Interview with Admicom’s CEO Simo Leisti

For those who are not yet familiar with Admicom, could you give us an overview of what your company does and which markets you serve?

Admicom was founded in 2004 with a clear mission: helping construction companies build better. Since day one, we have been developing digital capabilities that improve productivity across the full life cycle of a construction project. Our platform picks up where the architects leave off, starting with quantity takeoff and cost estimation, moving through bid management and project planning, and covering everything through site operations and back-office administration. We are the market leader in digital construction technology in both Finland and Estonia, serving approximately 3,500 companies today and generating ARR of around EUR 37 million. We have just over 300 employees across both countries.

Alongside our software platform, we run a Business Services unit of around 90 people. They deliver financial and payroll services, as well as higher-value financial management, analysis, and advisory work. The unit strengthens the relationship we have with customers and helps them run better businesses.

More recently, we have been making significant investments in bringing artificial intelligence into the construction sector. This is an industry that has been slow to adopt digital tools, which means the opportunity ahead of us is substantial. We see ourselves as the pioneers in this space, and AI is the next frontier we are actively building toward. 

The construction market in Finland is now expected to grow by 1.5% in 2026. However, you are guiding for 5–10% revenue growth. What is the strategy for Admicom to outgrow the underlying market?   

The first thing to understand is that our growth is not dependent on the construction market growing. Finland and Estonia together have around 75,000 construction companies and in the segment of companies with revenues above EUR 1 million, there are close to 7,000 of them, and we are serving only around 3,500 companies today. Even before we step outside that tier, we have significant room to grow through new customer acquisition alone.

Secondly, once we land a customer, we have a land-and-expand strategy. We typically enter the relationship by solving one specific problem, perhaps cost estimation, ERP, or project planning. From there, our account management teams get to work identifying where we can deliver additional value through our broader platform. The cross-sell and up-sell momentum we have been building is an exciting part of our growth story right now.

International expansion is the third pillar. The Finnish construction market has been under pressure, so we are actively pursuing growth outside our home market, both organically, by localizing our existing products for new geographies, and inorganically, through acquisitions. Reaching the upper end of our 5–10% guidance range for 2026 requires either a meaningful recovery in the Finnish market, which currently looks challenging, or a small acquisition during the year.

On pricing, we have been deliberately conservative. We have been applying increases of low single digits annually varying per product, and only when we are delivering genuine new value to customers. I am aware that some competitors have raised prices by up to 20%, but we believe pricing should track the value we create, and that discipline keeps us competitive and keeps our customer relationships healthy. 

We are also increasingly focused on product bundling to grow average revenue per customer. A good recent example is our site operations bundle, where we combined our documentation solution with our scheduling module and added an AI layer on top. That creates a compelling proposition that solves a bigger problem at once, rather than selling individual point solutions. This is the direction we want to push our product strategy more broadly. 

In April, you announced change negotiations that could lead to up to 45 redundancies, while also planning to bring in new competencies. How much of that shift is being driven by AI, what roles are being changed, and where do you see the need for new hires?

Three things are driving the reallocation. First, the Finnish construction recession has been more prolonged than anticipated, so we are shifting resources toward international growth, where the opportunities are more immediate.

Second, artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly, and our customers expect us to bring those capabilities to them. We are increasing our investment in AI expertise, particularly within R&D, our technology units, and our software teams. We want to accelerate the pace at which we bring AI-powered features to market.

Third, we have historically relied almost entirely on field sales to reach customers, and we need to evolve toward a multi-channel go-to-market model that includes digital sales and self-serve channels. That requires a different kind of talent.

These shifts are all interconnected. When we enter international markets, a multi-channel approach is essential, and AI has a role to play there too, particularly in accelerating how we localize our existing products for new geographies. We are making these changes now so that we are properly resourced to meet the targets we have set for ourselves over the medium term.

There has been fear in the market about AI disrupting vertical SaaS businesses. You have said AI will not replace Admicom but strengthen it. How do you think about the risk versus the opportunity, and what makes Admicom resilient? 

The market is changing, we are not dismissing that. It is one of the reasons we are accelerating our own AI investment, but when I look at the structural characteristics of our business, I see several meaningful moats that protect us.

The first is the complexity and verticalization of what we do. Construction is a domain-specific industry with highly specialized workflows. The data you need to train reliable AI models for in this sector is not available freely on the internet. We have been accumulating that proprietary data for over 20 years. We can train our own models on real construction information and deliver outputs our customers can trust. A generic horizontal AI tool cannot replicate that.

The second is the mission-critical nature of our systems. Think about cost estimation, resource planning, or financial management. These are high-stakes workloads where customers need to know the output is grounded in real facts and data, not a probabilistic guess. A contractor cannot build their margin calculations on a number that an AI tool has hallucinated. Our systems provide the reliability that those decisions require.

