Guideline Geo AB (publ)

Hello, my name is Malin Silberg. I'm the CEO of GuidelineGeo. Welcome to our year-end report and our Q4 report. For those of you that don't know us, this is who we are in brief. We design and manufacture non-destructive geophysical solutions for subsurface surveys. And we target the infrastructure market, where we help find pipes and cables in the ground, so-called utility locating. We also target the groundwater sector, where our solutions help find groundwater or monitor groundwater. And also we do ground investigations. It's often connected to the infrastructure market, knowing where bedrock is, quality bedrock or stability of the ground prior to any type of construction. We're a stock listed company. We're listed on First North Growth Market. We have a long history. We origin from the Swedish mining industry up north in Sweden. And given our size, we have a true global reach through our own offices and people across the world in the orange dots in the map. And we also reach more than 80 countries through our strong distributor network across the world. We have a growth strategy and I'm happy to announce that we are back on track on growth. So when we close 2025, we are back on our growth journey. So let's dig into the numbers. In short, in Q4, we saw strong growth and a stable profitability over the year. But if we start by looking at Q4, we were up 9% on our sales compared to Q4 last year. We crossed the 60 million Swedish kronor bar. Our profitability for the quarter was 11.9 in EBITDA and EBIT was 7.6 million Swedish kronor. Our operating cash flow was positive, 2.4, lower than last year and I'll come back to the reasons why. We are stable in our net cash. We have 17.3 million compared to last year's 19 and to us that is a very stable level. If I look at the full year and highlights, we were up in net sales plus 9% also for the full year. Our EBITDA 20 million, our EBIT level 2.1 and the operating cash flow, I'm happy to talk about that, 14.1 million for the year. We are an export company. We export 95% of our equipment worldwide. And we sell mainly in U.S. dollars, U.S. dollars in North America and Latin America. We sell in U.S. dollars in Asia. In Oceania, we sell in Australian dollars. In Europe and EMEA, we sell mainly in euros and less than 5% in Swedish kronor. So we are very much affected by currency fluctuations. If we look at our cost side, our supply chain from our sustainability agenda, our supply chain is mainly in Swedish krona. And employees, two thirds of our employees are based in Sweden and are paid in Swedish kronor. So we are very much affected by currency fluctuations. And last year was a challenge for export companies like us. And you can see the graphs, how the dollar dropped and the euro dropped and the Australian dollar dropped versus the Swedish kronor last year. So to quantify how that means to us, we can look at Q4 currency effect. Our EBITDA was 11.9, our EBIT 7.6. But the currency effect for the quarter on our profitability was minus 2.1 million. compared to last year's Q4, where we had a tailwind of 1.8. So the currency fluctuations during the year has really hit our profitability. And if we look at Q4 on the top line, on net sales, I showed you just that we had a growth in Q4 plus 9% in net sales. But if we would have used comparable currency to last year, the net sales growth would have been plus 19%. So that means we ship a lot more instruments to our customers compared to last year. If we look at full year effect, the currency effect impacted our profitability with minus 6.9 million compared to last year's tailwind of plus 2.3 million. And the same goes for net sales. Our net sales for the full year was up 9%, but in comparable currency, we would have been up 15%. So export companies like us, we follow the US dollar drop very closely and we adjust and we compensate for that. If we look at the sales per region, Those who follow us, you recognize these charts. If you look at the Q4 numbers, that was one thing that stood out in EMEA. We were up 40% quarter to last year's quarter in EMEA, and that is mainly Europe. Overall strong trend in Europe and also two major orders that I'll come back to that affected the Q4 sales in EMEA. If we look at the lower charts, the full year highlights, I'm glad to see that we see growth in all three regions, APEC, EMEA and Americas. Positive highlights is that we really saw a strong growth and a bounce back in our major markets, US, Oceania and Europe. That was really tough last year and now we've seen that we have a good bounce back in these three major and really important markets for us. On the downside, we had a tough year in Africa. One of the reasons I've talked about that in earlier quarterly reports is the shutdown of U.S. aid had ripple effects in funding of water projects throughout Africa. And that affected our sales in Africa to a pretty large extent. We've also seen a decline in China, competition from Chinese local domestic brands, but also the industry in China has been challenging for the infrastructure and building construction market. And we've also seen a drop in our Reutek sales, and I'll come back to the reasons for that. If we look at the sales split by our product plans, Malo and ABEM, it was a very, very strong quarter for Malo sales, and it was also a very strong year for the Malo sales. Product-wise, the Malo Easy Located Core, the utility product, and Malo Mira Compact, the 3D solution for utility infrastructure type of projects, grew really well for us in Q4. And we also, we've focused a bit on the aftermarket sales this year and we can see that that has a growing importance for us both on the Malo side and on ABEM side. If we look at ABEM sales during the quarter, we had a strong quarter for TEM sales targeting the water sector worldwide and our newer TEM products. If we look at markets, in Q4, we had a very strong, as I said, infrastructure and utility locating. It's grown really nicely over the year and very strong also in Q4. And it's the MIR family and this is the EL family that has been driving this growth. For those of you that follow our press releases, we've also, in Q4, had a lot of success and progress and growth from the defence industry. Throughout the year, we've had an increasing request and demands from the defence industry. And in Q4, we had two important and major events. First, we signed an OEM agreement with a European industry partner in the defence industry. And they also gave us an order in Q4 of 4.2 million Swedish kronors. Later in the quarter, we also got a large order from European Armed Forces of 3.1 million. That is part of a larger frame agreement of about 6 million over a period of time for both instruments and services. And then, as always, the