Olivier Novasque, CEO and Founder of Sidetrade, stated:

After a mixed year in 2025 on the commercial front, we are starting 2026 in full force. Bookings this quarter exceeded our expectations and already surpass, in total contract value, those of the entire first half of 2025. One week after unveiling our ‘O2C Intelligence 2030’ strategic plan, all our indicators are green: a strong rebound in bookings momentum, a record-high initial commitment duration on our contracts at a time when AI disruption is raising doubts about the sustainability of subscription models, encouraging early results from our indirect sales strategy, and the successful launch of Aimie Agent, the first of our three AI-native products. On the revenue front, although weak bookings in 2025 are weighing on organic growth, the strong performance of the ezyCollect by Sidetrade entity is fully playing its role as a growth engine and enables the Group to post 21% growth this quarter, including 27% for subscriptions, at constant currency.

 

Strong Rebound in New Subscription Bookings in Q1 2026 (+60%) to €2.05M vs. €1.28M in Q1 2025

In the first quarter of 2026, bookings reached €3.70M in ACV from new signed contracts, compared to €2.77M for the same period in 2025, representing an increase of 34%.

This momentum is driven by the strong comeback in bookings for new subscriptions (New ARR), which reached €2.05M this quarter, compared to €1.28M in Q1 2025, representing a jump of 60%. This performance matches the two best quarters of the record year 2024 (€2.1M in Q2 2024 and €2.09M in Q4 2024) and already represents nearly half (47%) of new subscriptions signed over the entire fiscal year 2025. Bookings for professional services came in at €1.65M compared to €1.49M in Q1 2025, representing an 11% increase.

A notable highlight this quarter: the average initial commitment period for new customers (excluding renewals) reached 52.5 months, a record that sits well above the industry average of 24 to 36 months. This lengthening contrasts with the prevailing narrative that AI disruption undermines subscription models and reflects, on the ground, the confidence of large enterprises in Sidetrade’s solutions.

In total, for this first quarter of 2026, the total contract value of new subscriptions signed over their commitment period (Total Contract Value or TCV) reached €7.91M compared to €3.36M in Q1 2025, representing an increase of 135%. Q1 2026 bookings, expressed in TCV, already exceed those recorded over the entire first half of 2025 (€6.36M).

The breakdown of bookings reflects three main drivers. On one hand, Cross-sell accounted for 54% of total bookings in Q1 2026, reflecting Sidetrade’s ability to expand its footprint within existing customers to new entities and geographies. Sodexo is deploying the platform in Brazil and APAC and Suez is extending it to its Water division. On the other hand, New Business accounted for 33% of total bookings, driven by the acquisition of prestigious accounts such as Groupe Accor (Middle East, APAC) and Sonepar in the United States. Finally, sales of additional modules to existing customers (Upsell) represented 13% of total bookings.

This quarter also marks the initial successes of the indirect sales strategy. A first European project was signed with a global leader in accounts receivable outsourcing and two deals were closed with the involvement of consulting firms. In total, approximately 35% of new subscription bookings were initiated or influenced by the partner network, which remains at an early stage.

Finally, this quarter marks the official launch of the Aimie Agents dedicated to autonomous phone-based cash collections. Securitas France paved the way in Q4 2025 by confirming its first four agents ahead of schedule. An additional 24 agents have been ordered by multinational companies and will be deployed in the coming weeks. The first of three AI-native products under the O2C Intelligence 2030 strategic plan, Aimie Agents validate a ground-breaking technological innovation under real-world conditions. Together with the two other AI products (Customer Agents via the Agent Builder Studio and Aimie IQ), they are expected to represent more than 50% of AI-native bookings by end of 2030.

 

Revenue up sharply: +21% Including +27% for Subscriptions at Constant Currency (17% and 23% as Reported)

Sidetrade
(€m)		 Q1 2026 Q1 2024 Change
Subscriptions 14.9 12.1 +23%
revenue 16.8 14.3 +17%

2026 figures are unaudited consolidated data.

Revenue from subscriptions reached €14.9M in the first quarter of 2026, up 27% at constant currency (23% as reported). This strong growth is driven by the integration of ezyCollect by Sidetrade, which extends Sidetrade’s presence to the Asia Pacific region and the SMB market, while accelerating AI adoption within this segment.

On a comparable basis (excluding the integration of ezyCollect by Sidetrade) and at constant currency, organic growth was 8% for subscriptions, confirming the resilience of the recurring revenue base despite weaker bookings recorded in 2025.

Subscriptions now represent 91% of the Company’s total revenue, demonstrating the strength and predictability of its business model.

International expansion continues, with 72% of revenue from subscriptions in the first quarter of 2026 generated outside France.

