Smartoptics Group ASA (SMOP) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, and welcome to wonderful Oslo Hotel Continent Hall. Also a warm welcome to those of you who are following us online. We are here to report quarter 3 of 2026 for Smartoptics. Quarter 3 2026, it is simply put, an absolutely fantastic quarter. Everything is good. We're growing the business with 80% compared to same quarter last year. We are also demonstrating very clearly that the operating leverage in the company is great. Our profitability is fantastic. When growth comes, we're also seeing that in lower down in our statement of operations. So everything good. It's a very special quarter for us in Smartoptics because we're passing our old $100 million target. And looking back at this target, reflecting a little bit why this happened and what took us here. I want to start out by saying that when we initially put this target forward, we said 2025 to 2026. I have always claimed that the opportunity to reach this has been good. But I've also said that it doesn't really matter when we reach it, but rather, do we have a business that's running good, great or so-so? And we can conclude that the momentum in our industry and in Smartoptics is great when we're passing this target. So, a very good achievement. We achieved this in July to be more precise, so about 6 months later than best case scenario that we have discussed. Why is this happening? Well, it is what we have been talking about over the past years that is taking us here. We have continuously strategically developed our hardware platforms, our software platforms to meet a broader application set, to meet a broader group of customers and to grow our addressable market. We have achieved this. And we have not stopped. This part of our strategy remains intact. We're doing exactly the same thing. So continuing towards our next set of targets, this is going to be there, contributing greatly to future success. We have also talked about the large account strategy over the years. And I have told you that we are very happy with the progress of our large account strategy so far. Our repeat customers are far bigger than they were a few years ago. There are more of them. They are very broad-based in the sense of different market segments, different geographies, highly concentrated around the U.S., but the U.S. is a big place, and there are different markets within the U.S. too. And we are now engaged in several conversations more or less developed with even larger accounts and players for new applications. Looking at the details of this, the revenue in Smartoptics is broad-based. We do not have a customer concentration problem at all in our company. The 10 largest customers represent around 31% of our revenue. So, an average 9-month revenue of around $2.7 million. 8 out of 10 of those are the U.S. 2 of them are Europe. 6 out of 10 are network operators. 2 out of the 10 are enterprises. and 2 out of the 10 are cloud and AI. So, effectively nil in that case. I want to comment on this a little bit further. We can see that network operators and enterprise are continuing to be both our largest market segments, also growing fastest. Enterprise is very interesting, where we're seeing an enormous drive from -- it's actually 3 customers building networks in the financial industry, algorithmic trading and such globally, that has been driving growth for us through this year, which is very, very nice. Smartoptics is a way stronger company today than it was when this set of targets was announced. We have our best team ever. We have a wider footprint, and we have new regions that are starting to show their potential. I will comment on that further. In doing so, in growing the company over the past years, we have managed to preserve our challenger culture. We are the nimble, fast-moving player in the market. There is no doubt that we are the challenger of challenger. When we compare ourselves with the 4 companies that we are normally compared with, we can see that in the U.S. market, which is the most important market for us and in our industry, if we roll back the clock to 2023, that group of 4 companies was about 7x larger than us together. In the first half of 2026, they are about 2.5x larger. So, there is no doubt that we're catching up and moving ahead of the mid-market players and to be honest, everyone else, too. So the challenger of challengers. I will now move into talking about the revenue and where it comes from. So, we have seen tremendous progress in Americas over a long time. This is continuing. Interestingly enough, we're also seeing EMEA at very high growth and Asia at very high growth. EMEA, not surprising to me. We have seen progress in our large account strategy in EMEA for, well, more than a year now. It's driven mainly out of Northern Europe, U.K. and Ireland. So, not surprising at all. I want to comment on Asia because it's, of course, a remarkable quarter in Asia, although small compared to the rest of the company. But what's interesting is that only about 11%, 12% of this revenue is coming out of Australia and New Zealand, which has been, as for those of you who have been following us over time, know that when we do a good quarter in Asia, it has normally been Australia and New Zealand. This time, it's a way broader geography. It is Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia. It is the Philippines. It is Japan. So, what I have been talking about for the past 6 months at least, building up a much stronger partner network in Asia, simply put much better resellers out there today and a much stronger team within Smartoptics is starting to pay off. And Asia is really starting to show its potential for the future as a great contributor to the company. I want to thank, of course, my sales teams for an exceptional performance over the past year. I also, of course, want to thank my operations team for delivering through the quarter. Thank you. Looking at our different areas, product areas, it is, of course, very, very nice to see that the areas where we are investing the lion's share of our money, solutions, software and service is leading the way, driving the growth. That is very, very good. Business area, Devices, flat year-over-year, which I think one explanation in that is supply chain. We're seeing far bigger backlog even into 2027 in business area, Devices, which is a fast-moving market where we normally don't have that much backlog between quarters. Quarter-over-quarter, I should say that Q2 was a little bit stronger than Q3. So, not the same as the rest of the company. That was due to a larger project, a larger customer in Q2. Order booking is roughly flat. So, absolutely okay performance there. But the important thing, where we put our money, where we make our investments, we're also getting growth. I want to hand over to Stefan to take you through the financials.

