Nixu Corporation’s growth ambition for 2022-2025

Nixu Corporation Stock Exchange Release on September 13, 2021 at 8.00 AM EEST

European cybersecurity company, Nixu hosts a Capital Markets Day today, on September 13, 2021 in a virtual format. Simultaneously the company publishes its mid-term growth ambition.

Nixu published its past growth ambition statement during fall 2019. Due to the volatile and unforeseeable business environment caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the company decided to halt its growth ambition in spring 2020. Instead of growth, the focus was placed on business continuity of its operations for the duration of the pandemic outbreak.

With the increase in vaccination rates, the societies are opening, and the business climate is returning to normal. During the pandemic, digitalization has gained ground fast due to remote working of employees and overall surge in digital business. However, according to research companies and industry comparisons, the investments in cybersecurity have not followed at the same pace during the pandemic. This increases the risks to digitalization as the multitude of cyberthreats is increasing fast.

In 2018, Nixu refreshed its strategy, according to which the company aims to be 1) the best workplace for cybersecurity professionals and 2) the trusted, go-to partner for cybersecurity services for digitalization in the Northern Europe. Between 2014-2020 Nixu has grown with a compound annual growth rate of 24 % with the pandemic period being a period of lower growth.

Nixu now sees the opportunity to return to a proper growth track and therefore publishes the following ambition measures originating from its growth strategy. The growth ambition, and the strategy behind it, will be explained to investors in more detail on Monday, September 13, 2021, at Nixu’s virtual Capital Markets Day event. Further information on the event and the webcast details can be found on Nixu Investor website at https://www.nixu.com/CMD2021.

• Nixu believes that the cybersecurity services market growth will return to about 10% yearly level. Nixu aims to grow faster than the market utilizing both organic and inorganic growth. The organic growth can be driven from the services already in Nixu’s portfolio by especially widening Nixu’s presence in markets outside of Finland in the Northern Europe. M&A driven growth will, at the beginning of period, focus on the existing markets.

• Nixu has previously invested heavily in building up its international operations and new service models, which have had a negative effect on the profitability of the company. Nixu is now aiming for a more balanced profitable growth approach where EBITDA percentage of the company should increase year-on-year and reach 15% of revenue level in 2025.

• Nixu expects its technology-based managed continuous services to be growing faster than the professional services. However, in the managed service portfolio the focus will also be increasingly on value-adding continuous professional services that are working tightly together with the technology components to create a premium offering. Nixu aims for the share of continuous recurring revenue to be above two-thirds of Nixu overall revenue. During H1/2021 the share was 36% of the revenues.

The growth levels defined above are intended to illustrate the ambition set by the company and its Board of Directors. They do not, however, replace the company's financial guidance on an annual basis. The company's outlook for 2021 remains unchanged: “Nixu estimates its revenue to remain on the same level and its EBITDA to decrease from 2020. Simultaneously investments to growth are increased.” Revenue during 2020 was MEUR 53.3 and EBITDA MEUR 2.9.

The cybersecurity market is growing with digitalization

The global cybersecurity services market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 8 % in 2022-2025 (Gartner). The markets where Nixu is present, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and the Benelux are showing slightly above average growth figures.

The cybersecurity market is still very fragmented and immature. The company expects the market to consolidate and mature over the next four years so that clients will increasingly place their trust in a limited number of larger companies.

Nixu has gained the position of a trusted partner for many of its clients. With this position, the customers wish Nixu to solve more and diverse challenges. Hence, Nixu’s holistic services expand the average size of a customer relationship. Typically, Nixu's customer base is very stable, and its customers are served by Nixu for a long time, allowing the building of customer-specific expertise.

Nixu Corporation

Further information:
Chief Executive Officer Petri Kairinen, Nixu Corporation
telephone +358 40 832 1832, e-mail: petri.kairinen@nixu.com

Distribution:
Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd
Principal media
www.nixu.com

Nixu in brief:
Nixu is a cybersecurity services company on a mission to keep our digital society working. Our passion is to help organizations embrace digitalization securely. Partnering with our clients, we provide practical solutions for ensuring business continuity, easy access to digital services and data protection. We aim to provide the best workplace for our team of about 400 cybersecurity professionals with a hands-on attitude. Nixu’s roots are in Northern Europe, but we serve our enterprise clients worldwide. Nixu’s shares are listed on Nasdaq Helsinki’s official list.
www.nixu.com