Overall, Sidetrade maintains a sustained growth trajectory in the first quarter of 2026, with consolidated revenue of €16.8M, up 21% at constant currency (17% as reported).

 

Strengthening of US Institutional Ownership

During the first quarter of 2026, two US investment firms, acting independently, crossed significant ownership thresholds in Sidetrade’s share capital. Briarwood Chase Management (New York) increased its stake to over 10% of share capital (see press release dated March 3, 2026). Mission Trail Capital Management (Austin, TX) acquired 5.39% of share capital (see press release dated March 24, 2026).

US institutional investors now represent more than 31% of the free float. In their respective filings, both funds cited Sidetrade’s proprietary Data Lake and its AI-native positioning in Order-to-Cash among their key investment rationales.

From SaaS Vendor to AI-native Company

Sidetrade did not wait for the current breakthrough of the agentic revolution. The company already had the foundations and assets to become a successful AI-native company in its Order-to-Cash domain of expertise.

With 26 years of Order-to-Cash expertise and more than 1,000 O2C projects deployed, the Company has assembled the world’s largest O2C Data Lake: over $8.8 trillion in B2B transactions, 1.3 billion payment experiences, 42 million buyer companies over the past five years. This industry-unique asset is fed in real time at a rate of five payment experiences per second. On this foundation, Sidetrade has trained expert AI models, calibrated on thousands of collection calls, millions of O2C emails, and billions of payment experiences.

In March 2026, US-based investment firm Briarwood Chase Management doubled its position in Sidetrade, crossing the 10% share capital threshold. Briarwood Chase Management cited the proprietary Data Lake as a solid advantage that competitors cannot easily replicate and described Sidetrade as a company better characterized as AI-native than traditional software vendor.

We have spent 10 years building the world’s largest Order-to-Cash data asset, at a time when very few technology companies were thinking about data at this scale, said Olivier Novasque, CEO & Founder of Sidetrade. This foundation is now our decisive advantage. With O2C Intelligence 2030, we are leveraging it at the speed of the agentic revolution.

From the raw transactional data in its Data Lake, over the years Sidetrade has built thousands of metadata points and key performance indicators, such as SPi (Sidetrade Predictive Payment Intelligence), to feed its AI models. A data flywheel of cumulative intelligence has taken hold. Sidetrade’s Data Lake feeds already-proven expert models (payment prediction, automated cash application through multi-criteria matching, best-action recommendation for collections), which in turn drive O2C applications spanning the entire cycle. In addition, every user call, email, action and outcome generates new data that allows Sidetrade to fine tune proprietary LLM’s; a competitive advantage that general-purpose LLM’s cannot replicate.

Many of Sidetrade’s O2C applications, recognized since 2022 as a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™, are already enhanced extensively by these proprietary AI models. Over the past ten years, Sidetrade has trained many proprietary models, each optimized for specific O2C use cases, on O2C events, data points, emails, interactions, and conversations, including more recently fine-tuned LLM’s. Initially derived from open-source foundations, these models are now state-of-the-art Order-to-Cash LLMs running on Sidetrade’s own GPUs within its Private Cloud.

These AI-native foundations, built over ten years, are underpinned by a large enterprise client base, deep integrations into complex processes, high switching costs, predictable subscription revenue growing by 20% in 2025 with a gross margin above 92%, and contracts with an average initial term of 46.4 months. This profile combines strong financial visibility with disruptive growth potential.

The O2C Intelligence 2030 plan capitalizes on this duality: simultaneously operating as the O2C Intelligence platform the agentic enterprise runs on, while preserving subscription-model predictability, with high-margin AI-native products layered on top.

 

Three AI-native Products on the Market by Q3 2026

Fully integrated into the Sidetrade O2C Intelligence platform, the three new products are orchestrated by Sidetrade’s proprietary technology stack: its Data Lake, its domain-expert fine-tuned LLM, and its O2C dedicated knowledge base.

With Aimie agents, Sidetrade creates agents dedicated to each role within the credit management department. Aimie Cash Collection, the first building block in this AI-native product line, launched nearly twelve months ago, is already on the market with 24 agents in production or roll-out phase in large enterprises. Connected to Sidetrade’s Data Lake, the best-action AI model, and the fine-tuned LLM, these agents determine the right collection action, the right timing, and the right channel to accelerate payment from a given buyer. Each agent conducts a complete conversation with debtors, follows up on cash receipts, qualifies invoices in Sidetrade’s ‘Cash Collection’ application, and decides on the next action.

At least three additional building blocks will be brought to market within the next twelve months: Aimie Cash Application Analyst, Aimie Dispute Resolver, and Aimie Credit Analyst. The business model for these agents is a fixed monthly subscription, priced per agent, with a capped volume of executions per month.

