R&D is probably roughly okay.
Sales and marketing should be reviewed for efficiency. With the same cost, more top-line revenue should be generated if the business is on a healthy foundation.
Admin costs should be significantly reduced further. And office space extravagances to a minimum. For this kind of operator, it might be appropriate to go fully remote and get rid of the premises.
But the direction seems to be quite the opposite. It’s no wonder why investors’ faith is being tested.
This is a rather light operator that merely monitors the Elements EDR solution; this is not really sufficient for anything nowadays, as there should be much more.
A Dutch operator spoke about a bunch of programs, meaning in addition to elements, there will be additional programs, but surely that doesn’t mean that Ws’s products would become useless… Their client companies had up to 3000 employees and 60% were non-profit organizations.
I wonder why the trading volume has been close to 200,000 euros almost every day recently, when a few months ago it was around a few tens of thousands.
When someone buys, does it encourage others? Tax-loss selling?
When I recently watched the November investor day video, and Riikola also praised it as cheap (EV/Revenue), I bought on Friday and today a total of approx. 153,000 shares. Always a plus when you get it cheaper than Heikkilä 
There are still many competitors.
https://www.teiss.co.uk/events/teissawards2025?tab=categories#companysme
With all these kinds of random “competitions”, one must always remember to check what they actually are. For example, in this case, it’s a competition where companies have had to specifically register themselves.
When one looks at who is nominated in the “Best Endpoint Protection” category, one can indeed say that this is not a Champions League, but rather some district-level amateur league competition. More or less all the real players (those recognized by Gartner or who were in the Mitre comparison mentioned earlier in the thread) are missing. But their marketing teams certainly don’t need to spend time on such things.
Withsecure bombards its social media channels with these, but in my opinion, they don’t have much value for an investor. The technology industry is full of various award galas, whose criteria are often quite vague (often, quite by chance, the event sponsors are the award recipients, keynote speakers, etc.).
In fact, I argue that it’s even bad publicity for WS to be competing in such a low-tier league; I wouldn’t dare to advertise that win anywhere when it’s seen who WS implicitly considers its competitors.
It’s a bad mistake to pay to participate in something like that; WS’s marketing side isn’t quite on the ball right now.
Has there been any new information about the consulting divestment? Weren’t negotiations supposed to be ongoing there, it just feels like quite long negotiations… Well, maybe this year
I just can’t even bother to think about when the x-date for divestment is. It will come when it comes, and in the meantime, accumulating shares is not a bad option for me.
2025 and even the Helsinki stock exchange is starting to show signs of spring; things will slowly start to sprout from under the soil.
Yes, the revenue and margin will come for WS too, exactly according to the strategy. (Or maybe not)
That’s what I still believe, despite the fact that every move, direction, and action of WS is trashed on the forum for some reason, which is interesting in the sense that if a company is considered completely doomed by someone, why would they bother to spend a single second of energy on it?
At least I myself never participated in, for example, Lehto Group’s discussions because there was no reason to. I haven’t had faith in it, so there’s been no reason to go there condemning the company. That would be quite a waste of time.
Based on the company’s previous interim report and investor day, the ship seems to be heading towards a turnaround. This naturally requires the achievement of targets, which the latest incentive program also seems to be guiding towards. Perhaps the worst skeletons have already been cleaned out of the closet; write-downs for consulting activities have been made at least moderately. I am not attaching those presentations as some time has passed since them and their information has already been discussed here, including my own comments (found at https://www.withsecure.com/fi/about-us/investor-relations/materials).
The largest owners have slightly increased their holdings over the past two months:
The largest reducers during the same period:
In about a month, the 2024 data will tell more precisely where the ship has moved as a result of the actions already taken.
Already eagerly awaiting the annual review to be published in less than a month. I wonder if we’ll finally turn for the better? Does anyone else have thoughts/guesses on what the upcoming review will contain?
Indeed, some kind of future outlook and vision must already start showing in numbers if they are at all serious about the “rule of 30” talk.
Maybe not yet in the upcoming one, but let’s hope there’s some kind of sign of this in the future as well.
Somehow, I foolishly keep believing in this vision because I can’t find any reasonable reasons why it couldn’t materialize, at least almost.
We don’t have to wait much longer to see what the direction is, and it’s certainly upwards, just unclear with what kind of curve.
Perhaps we’ll get 2.5 words about divestment, and probably the last word of the sentence will be left unfinished, and we still won’t get more out of it.
We’ll see, I’ll invest a bit more before the press conference starts.
WithSecure Plc has today signed an agreement by which its cybersecurity consulting business is sold to Neqst.
Neqst is a Swedish investment company that focuses on companies developing and utilizing technology.
The parties have agreed on a company value of 22.5 million euros. Of this, 60% will be paid in cash, as a debt-free purchase price upon the closing of the transaction. 40% of the purchase price is variable and based on the business results for 2025 and 2026. It will be paid in two installments at the beginning of 2026 and 2027.
The transaction is expected to close during the second quarter of 2025. The closing is subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals.
This adventure proved costly. Nsense, for example, was bought for 18 million (2015) and MWR for approximately one hundred million (2018). Of course, there have been other pieces in the puzzle, and perhaps they have generated some revenue in the meantime.
A lot has also been written down, and more will be written down. In the press release:
\u003e WithSecure estimates it will record an impairment loss of approximately 13 million euros in the last quarter of 2024. The write-down will be presented as part of the discontinued operations’ result.
But it’s good that the matter is finally nearing completion and the over year-long hanging in limbo of that consulting will end.
Inderes had estimated the value at 23 million (EV/Sales 0.7), so not a bad guess at all..
Alright, great that the deal was finally closed! For me, the sum-of-the-parts neutral debt-free value was 23 MEUR, so it hit the ballpark well 
Of course, now 40% will be paid in 2026-2027, so considering the time value of money, we’ll be slightly below that own estimate. But all in all, positive news, and I would be very surprised if WithSecure’s stock doesn’t react positively today.
It’s great how the analysis number matches the press release number, but did I misunderstand something badly, as we didn’t get anywhere near 23 M€ from this?
In the acquisition, 13.5 M€ will be paid to WithSecure for the business, plus an additional purchase price of 0 - 9 M€ depending on the business’s results in 2026 - 2027. Because money has a time value and there are risks involved in the realization of the additional purchase price, the value of that additional purchase price is well below 9 M€, meaning the value of the business sale is also significantly below the 22.5 M€ that WithSecure misleadingly communicated to investors.
