Kongsberg Automotive New

Good morning and thank you for joining Kongsberg Automotive's Q2 2026 earnings call presentation. Today we are hosting a digital webcast and with me here is Trond Fiskum, our president and CEO, and CFO Erik Magelsen. On the screen, you see today's agenda. And as always, we will host a Q&A session after today's presentation. You can, during the call, raise a question in the webcast tool. And with that, I will give the word over to our president and CEO, Trond Fiskum.

Thank you, Therese. Good morning to all. Thank you for joining today's earnings call. We go straight to the highlights of the quarter. We have had a positive development in the quarter and the numbers show a clear improvement in CAE's financial performance. Q2 EBIT improved to €12 million, representing a 6.2 EBIT margin. Compared with the same quarter last year, where we had a negative EBIT of €2.9 million. Cash flow also improved and moved in the right direction with a net cash flow in Q2 that was positive 4.3 million euro compared with a negative 0.9 million euro in the same quarter last year. Net profit increased to 5.2 million compared with a loss of 2 million in Q2 last year. And finally, return on capital employed improved to 10.2% compared with 0.5% in the same quarter last year. So overall, a good quarter that shows that we are on the right track. So the fundamentals of the business continue to improve across all key financial metrics. On this slide, we compare the Q2 results with the previous four quarters, and we can clearly see the positive developments. Starting with revenues, Q2 revenues reached €193.8 million, which is slightly above same quarter last year, and almost 8% higher than Q1. Revenues have now increased for three consecutive quarters, indicating an improved market environment. While we see that the overall market conditions remain mixed across regions and the different market segments, we do see encouraging signs in some key markets for us, particularly in North America, both in the commercial vehicle segment, but also in other market segments, for example, construction vehicles. We also see positive developments in the European commercial vehicle market. Moving on to profitability, EBIT for the quarter is, as mentioned, 12 million euro and an improved margin to 6.2. This is the strongest quarterly EBIT performance in a long time for KA. The improvements is primarily driven by reduced overhead costs and also some reduced warranty expenses. Erik will provide more details on this later in the presentation. It is worth noting that in the quarter we have a positive one-time effect of 2.2 million euro related to a reversal of impairment due to a successful customer contract renegotiation. And it also includes a negative effect from a restructuring cost of 1.8 million euro. Cash flow is also moving in the right direction. Q2 net cash flow was positive 4.3 as mentioned and the last 12 months cash flow has now improved for six consecutive quarters and is now at 17.7 million euro. Overall, the key message here is that the actions that we're taking over the last 12 to 18 months are delivering positive and measurable results. Profitability has improved, cash generation has strengthened, leverage continues to decline, and we are developing a financially healthier and stronger business. We continue to take additional initiatives to reduce K's cost base and improve our competitiveness. A key element of this is to simplify and optimize our manufacturing footprint. During the quarter, we announced the consolidation of our manufacturing operations in China. Following the acquisition of the remaining ownership interest in our China joint venture in 2025, we achieved greater flexibility to optimize our footprint in the region. And as a result of a strategic review, we decided to consolidate our manufacturing operations in China from three plants into one. The initiative will reduce our cost base and create a stronger consolidated unit in Wuxi in China. The restructuring costs associated with this consultation were recognised in Q2. The second initiative is in France. There we have initiated a restructuring process related to our plant in Cluse. We follow the procedure as defined by French law. The statutory and mandatory information and consultation process with employee representatives, labour unions and relevant authorities commenced in June and we expect to have a conclusion during the second half of this year. These initiatives are fully aligned with our broader strategy of creating a leaner and more competitive manufacturing footprint and to improve case profitability and cash generation. Regarding the warranty and recall related matters that we have communicated previously, there are no fundamental changes to report. The matters remain unresolved and continue to be actively managed. I'm personally involved to drive these cases forward and towards conclusion. During Q2, we continued with constructive discussions with the relevant counterparties regarding potential resolutions, and we have made progress in several areas, but no final agreements have been reached and the discussions remain ongoing. In parallel, during Q2, we initiated legal proceedings related to insurance recovery in one of these matters, and this is ongoing. So we are working actively to achieve commercially reasonable outcomes and as communicated previously, we will provide further updates as additional clarity is obtained. Moving to our commercial performance and contract awards for the quarter. During the quarter, we secured contract awards with an estimated revenues of €135 million. This represents a meaningful increase compared with recent quarters and reflecting an improved commercial momentum across the business. Our focus continues to be on profitable growth, not volume alone. Several contracts awarded during the quarter were secured on improved commercial and contractual terms, including the successful renegotiation and extension of the contract previously mentioned that led to the impairment reversal recognized in the quarter. Looking at the business mix, awards were well balanced between drive control system and flow control system. The awards were broadly aligned with our revenue profile, with the largest share coming from the commercial vehicle segment, which remains our largest revenue base. Looking ahead, our commercial pipeline remains solid. Customer engagement is high. We continue to actively pursue a number of attractive opportunities that supports our ambition of sustainable and profitable growth. We continue to execute against our four clear priorities for 2026, improving cost efficiency, strengthening cash flow, building stronger leadership and culture, and accelerating innovation and profitable growth. And the Q2 results demonstrate that these priorities are translating into real and tangible results. We continue to take additional initiatives to optimize our cost base and improve our competitiveness. and at the same time we continue to strengthen the organization, the leadership teams and our performance culture. Sustainable improvement is not only about cost actions and restructuring projects, it also requires strong leadership and strong performance-oriented culture. And finally, we remain focused on innovation and profitable growth. The contract awards secured during the quarter is a step in the right direction and we have, as mentioned, a high business development activity level. Our work is far from finished, but it is encouraging to see that we have improved results. It gives us confidence in that we are on the right track and confidence in the future of KA. We'll now take a more detailed look at the financials and I will hand over the work to Erik.