Large enterprises run O2C processes so complex that even specialized O2C applications sometimes fall short of the last mile. Sidetrade Agent Builder Studio fills that gap, giving Sidetrade customers a no-code environment to design custom AI agents through visual workflows. A client could, for example, build an agent that posts invoices directly to a corporate buyer’s AP portal, or one that checks deduction legitimacy against a discount agreement with a major retailer.

Building AI agents on the Sidetrade intelligence platform carries three advantages: 1/ Native access to Sidetrade’s fine-tuned O2C AI models, specialized LLM, and Sidetrade’s Data Lake, making the customer agents smart by DNA, 2/ Native connectivity to all Sidetrade O2C applications (no integration layer required), 3/ Operating on Sidetrade’s private AI infrastructure within a security and compliance environment certified ISO 27001, SOC Type 2, no generic public models involved. The economics compound: each agent built on the O2C Intelligence platform deepens client stickiness and raises switching costs.

At Sidetrade, the customer agent interacts with the world’s richest Order-to-Cash data asset, expert AI models built on that data, and with business applications designed for the most complex processes. This combination is what makes agents built within Sidetrade structurally superior to any agent that can be built outside, said Novasque.

Sidetrade has created a new role within its Customer Experience department to accelerate adoption: Cash Deployment Engineer (CDE). Embedded in Sidetrade’s strategic accounts, CDEs identify high-value use cases and design AI customer agents tailored to each organization. The target: time to value in weeks, not the months typical of traditional software deployments.

Sidetrade’s mission with O2C Intelligence 2030 is to deliver an O2C Intelligence that can reason, decide, act autonomously, and monitor the customer’s entire Order-to-Cash process to reach the best possible financial performance. Aimie IQ orchestrates the O2C Intelligence platform (agents + O2C applications + O2C data). As a natural-language engagement layer, it brings AI Agents, O2C software applications, and humans together in a single decision-making space. Aimie IQ reasons over data, determines optimal action plans, executes instructions autonomously, and monitors outcomes across the entire O2C cycle.

For a decade, the situation was simple: users interacted with software. We are now entering into a new paradigm, a symbiotic relationship where the interaction between humans, software, and AI agents occurs, said Novasque. The shift is from software that helps finance teams manage Order-to-Cash to Intelligence that runs it as a coordinated, real-time system governed by the customer’s own policies.

In practice, Aimie IQ guides users through their daily O2C priorities: it identifies the right application to engage, proposes orchestrating an AI agent to handle an outbound collection call with a buyer, and frees the user to focus on other tasks in parallel. Aimie IQ also benchmarks customer performance against peers on O2C KPIs, continuously mining the Sidetrade Data Lake to detect anomalies – such as an unexpected spike in disputes on a buyer across other vendors – and surfaces alerts. A finance manager enters a prompt and receives prioritized recommendations within seconds, all powered by the Sidetrade Data Lake.

Mark Sheldon, Chief Technology Officer of Sidetrade, stated: Our O2C Intelligence platform consists of four layers. At the base, our Data Lake and our domain-expert models: this is the intelligence foundation. Above that, private LLMs, core data processing, security and Agent Builder Studio form the platform layer. Then comes the execution layer, where Aimie Agents and Customer Agents operate alongside O2C business applications. And at the top, Aimie IQ powers the engagement layer. These four layers are not merely stacked. They reinforce each other. The result is a system where intelligence and execution are inseparable, and where the platform gains intelliegence with every interaction.

The three new AI-native products target a global AI agent market estimated at $139 billion by 2033, growing at a 43.8% CAGR (source: Market.us). Sidetrade is positioned to lead the agentic market in the O2C domain.

 

Agent-First Company: Sidetrade Transforms from Within

Sidetrade has launched a 36-month internal transformation program that deploys AI agents across all of its operations. This agentic operating model is self-funding. Each phase generates efficiency gains that fund the next. Reinvestment policy: 50% of savings generated are reallocated to the next wave.

Over the first twelve months, 20 to 40 internal AI agents will be deployed, with a target of 10% to 15% operational efficiency gains. On the R&D side, Sidetrade is embedding AI agents across code generation, testing, quality assurance, and deployment, while fast-tracking engineer upskilling. The target: a threefold increase in R&D productivity within 36 months.

Since April 1, 2026, Customer Success, Professional Services, and IT Support have been consolidated into a single department – Client Experience – which will be progressively augmented by AI agents. No more interdepartmental transfers for a unified client view.

This agentic transformation is expected to drive EBITDA margin from 23% in 2025 (26% without the impact of SHS Viveon and ezyCollect acquisitions) to 30%-35% by 2030. The stakes are also commercial. According to Gartner, 68% of enterprise buyers ask vendors whether they use their own product before shortlisting them. Sidetrade does not theorize about the agentic era; it runs it.

