NOTE AB (publ) (NOTE) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, and very welcome to NOTE's second quarter presentation. It's as always, when we have the current President in U.S., we see some disturbances during the weekend, so how do we cope with those changes and so on, but we will only touch upon that topic and focus more on NOTE's performance. So let's start with this. When we presented Q1, we were quite, how should I say, nervous about how the global factors would affect us. We were cautious in our guidance. We saw some slowdowns. We were seeing and expecting that the turbulence on the financial market would be bigger than it actually became. So we were quite pessimistic. We were expecting customers to move out their orders more in time than we have seen. So if I look at this quarter, it came in, as we see it, fairly much in line with what we said, SEK 980 million in sales with roughly SEK 35 million in negative effect coming from currency. So sales were as we were expected. Our profitability, 9.6% underlying. We were at 10% in the first quarter, then we also -- we knowing that are doing this, we see that there are some, what we call it, some [ WIP ] buildup that were stronger in the first quarter, that means that we produced some products, we stored them over the Q1 and then we sold them out in second quarter, and that has some effect. So I would say the first and second quarter is -- even if we reported 10% in Q1 and 9.6% this, it's to very similar quarters. It's more of a movement between those 2 factors, and then that is things you have in all quarters that you have some effects of this. Earnings per share, SEK 2.65, up with 7%, if I made my calculations correct, from last year. Cash flow. I will come back to that on the next slide, but we think that it's very important that we continue to generate good cash flows. Net debt, SEK 117 million, also a very strong number. We were down to neutral at -- after Q1, then we did the dividend and now we're back to some marginal debt as we see it. Going into numbers, what we can see is that we're continuing to invest for a growing future. I get some questions about that. How can we be so optimistic when we are reporting flat sales or an even reduced sales, say, in the last, say, 3, 4 quarters? But we still believe and we still see that our customers' forecast and what they are telling us is that they are expecting growth. We know that the first half year is affected by some negative stock reductions. And we are expecting that in the -- maybe in the fourth quarter and going into 2026, we will start to see stock build up again, and that will, of course, come as a positive effect on our numbers. So our expectations from Q1 with the negative effects, they have not materialized. We are also seeing that the outlook for the second half of the year remains strong. We adjusted that a little bit on the top end, that is more of an adjustment to the lower -- or the stronger Swedish currency, where we expect that, that will have an effect -- the stronger currency will have an effect of roughly of SEK 100 million in lower sales for the year. In this quarter, it was SEK 35 million. But what do we see? Also important is that we see a very strong financial situation. We are continuing to report an equity that is roughly 50%, 49% in this quarter. And our cash position is SEK 634 million. That is higher than we reported in the fourth quarter in 2024. So the dividend that we gave out, we earned that back with some margin in the first 2 quarters. And I think that is a big strength in our current operations that not only are we keeping our margins high, we're also generating a cash flow that is significantly stronger than our earnings. And as I said in Q1, we still expect that we have maybe SEK 100 million more to go until we are neutral, if I call it like that. So we have -- we can expect the cash flows to continue to be stronger than our profit after tax. I think that is also important to know that some of the questions I got after the Q1 and after we announced the big dividend that were: are we stepping out of acquisitions? And I would say that, that is quite the opposite. We are continuing to generate cash and we are expecting to have a cash position that during the year will become even stronger than it was in Q1. So this is the second best cash position we have had in -- forever in NOTE's history. So our room to maneuver is significant, and there are quite a few discussions ongoing now on the M&A area. There is nothing that I can report on at this point, but, how should I say, the landscape has improved significantly during this year. I also said last year that there were some discussions of how to view 2024, that was a really weak year. Today, that is something that is part of the valuation. So I see much better much better possibilities to agree on price and so on going forward. So this is an area where myself and our CFO, Frida, is putting a lot of energy into to ensure that we do good acquisitions and that we close them. We are -- as I have said before, we are expecting to have at least 1 acquisition per year. And in '24, we didn't do any one. So we're 1 year behind, if I put it like that. So this is very important. Also, something that I'm very proud of, our delivery performance is now back on track. We are showing numbers that are back to where we were in 2020 and 2021 before the component crisis came in and we went down a bit on performance. It has taken a long time. It is more tricky than