Clavister Holding AB (publ.)

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Clavister's Q2 interim report presentation. My name is Kate Linwood and I will be your host for today's webinar. And joining me today are John Westberg, our CEO, and David Nordstrom, our CFO. So we will begin with an overview of the Q2 report. John will share key business insights and David will walk us through the financial details. And after the presentation, we will open a session for questions and answers. So please feel free to submit your questions you have throughout the presentation in the Q&A box that you can find on the top right. And then we will answer the questions after. So yeah, with that, I would like to hand over to you, John.

Thank you very much, Kate. And again, welcome. Our second quarter for the year and starting with what we see as the key highlights of the quarter. I think it's quite clear that we will rank the net sales growth in the quarter as one of the absolute key highlights, so it is a record high growth. But as important is of course that we've been able to convert that growth into an improved profitability, which we'll of course come back to. Even though we have as well our substantial order backlog with us at the sales pipeline, which is really extensive and that brings us a lot of visibility for the future. But starting with the growth and the profitability. So this quarter, again, we saw a record 63% net sales growth. So clearly a milestone for Clevister. that resulted in a net sales of 89 million SEK, so quarterly high there. If we look at the underlying drivers for this growth, the majority of it comes from increased defense delivery. So we're rapidly increasing our conversion in terms of deliveries to our defense customers, defense projects. This includes the large Norwegian defense material administration contract that we won in the first quarter this year. So that project is now up in full swing. We're delivering on it. And as a reminder, that contract runs for approximately 24 months. If we look at our gross margin, as a reminder, our target has been for a long while to have a gross margin around 80%. You might remember that we've also communicated that in periods of high growth we've typically seen a negative impact on gross margin coming mainly from hardware intensive deliveries in periods of high growth. This quarter is actually a nice exception to that. We have definitely a lot of hardware intensive deliveries to the defense sector but we have been able to see a really sound product mix which balances hardware-intensive deliveries with software-only deliveries on a level that still makes the gross margin not only robust but a few percentage points above our set target. If we then look further down the P&L, this growth has been able to flow down through the P&L resulting in that all our other profit metrics EBITDA EBITDA and even net profit has seen a very very strong improvement turning some of them from negative numbers to relatively strong numbers if we look at the EBITDA margin the adjusted EBITDA margin that is actually reaching a 30% margin a new record again so it's a bit of a record quarter the adjustments in the quarter is quite limited so adjusted and the reported EBITDA is fairly accurate. If we move ahead then to the order backlog you've seen when you've been following us that we've subsequently and and incrementally building quite a strong order backlog. So at the end of this quarter, our order backlog amounted to 642 million. So that's obviously a big ramp up from the 375 million last year. this order backlog the the visibility is you know according to the current project plans roughly 226 million out of that backlog is expected to be delivered in the next 12 months period so that clearly gives us a very good long-term you know a visibility for the future and that allows us to you know plan ahead, do proper resource allotments and procurement and delivery planning, but also being able to comfortably invest in both sales and delivery capacity to fuel further growth. If we look at the order intake individually in the quarter, it was somewhat lower than the comparison quarter. main reason for this is that in the second quarter of last year we had a number of multi-year contracts uh that were recorded as order intake then we didn't see such you know multi-year contracts this period which which is which is a you know a clear reason for that if we on the other hand look at the trailing 12 months the order intake is 503 million so bit more representative measure if we look at the swing that can actually happen between the quarters. I'd like to have David walk us through this slide, which is a bit more on the working capital and the financing part.

Thanks, John. I saw from the chat the comment that there seems to be a problem with the sounds, with some attendees not hearing anything. If I just talk a little bit now, it would be good to get some feedback from some in the audience, just knowing, do you actually hear what we're saying or do we have an issue here? So sorry for that, but I think it would be getting some thumbs up. That seems to be working.

Maybe we can have a quick, can we turn the mics off very quickly?

We need to take a quick break.

