Around 44 full-time equivalents (financial year 2025).

Review: Haystack

Haystack is een strategiebureau uit Leuven, actief sinds 2001. Met ongeveer 44 VTE is dit een groot bureau.

1

How this agency makes money

Revenue, margin and what an hour of work brings in. Everything on the earning side sits together here.

Revenue trendgross margin per financial year

20212022202320242025

Latest year: € 5,21 mln gross margin, growth +13,5% against a sector median of -14%.

At or above sector pace

MarginEBITDA / gross margin · value-added coverage

20212022202320242025

HaystackSector median

EBITDA margin 21,2%, sector median 36,9%. Value-added coverage 1,27 (median 1,53).

Below sector level

Revenue per headGross margin per FTE, against payroll cost

€ 118.032

Against a payroll cost of € 83.934 per FTE. The ratio between the two is the coverage rate above.

No data

Yield levelYield per hour worked, against payroll cost

€ 72

72.589 hours worked, 1.646 per FTE. Against that sits € 51 of payroll cost per hour worked, leaving € 21 for premises, equipment, depreciation and profit.

No data

No hourly rate follows from this. Gross margin is already net of services and sundry goods, which mixes rebilled production with the agency's own overhead, and the accounts do not say how many hours were billable. Deriving a rate from this systematically understates it.

2

Can the agency take a hit

Buffer, cash position and payment behaviour side by side, so you can see where they disagree.

Bufferequity in months of payroll

Buffer: 6,8 months (median 9,2 mo). Equity in the latest year: € 2,27 mln.

Adequate buffer

Cash positionAvailable cash, and whether it covers short-term debt

Cash € 463.901. Liquidity ratio 1,99: current assets cover short-term debt in full. Solvency 42,4%.

Amply covered

Payment behaviourTowards suppliers and towards the NBB

Trade payables correspond to 78 days of supplier credit, sector median 109. The accounts were filed 195 days after closing; the legal deadline is seven months.

Pays and files on time

3

Signals and strengths

Events from the CBE and the Official Gazette over the past 24 months, plus positive markers derived from the figures.

Continuity

No serious signals

Signals in the last 24 months

Zichtbaarheid verschoven · 1 Nov 2026 · Google Autocomplete

Click a signal for a plain-language explanation. Each signal is a fact from a public source, without the agency's own context. Best to ask them directly.

What this agency does well

Outgrew the sector median 2 years running
Profitable in every one of the last 5 years
Strong buffer: 6,8 months of payroll in equity
Team grew (+11,1% FTE in the latest year)
Margin per hour worked rose 4 years in a row
Healthy working capital (current ratio 1,99)
Equity was earned, not injected (reserves 35,6× the capital contributed)

Each point is a fact from the filed annual accounts, measured against the same thresholds and sector medians as the signals above.

4

All the figures

Reference material, not a starting point. Expand it if you want to read the series yourself.

5 financial years, 2021 to 2025Result, staff and balance sheet

	2021	2022	2023	2024	2025
Result
Gross margin	€ 3,51 mln	€ 3,78 mln+7,7%	€ 3,68 mln-2,6%	€ 4,59 mln+24,6%	€ 5,21 mln+13,5%
EBITDA	€ 587.066	€ 491.251	€ 481.721	€ 1,15 mln	€ 1,10 mln
EBITDA margin	16,7%	13%	13,1%	25%	21,2%
Staff
FTE	39,5	39,7+0,5%	36,0-9,3%	39,7+10,3%	44,1+11,1%
Gross margin per FTE	€ 88.827	€ 95.145	€ 102.230	€ 115.505	€ 118.032
Payroll cost per FTE	€ 67.140	€ 70.653	€ 79.831	€ 78,61 mln	€ 83.934
Balance sheet
Equity	€ 587.733	€ 800.534	€ 1,07 mln	€ 1,79 mln	€ 2,27 mln
Cash	€ 518.059	€ 466.300	€ 351.517	€ 166.716	€ 463.901
Liquidity ratio	1,77	2,13	1,99	2,16	1,99

Payroll cost per FTE comes from the social report where available, otherwise from the Remuneration line. Both are gross costs including employer contributions.

What this factsheet does not know

How good the work is. Figures do not measure creativity, strategy or chemistry.
How the client portfolio is spread. Concentration is not in the accounts.
Freelancers and subcontractors are not in the FTE figures. An agency with 40 staff may in practice run with 70 people.
The figures cover financial year 2025, filed on 14/07/2026. At a fast-moving agency reality today may differ.

Based on publicly filed annual accounts (NBB) and official records (CBE, Belgian Official Gazette). An indication, not financial advice. Sector medians calculated on 2 Nov 2026. Sector medians based on financial year 2024: the last year for which nearly all accounts have been filed.

Coming soon

We're working on this part of the factsheet.

Coming soon

We're working on this part of the factsheet.

1

People 1 people mapped

SP

Stefan Peters

Strategic Growth Enabler

Based on public profiles. Something wrong? Let us know.

2

Seniors or juniors?

Payroll cost per FTE is the best public proxy for a team's experience level. Higher is not automatically better, but it says something about who sits at the table.

Payroll cost per FTE

€ 83.934

Team composition

44,1 FTE

64% women
36% men

€ 83.934

All agencies (2024) € 59.021

Read with care. Directors and partners invoicing through a management company are not in the payroll cost. At small agencies this skews the picture downwards considerably.

3

Will your team stay?

Inflow and outflow from the social report. This series only counts people on the payroll: freelancers who invoice do not appear in it. A low figure therefore means two very different things, a stable permanent team or a small core with heavy outsourcing. A high figure usually points to short contracts. Compare only within the same type of agency.

Exits 2025

4,5%

Inflow 2025

8,2%

3,6 FTE in, 2,0 FTE out

Net team change

+1,6 FTE

20212022202320242025

Source: annual accounts and social reports (NBB), collected by IKAg. Financial year 2025. Calculations by IKAg; an indication, not financial advice. Sector medians based on financial year 2024: the last year for which nearly all accounts have been filed.