it sounds to keep and deliver performance above 95%. So that's very pleasing to see, and we know that when we are hitting that number, we have very few discussions with customers that -- where we're failing to deliver. So this is a focus area for me, it's a focus area for the group and it's a focus area for everyone in all our factories to ensure that our customers get the products that they are ordering on time and in full. So that's very pleasing. Our quality remains strong. We are still delivering a quality that I think is world-class. When I look at what the demands are from the automotive industry, we are exceeding those requirements and those are the toughest -- they have the toughest demands in the market. So really pleasing to see. Order backlog, this has been a topic that we have talked a lot about. We're seeing that our backlog increased with 6% compared to end of first quarter. I think that is a better indicator compared to where we were a year ago. Order backlog 1 year ago, we are down 1%. But if I look at where we are heading, so to say, we are seeing that the order backlog currently is increasing, and that is really pleasing to see. I said that in my comments after the first quarter that this was the number that I was hoping to get up to this number, and this reflects a bit of how our customers is viewing us at the moment. So really pleasing to see. Moving on with our bullets. I think operating profit is something that we're very proud of and that we're pleased to see. We are delivering 9.6% underlying, and we are at 9.8% year-to-date. And as I said before, I think that, that number is more reflecting how we are performing. We will have some swings up and down in the -- but as long as we remain in our guidance, I think that is a very strong message that we're continuing to deliver good profitability even though we are not growing, so this is really pleasing to see. I think also that we are -- one thing is to deliver on the EBIT level, we're also seeing that our financial costs are going down. We see that our profit after tax is improving quite significantly and our profit per share went up with a very strong number. And I think this is also something that we are proud of, and that is something that we are focusing on not only to have a good EBIT margin, we're also focus on delivering good result after tax. And I think that is something that will pay off over time because that is the cash we can use for all our investments and so on. But as I said, our cash flow, SEK 260 million year-to-date, operational; SEK 214 million after investments. And that is a high -- a number that is higher than what we paid out in dividends. So -- and that was my expectation, just to be clear that we were expecting to generate cash flows that were really strong in the first half of this year. And that was part of the decision to make this quite substantial dividend payout. But our financial situation remains really strong. We are expecting to close at least 1 acquisition this year, if we can agree on the pricing. So that is where we stand. Moving on, looking at our segments. Western Europe remains where we are expecting, 10.1% this year. What is also good to see is that the Rest of the World is improving, 8% of underlying EBIT level is really strong. I think we have been higher than this 1 year before, but this is also getting to a number that we are expecting and where we want to be. Now we see that what is lacking is our growth. And we can see that -- when we look at our country split, we see that we see growth in basically all countries, and we have a negative number in Finland that is after currency. And I think they were growing 4%, 5% underlying before we did in euro and then in SEK, that means that we are declining a bit. The same goes for China, where we're also reporting negative growth, but it's positive growth in local currency. But U.K. is where we are struggling and minus 34% is a really high number. And as I've said before, we see that our largest customer in U.K. has zeroed out the first 3 quarters of this year, so we will have 1 more quarter with low or no sales to that customer; after that, we are starting up the production again. And that customer stands for maybe 12% to 15% of the U.K. sales. So it's significant. But what we should take with us here is that we are -- after the reduction that we saw in 2024, we have adjusted our cost base in especially the rest of the world to better meet our current run rate, and that is reflecting in the numbers where we see that. I think 8% in, what you can call, our low-cost countries that is very strong. We know that the price pressure is higher on those entities. So if we can maintain on 8%, I'm really pleased in this region. Moving on to our customer segments. And I was a bit afraid that the growth in Greentech that we saw in the first quarter would end, but now we see 15%. We also see that the order backlog in the Greentech area is improving. So I'm expecting that, that segment will continue to show positive numbers in the same range as we are seeing now; 15% to 20% is my expectation. The second segment that we see strong growth in is Security & Defense, 18% year-to-date. You should know that last year, we had 100% growth in this segment. So 18% over a year with 100%, that is really strong. I think that would be equal to maybe 60% CAGR in last year and this year combined. So growth in -- with some customers are going in steps, if you put it like that, that some quarters or some years is