Zaptec ASA (ZAP) Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Zaptec and our presentation of the financial results for the third quarter. My name is Kurt Ostrem, I'm the CEO. And together with CFO, Eirik Haerem, we will take you through the highlights from the third quarter. The third quarter was a really strong quarter for Zaptec, driven by the strong EV sales across Europe. The heading of this slide is steady progress. And the reason for that is that we see year-over-year that we have an increase in revenue, gross margin and EBITDA for Zaptec. The third quarter is always affected by the season, both installers and the end user have the summer break during this quarter, first in the Nordic countries in July and then in August for the rest of Europe. And this is expected and planned from our side that we see lower activities in these months due to the summer break. But despite this, we have delivered a really strong third quarter. And I'm happy to share that we have -- September was a record month for Zaptec. Never before have we delivered so many chargers and installed so many chargers in one single month as we did in September. And even better, this record is already being beaten by even higher installed number of Zaptec chargers in October. So this record installation and strong order intake points to future growth for Zaptec. We have also, in this quarter, have a robust performance where we reinforced our leadership in our core markets, especially in the home market in Norway, we have seen a really strong performance in this quarter. At the same time, we have strengthened our position in major markets in Europe. We have normalized our inventory during the third quarter, and we expect the inventory to be reduced further into the fourth quarter. And this is driving robust cash flow and improved the liquidity to Zaptec.

Okay. So I'll briefly take you through the financial highlights before we dive into the details later in the presentation. Q3 was strong in terms of revenue and orders for Zaptec. The revenue was up 23% compared to same period last year. The order intake increased by 35% and the backlog strengthened 44%. The gross margin came in at 39%, around the same level as same period last year. We spent NOK 124 million in OpEx, leaving us with an EBITDA of NOK 21 million, equivalent to a 6% margin. The EBITDA was significantly improved compared to the same period last year, where we delivered NOK 4 million in EBITDA.

As I said, we had a strong revenue in the third quarter. We see a 23% revenue increase compared to the third quarter last year. And even if we expect low activities during the summer months in the third quarter, we see that we have achieved almost the same high revenue as we had in the high second quarter. So we're really pleased with the revenue in the third quarter. Also, the order intake shows a really strong increase compared to the third quarter last year with 35% increase. We have now an order backlog of NOK 524 million at the end of the third quarter. And even if I have said this before, I want to repeat it, there is seasonality when it comes to order intake in Zaptec because we want visibility so we can plan our production and be able to deliver our charger when it's needed in the market. That's why we try to take up preorders to have visibility for the next 6 months. And we do this in the second and the fourth quarter. In the second quarter, we secure the orders for the second half. And in the fourth quarter, we secure the orders for the first half. That's why we will always have higher order intake in the second and fourth quarter compared to the third quarter, but still really strong third quarter this year with 35% increase.

So let's look into the gross margin in a bit more detail. Sustaining a strong gross margin is a key priority for Zaptec. We have demonstrated that over time, we're able to increase the gross margin. This is demonstrated by the trend line in the graph. We have achieved this by targeted supply chain efforts and also from introducing products in the market with higher gross margin. That said, from quarter-to-quarter, there might be variability in the gross margin. We saw an example of that in the fourth quarter with 39.4% gross margin, which was somewhat below the trend. As we look ahead, we plan for increased gross margin, and we think higher deliveries of the Zaptec Go 2 will lift the gross margin in the future. So over to EBITDA. We increased the EBITDA with NOK 17 million from NOK 4 million in the same period last year to NOK 21 million this quarter. If you look at this quarterly sequential EBITDA development, it's important to bear in mind the seasonality, which Kurt mentioned. When the top line is impacted, it has an effect on EBITDA. So I'd like to zoom out and on the next slide, demonstrate the LTM development. As you can see here, we have demonstrated the ability to grow EBITDA over time if you look at the last 12 months. We're targeting to increase this further in the quarters to come and expect based on current visibility to drive LTM EBITDA above NOK 100 million when we look at Q4.