So, okay. So am I, do we have sound now? Okay. Uh, so you are hearing me. Perfect. Great. So sorry for, uh, the bit of technical issues, but there's not due to our products, but other products. So as long as it's that's that's fine. Uh, okay. So, so let's look at earnings and what impact this has on, on working capital and what we're doing. So if we start firstly looking at the, at the cash flows from operations, are increasing strongly before working capital changes. So there's clearly a growing profitability in our business pushing cash flows before worker capital changes from 4 million to 23. So as a starting point, this is very sound and we have not seen these levels in Clevister before. However, this generates then impacts on working capital. This growth means that we are binding more cash in our business. And a key reason for this is, well, we have partially there is more business versus larger end customers, which in itself means that we're binding more cash in accounts receivables. That's one reason. A second reason is, of course, the large project with the Norwegian Armed Forces. This follows milestone payments. As you know, this contract started with work from our part early February, the first payment milestone comes during this autumn, meaning so far, yes, this project is very important in driving the P&L, but this, so far, it doesn't convert into cash. That cash conversion, that starts in the autumn with first payments of a bit above 60 billion SEK. So that's, I think, a very important takeaway that we will be seeing larger cash flow fluctuations in Clavister than we have seen before. That's, of course, consequences of partially a much higher growth that in itself, as in all companies, have impacts on working capital, but also large projects like BAE, but especially the Norwegian Armed Forces creates increasing fluctuations. To handle that, We have continued to develop our relationship with our commercial bank, Swedbank, raising the commercial debt from previously... Well, it was 100 million SEK, but the first down payment of this five-year loan was done in end of Q2, taking it to 90 million. We then borrowed an additional 40. With those 40, 26 million of that has been used now during this quarter fully repay the tax deferrals we've been having since COVID. Those would have been repaid within the coming 12 months, but we have done it now. but with a bank loan that we do repay over five years instead. Reasons for that is this gives a better visibility in liquidity. It gives us the ability to sit with a somewhat higher cash position to balance working capital fluctuations, which we deem to be larger due to the reasons I just mentioned. I think this is a positive change for us. Then I think also, which I think is important is to take a step back and look, okay, where were we one year ago? Well, a year ago, we were sitting with a large debt with EIB, which we were working hard to find a way to repay, which we have done. We did not have a commercial bank relationship, which was important to put in place because we saw the potential of the business moving in this growth trajectory. And in order to handle that, we needed to build those commercial banking relationships which we have built. that we sat with much larger tax deferrals. They are now being fully repaid. Then there is only one item left in the balance sheet that we are the ambition to handle, which is the old convertible loan of 10 million SEK with Norland Fonden that matures in May 27. And an ambition here is to after May 27, if things go according to our plan, would be to sit with the commercial loan with Swedbank, but nothing else with them having fully done the balance sheet cleanup that we set up to do. So I think these were the things I wish to mention here. Yeah, and then of course, we need to...