Thank you Trond. In drive control systems, the revenue level was recorded lower than in Q2 last year, but we do start to see a stabilizing upward trend in the top line level again. This is also demonstrated by the fact that the revenue level increased with 8% from the first quarter this year. The business unit driveline is where we primarily have a lower revenue level than in 2025, which is also in line with our plan. Even though we have lower sales than in Q2 last year, the EBIT improved significantly compared to Q2 last year. This is due to a combination of reduction overhead and administrative expenses and lower accruals for warranty expenses. As noted, Q2 includes a positive effect of €2.2 million related to reversal of prior impairments, but also restructuring cost of €1.7 million related to this business area now in Q2. So significant structural changes have been and will be made within this business area that we will continue to see positive effect from in coming quarters. So moving on to flow control systems. We now have recorded increased revenue level over three consecutive quarters, which is very positive and indicating a more stable market environment and gradual recovery in demand. And also here, the revenue level is 8% higher than in the first quarter this year. The increase in EBIT we see here is primarily driven by lower operating costs, both directly in the business area and through allocation of lower corporate costs. This in addition to the effect of increased contribution from the higher revenue level. You also see the positive development in the EBIT margin, which is now in Q2 close to 9%. The EBIT improvements in Q2 and the first half year 26 are driven primarily by operational execution and structural cost actions and reductions, and by lower warranty cost. and not by sales volume recovery. This is demonstrated in this EBIT pitch where you see the effect of the lower overhead cost compared to the same period in 2025 in the 9.8 million euro for the first half year. Q2 2025 was marked by significant growth warranty cost that also affected the first half year 2025. In addition to the structural cost changes implemented, we are now seeing signs of improved market stability. So moving into the net income, our bottle mine, coming from a negative net income of €2 million in Q2 2025, with a key effect shown on the bridge, we report a positive net income of €5.2 million now in Q2 2026, which of course is a substantial improvement in our bottle mine. For the first half year, we have improved the net income from a negative €4.2 million The operational profitability improvements reflected in the EBIT column here are the key drivers for the improvements, and this is coming from our structural cost improvements, improved financial and cost discipline. On the cash flow side, as Trond also mentioned, we have a continued increase in the 12-month trend, and this is now positive at 17.7 million euro. Coming from a negative level of 12.4 million euro in the same quarter last year. And the four quarters through the year will to a certain extent have different seasonality effects in relation to networking capital. And it is therefore most relevant to compare each quarter to the same quarter in the previous year. Now, the net cash flow in Q236 is 5.2 million euro higher than in Q225. So here it's important to look at over time and the positive cash flow development over time reflects both stronger earnings, structural cost improvements, stronger financial discipline and improved working capital management. The improved profitability and positive net cash flow development also materializes in a significant reduction in net interest bearing debt. And this net interest bearing debt has been reduced with 23.3 million euro from Q1 2025. As you can also see, the net interest bearing debt to EBITDA ratio has been reduced by more than 50% from the level in Q2 2025 and is now at 1.7. The leverage ratio per bond term definition that you see in the blue line is the key ratio in relation to our 110 million euro loan, bond loan, where the covenant is maximum 4. And this has come down to 1.6 now per Q2006. This positive development strengthens KF's financial position and gives us increased financial flexibility going forward. Then on the financial ratios, the improvements in our earning profitability that we achieve without increasing our asset at the same rate gives us a significant increase in return on capital employed. And this measure of our capital efficiency has now increased over four consecutive quarters and is per Q26 at 10.2%. It is also noteworthy here that the hectare ratio has increased quarter by quarter since Q2 2025. And this is now at 33.2%. So as we continue to improve our operations and cost base, giving increased probability, the hectare ratio will continue to increase. And this is, of course, one measure of our solidity. And then back to you, Trond.

Thank you Erik. Let me conclude on a few takeaways from the quarter. Q2 delivered a significant improvement in profitability and cash flow demonstrating that our operational improvements and cost reduction initiatives are delivering tangible results. Revenues increased for the third consecutive quarter indicating improved market stability and improved market conditions. We are taking additional decisive actions to reduce our cost base to further streamline our manufacturing footprint and going forward We remain focused on operational improvements, excellence and disciplined execution as we continue to work towards our long term EBIT target of 6.5. Final slide is regarding the outlook. We expect improvement in underlying profitability to continue through the remainder of 2026 and market conditions remains cautiously positive. supported by a stronger truck order intake in North America and also a positive development in Europe. Although there are geopolitical and trade related uncertainties that remain. This concludes our presentation today and we will open up for the Q&A session.