The third is the physical-digital connectivity we provide. Construction sites are complex physical environments, and our platform bridges physical reality with digital tools, including RFID asset tracking and real-time site documentation. That physical dimension cannot be replaced by software alone, and it creates a kind of stickiness that is hard to disrupt. Add to that the network effects we have built, particularly in Estonia, where our Bauhub platform has become the standard that all project participants use, and you start to see why this is not a system replaced overnight.

Finally, our customer base consists largely of small and medium-sized construction companies. Their technical maturity is relatively low, and the economics of building or switching to an alternative are not compelling, especially when our platform is affordable and delivers value that is a clear multiple of what they pay. As long as we keep that value equation strongly in our customers’ favor, I am confident in our position.

You have financial targets of reaching EUR 60 million in ARR by the end of 2028. Is the Finnish construction market large enough to get you there through organic growth alone, or does that target require international expansion and acquisitions? 

The honest answer is that reaching EUR 60 million requires all three: Finnish organic growth, international expansion, and M&A. From Finland, we believe we can generate EUR 15–20 million of incremental ARR organically. We have done the market simulation, and we are confident the addressable market is large enough, extending slightly down-market and slightly up-market from our current ICP gives us plenty of runway.

We can also cross-sell more aggressively into our existing base, integrate capabilities like Bauhub into the Finnish market, and continue driving the overall adoption of digital tools in the industry. Right now, Finnish construction companies are investing roughly half to a one percent of their revenue in digital technology. We know that companies using our platform grow faster and are more profitable. As we make that case more effectively, I believe we can expand that investment ratio.

For international growth and M&A combined, we are targeting EUR 7–12 million of incremental ARR over the strategy period. The majority of that is expected to come inorganically. We are looking for acquisition targets in the EUR 1–10 million ARR range, companies with proven growth, financially healthy operations, modern technology, strong founding teams, and good cultural fit. Bauhub is a good example of what we are looking for. Our approach is buy and integrate. We bring our land-and-expand model into each new market and complement the acquired company’s capabilities with our existing product suite.

We have appointed Henna Kotilainen as Chief Strategy Officer to lead the inorganic growth agenda, and she has already revamped our M&A prospect list. We are actively evaluating the Nordic countries, the Baltics, Northern Continental Europe, and the UK. We have not made final decisions on specific markets yet, but we want every market we enter to support both organic product expansion and a pipeline of acquisition opportunities. We have the financial capacity, both cash and debt headroom, to execute in this size range, and we intend to do so. 

Where do you see Admicom in one year from now, and what is the strategy to get there?

In twelve months, I expect us to have made tangible progress across five areas simultaneously: 

Our platform will have more AI-enhanced capabilities and new modular features that give our customers more reasons to expand their use of our tools.

We will have a multi-channel go-to-market model that is functioning, where customers can discover, buy, and start using our products through digital channels, rather than always needing to call a salesperson. That is a significant shift from where we are today. 

We will have more international customers and more international revenue. Some of that will come through organic sales and marketing investment, and some, I hope, through M&A. I am not going to push for an acquisition just to hit a calendar deadline. The right target is what matters, but with the outreach and analysis work we are doing right now, I am optimistic we will find the right candidates.

Our Business Services unit will have evolved further toward high-value consultancy, while also bringing in more automation to make the delivery of those services more scalable. Internally, we will have made meaningful progress on the operational infrastructure needed to support scalable, international growth. 

All of this is interconnected, and the competence renewal we are undergoing right now is designed to make sure we have the right skills and resource allocation to execute across all five areas at once. We are very focused and very motivated. We just need to accelerate.

Could you name three reasons why Admicom is an interesting investment opportunity today?

The first is the current valuation. If you compare our share price to what market analysts are saying, there is a clear discount right now. There is some hesitation in the market, and I understand it. The Finnish construction sector is in a prolonged recession, and we are in the middle of executing a major strategic shift, but that is exactly when good entry points emerge. The underlying business has not changed, and the long-term growth opportunity is unchanged. 

The second is the strength and resilience of our business model. We are serving one of the largest industries in the world, and we have now demonstrated through at least two full financial cycles that our ARR model holds up, even in a downturn. We generate strong free cash flow with a high cash-conversion rate, and we are returning capital to shareholders through buybacks and dividends while investing in future growth. We have proven the growth recipe in Finland, and with our first international acquisition completed, we are now beginning to prove it works internationally as well.

The third is what happens as we execute. As we scale cross-sell, expand internationally, and embed AI into both our products and our operations, we expect revenue to outgrow costs, improving our margin profile and delivering real operating leverage. For a company of our size, in a market where digital adoption is still in its early stages and where we have durable competitive advantages, I believe the long-term case for shareholder value creation is compelling. We have the right strategy – now we just have to execute it well, and I am confident that we will.