Thank you, Magnus, and nice to be standing here presenting those great numbers. We see revenue increased by 80.4% to a record high of $34.3 million compared to $19 million last year. We see strong growth over all regions, primarily driven by business area, Solutions. The gross margin was 49.5% for the quarter compared to 49.5% last year and 48% year-to-date. Gross margin recovered from Q2, where it was affected by lower initial margins on breakthrough deals with 2 customers. So in Q3, gross margin returned back to a more normal level. Year-to-date gross margin is in line with full-year 2025, which remains a useful reference for future quarters. We have a record EBIT of $7.1 million compared to $1.6 million last year, up 340% year-on-year and demonstrating our operational leverage. The employee benefit expenses increased 31%, and that is reflected by a 21% increase in full-time equivalents from 134 last year to 162 this quarter. Inflation, higher variable compensation and other factors contributed to another 10% increase in employee benefit expenses. Other operating expenses increased to $2.6 million compared to $2.2 million last year, and that's reflecting the business growth and organizational expansion. Total operating expenses decreased to 26% of revenue compared with 33% a year ago, excluding the prior year uplifting costs last year, and this is proving our operational leverage. Depreciation and amortization increased a little bit in absolute terms, but decreased to 3% of revenue. The EBIT margin for Q3 improved to 20.6%, which is a record high compared to 8.5% last year. On a year-to-date level, the EBIT margin increased to 14.5% compared to 7.7%. And if we exclude the non-recurring costs last year for uplifting and this year's cost for production relocation, the EBIT margin year-to-date was 15.1% compared to 9.2%. Profitability improved despite continued investments to support future growth. The operating cash flow in the quarter was $7.6 million compared to negative $0.4 million last year. And the strong operational cash flows was driven by higher profit before tax and a modest release of working capital. The equity ratio was 45% compared with 55% a year ago and 42% last quarter. The lower year-on-year ratio reflects growth in the balance sheet, where we see on the asset side, the total amount is $74.7 million compared to $50.7 million last year. And the increase is mainly related to higher trade receivables and cash, as well as the right-of-use assets for the new Stockholm office. Inventories has also increased to support the continued growth. The increase in assets was mainly financed by higher liabilities and equity, and that's including the liability related to the Stockholm office lease, higher trade payables, as well as deferred revenue and retained earnings. Despite the dividend we paid out in Q2, the total equity increased to $33.5 million. We have cash of $7.5 million end of the quarter compared to $1.7 million last year. And during the quarter, we have increased our credit facilities from NOK 75 million to NOK 200 million, now equivalent to USD 20.8 million. And this change is to support our growth strategy. Working capital decreased to $15.8 million from $18.4 million last year and slightly down from $16.8 million last quarter. Inventory continued to increase and are now at $22.8 million compared to $20 million last year and up from $21.3 million in the previous quarter. The year-on-year increase is primarily driven by longer lead times for components and reaching higher inventory levels is part of our strategy to strengthen product availability and support future growth. Inventory quality remains high with limited inventory risk. Trade receivables increased to $25.6 million from last year where it was $19 million, but it's down from $26.4 million last quarter. The year-on-year increase reflects the higher sales. Invoicing was less concentrated at quarter end this quarter than in the previous quarter and strong invoicing in the first month contributed to a slight quarter-on-quarter reduction in trade receivables. The collections remained normal, with no increase in credit risk. Trade payables increased to $12.3 million from $6 million last year, down from $12.7 million last quarter. And the balance reflects substantial inventory purchase towards the end of the quarter. We have payment terms of mainly 60 days, but some suppliers have 30 days. Net other short-term liabilities increased to $20.4 million from $14.6 million last year. Deferred revenue, which is the largest component here, increased to $14.2 million compared to $11.1 million last year, and tax liabilities increased to $2.1 million due to higher taxable income. Thank you, and Magnus, welcome back.