So again, sorry for the technical problems, but let's continue. If we then make a bit of an insight into our two business areas, if you like, starting with the civilian business. The civilian business is Clavister's core business and historical business, if you like. In the headline here, we also phrase it that that business has multiple growth avenues, which is definitely true. If we look at one of the important metrics in our civilian sales is annual recurring revenue. So we saw growth of our contracts, contracts values with around 5% this quarter. The civilian business is almost exclusively a recurring revenue business. So not only is it a stable core, but also an important recurring business for Clouster. The civilian business builds on a few things. It first of all builds on a very broad customer base. This is clearly different from the defense business which is more oriented towards fewer and larger accounts whereas in the civilian business we're looking at thousands and even ten thousands of deployments to a broad customer base. Still, even though the customers are a bit smaller, we're still getting the benefit from longstanding relationships. The types of products and solutions that Clavister is deploying with the civilian customers are still infrastructure products that have a long longevity. They are highly integrated in our customers' networks. So as a consequence, they become quite sticky. So the relationships we have are typically five plus years, even much longer than that. I think this is important. There might be some misunderstanding that a subscription-based model is also very easy to sort of interrupt and terminate from a customer's point of view. Contractually, yes, but the type of integration and the type of relationships we're building are much, much longer. So clearly, this gives us a lot of predictability and stability in the underlying base business. What drives this market? Well, I think this is clear for everyone. The rising cyber threats, the regulations and the geopolitical situation that in turn drives the entire judicial sovereignty requirements in the EU. That drives a lot of demand on cybersecurity and an increasing demand on specifically European cybersecurity. We're still not seeing the peak. We're only in the beginning of that demand on European sovereignty, but the discussion both within the political layers and decision makers at our customers have moved from curiosity around digital sovereignty to decision making criteria. Still early days, but the trend is extremely clear. Where would the growth in the civilian business come from? Well, of course, from new customers, that's clear. But keep in mind that, you know, Clevestra has been building a broader and broader product portfolio over the years. So we see a lot of cross-sell, up-sell opportunities also with existing customers. So that's important to keep in mind that with the big installed base we have, there is a reasonable opportunity to improve or, you know, saturate those installations as well with additional products. One of the sectors or verticals that I would like to highlight specifically is the energy sector. That is the fastest growing cybersecurity vertical in the European Union right now. For obvious reasons, cyber attacks are clearly targeted to the energy sector to a large extent. Our products have a very nice fit to that sector. And we're sitting already with large customer references, both in Germany, including Leag, for instance, one of the top energy producers in Germany, but also many of the regional and even local energy providers throughout Germany and Sweden. So this is a good sector for Clevestr to be in. Another one would be the even larger public sector, the public administration, local, regional and nationwide governments. We are slowly but surely building a position in that sector as well. All in all, this has led up to quite a significant pipeline. We have a partner model. As a reminder, we're selling through partners. We're attracting more and more partners, more scalable partners as well. The flip side of that coin is, of course, and we talked about this before, the larger type of customers, the larger type of partners also implicitly creates longer lead times. There are longer sales cycles, the deals are more complex, they are larger, they require more pilots, more proof of concepts and so forth. So we will see and continue to see quarterly variability on the civilian sales, but we are very confident in the pipeline that we've built and continue to build up. Switching over then to defense. Again, strong growth in the quarter, so that's clear. And the underlying drivers, of course, the increased deliveries. We talked earlier about the ambition for Clevister to become integrated as a technology in various types of defence platforms. And in this case, a defence platform would be, for instance, the BAE Systems CV90 vehicle. So, could be different type of vehicles, could be different type of utilities, could be different type of weapon systems. Our ambition is to sit with 10 defense platform integrations by the end of next year, by the end of 2027. Commercially integrated, that is, integration that gives us substantial revenue. Up to this point, including Q2, we've built commercial integrations with actually six defense platforms. I think this is important to mention as a lot of the public communication that we have been able to do is mostly centered around the CV90 platform. But there are five other platforms. Some of them are in the early days of production, early days of volumes. So you won't see them impacting our deliveries and net sales in the recent quarters or in the near quarters. But they sit there with a lot of potential to scale up. And again, we're integrated and commercially integrated, so we're not starting from a proof of concept situation. Talking about the CV90 platform, obviously it continues to create a lot of scaling opportunities for us. And I think it's sort of no secret that the entire market is talking about the potential Nordic edition. and as a reminder the nordic edition is a multi-nation procurement program where a number of of northern european states are are planning to procure a you know a significant amount of of cv90s uh naturally we we we um look forward to to to see more details on that and you know at this point we're only referring to BAE's public information about volumes and and and due dates and so forth but clearly we we have we have a strong wish desire to be included in that deal as well Coming back to the Norwegian defense material administration contract, again, that's a repetition 280 million that has been extended in the quarter by a 40 million SEC order for options. Those options are mainly related to something which in defense is referred to as NATO FMN, Federated Mission Networking. So this is essentially a requirement or a standard rather where the clavister solution that is being developed and delivered to the Norwegian Army is interoperable with all other NATO countries' operations. So a super important capability in the system. From a relationship perspective, I think this is also a good sign that the relationship with the Norwegian Defence Forces is really developing well. Worth highlighting as well, what we're delivering to defense is still standardized products. And we have been talking about this in other forums, but I think it's well worth repeating that the software and the products that we include in these defense platforms are the very same capabilities, the very same software that would sit in a civilian municipality, an energy company, or even the small SMB customer, if you like. we avoid at almost at all cost bespoke development for a single customer. So we reap the benefit of having a technology stack that is shared across all our customers, all our verticals. That's not unique, but it's very, very commercial feasible, if I may. With that, leaving back to David to talk us through the finances.