 

Financial Ambitions of the O2C Intelligence 2030 Plan

The financial model is built on long-term cumulative growth. It is designed to layer two engines: the recurrence of SaaS subscriptions and a new layer of AI revenue indexed on execution.

Metric Target
AI-native Product Launches by Q3 2026 3
AI-native Bookings (% of total) by end of 2027 20% to 25%
AI-native Bookings (% of total) by end of 2030 > 50%
CAGR of AI-native Bookings (2027-2030) 80 to 90%
AI-native Revenue by end of 2030 €18M  à €23M
CAGR of AI-native Revenue (2027-2030) 185% to 215%
AI-native Product Gross Margin (from 2028) 91% to 94%
Group EBITDA margin by end of 2030 (vs. 23% in FY 2025) 30% to 35%
GPU investment (cumulative 5-year capex, 31 to 261 GPUs) ~ €4.1M

 

Sidetrade Launches this Plan from a Position of Strength

In fiscal year 2025, Sidetrade reported consolidated revenue of €61.4 million (+14% at constant currency), including €53.5 million in SaaS subscriptions (+20% at constant currency), and EBITDA of €13.4 million, representing 22% of revenue. North America is now the Group’s largest region with 30% of subscription revenue. Companies with annual revenue exceeding $1 billion account for 85% of revenue. The average initial contract term reached 46.4 months, well above industry standards.

By combining the recurrence and predictability of subscriptions with the margin profile and growth potential of AI-native products, Sidetrade intends to build a self-reinforcing business model in which data, models, and client stickiness strengthen each other over time.

 

 

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Invoice-to-Cash Applications, 6 May 2024, Tamara Shipley Et Al.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designations. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

The decision reflects a growing trend among forward-looking finance organizations. In an environment marked by global volatility and operational complexity, legacy systems – dominated by rigid ERP structures and static workflows – have become increasingly inadequate. Rules-based automation and digital assistants, while useful, have reached their ceiling. Agentic AI is the new operating standard for competitive finance.

To stay ahead, CFOs are turning to Aimie to operationalize a new system of work: intelligent, autonomous, always on. This shift positions Accor’s Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific teams among the first to integrate agentic AI as an operational coworker. Aimie redefines what AI can do by transforming Order-to-Cash from a scripted back-office function into a self-optimizing system of intelligence. She is a teammate who accelerates cash collection.

Purpose-built for corporate finance and backed by Sidetrade’s $8+ trillion transaction Data Lake, Aimie brings contextual intelligence to every interaction. Her capabilities include:

Aimie delivers consistent, policy-aligned execution at scale, driving measurable gains in cash flow, reducing manual workload, and enabling finance teams to refocus on higher-value priorities.

By embracing agentic AI, Accor’s teams across the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific join a growing group of organizations that gain a structural advantage in financial execution. Those who hesitate risk being overtaken by faster, leaner, more adaptive competitors.

Sidetrade
(€m)		 2025 2024 Variation
Revenue 61.4 55.0 +12%
of which subscriptions 53.5 45.5 +18%
Gross margin 47.4 43.1 +10%
as a % of Revenue 77% 78%
EBITDA* 13.4 11.0 +22%
as a % of revenue 22% 20%
EBIT** 10.3 8.4 +23%
as a % of revenue 17% 15%
Net profit 9.0 7.9 +14%

The consolidated financial statements for 2025 have been audited. The statutory auditors‘ report on certification is being issued.

* EBITDA corresponds to operating margin before depreciation and amortization of tangible and intangible assets and impairment losses.
** EBIT corresponds to operating profit under French GAAP, including the Research Tax Credit.

 

Olivier Novasque, CEO and Founder of Sidetrade commented:

2025 marks a turning point for Sidetrade. For the first time, our EBITDA exceeds €13 million, rising 22% and bringing our margin to 22% of revenue, an all-time high. This performance directly reflects the continued acceleration of our subscription revenue, which grew 20% at constant currency, including 10% organic growth. Despite the dilutive impact of our two most recent acquisitions, SHS Viveon and ezyCollect, on profitability, we once again demonstrated that accelerating subscription revenue consistently generates powerful operating leverage.

This virtuous model is built on three pillars, developed methodically over the years.

First pillar: our winning AI strategy, launched in early 2015. Its foundation is our Data Lake, unique in the Order-to-Cash space, built on more than $8 trillion in B2B transactions and over 42 million buying companies. Backed by this hard-to-replicate asset, we have established a substantial lead in the wave of agentic AI, with our Aimie Agents announced nearly twelve months ago, 24 of which are already in production or being deployed. These Aimie Agents are only the beginning of a broader and more transformative AI roadmap that we will unveil soon.