really strong and then they flat out and then they can continue to grow. And especially in Defense, for those that work in it, it's a lot related to which orders do you have in the quarter. Some orders are really high and then you can have 1 or 2 quarters that are a bit slower and then -- at the moment, we are expecting this segment to continue to grow, but it will be a bit -- it will not be linear, it will be a bit, how should I say, changing between the quarters. If I look at the other segments, we see Communication, minus 7%. This is a quarter where -- or this is a segment that we see quite low activity. So I am expecting that this segment will start to be growing already from Q3. If that means that we, year-to-date after Q3, will be positive, it's hard to say, but quarter-over-quarter, I would expect Communication to grow. For those of you that remember, this was one of the segments that were really weak in the third quarter last year, and that was, so to say, one of the reasons why we did not meet our guidance for Q3 that the Communication came in really weak. So therefore, we will be meeting quite a low quarter in the third and fourth quarter in this area. Medtech, fairly flat. We are expecting that to continue to be a few percentage down for the year, but not [Audio Gap] the run rate we have is roughly the run rate we are expecting. Then we have our large Industrial segment, and here, we have some customers that are still performing quite low. We see that the order intake and that their forecasts are getting up to a higher pace. So we also expect the Industrial to start to grow year-over-year when we look quarter-over-quarter [Audio Gap] to Q3 and Q4. So if I look at this [Audio Gap] Greentech to remain where -- at quarter-over-quarter, roughly the same; Security & Defense, some growth; Industrial, we will start to come back to neutral or a few percentage up; and Communication, especially in Q3, we are expecting that to grow; and then Medtech will remain where it is. So it's Greentech, Security & Defense, very positive; the rest, flattish, if you put it like that for the rest of the year with some ups and downs. Moving on. I think that what is important when we look at our business is that it's -- if you look at this trend, we started -- if you take 2020 as a start -- starting year. We doubled the sales in 2 years from 2020 to 2022. Then we continued to grow into '23, and then we have had a reduction in '24 and now we're guiding for a marginal growth, 0% to 5% up for the full year. We should also know that the sales that we are expecting is in local currency will be 2-, 3-odd percent up to 8%, 9% when we summarize this. So the reason why we're not -- why we are guiding down is mainly due to that the Swedish currency is stronger and that means that the sales we do in other currencies will affect us quite significantly. We are expecting to keep our margin in the 9.5% to 10.5%. If I would guess, I would say that Q3 will be lower and Q4 will be higher. If both of those will be within this estimate or if Q3 will be slightly below and Q4 slightly above, I think we did 10.7% in Q4 last year, and Q4 is naturally our strongest year when it comes to profitability. So it's -- we are expecting the second half to be fairly in line with the first half in margin, but we are expecting to start to see growth in the second half. The guidance that we put in front here is roughly 5% to 10% positive growth for the second half of this year. So even if we reduced the upper end of the estimate, we're still expecting quite good growth in the second half. Our order backlog is indicating 6. So that would mean that we are in this -- that we have orders to support this. If I look forward, what will happen into 2026? We talked about this 1 customer in U.K., that will come back. That will mean a few percent. We are also seeing that, especially the Industrial segment, is starting to show some positive signals. We are expecting Security & Defense to continue to grow in the 20-plus percent range year-over-year, and we are also expecting that Greentech will show quite good growth in the coming year. So we are seeing quite a few positive signals, when we move into the second half of this year and in 2026, but that we will come back to later on. So with this said, I can comment a bit on acquisitions. So I think that is one area where we have been seeing that we are lagging. We talked a lot about it last year that many of the sellers were expecting that we would pay or valuate the companies on '22 and '23 that was boosted with the inventory buildup and that we should not look at '24. Currently, we're seeing that the expectations of the valuation is coming down and that '24 is naturally a part of the valuation, that means that we have much easier to meet our sellers on price because we are -- the market is quite, how should I say, it's quite -- the expectations is quite fair. So we have a few very constructive dialogues, and we are expecting to close 1 or 2 of those during this year. Hopefully, we will close more than 1, but that -- as you know, that is quite a lot of work to do that. But we're quite active in this area at the moment, which is very pleasing. So with that said, I will hand over to the audience for some Q&As. And this time, since we're not having this with an audience, we will open the floor for questions from -- telephone questions or voice questions from the web.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Thomas Blikstad from Pareto Securities.