Thank you. So we start as always with order intake and order book. And as Jan alluded to in the beginning, order intake in Q2 is a bit on the weak side. But as we've also said before, and by looking at the graph, order intake in Claviser is something that fluctuates heavily between periods. And Q2 is no exception. We saw a record high order intake in Q1, sitting now with a bit of a lower order intake in Q2. I don't think one should read in too much into that number. There are natural fluctuations between kind of when do large contracts land, in which periods are we taking multi-year contracts, and there is a natural fluctuation to this, and I would expect order intake volumes to bounce upwards in coming quarters. Again, that's what we can see historically. I think more important is to talk about the trend line, which keeps pushing upwards and and the order book sitting now at 642 million SEC. That gives a lot of visibility together with our ARR base, which means that there is much easier to plan how we build up and invest and grow in the company going forward. So I think that's the key takeaway. And just mentioning, I mean, we have John talked a little bit about Nordic Edition, the possibility to land that would obviously be something that would continuously to grow the order book and give increased visibility going forward. So that's clearly an opportunity to work with coming quarters. Net sales wise, here the fluctuations in the order book translates into something much more smooth. we see that we for some time have been able to keep bending the the growth trajectory upwards and in this quarter clearly landing in our strongest growth quarter so far with with with 63 growth and and it is civilian sector coming in with the stability in the base a high degree of recurring contracts. And this has been a very important part of the strategy when we set out several years ago to say, let's ensure that the civilian base is a foundation from where we can grow with large projects. I think we're proving that. Then the civilian base, we will grow it faster. We will talk more about that, but it acts exactly as the foundation we have designed it to be and with defense really delivering high growth from a base of stability and that leads to these numbers. So I think that's important to state. Here, the mix between civilian and defense sales I would say that what we're seeing here is more or less what we alluded to in Q1. We still reiterate that have higher growth expectations from the defense side in the near quarters. We said it in Q1 and we're saying it again in Q2. Expect the stability in the civilian business. I think we're seeing a growing pipeline. As an example, and this was not a large order, But a very important order that we managed to win in Q2 as an example, one of the major energy suppliers in the Nordics as a new customer in Q2. That took a year. We now landed with a foothold together with also which was part of the strategy or is part landing larger national resellers. That was one of the first deals we did with one of these major resellers in Sweden versus this type of customer. So by focusing on large customers in the energy verticals, we build valuable relationships, we can scale and we build business together with large resellers, which can scale not only that account, but a larger subset of larger customers in that vertical energies and verticals. So this is important. It takes time, but I think we're also yielding results. So we avoid making very firm commitments and guiding around what to expect from the civilian business. Either in saying you should expect stability and you should expect Clavister to keep working on building these end customer and large partner pipeline and relationships. And I think we're doing that and recruiting quite a lot to the team to also deliver on that. ARR wise, well, there is there is an underlying and I realize I'm repeating myself and I said there's an underlying stability in the business because it is we are keeping customers we are growing the the value of the contract base however of course the speed with which we add new customers new larger resellers will need to increase of course but the work to go there is being done and I think we can thanks to also the performance in defense, keep having a long-term view of what's done here, to keep building something with a good thought in, okay, where are we heading, and allow ourselves to be long-term in how we execute that. But there is a growing ARR base that supports us going forward. Profitability wise, I think here in the defense area, we are really balancing within the fence to ensure a good order, good profitability in the gross margin. We have growing deliveries to, for example, BAE with very expensive hardware diluting the margin a bit from our target. of 80%. But on the other hand, we see the Norwegian armed forces with a pure software delivery. These two balances each other very well. And the defense and the civilian business being then growth wise a bit on the low side. I mean, that's the case, meaning then that we have less dilution on the margin from hardware deliveries, meaning that there's a strong margin support also coming from the civilian sector, leading to a very strong gross margin. This also translates to very large gross profit increases in absolute numbers as well. So this then fuels profitability further down in the P&L. So if we look at that, we see if we have switched slides and look at first, sorry, first starting with OPEX that we have an OPEX increase of 20% in Q2, roughly in line with Q1 where there were a bit larger one-offs. We're sitting with the one-offs in Q2 as well. So do you adjust for them? Underlying OPEX growth sits around roughly 15%, meaning that we're investing quite a lot in increasing capacity. The key growth driver in cost here is the buildup of the development capacity to deliver the software and building the software needed for the Norwegian delivery. That's the one single thing that drives costs mostly, but also investments in sales and marketing or other larger cost drivers. We have been saying, and I saw a question in the chat about that, so I can answer that specific question here. What to expect around profitability? this growth is fueling EBITDA reaching adjusted EBITDA margins around 30%, highest we have demonstrated so far. We're reaching EBIT of 17%, that also the highest we've seen so far. And I get quite a lot of questions, and Jan as well, about what to expect regarding the EBIT margins. Well, our intention is to be EBIT wise margin wise in 10 to 15 percent EBIT margin, not trying to optimize profitability, but rather say we need profitable growth, profitable growth for us in the range of 10 to 15 percent. We believe that that's enough to handle our working capital needs or general cash needs in the business. But let's not work hard to be above that for now. Let's rather reinvest these profits, these cash flows into growing the business further. So that's what we're aiming for. And of course, glad to see that the company is net result positive for the second consecutive quarter. We have, seeing here, clear improvements and they are operationally driven. So that's, of course, very important for the long term stability of the Cluster case. So I stop there.