The second pillar is international expansion. Recognized by Gartner® as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Invoice-to-Cash Applications, Sidetrade has successfully scaled globally, with 71% of its revenue outside France. North America has become our leading region, and the acquisition of ezyCollect opens up a third continent, Asia-Pacific.

The third pillar is the Company’s move upmarket toward large global enterprises, whose business processes are dense and highly complex. Sidetrade now generates more than 85% of its revenue from companies with over $1 billion in annual revenue.

Over the past four years, Sidetrade has nearly doubled in size, establishing itself as a global leader in its field while delivering record profitability, absorbing significant investments in AI, and pursuing an ambitious external growth strategy. Given the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, we will unveil our new strategic plan, O2C Intelligence 2030, on April 7. Sidetrade has the foundation and the capabilities required to lead the agentic AI revolution in Order-to-Cash

 

Improved Commercial Momentum in the Second Half

In 2025, Sidetrade recorded €11.04 million in Annual Contract Value (ACV) from newly signed contracts, including €4.32 million in new Annual Recurring Revenue (New ARR) and €6.71 million in Services bookings.

The average initial contract term was 46.4 months, well above industry standards, providing strong visibility and a predictable revenue base, two structural advantages that support cash generation and investment planning.

 

Strong Revenue Growth in 2025: up 14% with 20% in Subscription Revenue

For FY 2025, Sidetrade reported consolidated revenue of €61.4 million, up 14% at constant currency (12% on a reported basis).

Subscription revenue reached €53.5 million in 2025, up 20% at constant currency (18% on a reported basis). On a like-for-like basis, excluding the consolidation of SHS Viveon (H2 2024) and ezyCollect (Q4 2025), organic growth reached 10%, demonstrating the resilience of the Group’s business model in a macroeconomic environment marked by high volatility.

International Expansion as a Key Growth Driver

In 2025, 71% of subscription revenue was generated outside France, reflecting the Group’s continued expansion in its strategic markets. Within this context, North America posted 25% growth at constant currency, becoming the Group’s largest region and now accounting for 30% of total subscription revenue.

Growing Traction Among Global Enterprises

Momentum in large enterprises continued. Subscription from companies generating more than €2.5 billion in annual revenue now represents 54% of the Enterprise portfolio, highlighting Sidetrade’s relevance for global companies.

ezyCollect Acquisition in Asia-Pacific

Consolidated as of October 1, 2025, ezyCollect contributed €2.2 million to FY revenue. Its operations, in the Asia-Pacific region (Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines), represent 13% of total revenue in Q4 2025. This new region is emerging as an additional growth driver among the SME segment, which offers strong expansion potential and is naturally well-suited to the adoption of agentic AI solutions.

 

Record Profitability: EBITDA up 22% to €13.4 million, Representing 22% of Revenue (2pts)

Sidetrade’s gross margin in 2025 amounts €47.4 million, up €4.3 million compared to 2024, in a challenging macroeconomic environment. Gross margin represents 77% of consolidated revenue, (vs. 78% a year earlier), reflecting a mechanical decrease linked to the integration of SHS Viveon and ezyCollect, whose gross margins are progressively converging with the Group’s standards.

On a like-for-like basis, excluding the consolidation of these two acquisitions, the overall gross margin rate increases to 81%, compared with 80% in 2024, and remains stable at 92% for subscription revenue alone, confirming the strength and resilience of the model.

Sidetrade now includes EBITDA as its benchmark indicator for assessing operating performance before depreciation and amortization.

In 2025, EBITDA exceeds the symbolic €13 million threshold for the first time, bringing the margin to 22% of total revenue, representing an increase of 2 points compared to 2024. On a like-for-like basis, excluding the consolidation of SHS Viveon and ezyCollect, EBITDA margin reaches 26% of revenue, an improvement of 5 points compared to 2024. The growth in recurring revenue, combined with a controlled cost base, generates incremental profitability with effects growing from year to year.

EBIT reaches €10.3 million in 2025, up 23% from €8.4 million in 2024, representing 17% of total revenue (vs. 15% a year earlier). On a like-for-like basis, excluding the consolidation of SHS Viveon and ezyCollect, the margin stands at 20% of revenue, a gain of 3 points compared to 2024.

This record level of profitability reflects the maturity of the business model and results from a combination of converging factors. In a context marked by caution corporate investment behavior, Sidetrade leverages the momentum of its recurring revenue while maintaining strict cost discipline and strengthening operating efficiency.

This performance is all the more significant as it is achieved while maintaining an ambitious investment strategy, with €2.2 million in additional R&D spending directed primarily toward agentic AI development, positioning Sidetrade at the technological frontier of its market.

