Guideline Geo AB (publ)

Hello, my name is Malin Seiberg and I'm the CEO of GuidelineGeo. Welcome to our Q3 report. I will do what I usually do. I'll introduce to newcomers you to the company in two minutes and then we'll spend the rest of the time on the Q3. Please type in any questions that you may have in the chat and we'll respond to them in the end. Kailan Geo, we are your guide to the subsurface. We use non-destructive geophysical methods to survey down to roughly 1,000 meters below the surface. We serve three applications, groundwater management, ground investigations, general ground investigations and utility locating. Ground investigations and utility locating is serving the building construction and infrastructure market segment globally and the groundwater management is of course targeting the water sector. We have customers in the private sector as in the public sector and also in academia. We are listed on Nasdaq, first North growth market. Last year, we had a turnover of approximately 200 million Swedish kronors with a nice profitability. Given our size, we are truly global. We are a true export company and we sell directly through our sales and service subsidiaries. And we also have an industry leading partner network where we sell through our distributors. Innovation is in our DNA. We are proud to develop and bring to market market leading technology and solutions. And we are made in Sweden. We have our roots up north. We have our operations, our manufacturing in the small community Malå in Västerbotten. And we have R&D in Umeå close to the university there. And last year we celebrated 100 years as a company. We go to market under two brand names. It's ABEM, Aktiebolaget Elektrisk Malmletning, ABEM, and Malo, which is the name of the community in Västerbotten where we operate. And we have our headquarters in Stockholm. Let's move our eyes to Q3. Q3 was a weak quarter if you look at net sales and order intake Net sales 42.2 and order intake 39.1. And I will walk you through some details and highlights in the coming slides. I would say that we had a strong quarter from an EBITDA perspective, 6.3. And I'll walk you through more details about that and why I consider that a strong EBITDA for this quarter. We had a positive EBIT 1.2 and we had a negative cash flow of minus 2.8 for the quarter. And I will walk you through more details about why I don't see this as a concern at all for this quarter. Let's start with net sales. Net sales for the quarter 42.2, which was down 15% compared to the same period last year. Year to date 128.7 million, which was down 7% compared to year to date numbers last year. We are targeting construction infrastructure market and it is still weak. It's been weak throughout this year for us. And it's our larger market that suffer. We are also targeting the water segment and the water segment is stable. It's growing. It's an important market for us. If you look down left you can see the quarterly net sales split by region and here you can see that for the quarter APAC was flat but if you look down right you can see that year to date APAC shows a good growth which is really nice to see because we have invested pretty heavily in sales activities in APAC throughout the year. EMEA is close to flat for the quarter but EMEA has had a tough year so far and we rely heavily on the construction infrastructure market and our large countries in EMEA has been suffering. Americas also had a really weak quarter, not as weak if you look at year-to-date numbers, but still, Americas is not performing as last year. When you look at these numbers, I also want to remind you about the currency effect. We are a true export company. We sell everything. We export our entire sales and we sell in US dollars, we sell in euros and we sell a bit in Australian dollars. We've had a weak Swedish krona for a long period of time, and that has benefited us as an export company. But this quarter was the first quarter in a long time where we actually had a negative impact from the currency effect on the net sales. And if you look at year-to-date numbers, year-to-date currency effect this year is far below year-to-date currency effect last year. So given being an e-export company, the currency of course affects us. If we move our eyes to order intake, we had a weak order intake for the quarter at 39.1 million compared to 54.9 last year's Q3. Last year's Q3 was an amazing quarter from an order intake perspective. It was exceptionally strong, so the comparison is a bit off here. Last year's Q3, we had just launched the big thing for us last year, Marlowe Mira Compact launch that generated a lot of orders and we also had sold a large sale to the mining industry through our RoiTech business. I want to give you some highlights for the region. And if we start look down left for the quarter, you can see that APAC had a good quarter also if you look at order intake. It's a growth in APAC both for Malå and for ABAM and year to date APAC also have a strong order intake trend. I specifically want to highlight China. China has had a really tough year so far with a poor economy and building construction market. So I'm glad to see that in the quarter we got a large order and a large order for ABEM. Our partner in China has been really strong in selling our Malo products. So it's extra pleasing to see that we got a large order also for ABEM this quarter. We have two large economies in Asia, in the Philippines and in Indonesia, where we have really strong partners, distributors selling both Bebem and Malo. And both these countries had multiple orders on both Malo and Ebem throughout the quarter. So it's really good to see. For those that track us, you know that we signed a new partner, a new distributor in Japan last year, Gadielius, Swedish Japan Trade House. And it's really good to see that in this quarter, we have multiple model orders coming in from Japan. So they're doing really well. So it's good to see. It's also true for Australia. We acquired our distributor in Australia earlier this year and we are on a good path. Multiple orders from Australia also for this quarter. So APEC is good. EMEA had a poor, a weak quarter as you can see and also a weak year so far. And we are struggling from the construction infrastructure market, as I said. And it's our larger countries that struggle. It's UK, it's Germany, it's France, it's Spain. It's also in Sweden. So our larger countries do struggle in Europe. In EMEA, we also have MIA. And in Middle East, we got multiple orders from the water sector in the quarter. So it's good to see. Americas had a weak quarter as well in order intake. Again, North America's construction infrastructure market is weak, both in the private sector and in the public sector. And the public sector is probably also affected by the upcoming election that slows things down in the public domain. In Americas we also include Latin America and Latin America often has a good second half of the year and Q3 was pretty okay for Latin America. So good order intake from Latin America. Then we also we think we had an internal impact on order intake Some of you might remember that last quarter I told you that we had relocated our global sales director pair from running the US sales to Australia for a period of time to get our Australian team up and running in the new costume. And that might also have had an impact on order intake this quarter. If we move our eyes to the split between our two product lines, in between ABEM and Malå, we continue to see that we have two strong brands equally important to us. And I want to highlight on ABEM that we have a good quarter for our TEM sales. And for TEM, we have our own solutions, own developed and manufactured solutions, but we also have our solutions that we offer from the partnership with our Danish partner that we... introduced earlier this year. And both are growing this quarter from small number, but still a nice growth to see. And specifically interesting is because this is targeting the