Thank you, David. So before leaving for Q&A, a bit of a summary and our outlook. So I think we can clearly state that when we're now moving into the second half of 2026, we have with us a very strong order backlog that provides visibility. we have the profitability that allows us to invest in not only delivery capacity, but also further sales and marketing capacity to fuel further and future growth. From the pipeline we're building and the type of partners and customers we're attracting, I believe it's fair to say that we have a strengthened market position as well as strengthened brand in the market. If we look at the priorities, clearly we need to continue to execute successfully on the contracts that we have won already. David mentioned already that naturally we want more from the civilian side, so we need to accelerate the civilian business and continue to scale the defense business. So nothing magic really, but those are clear priorities. And again, to repeat myself a little bit, still worth to remember that the technology we're building is not bespoke software to individual customers. It is a shared product share portfolio concept where standardized products are being supplied to all our verticals and all our types of businesses. That's super important to create leverage. Looking at the planning ambitions, we remain with the ones we had in the previous quarter, namely, we should be able to grow faster than the general cybersecurity market. We should be able to meet our 80% gross margin target. There might be fluctuations, of course, but still, in general, 80% target. And coming back to the EBIT question, we should be definitely reinvesting a significant part of the the cash flows we're generating into further growth and capturing larger market shares. With that, Kate, over to you and Q&A.

Yes, thank you very much for you both sharing your insights. We already have many questions that come in, but please share them now as well. We'll pick them up as they come in. Let's first look at different business areas. I would say let's first look at the civilian business. We have a question. When can we expect ARR growth to pick up again? Please outline what the plans are for refocusing the civilian business and the repositioning in the coming quarters.

