Materialise NV

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the first quarter 2025 materialized financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, Please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Harriet Freed of Alliance Advisors. Please go ahead.

Thank you for joining us today for Materialize's quarterly conference call. With us on the call are Brigitte DeVette, Chief Executive Officer, and Kuhn Berges, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call and webcast are being accompanied by a slide presentation that reviews Materialize's strategic financial and operational performance for the first quarter of 2025. To access the slides, if you haven't already done so, please go to the investor relations section of the company's website at www.materialize.com. The earnings press release issued earlier today can also be found on that page. Before we get started, I'd like to remind you that management may make forward-looking statements regarding the company's plans, expectations, and growth prospects, among other things. These forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown certainties and risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed, including competitive dynamics and industry change. Any forward-looking statements, including those related to the company's future results and activities, represent management's estimates as of today and should not be relied upon as representing their estimates as of any subsequent day. Management disclaims any duty to update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or changes in expectations. A more detailed description of the risks and uncertainties and other factors that may impact the company's future business or financial results can be found in the company's most recent annual report on Form 20-F, filed with the SEC. Finally, management will discuss certain non-IFRS measures on today's call. A reconciliation table is contained in the earnings release and at the end of the slide presentation. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brigitte Devette. Brigitte, please go ahead.

Good morning and good afternoon, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. You can find the agenda for our call on slide three. First, I will summarize the business highlights for the first quarter of 2025. I will then pass the floor to Kuhn, who will take you through the first quarter of financials in more detail. And finally, I will come back and explain what we expect for the remaining months of 2025. When we've completed our prepared remarks, we'll be happy to respond to questions. I'm moving to slide four for the highlights of the first quarter of 2025. To start with, we recently published our 2024 Sustainability Report, sharing our goals, actions, and progress on our sustainability strategy. Since the start of Materialise, our key focus has been to make a real difference through additive technology, and sustainability has always been part of this mission. As we shared in the report, we set ourselves the target to cut absolute emissions by 55% by 2029 compared to the 2019 baseline. And in 2024, we reduced our emissions already by 32%, which represents a 3% reduction on the 2023 emissions. The most significant change from the previous year was a reduction of almost 700 tons of CO2 in raw materials, reflecting improved efficiency and our constant improvements in our operational processes. And this is a perfect example to show that profit and planet go hand in hand. Now, our key focus in the recent years has been to scale additive manufacturing, making additive easier, faster, and more reliable, while enabling more applications of additive. In the first quarter, we've made meaningful progress on this journey, and I'm very proud that in the current challenging market environment, we managed to grow our revenue in this period by more than 4%. In our medical business, we continue to see strong uptake of our personalized solutions, driven by adoption in various anatomical areas across orthopedics, CMF, cardiac, and respiratory. The strong growth in the first quarter, which comes on top of an already strong quarter last year, is evidence of this. To boost the adoption of personalized devices even further, we are continuously improving our segmentation, planning, and design software to make it faster and more user-friendly. In our last earnings call, we discussed the launch of our cloud-based Mimix platform called Mimix Flow, which makes it easier and faster to segment and plan cases thanks to the access to AI-based algorithms and which enables effortless collaboration among clinicians and engineers