water sector that we are strong, that we believe in to continue to grow for us. Highlights within the Malo product lines is we got multiple orders for our smaller solution, Malo Easy Locator Core, which is directly targeting utility locating. Utility locating is finding pipes and cables in the ground, and that is targeting the construction and infrastructure markets. So it's really good to see that this product is starting to grow in importance again for us. EBITDA, I started off by saying that I'm proud of the EBITDA and think it's a strong EBITDA this quarter, 6.3. Why do I say that? If you look to the red bars on the right hand side of this chart, you can see that we ended 6.3 for Q3. But if you look at Q2 2024, we had exactly the same EBITDA, 6.3. And for those of you that follow us, Q2 we had 9.5 million higher net sales than in Q3. So I'm really pleased to see that we can perform this way and have a 6.3 EBITDA despite the much lower net sales. So how did we manage this? I've talked to you about our improved, our focus on improving our way of forecasting. And that worked this quarter. We saw this coming and we saw it pretty early. And it's because of our improved ways of forecasting. So we implemented early on cost control and cost control measures, such as we implemented the four-day working week in our operations up in Malå. We delayed recruitments, both new recruitments and replacement recruitments, and we implemented a general cost consciousness throughout the entire company. And I'm really proud how the team stepped up to really make this EBITDA turn out so good this quarter. If we turn now to cash flow, we had a negative operating cash flow for the quarter, minus 2.8 million. I said I'm not concerned about this, and the main reason is because of the large order that we announced in Q2 that went to Tanzania. So we managed to ship the last days in Q2, and the cash flow is impacted by the payment terms for that order, and that order is 8.5. So that is the main reason why I'm not concerned about the minus 2.8 that was expected. Last quarter, I mentioned that we had higher stock levels than we wanted to see. And that is still true. We have made a lot of effort to bring stock levels down and they are going down. We've seen a change in trend, but it's gone a bit too slowly. But we see a good trend here. If you look at the investment activities that impact cash flow, they are higher, Q3 2024, compared to last year's Q3. And that is, of course, because we had since then acquired our Australia distributor and we continue to invest in R&D and capitalise in R&D. The net cash last day of the quarter was 4.7 million Swedish kronor. And on top of that, we have the unused Czech credit of 13. And again, this looks like a small number compared to last year. But again, I'm not concerned. And the main reason is because of the large order that the payment was not expected in Q3. So let's leave the financial numbers and move into what we've actually done this quarter. We continue to invest heavily in sales and sales activities and push sales and meet and engage with customers. And this quarter alone, we've attended exhibitions and conferences and major workshops in all of these countries. We have had a stronger intent that whenever we go to an exhibition or a conference, we want to see a stronger and more active participation than just having a stand and meet those that enters our booth. So when we go to an exhibition, we give a presentation. When we go to a conference, we present a white paper. When we go to a conference, we also add on a field workshop as a way to meet customer, engage with customer, get customer hands on with our solutions, both the software and the hardware. So we continue to invest in sales activities. We know this leads to sales in the end. During the quarter, I've also taken time to implement both structural changes to the organization and I formed a new and strong management team. The purpose of these changes have been to further strengthen the business focus in the management and in the company. It's been to improve and increase our internal efficiency. And I've also wanted to form a management team with the ability to execute on our longer-term strategy. So if you look at the picture, I have Michael on my side. Michael is our CFO since early this year, and he has done some restructuring of the finance function in Sweden since he joined, or lately. We have Per, he's a Swedish-American, He works out of Colorado, Denver, Colorado. And he is our CRO, our Chief Revenue Officer. And he's a pair that I referred to who relocated partly to Australia last quarter and who is now back in the U.S. But he is responsible for our global revenue sales from all our regions going forward. I've promoted Anders to VP Marketing and we formed a marketing function and in our marketing function we include our product management, our product marketing and our marketing communication and our business development. And I've asked Anders to lead this as a way to strengthen our business focus in the management team and in the company. I'm also really glad to have an internal promotion of Angelica who runs our research and development team and runs our Umeå site. She's been with the company quite some time and it's really good to see that promotion of her. And in Malå we have Johnny running our operations and our Malå site and he's also responsible for our global service and support. And then we have Kerstin. She's been with the company many, many years and she knows every employee in the company. And she is a strong VP of HR and IT nowadays also reported directly to me. With the change of pair becoming CRO for the company and traveling all the time, we needed to strengthen the US team. So to you, we report our three regions, Americas, EMEA and APEC. But internally, this is how we manage our sales and our regions. So we have appointed six head of sales, one per region. So we have recruited externally Eric to lead our North America sales teams. We have Carrie since many years running our Latin America team. We have Peter running Middle East and Africa. And he was the one who brought in our large Tanzania order. We have Anders running Europe. We have another under in APAC in Asia, running Asia for us. And we have to the down right, we have James, who came to us through the Australian acquisition. And he heads our subsidiary in Sydney, and he also is the head of sales for Oceania going forward. So now we have a very strong management team and we have a very strong sales management within the company that I strongly believe will deliver going forward. And last but not least, we continue to invest in our product development and we have an innovation strategy. And this quarter we launched Malo Geodrone 600, which is an airborne GPR solution. GPR is ground penetrating radar solution. Airborne GPR solution is an efficient way to survey large areas and also areas that are remote or inaccessible or hazardous to walk in or drive in. It can be rivers, it can be riverbeds, it can be ice or glaciers, any type of hazardous area or remote area. When you do airborne surveys with GPR, you need to fly close to the surface, preferably half a meter above ground. So what you can typically detect is smaller objects and or layer detection subsurface, pretty shallow. You can find buried objects. You can find sinkholes or pit holes. And you can find shallow bedrock, for instance. Important release for us this year on our Malo side. The key takeaways from this quarter from me is that we had a weak quarter from a sales perspective. But if you look at EBDA, we had a strong quarter. We have invested in organizational restructuring as a way to strengthen the business focus in the company and also to improve our internal efficiency. And we continue to focus and invest in our product development and innovation. And this quarter, we did launch the Malo Geodrone 600. And with that, I will end my presentation and will hand over to you to see if we have any questions in the chat.