Thank you. I will now talk about our longer-term financial aspirations. I want to start by repeating that our revenue is broad-based. We are seeing, of course, AI being a very important component in all our market segments. Our network operator customers are selling a lot of bandwidth to hyperscalers, neo?scalers and enterprises for supporting the AI infrastructure. We're seeing our enterprise customers investing into their application layers and IT infrastructures to support future generations operating models. And of course, we're seeing an emerging market for us coming on board with direct neo?scaler and such revenue more related directly to the AI data centers that are continuing to grow. Having said that, the investments we're now doing going forward is, as I said, to continue to grow our addressable market. We see a fantastic opportunity in renovating for the lack of a better term, the Internet, to support future generations of optical transport demands. A lot of the networks out there are built for things like broadband rollout 5, 10, 15 years ago and needs higher capacity and better performance. We're tagging on to that. So, more performance in our products. Longer reach in our network solutions will broaden the addressable market for the company to probably around 2x as we have discussed earlier. Other investment areas for us, of course, AI-driven automation in our products and in our software platforms to address our customers' operating expenses in a more effective way. That's another area where we are investing. And last but not least, of course, investing in our own operations and all of our processes to drive more automation into how we do things, what we do and so on. So, we're going through a very, very interesting phase in the company now, building everywhere, which is, for me, as a company, builder is super fun, to be perfectly honest. And I think that my colleagues in the company agree with me. It's all very positive. I also have to say that the mid-term financial aspirations that we introduced about half a year ago to grow the company to $300 million to $400 million and to achieve an EBIT margin long-term sustainable with upside potential of 16%. Quarter 3 is a data point. That is, of course, indicating more. But it's one data point. So when it comes to our mid-term financial aspirations, we are staying firm for now, and we will come back as the longer-term results trickle in. With that, I want to hand over to Q&A. Mr. Burman.

Perfect. Any questions in the room? No? Then let's go to our analysts on the portal. First up is Christoffer Bjørnsen from DNB Carnegie.

Congrats on the strong quarter. I just wanted to start off with the dynamics between Q2 and Q3. I believe you said last quarter that you had a couple of weeks of manufacturing issues in conjunction with the site transition. So, one can make the argument that adjusted for that, if you were shut for a couple of weeks that depending on when the catch-up came on that, that Q3 revenues is essentially flattish on a sequential basis. Is that kind of how to look at it? Or how do you look at the underlying trend improvement or what you want to call it, just for starters?

Yes, no. So, Q3 is a better quarter from all aspects. Yes.