through real-time file sharing. eliminating the need to upload or download files. In the first quarter, our customers reported significant efficiency gains with this product and confirmed that they value the access to a single integrated platform. Now, in addition to Mimix Flow, we've previously introduced specialized solutions for segmentation and planning workflows in specific applications, such as CMF or Structural Heart, all under the Mimix and Light brand, This tool helps surgeons reduce planning time. Autognathic cases, for example, can be completed in under 25 minutes thanks to its intuitive workflows. In the first quarter of this year, Mimix and Light CMF was shortlisted as a finalist for the TCT awards in the healthcare application category. And that is a testament to the value of this product line. Now, while we continuously make progress on our software offerings, We also continue to expand our portfolio of personalized instrumentation and implants. In the first quarter, we announced the launch of a clinical trial led by the University of Michigan focused on a 3D printed tracheal splint for infants with tracheobranchomalacia called TBM. TBM is a rare and potentially fatal condition where the airway collapses. And while most children outgrow the condition by age three, they often depend on ventilators in the meantime. This bioresorbable splint allows babies to grow up at home until the disease is resolved and the implant dissolves. The trial will enroll 35 infants across multiple children's hospitals with the goal of making this life-changing personalized device widely accessible and opening the door to a new market for materialized. Now in our software division, Our goal is to help customers scale additive manufacturing with advanced software solutions. Broader adoption of additive manufacturing depends on overcoming current barriers and reducing the cost of parts. At the recent Rapid TCT conference in Detroit, we announced two new products that addressed these challenges. The first was the 2025 release of Magix, our flagship software for data and build preparation. The user will now benefit from performance and functionality enhancements as well as simplified licensing and automatic updates. As an example, the new release introduces seamless processing of NTOP implicit geometries, a file format that can characterize very complex high-performance geometries at a fraction of traditional file formats. By pairing this capability with Materialise's next-generation build processors, users can design and print parts that were previously too complex for 3D printing. For example, DMG Mori, a leader in precision machining, used the new integration of Magix and NTOP to process a high-performance geometry file in seconds compared to days previously. In a second announcement, we introduced two next-generation build processors, developed through partnerships with Aplas and OneClick Metal. Materialize's next-gen build processor is a configurable software that translates 3D design files into 3D printable instructions, optimizing and managing the 3D printing process from start to finish. The combination of Wraplas' SLA 3D printing technology with Materialize's build processor has already demonstrated remarkable results, including a 30 to 40% increase in printing speed. At the same time, the build processor integration with one-click metal supports the rapid growth of the mid-market 3D printing sector. These new capabilities complement our Magix SDK offerings, which we launched at the end of 2024. By giving users access to our algorithm base, which we've built over 35 years, we allow them to create custom workflows for their unique manufacturing requirements. With these solutions in the market, we help customers overcome the barriers to adoption of AM, and we are confident in the growth that this will bring for materialized. In our manufacturing division, macroeconomic circumstances remained difficult in the first quarter. Nevertheless, I'm proud to say that we again made progress in our key segments, and in particular in our aerospace segment, where sales grew by 23% versus the first quarter of 2024, and we were able to renew longer-term contracts with key customers. In light of the current geopolitical landscape and the breakdown of traditional global alliances, we are also reassessing Materialise's involvement in the defence sector to extend our offering into this segment. We anticipate that a broader engagement in the defence sector will strengthen our position in the aerospace segment and create new opportunities in the future. I will now turn over to Koen, who will present the financial results.