Yes, we can start with a question around the payment terms from the large order from Tanzania. Is there a risk that we won't get paid for that order?

No, there is no risk behind that payment order at all.

You mentioned a four-day working week in operations. Did you take any other measurements to cut cost?

Yes, when we saw that the lower sales was coming, we took a lot of actions. And the obvious one was that we didn't need the full production capacity in Malå. So that's why we talked to our unions and we implemented a four-day working week in Malå. We, of course, also took many other actions. Like I mentioned the recruitments, we delayed planned recruitments. We also got a couple of people leaving and we did not replace them. And we also took a lot of, we looked at what we had planned to do for the rest of the year and we reduced our costs. So a lot of small pieces here and there to have a general cost consciousness and push out both recruitments and also other activities that was planned for this quarter that we did not do.

Do you see an upcoming liquidity issue?

No. We don't see a risk of an upcoming liquidity problem. We have our check credit. It's still unused. We have a pretty good forecasting of our liquidity and our cash flow, and I'm not concerned about that.

You mentioned a large ABEM order in China. How big was the order? Do you have a limit for orders worth press-releasing?

Yes. I cannot say exactly how large that order was, but we have a limit. We press-release orders that are above 5 million Swedish kronors through Zizion. And this was below that, otherwise we would have press-released it.

You talked about a very strong order intake last Q3 and then you obviously had a great Q4 last year. What can we expect this Q4 regarding end of year push like last year?

It's a good question. I cannot communicate what's in the future, but we do have a seasonal impact in our business and we know that second half years are typically good, typically stronger than the first half year. So we are looking forward to to make a last push to close the year as good as we can. But of course, we are also tracking the market and the business opportunities really closely because it is a weak market. I need to also highlight that.

Good. And that was the last question. Let's see if... Here comes one more. We can see that your competitor, Impulse Radar, has published their yearly report for 2023, where they decreased turnover about 20%. Would you say that their performance is representative of a tough environment for GPR?

It's difficult to track exactly revenue from our competition, but they do. And I can just relate to us. We have seen a tough year for GPR and they have too. So there are no market analysis numbers that we can track, but I would say that they might be representative from the business economics at the moment for GPR.

And we can wait a little bit longer and see if there's someone typing that hasn't come in yet, otherwise that was the last question.

And it might be good to just add on to Impulse Radar, they're doing GPR only and we also have our ABEM that also targets general ground investigations and also the water sector that is a different sector with a different market dynamic. So it is difficult to compare competitors because we're the only one that has this broad portfolio that targets different markets so it is hard but of course we are tracking our competition as closely as we can as a way to track the market and do our market outlooks for ourselves.

I think that was the last and you're always welcome to contact us by phone or email of course if you would think of any questions after this.

Thank you and see you again in next quarter.