nordics and the Baltics?
Well, there's a number of different things that explains the differences. But it's -- we continue that part that we've been doing for quite a while, which is not perfectly in line with your point, Fredrik, Nordics is still relatively high share on Systems, targeting a slightly different segment than we see in other regions, but the shift to Services is the main driver for us to both generate margins or improve margins, I should say, but also a little bit stabilize the volatility that the Systems business in general gives us.
You've followed us for a long time, Fredrik, so you know that we get quarters with high Systems revenue and then there can be a quarter following with a slightly lower. And the more we shift to Services and cloud services specifically, the more we even out that volatility.
Okay. And also on the growth in -- organic growth in recurring revenue, it has been quite good for a while now. And I mean we have seen slightly lower intake of cloud contracts. And you also mentioned that some markets are a bit softer. I mean, should we expect that trend to continue? Is it reasonable to assume or is it some kind of catch-up effect from the pandemic perhaps that are coming in right now?
No. It's not a catch-up effect. It's a combination of -- well, it's a combination of strong growth in Support and Support business is tied to Systems. So we did have a very strong Systems business for many quarters now, and that generates additional Support contracts, which is good. So some of they are coming from there. And then there is a good demand for cloud services. And we don't -- while we see a little bit of slower pace at this particular point because of the uncertainty, the demand is definitely there. So we expect the ARR to continue to grow over the longer term.
Then, Daniel, I think you have your hand up as well.
Yes, absolutely. I have a couple of questions, please. The first one is on the cost savings program. You mentioned that some will be in OpEx and some will be on COGS. Can you give any split on that or any indication of the split?
It's pretty -- I would say, pretty equally spread. I think what will make it hard for you when you try to model is that we have all of the other things happening. So we have different types of cost increases and other sort of recur, especially in the COGS and COGS side, it will be very dependent on how revenues develop as well.
Exactly. So that was kind of my follow-up question, the SEK 60 million lower cost base in 2024, obviously, what do we compare with? Do we compare with the 2022 cost base? Or should we compare with what it should have been in '24 if you have initiated a cost reduction? Or how should we think about the base?
So it's -- we're looking at the Q1 cost base without seasonal effects, if you will. And based on that, if you take that 4x then, but with seasonal effects, then we will be SEK 60 million lower. So it's not going to be -- it's not straightforward that it sort of all falls down to the bottom line because, of course, there's a lot of different things impacting. But we've taken measures that like-for-like take down the cost from Q1 by SEK 60 million on an annualized basis.
I see. I see. And what we can control is then basically SEK 30 million from that base that we can calculate and then the other SEK 30 million will come in COGS, but that will be highly dependent on sales, obviously. The absolute number. If sales grows a lot, COGS will still increase. But the sales declines a lot, they will obviously decrease and we won't know what is what, I guess.
Yes. And I think the half equal -- I mean that's a very, very, very rough estimate. So it's not exactly a SEK 30 million, SEK 30 million, but it's not sort of hugely skewed to one or the other.
Okay. So maybe what we can control is maybe to attach a SEK 30 million annual lower cost on the pure OpEx side. That's maybe a fair assumption and the rest will come in the gross margin rather than putting SEK 60 million lower OpEx straight versus Q1 because that will be an overstatement.
Yes. Exactly. Yes.
Okay. Excellent. And then...
You understand this already, but we want to use Q1 as an absolute baseline. So we don't want to work with cost avoidance. We want to do actual real cost savings. So the -- that's why we use Q1 as the baseline.
Yes, I see. I see. Okay. And then in terms of the market here, I mean, AI is on everyone's lips in this quarter, obviously. And one trend could be increasing the need and demand for storing data, which is obviously positive for you. On the other hand, older data is not that relevant for today's AI models, which maybe could create a lower appetite for storing older data and just storing the last 1, 2, 3 years, and in combination with lower appetite variety CapEx in the really near term. What is the main driver from what's happening in relation to AI on data storage in your view?
It's driving more data storage, not less, and it's also driving more compute capacities. So from our perspective, it's a positive driver and use old and new data in a clever way. There's a general topic that has nothing to do with AI in terms of waste in data. We store a lot of that is not being used, but it has nothing to do with AI. And again, we don't see a huge drive for people to kind of throw away data, but they may be using more cost-effective storage to store unused data or seldom use data. But on AI specifically, you're going to see growth in data, not declining in data.
Okay. That's helpful. Secondly, on cloud migration, what are companies really doing here? When we look at the cloud data, the cloud revenues from the big U.S. tech companies, they have seen decelerating growth rates, especially if you adjust for price increases. But do you see a trend that some companies would like to migrate faster to the cloud to reduce costs? Or will they just see longer lead times because they would like to postpone IT CapEx? Or how do you see the cloud migration here near term?
So I think cloud migration will continue at the pace we've seen in the past. What has happened over the past year or two, maybe it's a much more nuanced approach and we even see customers coming back from the cloud for all sorts of reasons, cost being one of them, but also being in better control and make sure that you trust your data is the second one. So we definitely see customers continue to move to the cloud, including the, what we call, the public cloud or hyperscaler cloud, and that journey will continue. But it's much more nuanced and precise than it was maybe a year or two ago.
But they are more precise on why do they want to use the public cloud and how do they actually go there. They don't want to lose control, they don't want to lose control of data governance, they don't want to lose control of cost, they don't want to lose control of security. So there's a more, I guess, nuanced and maybe professional move towards cloud rather than the blanket, everything should go now quickly.
Okay, I see. And then finally, on M&A, you were talking about the solid and strong financial position. So financially, you can absolutely handle M&A, but first of all, you will do a cost reduction program. So internally, it could be a little bit strange to do to go and buy a company if you say you would like to save money and save costs.
And then secondly, management capacity and what regions you can do within, it's difficult to do in the regions you do the cost reduction program, obviously, and the cost reduction program, in my view, seems to be targeting the Service organization a bit, and that's where you have been doing acquisitions historically as well. So should we expect that you use the financial headroom for acquisitions here ahead? Or should we expect to have a couple of quarters more muted because of what you're doing internally? Or how should we think about it?
No, you should think about us continuing our acquisition story. We do have the luxury of being able to rotate as we call them our acquisitions. So we don't land in the same team or in the same region every time. So the last 2 were in our business in Central and Germany specifically. But we still have capacity in terms of management capacity in other regions and maybe particularly in Nordics and Baltics and the U.K.
The cost program has been executed, as Linda mentioned, so the vast majority of the activity is already done and implemented. So from a management perspective, that's already done. So I think we're capable. For us, it's more the continued work we do in building pipeline. We're very picky with our acquisitions, as you know, from before. We integrate them typically quite heavily into our operations because we want to meet our customers as one company. So we want culture, operations, target customer, vision for the future to be very much aligned. So for us, it's mostly by identifying the right targets at the right price points.
I see. That sounds promising. That's all for me. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Daniel. Thank you. Are there questions?
All right. Thank you so much. We mentioned it here in the beginning this call is recorded and will be published on our website. So if you want to reenjoy it, you will find it there. The slides are also available on the website already for your reference. So again, thank you very much. We will meet again in second half of October, but before then, enjoy summer. And in case you have them, enjoy your vacations. Thank you very much.
Thank you.