All right. And on the inventory, typically, we would applaud a strong cash flow. But given the -- what seems to be a really strong demand outlook, we're kind of looking for a bit more additions to inventory. So, I think you've said in the past that you're comfortable with the supply chain through the first half of '27. But can you maybe kind of expand a bit on that despite current inventory maybe not supporting that much growth going forward, are you confident because you have stuff coming in that you have visibility on? And given the $20 million expanded credit facility, which is unused, does that kind of suggest the level of inventory you're looking to bring in over the next couple of quarters incremental to the current kind of run rate on the inventory side? Messy question, but I hope you catch my drift.

Yes. I catch your drift, Christoffer. So, inventory supply chain. So, I think we can safely conclude that going forward and through 2027, it is going to be access to components that will be everything. We have demonstrated clearly that our own capability, our own production is great. It's better now than it was when we entered Q2. It's better now than it was when we entered Q3, and we're continuing to improve. So, supply chain is going to be it for the foreseeable future. We have also explained numerous times that our demand planning for critical components is 1 year out. That means we are now working with Q3 and Q4 and what we did 6 months ago for Q1 and Q2 will, to an extent, determine our future. So, you should hope that we have done a good job. That's only one side of the story, however, because if you look at this market, it is daily work that my supply chain team is doing. That matters more. How much can we pull in, how much can our suppliers provide us with in addition to what we have asked for? Are we going to get any pushouts that are unexpected for one reason or another? That is unknown to us today. Opportunities arise all the time. We get a call from a component supplier telling us that we have x amount of pieces of this particular ASIC or whatever it might be ready for shipment next week, do you want it or not? Generally, our answer will, of course, be yes. We want it. But it's impossible to predict for us. So it's constant work. This will continue. So far, so good. We have received more than we were hoping for. I'm expecting that to continue. But I'm not expecting a general massive improvement in the component market in the coming years probably because the demand is very high. And we know that the biggest players in our market, the hyperscalers and such, they are planning how to build their data center infrastructures in 2029, '30 and '31 today. So, there is no doubt that it's something that will be with us for some time.

But just to be clear, you are guiding for 25% growth medium term from what is now kind of a pretty high base, assuming also Q4 is a pretty decent quarter. So, you are seeing that you will have access to more inventory next year than this year, you know, what I mean or supply?

You are interpreting our mid-term financial aspirations as guidance. We are saying that we are -- we see a revenue potential of $300 million to $400 million and above. We're seeing a minimum average growth from '26 of 25%. We are not really talking at all about what the guidance is. So, we shall see is my answer.

Good. Next up is Markus Heiberg from SEB.

So, just to continue a little bit on the constraints into Q4. Normally, that's a stronger quarter than Q3. Is there anything now in the component market or certain constraints that makes the normal seasonality not valid that there are other things determining your growth into Q4? Or how should we think that as we update our models?

Yes. Q4 will be a lot about access to components, no doubt. We do not know what normal seasonality is after an 80% growth quarter. What I do know, as I said, is that Q4 will be a quarter that's going to contribute greatly to what we're looking at here. However, again, unfortunately, our visibility on the supply chain is not good enough. And I'm more talking about when I'm saying that we know what we're getting, but what can we get in addition to that, that we don't know. So it's very, very difficult at the moment to predict that.

That's understandable. And then maybe you can reflect a bit on the EBIT margin, which is now above 20% in the quarter. And to what extent is that sustainable into the coming quarters? I think OpEx is up -- or employees are up 20% year-over-year and OpEx up 40%, but your top line is much higher. So, you have a high operating leverage now. So, how should we think about margins in the coming quarter, considering your high level now?

Well, I think everyone clearly can see that obviously, if we continue to grow at very high levels, we will see a clear upside on this number. That's mathematics. And it's proving the model in a sense. We have 1 data point now. We'll see how this develops. I am sure that we have to come back and discuss this several times in the future. What I do know is that in the first half of the year growing by 50%, 60%, in the third quarter growing by 80%, I can assure you that it's impossible to drive OpEx growth at that level. It's not wanted. It's very, very difficult. So hence, it will contribute. Growth will contribute to EBIT.