Thomas here from Pareto. If we look at the guidance for 2025, we see Q3 is facing much easier comps and you also have a new Torsby plant being operational from Q4 and onwards. The first question is, if you could give some color on the expected contribution from the new capacity in Q4? And also what sort of volumes you need in order to sustain the margin?

I think that if we hit the lower end of our guidance, we will be in -- around the midpoint of the guidance, that is what we expect from a profitability point of view. If we hit the higher end of the guidance, we are expecting to have double-digit OP for the roughly, that is how we see upon it. Second question about the capacity in Torsby. We are not running out of capacity as of now in Torsby, so that will not have any higher sales impact, that is more of an adjustment of capacity for the future growth that we are seeing. Was that clear, Thomas?

Yes, absolutely. And also one further question, if you could. What sort of dynamics do you anticipate between the next 2 quarters considering the easier comps in Q3 and also -- yes.

It's -- I would say that we are expecting both quarters to be fairly aligned in growth when it comes to percentage growth. We know that also this year, it's not, what you call it, it's not this kind of years where you have the full throttle on, so to say. So we are having 2 to 3 weeks closure of the Swedish factories during the summer that will have a negative effect on the sales in July, but that is a smarter way to do it than to run factories with lower capacity over a longer period. So I would expect that both quarters would come in a percentage growth in fairly the same number, and that would mean that we are in the 5% to 10% growth compared to what last year.

[Operator Instructions]

I will continue with some questions that I've got from the web. First, I have one from Karl. Large order announced in Security & Defense. Can you tell us a bit more about the win? Is it towards Defense more than Security? The answer is yes, it's more towards Defense. Very easy question to answer. Second question from [ Alexander ]. Inventory turn rate has improved during the last quarter. Do you see further improvement? And how do you expect it to develop if the market turns up? I mean we have stated to the market that we are expecting 4 to 5 in inventory turnover. We are roughly running at 4 at the moment. We are -- over time, we think that this will be more like 5 than rather than 4. So there is still maybe SEK 100 million left of inventory to go until we are where we want to be. And we are expecting to be in that range. If we grow or if we're flat or whatever, I mean, inventory turnover, if the market conditions are aligned with the sales, which they are today, on the component market, then we should be in this range. It doesn't really matter if we grow or not because what we order is coming within, say, 8 to 12 weeks even on the longer lead time components and that means that we should be able to balance our inventory towards our sales. The reason why we had this massive inventory buildup is that the component industry started to go from 10 to 12 weeks lead time on semiconductors up to maybe 50 to 70 weeks. And then it was very hard for us to keep service level up and at the same time, keep the inventories balanced. And we don't see that there is a, how should I say, the imbalance between demand and supply at the moment on the component market. So we are expecting it to be in this range also going forward. And that is why I say that we have maybe SEK 100 million more in over stock or in expected over cash flow to come in, in the second half of this year and that will come in -- it's never linear, unfortunately. So it will come when it comes, so to say. Then I have a question from Karl. What is the driver behind the strong growth in the rest of the world, any particular customer or segment or regions? I would say that the Rest of the World had a really negative growth last year, and it's more of a recovery back to a normal level. We can see that especially Estonia, we have -- our customer base there is to quite the big extent, quite large industrial company and they overstocked a bit more than the rest of our customers did in '23. So I mean '24 was quite weak in especially Estonia and that we're seeing that the Estonia is coming back to good growth numbers. Also, China, we saw a very negative development in '24, and that is now recovering to slightly higher level, but we are still quite far to go in China until we are back to where we want to be there. But that -- those are the main reasons for it. Then we grow nicely in Bulgaria. It's still a small site. We are seeing good order intake. We're seeing that we grow with our existing customers, and we have good dialogues in that factory to also grow that with new business. So Rest of the World has a strong position to support in the growth journey that we're looking at. I hope that answers your question, Karl. Then we have one from [ Antti ]. What kind of multiple EV/EBIT are you willing to pay for M&A targets currently? We are in dialogue with a few targets, so I will not give you more statement. But you can say that historically, we have seen that normal numbers, if I read the reports from the M&A banks and advisers, has been: If the business is flattish, maybe EBITDA level or EBIT levels of 7 and then if they have shown good growth, we can -- we have seen numbers up to maybe 9 to 10 on EV/EBIT levels. I would expect that some of the targets will go higher than this, especially if they are heavily dependent on defense because the multiples there has -- we are seeing that those are driven up. But I will not be more clear on this because that can affect some of the dialogues we're in. But I would say that it has came up maybe 1 or 2 turns, that is my expectation, if you look 2, 3 years ago. Okay. Next from [ Tommi ]. Possible acquisition, what geographical