You are Nadja Brunner, Head of Strategy at Helvetia Climatec, a Swiss maker of premium boilers and heat pumps. A global technology platform has just launched an app that runs the energy of any building, whatever brand of equipment is inside. Before the board meeting of 3 September you have to decide which of your company's assets the response is built on.
The situation
Helvetia Climatec has sold equipment, and only equipment, since 1971. It booked CHF 480M of revenue in 2025 at an 11% EBIT margin, about CHF 53M, employs 1,650 people and holds some 18% of the Swiss premium market. It sells through about 1,200 independent installers who specify, fit and service its units. There are 240,000 of its units running in Swiss homes and buildings, and together they produce CHF 2M of recurring revenue a year.
On 5 May a platform with 50 million users launched a system that connects heating, EV charger and solar panels and optimises them against the tariff of the moment. Two Swiss utilities will bundle it, and one of them is weighing an exclusive deal. Each year the platform spends on that software-and-services layer about ten times Helvetia's entire R&D budget, which is CHF 38M and almost all mechanical and thermal. Helvetia's share of that layer is 4%.
Analysts see the equipment margin falling from 11% to 6–7% within three years, which would take CHF 20–24M a year out of EBIT. The board will not raise the R&D budget, and the software programme your technology lead has costed runs to about CHF 14M a year: it would come out of hardware projects already running. You have until 31 July to answer the platform's invitation to its founding-partner programme.