I can start and you can fill in, David. If we look at this, and this has to be a bit of a memory lane, unfortunately, so bear with me. When we When we did a larger overhaul of our commercial strategy back in 2021, I believe, we did a few things. One was the shift towards a recurring revenue model, subscription-based licensing, building a possibility for our sales teams to rather chase new opportunities rather than working with existing in customers only and chasing our own tail if you like. The other main change we did to the strategy was to focus on our geographical targets, moving from a position where in the past Clevister had been spreading itself way too thin with limited sales resources in not only many countries, even many continents. And that's ambitious, of course, but being a super small company at that time, that didn't bear fruit, obviously. And the other focus, so the change was basically consolidating back to Europe, reaping the benefits of the increased focus on European technology and so forth, and focusing on the fewer countries building a critical mass in those before we start expanding to other countries. And the final and perhaps most important in the end change came from understanding who is our ideal type of customer. And we were also in the past very scattered and fragmented in that area. So we tried to sell basically to everyone who wanted to buy cybersecurity. That's neat, but in reality, We didn't sort of spearhead into customers where we could really become the most relevant supplier for those markets. what we did essentially was taking a step back looking at what are the the type of customers type of verticals where Clavister as a supplier with our technology would be the best fit representing the best ideal customers if you like and our conclusion was that within the so-called mission critical type of environments being public administration energy defense and and so forth That's where you have the biggest impact from cybersecurity attacks. You have fairly large budgets to invest in cybersecurity and the requirements on certain tech and definitely the requirements on European suppliers is important. So that was a shift and that is a shift that we're still living. So keep in mind that the historical customer base represents a wide type of customer groups. You have your local hamburger chain or local hairdresser, but you also have the large enterprise customers in there. Nothing wrong with any of those, but in order for us to scale the civilian business, we need to be represented on a set of verticals where we are the experts, we are the most viable supplier, we have the best technology and so forth. And we believe that the sectors we are focusing on really represent that. So that's a bit of a memory lane on, you know, why are we seeing a civilian market that is, you know, slowly, you could say, picking up, but picking up. But even more important, the quality of the opportunities, the quality of the pipeline is on levels that, that we historically were not able to see, given that sort of defocus that we had at that time. So that's just to give a bit of the context here. How long it will take to convert that pipeline and an increased pipeline to opportunities or to deals that will hit the P&L, I will actually refrain to answer that. It will become a bit naive from me if I would state a date to be honest but I mean there's super clear ambitions from management from sales teams you know there's a high activity level and again you know the pipeline is increasing so as always with sales it's a numbers game what you fill in the pipeline in is what you get out at the end of the day so We have a lot of confidence in improved civilian sales as well, but I won't give you a date.

Okay, thanks very much, John, for the elaboration and the detailed explanation on the civilian business. I think it's always good to elaborate more in detail on that. We do have one more question regarding our customers on the civilian side. You mentioned that on the civilian side, the customer relationship is typically five years plus. When you lose a customer, what is typically the reason? Do they move in as a supplier or simply decide they do not need the technology? Do you have any further insights on that?