The EV market continues to strengthen throughout Europe. And if you look at the plug-in vehicle sales in the third quarter compared to third quarter last year, we saw an increase by 36%. And if you look at the biggest car market in Europe, Germany, they have impressive 57% increase in the third quarter. This shows the potential and gives a great outlook for Zaptec. The way we are executing our strategy is that we build on our success in our core markets like the Nordics, and we accelerate the rollout of new products, the Go 2 and the Pro Eichrecht this year, and we expand into major markets in Europe. And all the time, we have focused on the cost and looking after our working capital and make sure that we optimize our cash flow. When we look in the mature markets, our core markets, we see that Norway had 33% increase in revenue in the third quarter compared to third quarter last year. This is impressive. And in fact, Norway had already passed the target for the budget for the entire 2025. Also in Denmark, we see an increase in EV sales and then also a really nice increase in sales of Zaptec charger in Denmark, and the increase was 14% in the third quarter. In Sweden, our biggest market with a really high market share, we also see 11% increase on top of a very strong quarter last year. So great performance of all these 3 markets. And as we have said, a new record in September and a new record in October. We installed more than 25,000 Zaptec chargers in October month. This is a really great achievement. And if you look at this graph, you can see the seasonality with a dip in each summer break and then a strong growth in the autumn. And the growth has never been higher than we see these days, and we're really looking forward to see the results of November if we can manage to set another new record. And we are producing and delivering according to our plan. We are now producing between 6,000 and 7,000 units of our new products, Zaptec Pro, M&E and Zaptec Go 2. And the most important with this slide is that we are ready and well positioned to scale up the production of these products when needed. We also have a strong growth in new major markets in the third quarter. We have 54% growth in major markets like Benelux, U.K., Germany and France in the third quarter. When that said, we are not satisfied with the development, and we are impatient, and we want to grow even faster in some of these markets. But we are now putting in more resource into the sales and also delivering new features into these major markets, and we expect to see the results of these efforts going into 2026.

Let's look a bit more into the cost side. We continue to focus our OpEx on innovation and targeted commercial efforts. This includes a new brand campaign launched recently in the fourth quarter. We continue the trend to grow the revenue more than we grow the costs. It's important to note that in the third quarter, the Zaptec share price was up more than 50%. This had an impact on our OpEx. And the explanation for that is that we have a share-based bonus program for employees, and the effect of that was around NOK 5 million in the quarter. As we look ahead, we plan for a continued sustainable OpEx level, aiming for increasing the top line more than we increase the cost to boost our profitability further. And then let's look into our inventory. Zaptec's excessive inventory historically dates back to 2023. We had significantly boosted order intake in the first half of the year, leading to a high production order for us. These production orders were to be delivered at the end of 2023. However, the market turned around and softened significantly when interest rates spiked and EV sales declined. We have since 2024, worked to normalize the inventory in a controlled manner. The third quarter marked another step in the right direction where we reduced the inventory with NOK 74 million. We are now approaching the target levels. However, we expect a continued decline in the inventory in the next quarter. And then let's look at our liquidity position. We delivered a strong cash flow from positive result and from cash release from the normalization of the inventory also in Q3. We added NOK 66 million in liquidity. With NOK 532 million available, we are now in a robust position to manage future growth and to navigate future market uncertainties. And with that, I'll leave it to you, Kurt, to sum up.

Yes. And the main driver for our sales are, of course, the EV sales in Europe. And the EV sales in Europe are strong and are expected to stay strong. And we have shown that we are positioned to maintain our leadership in our core markets. And with the record installation rates we have shown, we create new growth opportunities for Zaptec. We are now doing strategic sales initiatives and new product features launching into new markets, and we expect to see results of this going forward. So all in all, we have a continued outlook for profitable growth for Zaptec. So thank you for following this presentation, and thank you for following Zaptec's journey.