groundwater sector is important to us and is strong for us. And here we can see a growth in the TEM solutions. And we also released a new important product for the water sector. And I'll come back to that a little bit more. And on top of that, we saw the decline in sales in Africa that I've talked about. Sales channel. As part of our strategy, growing sales through growing our indirect sales is key for us. The indirect sales is a key growth driver. and it's for our partner network and if i summarize 2025 we signed five seven new distributors across the world two of them in the us where we want to change the move the needle to more indirect sales and we also discontinued two of our earlier distributors We also, in 2025, started our own legal entity, our own hub in Malaysia. In Asia, we have a very strong representation and a strong distributor network, and to form that hub is a way to support the indirect sales growth even further. But we also identified another type of indirect sales channel that we think is crucial to help us grow and to scale our growth without having to recruit our own sales team. And that is through OEM, OEM partners. And what we mean is that we sell sensors, we sell products to an OEM partner and the OEM partner integrates our sensor or our product into their full solution and they sell their full solution to the worldwide market through their sales channel. And to us, this provides access to new market segments where we don't have our own sales channel. And in Q4, I already mentioned the European OEM partner for the defence sector. We believe strongly in that. And we also signed an OEM partnership with a company called Aistus, who is a US-based high-end consulting company within environmental and groundwater surveys that will incorporate our solution into their offering. And to provide sales growth through our indirect sales channel, the partner conferences are key to drive and scale the indirect sales growth. And last year we had partner conferences in Malaysia for the Asian team, in Ethiopia for our Middle East and African team, In Mexico for our Latin American team and in Stockholm for our European and Middle East team. So key events for us to grow our indirect sales further. If we leave sales behind and look into our profitability number, in Q4 we had strong profitability. EBITDA at 11.9 and EBIT at 7.6. I can see that in the charts to the right in the picture. It's partly driven or mainly driven, I would say, if you look at the pie chart below, the sales per quarter. And the sales per quarter last year looked like that. And we had 30% of the annual sales in Q4. So this is a typical trend that we see over the year, that Q4 is often the strongest quarter. And our cost, our costume, our fixed cost is fairly flat. So when we reach those 60 million per year, then we have a very sound and healthy and nice profitability. And typically what drives a strong Q4 is public tender, public budgets, but also seasonability around the surveys. That is more frequent in summer periods. Throughout the year, we also faced challenges with the tariffs when we import to the US. And we are since August. We have 15% of all ABEM and Marlowe products that we sell in the US. And from August, we also have 30% on our RoiTech systems that we import from South Africa to North America. And in practice, that really hinders further new product sales of our RoiTech systems. But those of you who follow us might have read the January news that we did a pretty large system sale of our RoiTech systems in January to a US-based customer. And that was one of our demo systems that we already had in place in the US. But these import tariffs, we are trying to push those to the customer as far as possible, but we haven't managed to do it to the full extent. So we are seeing impact to our margins, both because of the currency, but also because of tariffs. Still healthy margins, but margins have been affected. If we look at cash flow, operating cash flow for the quarter was 2.4, and last year's same period was 17.3. And what's the reason for that difference is an obvious question. And 17.3 was a one-time effect. We got paid for a very large order last year, roughly close to 9 million that we got in Q4. But also, this 25 years Q4, we sold and shipped a lot in December. I think more or less half of our Q4 sales was in December. And then we will get paid in Q1 instead. So nothing concerning, nothing alarming from our end about that. And we are still at a healthy level of 17.3 million in net cash. And we have reduced our unused check credit to five. Innovation is part of our DNA. Throughout the year, in June, we launched the tow hitch carrier to the MIR Compact to turn the MIR Compact into a more mobile solution. And we started shipping solutions in Q4. Strong positive interest and strong sales. So we continue to believe strongly in this product. This product has also increased the number of active users of our Model Vision, our software platform. And that's also nice to see. Expected, but still nice to see and track. On the groundwater side, on the ABEM side, in Q4 we launched the ABEM Ground Temp Trick, which is a semi-mobile solution targeting water exploration. Really good combination to our portfolio of solutions targeting the water sector. Really strong positive interest and we expect to ship first solutions to our customers end of Q1 or probably Q2. Branding and communication. We've invested this year in a new brand identity and a new website to help scale our digital marketing worldwide. And the year end report is now sent to you in a new format that you can see below. So I hope you like it and if we welcome any feedback or comments on that new format. And last year, we also had the employee event in Storforsen, and this is part of our sustainability strategy to invest in our strong company culture and a way to support collaboration across all the time zones and cultures and countries where we have employees. And to summarize this Q4 and end of year report, we see a strong net sales growth and a stable and sound profitability, despite a very strong impact from the currency fluctuations that we've seen during 2025 and also continued a bit into 2026. We've seen a strong bounce back and a strong growth from the infrastructure market and specifically for the utility locating application and really happy to see a strong bounce back in our major countries for GPR. And the last bullet is around our channel strategy to grow our sales through our indirect channel. And this year, we've signed seven new distributors and three OEM partners that will help contribute to our continued growth path. And with that, I will end this presentation and I will open up for any type of questions that you may have typed in the chat.