2025 EBIT also includes a Research Tax Credit of €3.5 million, (vs. €2.6 million in 2024), as well as a marginal capitalization of R&D expenses (€0.2 million, representing 1,5% of total R&D costs for the year).

Overall, the increase in operating margin to 17% (20% on a like-for-like basis), compared with 15% in 2024, reflects a new level of profitability driven by the operating leverage of the Company’s model.

 

Operating Leverage Confirmed: Net Profit of €9.0 million, up 14%

Financial result amounts €0.1 million for 2025 (vs. €0.7 million in 2024), primarily reflecting interest income from short-term cash investments, partially offset by foreign exchange losses during the period.

Corporate income tax expense is estimated at €1.3 million in 2025, compared with €1.1 million in 2024, in line with improved operating profitability.

Sidetrade’s 14% increase in net profit in 2025, to €9.0 million, confirms the Group’s ability to combine revenue growth with accelerating profitability despite an economic environment that remains challenging.

 

A Cash-Generating Model Supporting Growth

In 2025, Sidetrade generated operating cash flow of €8.7 million (excluding the timing impact of the Research Tax Credit). This cash generation partially contributed to financing the ezyCollect acquisition for €37.3 million (€34.7 million in cash and €2.6 million in Sidetrade shares).

As of December 31, 2025, Sidetrade reported gross cash of €16.3 million, compared with €25.2 million as of December 31, 2024. The Group also held 85,300 treasury shares, valued at €20.6 million as of December 31, 2025.

Financial debt at year-end 2025 totaled €30.8 million, primarily related to the financing of the ezyCollect acquisition through a €25 million seven-year loan at a 3.1% interest rate.

With a solid net cash position and well-controlled debt, Sidetrade retains the flexibility required to fund its investments and support its expansion while maintaining a strong balance sheet.

 

Outlook

Sidetrade will unveil its strategic plan, ‘Order-to-Cash Intelligence 2030’, on Tuesday, April 7, 2026, with the ambition of defining the global standard for Order-to-Cash in the age of agentic AI.

The move makes Mission Trail Capital Management the second US-based investment firm to cross a major ownership threshold in Sidetrade in less than three months. On March 3, 2026, New York-based Briarwood Chase Management disclosed it had doubled its position to over 10% of capital, citing Sidetrade’s proprietary data advantage and AI-native architecture as core to its investment thesis.

Mission Trail Capital Management, LLC (MTCM), is an Austin, Texas-based investment manager focused on leading software companies. The firm’s concentrated portfolio construction affords the ability to conduct deep fundamental due diligence that frequently spans several years with a long-term investment horizon.

Joshua Braden, Founder of Mission Trail Capital Management, commented: We are thrilled to invest in Sidetrade. We have known Olivier Novasque and his team for many years and admire the ambitious, thoughtful way they built this company to deliver measurable customer value. In our numerous conversations with Sidetrade’s customers, we heard consistent reports of significant working capital improvements, particularly decreased DSOs, following Sidetrade’s implementation. By investing in a proprietary Data Lake and embedding AI into their roadmap years before it became a buzzword, the team demonstrated a long-term commitment to superior customer outcomes leveraging cutting edge technologies. We look forward to supporting their continued growth.

 

Why US Capital Is Accumulating

Sidetrade operates at the intersection of AI and enterprise finance. Its platform intelligently automates the Order-to-Cash processes for large enterprises, powered by Aimie, its agentic AI trained on a proprietary Data Lake of over $8 trillion in B2B payment transactions from more than 42 million buyer companies worldwide.

The company’s billing model is based on transaction volume. In a sector where AI-driven disruption threatens to compress per-seat pricing, this architecture eliminates the cannibalization risk the market is applying broadly to software valuations.

In 2025, Sidetrade moved from predictive AI to autonomous execution, launching the first AI Cash Collection Agent capable of calling debtors, qualifying invoices, and executing collections without human intervention. Twenty-four agents are entering live production with multinational clients by the end of Q1 2026.

 

 

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Invoice-to-Cash Applications, 6 May 2024, Tamara Shipley Et Al.
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner and Magic Quadrant is a registered trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Briarwood Chase Management LLC is a New York-based firm focused on making long-term investments in a highly select number of global opportunities. Briarwood builds each position through deep fundamental due diligence, direct management engagement, and operational reviews, targeting companies with strong growth characteristics and durable competitive advantages.

The firm acquired additional shares of Sidetrade through its fund Briarwood Capital Partners LP, following its initial crossing of the 5% threshold at year-end 2024.