Good. And then final one for me is on -- can you elaborate on the even larger players that you are engaging with? And what kind of players are we talking about? Is it Tier 1 telcos, hyperscalers? And to what extent is that due to competitors unable to supply? Or to what extent is that driven by your own technology? And when could this sort of engagement result in volume orders?

I will start by answering the last question. Of course, we are in a very good position when it comes to supply chain compared to many of our larger suppliers. That's reality. However, I believe that the investments that we have done in our products over the years has taken us to a point where we have a very, very attractive offering for even the larger players. As a company, we have grown to a maturity when it comes to things like security, which is kind of top of mind for us and for everyone else. It's security in our products. It's security in our IT environment. It's probably the most important question at the moment compared to several years ago where it was more normal CSR questions that mattered most. We are there. We can prove to the larger players that we have a very, very stable environment that we're operating within. We're simply a good company. When it comes to who these people are, I would say it's predominantly network operators of different kind in different markets, predominantly.

Okay. Up next is Øystein Lodgaard from ABG.

I have a couple of questions on these larger clients that you're talking about. First of all, are there now Tier 1 opportunities we're talking about? And then what is kind of the -- what is required for you to win these contracts? Are there anything that things you need to develop or any other kind of things you need to accomplish before you can land a Tier 1? And then the last question on that is, if you land one of these big Tier 1s with the tight component supply that are in the market, are you then actually able to deliver on those large opportunities in this current tight market?

I can confirm that we have Tier 1 opportunities with our existing products that are in very developed phases, meaning proof-of-concept lab trials, first office applications and such. So, that's what we're talking about. And none of these are -- and RFQs, I should say, added to that. We're not quite there yet, but it's looking very promising. And as you know, this is not new territory to us as a team. We have done this in the past. We know how this is done, and we know what we need to do to be successful as a team. So it all looks fairly good. Then your question is, can we supply? I mean, yes. I can only reiterate that availability of components will be the most important thing for us in the foreseeable future here. And I certainly hope that we will be able to supply in line with expectations. I should also say that with larger accounts, as we're seeing with the larger accounts that we have now, which are typically Tier 2 type players and typically in the U.S. So, fairly large organizations, I should say, compared to, for instance, what we're seeing in Europe. There are ramp-up periods. And it is a share of wallet game. It's application by application. It's growing in importance. It's proving ourselves over time that matters. So it's not like a construction company where we get a contract to build a bridge and that's it. It's a long game.

Okay. Next up, we have Jørgen Weidemann from Pareto.

So first off, I would like to ask, have the discussions you have with your customers changed in the last quarter? Is there more urgency to the discussions you have? Or is it more or less the same that what it's been for the last, call it, the last year or so?

There is more urgency and the urgency has been there for 9 to 12 months caused by, as you have seen, our larger competitors are leaning more and more on hyperscalers for their growth, which means other segments in the market have a problem getting attention, which means qualifying us as a supplier is typically an accelerated activity that gets very high priority within our customers' organizations because they need it to provide their growth simply.

Okay. And could you say something about how quickly you now managed to build out the organization that you have? You said it obviously can't be as quick as the top line growth, but how is your access to talent? And how is the current development of the organization helping you to maybe accelerate the development of some products that you need to address new use cases for customers or access larger customers than what you currently do?

Yes. May I also say that as we have discussed, growing our capabilities today versus growing our capabilities a few years ago is a completely different game. It is much, much more about automation, about leveraging the possibilities that we get through AI and our in-house software development capability. So, having said that, talent, domain competence is going to be critical for the future. And so far, so good. I think when people in our industry look at Smartoptics, they are seeing the same thing that I'm seeing the challenger of challengers. It's an attractive place to be. People want to work for Smartoptics. And yes, it's all good, I would say.

And then a final one from me. If you look now at the largest customers that you're currently serving, how large a share of their use cases would you estimate that it can address today? And how much do you think you can address incrementally by developing new products over the next, say, 2 years?