Digital Workforce Q4’25 flash comment: Report was interesting in several ways

Translation: Original published in Finnish on 2/18/2026 at 9:35 am EET.

Source: Inderes

Digital Workforce published its financial statements for 2025 this morning. Revenue grew strongly, driven by the acquisition, and was in line with our expectations. Profitability improved clearly but missed expectations. The company has secured promising new and strategically important contracts early in the year, improving confidence. However, there is still work to be done. The company's guidance is in line with our estimates, with an even slight positive surprise in terms of profitability. The dividend proposal exceeded our forecasts, and it is somewhat surprising that the growth company decided to propose a high dividend. 

Revenue grew strongly as expected, driven by an acquisition

Digital Workforce's revenue grew by 21% to 8.6 MEUR in Q4 and was in line with our estimate. Growth was driven by the acquisition of e18, and we estimate organic growth to have been 2%. Organic growth is somewhat better than the overall IT services sector (Q3 -2%), but slower than the previous year and the big picture potential. By business area, "higher value" continuous services grew by 15%, contrary to our forecast of 31% growth. Expert services, on the other hand, grew by 34% and clearly outperformed the 10% growth forecast. The e18 acquisition was expected to generate mostly continuous revenue, so the revenue growth structure is surprising.

The company has already commented earlier that the Agent Workforce solution creates good and scalable growth opportunities for the first half of 2026. In Q4, the company made progress with expanding its continuous services business and Outsmart automation platform with agentic AI (Agent Workforce) products. The company reports that several new, transformative agentic AI solutions were deployed for production use, especially for financial services and insurance customers. Collaboration with technology partners increased, and the company has invested in a project that is central to its strategy. The aim is to build scalable and repeatable enterprise-grade Agentic AI products. The company announced new contract wins for agentic solutions early in the year.

Earnings remained below expectations in Q4

Earnings levels improved in Q4 but fell short of expectations. Gross profit was 39%, which is a clear improvement over the 33% recorded in the comparison period. This increase in gross profit is related to better utilization rates of own resources, improved contracts, and efficiency measures. EBITDA was 0.58 MEUR and 0.75 MEUR when adjusted for one-off items, which was below our estimate of 0.9 MEUR. This corresponds to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 8.7%, which is above the 4% of the comparison period but below our estimate of 11%. However, profitability is still constrained by strategic investments in the big picture. In general, the earnings level and profitability at Digital Workforce are sensitive on a quarterly basis, as the scale is still small, and thus the start and end of individual larger projects and the timing of investments can clearly affect the profitability level of a single quarter. Depreciation was slightly lower than expected, offset by slightly higher-than-expected financial expenses. Thus, earnings per share were EUR 0.00, one cent below the comparison period. EPS for the whole year was -EUR 0.07.

At the beginning of 2025, the company published a new dividend policy with the aim of paying a dividend of at least 30% of the profit for the financial year. The company's board is proposing a dividend of EUR 0.09 per share for 2025, which is well above our estimate of EUR 0.04 as well. It is somewhat surprising why dividends are being paid out instead of investing in growth when cash flow is not yet very strong. In absolute terms, the difference in dividends is not significant, but the message it sends is puzzling. On the other hand, cash flow should improve in 2026. 

Guidance well in line with our forecasts

Digital Workforce expects the group's revenue to grow by at least 15% in 2026 compared to 2025. Additionally, the company expects adjusted EBITDA to be 6–12% of revenue. Prior to the Q4 report, we had forecast the company's revenue to grow by 20% in 2025, driven by an acquisition (organically 7%). In addition, we estimated adjusted EBIT would grow to 2.7 MEUR, which corresponds to 8% of revenue (2025: 1.1 MEUR). The growth outlook is also supported by new contract wins, particularly a significant contract worth 1.4 MUSD per year with a large US healthcare organization that was announced just before the report. This will boost confidence in the company's competitiveness in the US market as well.