Briarwood believes that due to the foresight of management, Sidetrade is uniquely positioned to lead in providing AI-native solutions in the Order-to-Cash space, citing specifically how Sidetrade has a proprietary data advantage, having leveraged unique customer data in an anonymized and highly secure manner to build an exclusive data lake. Sidetrade’s multi-year contracts (averaging 3-4 years) also give the company a strong incumbency advantage versus competitors.

Proprietary data is the new gold, and we believe Sidetrade’s leading Data Lake in the Order-to-Cash vertical, built over the past ten-plus years, provides a strong moat that competitors cannot easily build or replicate said Robert Blatt, Managing Director of Briarwood Chase Management. We also were deeply impressed by management building and operating their own data center infrastructure with Nvidia GPU chips not only before AI was in vogue but even well before ChatGPT’s first commercial release – as well as the fact that the company is now training and developing their own domain-specific LLM. Sidetrade management has been preparing for AI and building AI into its product roadmap for many years, and this, combined with its vast proprietary data, gives us conviction that not only is Sidetrade differentiated from most SaaS businesses, it is now even potentially better described as an AI-native ‘start-up’ than a traditional software business.

As trillions of dollars pour into AI infrastructure globally, value creation is shifting from the compute layer to the application layer, where domain-specific AI platforms transform raw processing power into measurable enterprise outcomes. Sidetrade operates at this layer. Its AI-native platform automates the entire Order-to-Cash cycle for large multinational organizations, powered by Aimie, Sidetrade’s agentic AI. Aimie is trained on a proprietary Data Lake comprising over $8 trillion in B2B payment transactions from more than 42 million buyer companies worldwide, captured directly from live enterprise workflows over a decade. This represents a head start of at least three years that widens with every transaction processed. This data moat forms the foundation upon which Sidetrade builds, trains, and deploys AI models specifically designed for Order-to-Cash operations at enterprise scale.

In 2025, Sidetrade moved from predictive AI to autonomous execution. The company launched the first AI Cash Collection Agent capable of calling debtors by phone, qualifying invoices, and executing collection actions with zero human intervention. Fifteen agents are scaling into live production with multinational clients by the end of Q1 2026, processing tens of thousands of invoices across thousands of B2B debtors. In a software market where most “AI-powered” claims remain feature-level enhancements, Sidetrade is shipping autonomous agents into Order-to-Cash workflows.

 

 

 

 

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Invoice-to-Cash Applications, 6 May 2024, Tamara Shipley Et Al.
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The Global Payment Gap in B2B

In a volatile macroeconomic environment, B2B payment behavior reveals buyers’ efforts to optimize their working capital, along with the resulting commercial tensions and cash-flow risks that follow.

The Sidetrade Data Lake shows 37% of the days-to-pay cycle now happens after the payment due date. This shift increases uncertainty in suppliers’ cash-flow forecasting and raises the stakes in working capital management.

 

Regional Discipline, Not Terms, Explains Who Gets Paid Faster

Globally, businesses took an average of 51 days to get paid in 2025, composed of:

 


The data indicates that short commercial payment terms alone do not reliably accelerate cash generation.

Country-level disparities are significant:

That 37-day gap represents cash exposure for multinational enterprises operating across regions.

 

United States Snapshot: The Impact of Industry Behavior on Competitiveness

A 25-day average delay hides the United States story. On average, Financial Services, Insurance, and Real Estate operate at 57 day-to-pay with 27 days of delay, while Manufacturing and HR Services hold delays at 24 days and pay materially faster (54 days and 49 days respectively).

In this context, companies’ ability to convert revenue into cash depends first and foremost on the payment discipline specific to each industry, approval chains, and Order-to-Cash processes. Credit policies, risk segmentation, and accounts receivable management strategies must be grounded in buyers’ actual payment behavior.

 

United States Payment Discipline by Industry

 

European Payment Gap Despite Regulation

Europe outperforms the United States on payment discipline (18 vs. 29 days of delay), but EU regulation does not equal consistency. The Netherlands sets the global benchmark with Germany, Sweden, Finland, and the Czech Republic close behind (12 -15 days). Spain and parts of Southern and Eastern Europe lag, by weeks despite operating under similar legal framework.

These patterns reinforce that regulation alone does not standardize payment behavior. Control of Order-to-Cash discipline, at both the industry and enterprise levels, remains decisive.

 

European Payment Delay by Industry

Germany averages 15 days of delay; ICT and Transport & Logistics underperform relative to the national baseline.

Within France, average payment delay stands at 19 days, but ranges from 17 days in Retail and Transport & Logistics to 24 days in HR Services.

The United Kingdom averages 21 days of delay, with Life Sciences and Manufacturing among the slowest.