Yes, we have one here to start. You have sent out two press releases last quarter about the defense industry. Do you expect more sales in this sector and who are the customers?

First, it's defense sector. I can't name the customers, obviously. But let's talk a little bit about that sector. It's just look around you, follow the news. Of course, with this new geopolitical situation, the defense sector is growing exponentially. in Europe and in many parts of the world. And we've seen that all along last year, a growing request from the defense industry around to our geophysical solutions. So of course, we believe that geophysics can play a role in the growth in the defense sector. If I look at the specific press releases, And partnering up with an OEM partner in this sector in Europe is not a one-time thing. Of course, we do that because we believe that they see a need for it and that we can provide a solution to help them grow and to help us grow. So we continue to believe in the defense sector and we think that is very important. Interesting to track and follow and to see where we can play a role in that.

Your profitability is lower than last year. What are you doing to improve?

Yes, of course, we're not happy with the profitability numbers. We want that to be higher. we need to remind ourselves that we are very much affected by the currency drop. So this year's lower profitability is absolutely affected by currency. But That's a fact we can't change how the currency affect. So of course we need to work in all ends to make sure that we continue to have a healthy and sound and growing profitability. And we need to work in both ends. We need to work on our supplier side and our cost side of our products. And we also, of course, need to work on our revenue side. We do pricing quizzes and we need to also make sure that we are... efficient cost efficient in our setup in our cost structure so of course we've done a lot of work in the budget process around where we can reduce cost in our own setup and where we want to invest to help help us grow so the profitability and our margins is very high up on my agenda on how to improve that going forward

Can you make a quick comment about the outlook visibility in 2026 for your main end markets, infrastructure, utility location, mining and water research?

It's a bit hard to find reliable market data, how those go, but I think it's We can all see and read about the growth in mining or the growth in the defense sector. I think to me it's more important how much growth from these sectors will be for geophysics and subsurface surveys. And that is both how the industry grows and how these markets adopt geophysics as a method. But if I look at the market for GPR, we've seen a year-over-year growth over an industry cycle of in between 8% to 15%. It's a very large span, but it's somewhere around that. But that is regardless of application or industry. That is for the technology.

You mentioned that you sell in different countries in different places. What is your cost split and how is the split between the currencies?

We have two thirds of our employees in Sweden and they are paid in Swedish krona. And then we have one third in Sweden. And our main office in the US and then in Oceania and then in Kuala Lumpur. So we don't give exact numbers, but it's a rough estimate. Two thirds in Swedish krona in our employee base and our employees are the main cost in our company. Supply chain is the other big part. And we aim to have as much of our supply chain in Sweden as possible. And we pay them in Swedish kronors. But there's a lot of electronics in our equipment and electronic components are bought in US dollars. So, of course, we expect our suppliers not to actually compensate for the drop of the dollar. But our supply chain is mainly, I would say, in sick.

What is the typical ramp-up period for a new distributor? Do you expect to continue onboarding five to ten new distributors each year?

We've had a very high pace and we also have people knocking on our door to wanting to become our distributor. And it's been a really key part of our sales channel strategy to connect more distributors to our partner network. Will we continue at this high pace? We still have white spots on the map. We still have applications where we want to have a stronger distributor. So we will continue to sign more. The pace, let's just say that we've had a very high pace on new distributors. onboarding it takes time and effort to onboard but board a new distributor but we also learned how to do that in an inefficient way and the partner conferences are one thing where they also can learn from each other um and where we can meet many of them at the same time instead of having our sales team and travel around the world to each and every one of them So we've learned a lot how to onboard them. It is a bit different from the signing an agreement to first sale and to have good traction. Yeah, it takes a while and I'm saying quarters or year and not months to really make sure that we see good traction in a distributor. But then of course there are individual differences.

And I believe that was the last question.

All right. If any other questions come up, please don't hesitate to send us an email and we'll try to respond to them also outside this session. Thank you for listening and see you again in a quarter. Bye bye.