Thank you, Brigitte. Good morning or good afternoon to all of you on this call. I'll begin with a brief overview of our key financial results as shown on slide five. Amidst the current macroeconomic and geopolitical turbulence in the first quarter of this year, we managed to increase total revenue year over year by more than 4% to 66.4 million euro, while EBIT for the first quarter of 2025 amounted to 0.6 million euro. The net results for the quarter amounted to a loss of minus 0.5 million euro or 1 euro cent per share, reflecting also the impact of significant unfavorable effects from exchange rate fluctuations. Driven by positive free cash flow, we reinforced our net cash position at the end of Q1 to 67.7 million euro, an increase of almost 7 million euro versus the beginning of the quarter. In the following slides, I will further elaborate on these results. As a reminder, please note that unless stated otherwise, all comparisons are against our results for the first quarter of 2024. Turning now to slide six, you'll see an overview of our consolidated revenue. Materialized Medical continued nicely on its double-digit growth path, increasing its revenue by almost 19%. On the other hand, revenues at our software and manufacturing segments were impacted by the uncertain market conditions, resulting in reported revenue decreases of around 6% each. At the same time, however, we managed to grow the deferred revenue related to software maintenance and license fees, coming both from our medical and software segments, by €1.9 million in this year's first quarter. bringing the total amount carried in our balance sheet to almost 49 million euro. As you can see in the graph on the right side of the page, Materialise Medical accounted for 47%, Materialise Software for 15% and Materialise Manufacturing for 39% for total revenue over the first quarter of 2025. On slide 7 you will see our consolidated adjusted EBIT in EBITDA figures for the first quarter of this year. Consolidated adjusted EBIT totaled €0.6 million compared to €2.7 million for the same period of last year, representing an adjusted EBIT margin of 1%. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter amounted to €6.1 million, decreasing from €8.1 million in 2024, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 9.3%. In today's turbulent and rapidly changing market environment, it's also relevant though to compare our operational performance against the prior quarter, being the last quarter of 2024. We are happy to report that both the adjusted EBIT and EBITDA in the first quarter of this year improved significantly compared to Q4 of 2024. The increases of respectively 154 and 43% reflect the impact of the measures we are taking safeguard operational profitability in these challenging times. Moving now to slide 8, you will notice that the quarter's total revenue in our materialized medical segment increased, as said, almost 19% compared to an already strong first quarter of 2024. This solid growth was generated by both medical software and by revenue from medical devices sales, which grew respectively by 14% and 21%. Within our medical devices and services activity, we saw continued growth both in our direct and in our partner sales. In line with top-line growth, adjusted EBITDA grew further to over €9 million at the stable adjusted EBITDA margin of 29%. Important R&D investments in our future growth and in the further integration of FAOPS continued as planned in the first three months of this year. Slide 9 summarizes the results of our materialized software segments. Although sales in our software segment increased by more than 2%, reported revenue declined by 6% to €9.8 million as a result of more revenue deferral. This quarter we generated a net build-up of €0.7 million of deferred revenue in our software segments. Whereas in last year's corresponding period, we depleted the deferred revenue reserve on our balance sheets. This also reflects the continued transition to cloud and subscription-based business model into one of this year. And for the first time, more than 80% of our software revenue was of a recurring nature. As a result of the lower top line, adjusted EBITDA in our software segment decreased to €0.6 million, representing an adjusted EBITDA margin of 6.1%. Now let's turn to slide 10 for an overview of the performance of our materialized manufacturing segments. In the first quarter of 2025, as expected, manufacturing continued to operate in a very challenging market environment, where macroeconomic uncertainty further impacted the investment climate in our core markets. As a result, revenues decreased by 5.5% in the first months of this year, compared to the corresponding period of 2024. When making the comparison against the fourth quarter of 2024, however, revenue increased again by 12%. Also in the opening months of this year, we realized further growth in our strategic focus areas of aerospace and medtech, while the industrial and automotive segments continue to face serious headwinds. Adjusted EBITDA for the segment ended negatively at minus 0.4 million, but was significantly up from the adjusted EBITDA of minus 3 million euro reported in the fourth quarter of 2024, reflecting the impact of operational optimizations we continue to implement in these business segments. Slide 11 provides the highlights of our consolidated income statement for the first quarter of this year. Over the first months, our gross profit margin decreased to 55.3% compared to 56.5% in Q1 of 2024, while remaining roughly stable compared to the prior quarters. Our operating expenses in the quarter increased by €2.4 million, or 6.9% in aggregate, with the biggest increase coming from higher R&D spend, which grew by almost 12% compared to prior year. In the first quarter of this year, we spent more than €11 million on R&D, the majority of which in our medical segments. Net operating income in the quarter was €0.4 million compared to €0.8 million last year. And as a result of these elements, the group's operating result in the quarter was €0.6 million, compared to €2.6 million in the last year. Now, in Q1, net financial results amounted to a loss of €0.9 million, which includes interest income of €0.7 million from our cash reserves, an interest expense on our financial debt, 0.2 million euro and significant negative impact from foreign exchange fluctuations of minus 1.3 million euro. In last year's corresponding period the net financial result was positive by 1.5 million euro as we benefited from favorable exchange rates effects at that time. Income tax expense in the quarter amounted to 0.2 million euro compared to 0.5 million euro last year. And as a result, the net loss of the first quarter was €0.5 million, representing €1 per share, compared to the net profit of €3.6 million for the corresponding 2024 periods. Now, please turn to slide 12 for a recap of balance sheet and cash flow highlights. In the first quarter of 2025, we further reinforced our balance sheet. Our cash reserve increased to €104 million by the end of the quarter. Loan and lease repayments further reduced our gross debt to €36 million. The resulting net cash position at the end of the year as set was €67.7 million, up by almost €7 million compared to the position at the beginning of the year. Trade receivables, inventory and trade payable positions all increased, reducing our net working capital. out of which 49 million was related to deferred revenue from software licenses and maintenance contracts, as I mentioned earlier. As you can see from the graphs on the right of the page, cash flow from operating activities for the first quarter was strong and amounted to almost 10 million euro. Capital expenditures for the quarter amounted to 1.8 million euro. reflecting a more normalized level with the bulk of the investments in our new ACTEC plans behind us now. As a result of these, we generated once more a positive free cash flow, which amounted to 8 million euro over the quarter. And with that, I'd like to hand the call back to Brigitte.

