Greetings Inderes viewers! Today we are at Aiforia's office discussing the autumn's events with CEO Jukka Tapaninen. Hello Jukka! How has your autumn gone so far?

Hello Antti. Yes, the autumn has got off to a fast start, so things are going well if you ask about it in general terms. But perhaps there are some details to discuss.

Great, let's go. Let's get into the details. Well, a recent piece of news was this PathAI agreement, and it particularly emphasized the role of the US market in this. So what kind of opportunities does this agreement concretely open up for you in the US, and can you describe how much your market presence will now expand there in the Americas?

Well yes, so this was an interesting deal, as I have always said. This industry is consolidating. Now it seems that when these image management systems are acquired, and this deal was such that Roche bought PathAI for, if I remember correctly, 750 million plus 300 million tied to various metrics. And these have both been our partners already before, that is PathAI as well as Roche, and we have also cooperated regarding this AI with them. Now what does this concretely do? This deal means that now we are partnering more deeply with them.

Of course, we were already there in San Diego a week ago together presenting at their booth at a big event. But what is even more concrete is of course these customer accounts and sales. What is behind PathAI? So it concretely opens up big opportunities there, because PathAI is a big supplier. Among others, to Quest and many other such large hospital systems or lab chains and so on, that we will move forward together there and then see whether sales happen or not. But the market is big, and there are a few strong image management players in addition to PathAI, with whom we also partner. Indeed.

Well, you have had quite a few partnerships come in during this year, during last year, so how would you describe the progress of these partnerships in the big picture, and are there some specific ones that have progressed particularly well commercially? What would you like to highlight?

Well, if we talk about these image management players, PathAI is of course a big opportunity now. Proscia is another American image management manufacturer. With them we have a cooperation arrangement that now opens up big private lab chains for us, surprisingly enough in Europe, so that is interesting, that they are strong there, and all of these are important.

Plus then individual deals are made of course with many partners, and Siemens is certainly there, which was done a year ago, is now moving forward strongly commercially. It hasn't brought us much yet during this year, but now we have built up the pipeline, and we are part of their offering, so we believe that will also start working. At some point here.

Well, France is currently an especially important market for you, and new hospitals joined there, and you also established a subsidiary in France. What is the situation with this subsidiary? Have you reached full speed there, or is the build-up phase still ongoing?

Let's say that sales have been made well, and the next phase both in France and in general for us is that we have over 20 such larger clinical customer accounts agreed. We have delivered seven of them now, which are in production, so production must of course still be increased, but some have been delivered there. Usage has not yet started, and some are in the delivery phase. This, if you think about our revenue base, is a big deal.

But France as a country has progressed well, and we have Europe's largest hospital network there, AP-HP. The Paris hospital district, 38 hospitals. Now we have three delivered there. Now we won five more, and this is regarding prostate cancer. But of course we want to sell all the other AI models there in the future as well. That is a big opportunity.

Then there is this. Significant is the Institut Curie, which is a good reference, a well-known name. The city of Nantes is a big one. It is definitely moving forward. And what I have said before. We have also gained inclusion in public-sector-funded projects in France, meaning they support the transition of hospitals. To AI-assisted diagnostics, and we are involved as the only AI supplier. Meaning this system funds the first year. The transformation into the hospital and enables the adoption of AI. Because of that, France is a big opportunity for us.

Well, otherwise regarding sales you told us in the summer that you are investing more in sales, so how are these investments progressing, and have you managed to make the planned recruitments or are you still? Is this ramp-up still facing challenges?

Let's put it this way, that the most significant recruitment was the new sales director, so he has got off to a good start, and we have a few sales positions open in the US and Germany at the moment, but principally the organization is in shape so that we can start scaling forward.

Well, you mentioned the consolidation in the industry there, and news has indeed emerged. There was this Roche-PathAI deal, and then another was Agilent's acquisition of Proscia. So how do you see this in the big picture, this consolidation, and what is its significance for you? Does it change your position somehow, and what does this entire industry consolidation look like?

Well, this, as I said, was expected. Meaning this is a completely new market. Where are we? First of all, there is this digitalization of pathology. Where there are scanners, where there are image management systems, where there are lab systems? And then there is this AI-assisted diagnostics, where we usually are, so how this has progressed is that first you have to acquire a scanner so you can digitize images. After that you have this image management system and storage and sharing, which includes Proscia and PathAI. Sectra and this type of companies. And after that is diagnostics.

Diagnostics is what then brings the ultimate return on that investment from the customer's perspective. So all of these will happen, and previously it has gone such that these pioneer customers who have bought, they have bought from us, they have bought from these image management suppliers and many others. Meaning they have had to make contracts with three, four different companies so they can get a single solution. And it is now to be expected that this will start to consolidate. And the first phase is scanners. Well, that perhaps becomes more of a commodity market, meaning they all produce high-quality images, but after that the software part is this storage and image sharing. It is clearly the next one, because all images are digitized. They need to be stored, they need to be shared, and then next comes this diagnostics side, where we are. So now it is expected that when these larger image management vendors have consolidated, things on the diagnostics side will happen next.

Well, from Aiforia's perspective? If you get a sufficiently good offer, is the answer yes, or do you want to develop the company independently?

Well, let's say that for some strange reason our share price has weighed on so low at the moment that there is probably no enthusiasm to go selling it at that. But things are happening in the industry. And what is of course significant is that we are certainly the leader on the diagnostics side. We have the most such solutions already in implementation with customers, and we have a good pipeline there. We have already signed those contracts, so in a way we are the market leader, but since it's a new market, there is no serious competitor there, or by no means anyone doing it better. And we aren't doing extremely well yet either, but it is expected that that market will take off very soon.

So, the shareholders will decide if the company is sold someday or not. But. It is expected that something will happen there now. But of course we must now on our part improve revenue and of course the company's value upwards before that.

Here we are now, with just a couple of months of the year left. But what are your achievable goals for the rest of the year? What are you focusing on, and where do you want to succeed during these final months of the year?

Well, typically Q4 has been our biggest month when we close deals. So our default assumption is indeed that some significant deals will be made by the end of the year. And as I said, then moving into 2027. We have strongly focused on getting, first of all, the sales organization in shape and then having enough things to sell. In other words, we have succeeded in growing the pipeline quite significantly larger, and we are aiming to get the revenue up next year and close a sufficient number of deals.

But where that revenue comes from, it comes partly from these already existing contracts, from which we know that a certain baseline is starting to emerge. Plus then that we have a strong focus on getting these already made contracts delivered and into use, so we can record it as revenue, and then we will make a few new significant deals on top of that, so I have a quite strong belief that we are heading in the right direction.

Thank you very much for the interview and good luck with the rest of the year!

All right, thank you.