areas are you looking into? Also, the fact that U.K. has been challenging, how do you look upon challenges when entering new geographical markets? Very good question. We are looking at acquisitions in -- especially within Europe. No, I can say that we -- European companies with the majority of the business in Europe, some might have the business outside of Europe, but where they have the current head office is in Europe. Then we have one from Karl. There has been quite a few acquisition made in the market recently. Scanfil made a quite sizable one yesterday. Did you look at it? Also, the acquisition has close to 40% from defense, but the price tag was a bit high, 10x EBIT. Do you think NOTE could pay similar multiples if the exposure is very good? Yes, maybe. We will see. Once again, I will not comment so much on pricing because that is -- that will be -- we will get back to that when we have closed something, that is a much better way, I think. Then we have one more from [ Antti ]. What is driving price pressure in rest of the world and how do you aim to offset it? I think price pressure is something that we're always facing and the rest of the world [Audio Gap] that we're seeing that we have lower material margin, that means that the material stands for a higher portion of the sales. And that means that we have to be more efficient in how we produce to maintain our margins that we expect. As always, we are investing in automation, we are investing in better equipment and we are looking into ways of how we can continue to drive cost out of our production process. And I think that is our measures on how we are -- yes, how should I say, addressing the price pressure. We are expecting to maintain our margins. We are expecting to meet this competition with a stronger cost base. That is how we try to handle that. Okay. Next question from [ Antti ]. What is driving price pressure in rest -- that I already answered that. Then we have [ Simon ], what is your preferred acquisition size in terms of sales? I would say that we are -- our expectation is that they should be plus EUR 20 million, EUR 25 million, and then we don't have a high and upper limit of that. So -- but we are -- we want them to be sizable that they make a difference. We did the one in Bulgaria was smaller, but here we are expecting to add a lot of organic growth to that acquisition. It was more that we wanted a footprint in the lowest cost base in Europe. And so that was a slightly different strategy behind that acquisition. But otherwise, I think they should be sizable. Otherwise, it's more work than gains, if you put it like that. Then we have 1 more from Karl. A lot of talk about Plejd. They are growing a lot and are in-sourcing more and more. Can you talk about how this impacts you? I would say that we have a very good dialogue with Plejd, and we are acting jointly with them, and we are doing whatever we can to support them in the best way we can. And we're very happy with the cooperation with them. So for me, this is -- they are very open in how they think and we are open with how we want to pursue this business. So very, very pleased with the relation with them. Then we have one more from [ Alexander ]. Revenue per employee is quite a bit lower in rest of the world compared to Western Europe. Why is that? Is it a volume question or less automation in those factories? I think that the nature of business that you are putting in the lower cost base is that there are higher on work content. If there's pure PCB or PCBA production, then you can as well do it in the higher-cost countries. So the nature of the business is that it's the material content is lower, the work content is higher. So therefore, it requires more people for the same sales. And that is, in my opinion, more related to the business that we do and the products that we produce in these regions. So that is why the sales per employee is lower. We are, however, trying to automate also the activities in the rest of the world as well as we do it in the Western Europe because that is how we want to grow our margins over time and also become more compatible when we look at our peers. So that is natural. We are not -- it's not something that we think is bad, but we want to improve also the sales per employee in the rest of the world, that is also part of our strategy. I think that is the last question I have got in.

The next question comes from Anders Akerblom from Nordea.

Yes. So starting off on the sales guidance for 2025. As you mentioned, you lowered this mainly due to FX. But is there any other -- anything in particular or any other dynamic we should take into consideration to why you lowered this?

No, I think the second half is looking quite as we were expecting in the first -- after the first quarter. FX has a natural effect of it, so that is important. And we also -- this also shows that we are expecting a growth of 5% to 10% in the second half, which is more in line with where we are seeing that the sales are heading at the moment. So it's nothing really more than that.

Okay. Just I was thinking that kind of the FX impact should have been seen then as well and that if some sort of sequential deterioration in any type of customer group or such should have preceded this.

I would say that in the first quarter, we had -- our FX was flat, so that was neutral. And we don't really, how should I say, we don't speculate in how the currency will go when we guide. So we are simply -- how should I say, we are multiplying our order backlog in local currency towards the Swedish currency at the end of the quarter and then that will have an effect.

Okay. Yes. Makes sense. And also on the backlog development. I mean good to see growth here. But I was wondering if -- partly if there has been any sort of lead time consideration that might have impacted this given that if lead times have shortened or such, is that something that's affected the numbers?