Thank you, Koen. Let's turn to page 13. I'll conclude my remarks with a discussion of our full year 2025 guidance. The fundamentals of our business segments are strong, and while we expect the current uncertain macroeconomic and geopolitical conditions to weigh on our 2025 results, in particular in the second quarter, we anticipate a stabilization in the second half of the year and therefore expect to be able to deliver on our earlier guidance. As such, we continue to expect to report consolidated revenue for the full year 2025 within the 270 to 285 million euro range we communicated in our prior earnings call. We are also maintaining our adjusted EBIT guidance of 6 to 10 million euro for the fiscal year. This concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, we are now ready to open the call for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question comes from Troy Jensen of Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning, good afternoon. Congrats on the better than expected Q&A results here.

Yeah, good morning, Troy. Thank you. Yes, indeed.

So, Brigetta, for you first, just tariff impact. To me, it's probably not much. And when I think about your European business, you print parts out of there and ship them into Europe. And probably for the U.S. healthcare business, you print locally and ship from the U.S. But can you touch on kind of tariff impacts for materialized?

Yeah, absolutely. So with what you just said, you're absolutely right. So there are three things that I would say on the positive side. So we have our healthcare business with a U.S. manufacturing plant, which helps, obviously, in this situation. Our manufacturing business focused on Europe, as you said. And then the third one is that software, as such, at this point in time, is not impacted. Now, where we do see the impact potentially is on our raw materials, because even in our U.S., we will have raw materials that potentially are impacted. That's one, but the biggest impact is probably the impact of tariffs on our customers. And that is, at this point in time, very hard to say what the impact will be and how customers will react to the climate and to their increased costs. So, but from our side, you're absolutely right with, you know, the focused operations of manufacturing in Europe and our healthcare business in the US, and I would add software, is the one that is excluded from service at this point in time.

All right. Makes sense. And just how about you talked about Q2 being disruptive here and then kind of stabilizing or back to normal in the second half, so to speak. Can you just touch base on month to date? I mean, how does Q2 look? Are we going to be down sequentially, flattish? I mean, any insight on what you think Q2 could look like?

Yeah, so I mean, I obviously can only take the information that we have at this point in time. So the way we look at Q2 at this point in time is that it's going to be a bit more of a difficult quarter. The start of the month was okay. So overall, I would expect us to be somewhere more or less flattish on the top line. But there's a lot of uncertainty in the market, which makes it very hard to predict what the rest will be. There will be pressure on our bottom line in the second quarter. Now, again, as I said earlier, we'll expect that to stabilize in the second half of the year and not getting out of this. But again, at this point in time, hard to predict.

I understand. And then maybe for Kuhn, I mean, I know I hit this a lot frequently on these quarters. quarterly calls, but software was below 10 million. It's the first time we've seen it at that level since kind of the beginning of COVID. Just thoughts on kind of growing that business. I do get, you know, deferred routes are growing. And then could you also confirm, did you say 80% of revenues in software are from recurring sales? Sorry for all the questions together there.

Yes. No, thank you, Troy. Indeed, for the first time, we passed the 80% threshold or milestone of our total revenue software revenues within the software segment that were of recurring nature. Last quarter I indicated we were just north of 75%, so we made quite a big step up in the first quarter of the conversion to recurring revenue. And that is also translating into our reported revenue number. So compared to other quarters, we have deferred more of the sales of the revenue coming in on the balance sheet. And that impacts also the top line. And that is also one of the reasons why we see a lower reported revenue in the first quarter. And indeed, as you said, just below the 10 million euro point.

Now, maybe just to add one more point on here, Troy. I mean, the fact that we are above the 80% now with our recurring also gives us an indication that we're getting closer to the endpoint of this transition. Now, I'm by no way saying that the endpoint of this transition isn't this year. We know that it takes a couple of years to go through this. But with the recurring revenue above 80%, at least the end of this is in sight somewhat.

Understood. All right. Well, keep up the good work. Good luck this year.

Thank you, Troy. Thank you. And as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star 1-1. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn it back to Brigitte DeVette for closing remarks.

Well, thanks again for joining us today. We look forward to continuing our dialogue, as always, through investor conferences or in one-on-one virtual meetings or calls. And please do reach out if you have any questions. With that, I want to thank you and say goodbye for now.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.