Qt Group, Finnish Technology

A deep dive into one of the most interesting European software small cap

From 26.9M€ in 2015, QT Group sales reached 181M€ in 2023, representing a 26.9% of CAGR. These impressive results show the success of the Finnish software company. Listed in 2016, it is a spin-off from Nokia. The company provides software development platforms and frameworks.

With an ATH around 179.8€ in October 2021 and a low just under 39€ 1 year later, the stock has been on roller coasters.

In this article, we will present the different activities of the company, its outlooks, opportunities and risks. We will also estimate a fair price as a reference.

If you like stock deep dives, you have articles about Paypal, Arista, Novo Nordisk, LVMH or Palo Alto Networks.

This stock is also my last buy. You can find why I bought it just here.

Company overview

QT Group is a Finnish software company providing a solution for UI (User Interface) and application development. Its product offering addresses each step of the product development process, from design and development to testing and deployment:

• Development. From mobile and desktop applications to smart devices, the Qt Framework and its development tools provide everything necessary for developing and deploying product lines.

• Design. They offer gners, technical artists, and front-end developers. By closing the gap between designers and developers they simplify the process to create products.

• QA (Quality Assurance). Their quality assurance tools ensure the quality of all cross-platform desktop, mobile, embedded, and web applications regardless of the platform used. Automating testing enables companies to save time, cost, and enable growth.

Qt also created a developer community. The Qt Community consists of more than 1.5 million developers around the world. Part of the success of Qt is due to its strong community, which contributes to the quality of the framework by finding and fixing bugs and adding to the Qt codebase by sharing various features of their software development projects.

These 3 offers are divided into several products.

Qt Framework

The Qt framework contains a comprehensive set of modularized C++ library classes and is loaded with APIs to simplify application development. Qt produces maintainable and reusable code and it is cross-platform.

Qt Creator

Qt Creator aids developers in creating software for desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms. It supports the use of coding assistants like GitHub Copilot during programming. AI is therefore a way to better use Qt and not a way to avoid using it.

Qt Design Studio

One of the main strengths of Qt is its design platform. It turns design visions into production-ready UIs. It is possible to create UI designs with design tools like Figma, Adobe XD or Adobe Photoshop and import them into Qt Design Studio where the code is automatically generated and ready to be used by developers. 

It is then possible to simulate and validate interactions and dynamic behaviors.

QA for Qt projects

There are several features inside the QA tools: GUI (Graphical User Interface) tester, code coverage analysis, test results, management & analysis.

Qt Digital Advertising

Qt offers a digital advertising solution to help app developers, publishers and DOOH (Digital Out Of Home) screen owners maximize ad revenue, whether apps are built with Qt or any other framework.

Qt Insight

Qt Insight is an application analytics solution designed to provide real insights into how people use the developed application or device. It was created to shed light on an application’s or device’s performance, usage, and user data that may not be otherwise attainable.

Revenue breakdown

The revenue is divided between license sales and consulting (92% of revenue) and maintenance (8%). The maintenance part decreased by 32% between 2022 and 2023.

Most of the revenue are in Europe. North America is developping. To be noted: North America revenue decreased between 2022 and 2023.

Outlooks