I think there's one question I can start with. Can you comment some more on the reduction in net interest bearing debt and the leverage ratio and what this implies for Kongsberg Automotive? Yes, as you see from the graphs, we have managed to achieve a significant reduction, a good reduction in net interest paying debt and also in the leverage ratio. This is important for Kongsberg Automotive because it demonstrates a more solid financial company with a better balance between debt and equity. You can also say financial resilience. and it gives us greater financial flexibility with regard to financing and more financing opportunities and the combination of different types of financing and also to finance new growth. So this is important from many perspectives and I think everything we do in a way at the end materializes in our cash flow and in our net interest paying debt, Trond.

Okay, there is a question here regarding the warranty. There's two questions actually. So the first one is when can we expect the warranty cases to be concluded? We understand that there is a desire to have a timeline for this, but we cannot provide one. These are complex matters and the timing is not entirely within our control. We are very actively engaged in this and we are making progress as reported and I'm personally also involved in driving these cases towards the resolution and we will come back with updates when we have that. The second question regarding warranty is can you explain actual accrual levels for warranty cost compared to risk estimates? Can we expect significant adjustment in accruals? The answer to this question is that we have made accruals based on our best estimate by management.

Yeah.

You can take the next one, which is on net working capital. While your report continued good free cash flow, there seems to have been an increase in working capital in the past few quarters. How should we view this for the full year 2026? I think I can just comment from my point of view. When we have increased revenues, this is naturally followed by higher working capital to support that revenue growth over the last few quarters. So that is my first immediate response to that question. Anything to add, Erik?

Yeah, that's right. And I think it is kind of a function of the revenue and the top line and activity level. If you look at, if you take the net working capital in percent of the revenue level in the last three months and analyze this, we have a net working capital ratio at around 19% per Q226, and it's the same as it was in year N25. So, we are of course working to There's a question regarding

Q2 EBIT margin reached 6.2%, very close to your long-term target of 6.5%. Do you believe the company now operates with a structurally lower cost base than a year ago, meaning that future revenue growth should translate into higher incremental margins? Yes, the company now operates with a structurally lower cost base, as also shown in the EBIT bridge by Erik. And yes, also future revenue growth should translate into higher EBIT margins. There's one more question. You mentioned improving market stability and that revenues have increased for three consecutive quarters. Do you believe the market has now passed the bottom of the cycle? Definitely. That is what we see based on the current market situation. and we do see that the market is stable or improving. Again, we have to emphasize the uncertainties on the geopolitical and trade-related issues that impacted the revenues last year. That risk is not disappeared, but the base case is that we believe that the market is now much more favorable. Okay. There are some long questions here that we have to read through.

I think it's also on the structurally lower cost base and that any future recovery market demand is likely to generate significantly higher profitability than in previous cycles.

That was a repetition of the previous question. Is there anything to add? No, that's...

Just that we are continually working to reduce our cost base, of course, in addition to what we have now.

There's one more question on the business pipeline. You described the business pipeline or business opportunities pipeline as solid. How would you compare today's pipeline with the same period a year ago? And are you seeing more opportunities in the commercial vehicle market? We don't want to provide specifics here, but I think in general we do see an improved pipeline. We do see more opportunities coming. for Kongsberg Automotive than a year ago without going into any specifics. And I think this is also one of the reasons that we are also optimistic about the future of the company. We do see a lot of good opportunities and we have relevant technologies and products also with the changes that we see in the industry. Do you want to comment on this one?

Yeah, it's a question here that as we mentioned that improved leverage profile could open opportunities for more funding alternatives, including opportunities to fund growth. You already have a liquidity reserve in excess of 100 million euro. Are you seeking to further strengthen this funding base? And are you alluding to M&A opportunities? I think that generally this improvement we have in all parameters are giving us increased financial flexibility now to what kind of debt financing we will have going forward and it also gives an opportunity to finance new growth and including in that definitely that Where there are interesting M&A opportunities, we will look at that. And then it's, of course, a company of our size. There's always opportunities in a company that we will look at from time to time. So generally, it's positive because it gives us more financial flexibility to have more options open.

There is a question on contracts. You mentioned that new contracts have been secured on improved commercial and contractual terms. Can you elaborate on what has improved compared with previous years? Is it primarily pricing, margins, indexing mechanism, or other contractual conditions? In general, our focus is to make sure that we have a long-term Thank you very much. Price reductions and avoiding those. It is about making sure, yes, that we get compensation for raw material price fluctuations and other cost drivers, including energy tariffs and also contractual conditions, in particular related to warranty. So all of these in combination, I would say. That was the last question. There is a couple of other questions. They're very specific and maybe technical. Maybe we can sort them out separately. I think if there's no other questions, we... Thank you everyone for their participation. Have a great summer.

Thank you very much.