Words from our CEOs – Annual report 2024

We now operate under our new brand, Eidra, which we believe better represents who we are, what we can do for our clients, our Scandinavian heritage, and our global ambitions. A brand that during 2024 also manifested in our new landmark head office in the heart of Stockholm. 

Our own changes aside, 2024 has been a year where great change is needed more than ever for businesses, brands, and people — and for the world at large. A year of geopolitical turmoil, financial recession, and a year when climate change has become even more real. It was also a year when AI became ubiquitous and sustainable technologies proliferated. In this environment, which presented both daunting challenges and exciting opportunities, we have proved that our concept of duality — the collaboration between the very best people in consultancy, creativity, engineering, AI, and data — matters more than ever for driving change and growth for our clients.

Thanks to our concept of duality, we have not only maintained a steady course in our largest region, Sweden, despite challenging market conditions — largely due to a remarkable year for our digital product consultants, Umain, and our brand consultancy, Kurppa Hosk — but we have also expanded our businesses in other regions. 

In Norway we saw organic growth and also joined forces with Oceans, one of Norway’s leading agency groups. In the Netherlands, we picked up speed and growth thanks to impressive performances by both our engineering and design practices Q42 and Fabrique, fueled by our local management consultancy practice. We’ve also seen extremely strong organic growth in the US, where we made our first acquisition in the region by joining forces with digital product consultants Punchkick in Chicago. The US now accounts for 20% of our total revenues. 

We opened an office in London to build a bridgehead between Europe and the US and to support our growing business in the UK. At the end of the year, our brand and design consultancy companies — Kurppa Hosk, Goods, Neue, and Heydays — merged to form a single global entity under the Kurppa Hosk name, serving our growing portfolio of international brands. In total, we welcomed 300 incredibly talented colleagues to the Eidra team.

We have also intensified our efforts in Eidra’s sustainability practice and made significant investments in our AI initiatives, as AI is clearly becoming the disruptor we anticipated. This calls for great change — both in our own ways of working and for our clients.

During the year, we have helped the world’s leading global food service retailer to scale and strengthen customer relationships across 65 markets. We helped rebrand and transform one of the largest truck and bus manufacturers in North America. We helped one of the world’s most important and renowned art institutions to bring their extraordinary art experience to a global audience through digital. We supported one of the most iconic brands in video gaming to build their global online community, a multinational engineering company to build their products and experience for EV charging, a new venture in sustainable heat pumps to develop their business, brand, and products, and one of the world’s largest fashion retailers to streamline their design processes with AI.

All of the above is made possible by our ability to collaborate closely with our clients and across our companies. We use our management consulting capabilities to orchestrate our different fields of expertise, to lead major transformation efforts and, not least, ensure that all our projects and deliveries are aligned in all dimensions with our clients’ business conditions for maximum return. Over the past year, this approach resulted in more than two Eidra companies working together in 75% of our client engagements.

A key factor in this success has been our investment in building a strong common Eidra culture by prioritizing state-of-the-art offices and, not least, by gathering our entire Eidra team for two full days in our new Stockholm head office in September for our yearly global conference, EICON. Further advancing our ability to orchestrate our client engagements across Eidra’s capabilities will remain a key focus in 2025 by growing our management consulting population. For better financial control and organizational clarity, we have implemented a new governance model that grants our regions in Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, the US, and the UK a stronger mandate to manage their businesses and teams.

Financially, we have weathered the storm and, despite tough market conditions, managed to slightly increase our top-line revenues by 1% percent to a total of 1605 MSEK. Thanks to financial discipline and organizational efficiency we have grown our profits substantially to deliver a 13% EBITDA profit margin. At the time of writing, we are seeing a more positive sentiment in our markets, with Norway, the US, the Netherlands, and the UK picking up even more speed, and where we also see some brighter skies in Sweden.

It has indeed been a busy year, and we anticipate 2025 to be equally intense. Our focus will be on driving top-line organic growth, accelerating our M&A activities, and consolidating for greater simplicity and efficiency. We are also investing further in our AI, data, insight, and tech capabilities, areas where we continue to see increased client demand.

Nice works.
Mattias Olofsson & Måns Jacobsson Hosk