Absolutely. I think, you know, I've never encountered a situation where a customer leaves us because they don't need the type of technology that's... Well, it might have happened, but it's a bit unheard of. One of the situations which is... It's impossible for us to mitigate is when a customer becomes acquired or forms part of a larger group, and there is a group decision that we are a large corporate, we are a Cisco house, or we are a Palo Alto house, and everyone has to fall in order and change their equipment to the group standard that we've seen in some cases. Other than that, what we typically see, and It's also part of the dynamics in our civilian business that, yes, it takes time to build those type of really large opportunities and the semi-large opportunities. But Clavister is, and I think you could ask all of our customers and get a resounding answer on that one, Clevestry is the type of customer that when we're in we're building a super strong relationship with the customer and and you know we're not only you know invoicing the customer for five years or ten years we're actively building you know a relationship with them we're expanding with them we become yeah a bit a bit you know I wouldn't call it marketing bullshit, but a bit slimy. We become the trusted advisor to the customer. And that's true for many of our civilian customers. They need some convincing to take on a smaller brand, a fairly unknown brand, at least if you compare with the big US ones. But once they pass that hurdle, they sit with us for a very long time. And the products and you've seen the statistics, the products are super stable. They keep on running for many, many years. Naturally, if there is a hardware as part of our delivery, there will be a point in time when hardware grows old and needs to be replaced. In many cases, that serves as a trade up potential, selling newer products to them. But at those points in time, naturally, we can be subject to a competition, of course. In the worst case, if we're not competitive at that time, we could be replaced. But, but otherwise, you know, we, we sit with long-term relations. I don't know, David, if you would like to compliment.

I agree. And I think you can add, you can add two, two more scenarios that are, they are equally and growth opportunity for us, but, but they also represent the risk, you know, senior changes. I mean, a new CIO, that's a point of entry for us. That's how we have won many, many important customers that CIOs that we have relationships with before move to now another company. The company where they were keep us, but we get an entry point at a new company. But of course, that also represents a risk that a new CIO might have his or her views on preferred vendors, and that represents a risk of getting replaced. So that's, I would say, that key risk. And of course, especially with smaller and midsize customers, they listen to a high degree to what their integrator, their partner is selling to them. And would they, for whatever reason, change to a new reseller, a new partner from where they buy IT services, that might also represent the risk that that partner is not the types of partner. would replace Cleft with something else. But that, of course, goes in both ways. So these are typical risks. It's much more rare that somebody uses our products and one day finally says, no, I don't want this. I want something else. That is not the typical scenario where we lose a customer.

Great. Thanks to you both for elaborating and sharing your insights in the civilian business. I think it's good to spend some time there. We usually spend also a lot of time on defence. And with that, let's sidetrack into questions around defences. We have got a lot as well around that. Startinging off with the Nordic edition. When can we expect the Nordic edition order to be announced? And what is a realistic base case scenario in terms of numbers of vehicles and order size for clavister?

I think as I mentioned, I would like to avoid speculating on that because at the end of the day, we are a sub-supplier to, in this case, to BAE Systems. It's their prerogative, it's their timeline that governs everything. I would say the best answer is really to look at the public communication from BAE and the latest news from the market, market screening there, if you like. So we can only state that we are integrated. We have, of course, good expectation to be included, but timing, volumes, everything that has to be announced when slash if it comes.

And next question around defense platforms is in how many defense platforms were you at the end of the financial year 25 and in Q1 26?

We were in three defense platforms in Q4. So we've added obviously a number of ones here in the first half year. So quick answer.

There is a big focus on CV90. Are there any other defence contracts that could develop into similar importance as the one with the CV90?

I would say so, yes, keeping in mind that the CV90 relationship with BE is the one we have spent the longest time on. So it's no surprise that that type of capability or that type of opportunity has reached the highest numbers, highest importance, if you like, or highest opportunity. But if we look at the other platforms, they are also, to a great extent, they are volume platforms. Then, naturally, it's really up to proof if those defense contractors, those defense customers, if they become as successful as BGE has been with CB90. That's a bit out of our control, but the opportunity is there, I would say.

We are still staying with CV90. Just a quick clarification. The BAE CV90 program covers a family of several different vehicles. Can we assume collaborative technology is included across the entire CV90 vehicle range?

Yes. Quick answer. That's great. It's a standardized platform. CV90 is a platform, standardized, and you have a number of configurations. You have the infantry fighting vehicle, you have the command vehicle, you have the TOE vehicle configuration and so on. There are many configurations but the base platform remains the same and we're in the base platform.