Late payments are structural and consistently exceed statutory limits. For policymakers, they offer real-time insight into underlying economic pressures, said Mark Sheldon, CTO at Sidetrade. For enterprises, payment delays undermine cash forecasting, inflates accounts receivable costs, and weakens balance-sheet confidence. Renegotiating commercial terms treats the symptom. Controlling the Order-to-Cash cycle addresses the cause.

 

Data First, AI Second

In large enterprises, customer payment behaviors are spread across ERPs, CRMs, spreadsheets, and manual work, masking the drivers of payment delay. In 2015, Sidetrade recognized that payment signals were fragmented and largely untapped. The company evolved from an Order-to-Cash SaaS vendor to a data-centric, AI-native cash performance platform, backed by sustained investment in proprietary private-cloud infrastructure purpose-built to ingest, normalize, and analyze large-scale financial transaction data with high reliability.

We began by building the data foundation to analyze the Revenue-to-Cash, said Mark Sheldon, CTO at Sidetrade. Since 2016, the Sidetrade Data Lake has been used for training our AI models. The continuous accumulation of payment experiences, combined with proprietary infrastructure and models purpose-built for Order-to-Cash, allows our AI to learn from trillions of payment experiences. Other models, trained on broad and/or much smaller datasets, cannot reproduce that level of accuracy and outcomes in terms of financial performance.

Today, the Sidetrade Data Lake aggregates more than $8 trillion in anonymized B2B transactions, forming a continuous, payment behavior-driven dataset that reflects how enterprises pay their suppliers across regions, industries, and economic cycles.

Sidetrade’s differentiation is rooted in more than a decade of continuous investment in domain-specific data, combined with the operation of its IT infrastructure and controls over the entire AI lifecycle. From data ingestion to model deployment, the company operates without reliance on third-party MLOps platforms, ensuring long-term technological coherence and sustained operational performance.

 

The Importance of Financial Decision Intelligence

Static datasets do not learn. The Sidetrade Data Lake continuously captures and standardizes buyer and vendor interactions, creating the foundation required for reliable domain-specific AI at scale. Payment events are streamed in near real time Sidetrade’s AI stack, through a Kafka-based ingestion layer, persisted in a scalable analytical store, and refined through a medallion architecture that progresses data from raw to curated states. Transformations are SQL-driven, versioned, and testable, enabling reproducibility and auditability at scale.

This IT architecture allows Sidetrade to maintain consistent historical views of invoices, payments, disputes, and Order-to-Cash actions across regions, and business units. It also provides curated, production-grade feature sets to AI models supporting predictive and prescriptive use cases in collections, dispute management, credit risk, and cash forecasting.

Quality data is the foundation of AI. Without it, there’s no learning and no intelligent Order-to-Cash, said Mark Sheldon, CTO at Sidetrade.

Indeed, Aimie, Sidetrade’s agentic AI, models payment behavioral patterns that remain invisible to static or single-tenant datasets (client-bound datasets). In 2025, the Sidetrade Data Lake captured approximately 285 million invoices representing $1.7 trillion. The result is improved decision-making accross collections prioritization, dispute resolution, credit risk assessment, payment window modeling, and cash forecasting.

The discrepancies we see in the Data Lake are not marginal. They tilt the competitive balance between complex, multi-entity organizations in the same industry, strain trust between suppliers and customers, Sheldon said. In 2025, Aimie executed or recommended more than 5.1 million collection actions and supported a 49% increase in cash collection efficiency. This performance reflects a shift away from reactive workflows toward disciplined, AI data-driven operation.

Aimie, Sidetrade’s autonomous decisioning AI engine, applies probabilistic modeling, algorithmic optimization, and natural language processing to interpret payment behavior in context. This includes recurring disputes, approval bottlenecks, and region-specific execution patterns. Unlike generic models that operate on abstract assumptions, Aimie’s decisions are grounded in observed customer behavior inside live financial workflows, including exception-heavy scenarios where traditional automation breaks down. Outcomes are continuously captured and fed back into Sidetrade’s platform, allowing AI models to recalibrate against real payment results rather than static benchmarks.

Autonomous decisioning in finance doesn’t come from a model alone, Sheldon concluded. It comes from the scale, structure, and governance of the data behind it. Aimie is trained on anonymized, real-world B2B payment behavior, using Order-to-Cash-specific models, deployed within a governed and private environment. That data foundation is what allows our autonomous agents to prioritize collections, surface disputes, flag emerging risk, and forecast cash with a level of accuracy and operational efficiency that generic AI agents cannot match.

With Sidetrade, enterprises are transitioning from static, rules-based automation to autonomous cash flow decisioning powered by adaptive AI. In volatile markets, where payment behavior shifts rapidly across countries and industries, predefined workflows fail to keep pace. As regional and industry patterns diverge, effective decisions depend on AI systems that learn continuously and act in real time.