Okay, moving on to Saab. We have two questions around Saab. What are your expectations on the relations with Saab? And a question, how is the cooperation with Saab developing? Is it generating revenue and how do you see future development?

Saab is obviously a large creature, not only in the Swedish market, but in general in Europe. I would say the relationship is developing well. I think you might recall that we announced that already in Q1, we started to see revenues from our relationship with Saab. We are seeing, as I mentioned, Saab is a big creature, so there are many avenues of opportunities to explore within the broad Saab. So our cross-domain relationship with Saab is one area. that is starting to produce revenues. We saw that in Q1 already, continuing to develop that. And there are other avenues as well that we're exploring with Saab. Of course, I can't mention the details, but yes, we're happy, confident, and have good belief on what we can achieve together with Saab over the time.

Thank you, John. So let's hand over the talking stick to you, David, for some financial questions. Can you please explain the incremental loan drawn down to payment deferred taxes?

Yeah, I will try and if I also understand the question, otherwise come with a follow-up question. So if we go back, I mean, I do like John here now and go back down memory lane. He's Historrically, Clevenser was loss-making. We needed to find ways of servicing the cash needs of the company before we took a broader grip on refinancing, restructuring the company. And that was using what was available post-COVID. The Swedish government extended the ability to defer payments of VAT and social charges in a way of liquidity to support the Swedish enterprise. We used that ability. So at the time, we sat with 80 million SEK of deferred taxes that was used to strengthen liquidity. Over time, we have been repaying that under a three-year repayment scheme. Now, at the end of Q2, the remaining values were around 26, 27 million SEK. and would be have been repaid within the coming 12 months. Our assessment is that that repayment of 26 million SEK combined with the growing business, I mean growing at this rate, adds pressure on the working capital. You all know that. And of course, the payment milestone construction of the Norwegian Armed Forces contract, where you have a constant to build the product, but payments are lumpy. The combination of that said, okay, it's better for us to enlarge the engagement with Swedbank, increasing that with 40 million SEK to repay the tax deferrals of 26, 7 million. So that's removed, which adds then an extra 13 million. That's the net contribution. to sustain cash flow needs and repay that over a much longer period of time, five years instead of one year. So that's really the rationale. And also I think it benefits the entire story that we are removing kind of the more other birds in the balance sheet for one more streamlined relationship with commercial bank. So I think that's the background. I hope that answered the question.

What tax rate should we assume for the financial year 2026?

Well, so if we start with the company tax rate in Sweden is 20.6. However, we ran this with losses for quite many years and in Sweden, you accumulate taxable losses and when you are then profitable, which there is, you deduct those profits versus the losses, which you carry forward, meaning that for, and these are close to 800 million SEC, meaning that we can generate profits up to roughly 800 million SEC before we pay any taxes. So for 2026, assume zero as a tax rate. And that's also guiding that I don't expect to do above 800 million in profits for this year. So that's also answer that potential question. Yes. But that was it.

Okay, then we have a question about the case against Fortified ID. In June, you won the case against Fortified ID. They had until late July to appeal to the Supreme Court. Have they done so?

Actually, both our opponent in the case and ourselves have appealed. We did so not because we did not like the verdict, but because of a very technical, juridical practicality in the Swedish legal system. So in the case there would have been an appeal from the opponent, we would benefit from appealing ourselves. So we did that. There is still no outcome from the Supreme court in Sweden will actually take on the case. That's something that probably will be seen here in the early autumn.

Okay, yeah, thank you for answering that question too, John. And I think we have come to the end of our Q&A session. So I would like to thank you both for your presentation and for taking time to answer all the questions. Thank you very much to the audience for all your questions. It's really good to hear your questions and be able to respond and interact on those. Thank you for attending today's webinar. You will find the recording shortly on our website. And if you have any further questions, just write to ir.clarister.com. Yeah, with that, I'd like to thank everyone and wish you a great day.

Thank you.