Guideline Geo AB (publ)

Hello.

Welcome to our Q2 report.

And for Swedes, welcome back from the Swedish summer period. My name is Molly Silberg. I'm the CEO of Guideline Geo, and I will introduce to you the Q2 report to you. But first, for any newcomers, this is Guideline Geo in brief. We are your guide to the subsurface. We design, manufacture non-distracting geophysical solutions for subsurface surveys. Our main applications are utilities. General ground investigations prior to any type of infrastructure or construction work and groundwater management, groundwater exploration and groundwater monitoring. We're listed on the First North growth market. We have a hundred year history. And one of our uniquenesses is that we have a true global reach through our partners, our distributors, but also some direct sales through our subsidiaries. And we are on a growth journey. Moving on to first half year. If we start with Q2 we were up 7% in sales and we improved our profitability both EBITDA on EBIT even if the EBIT is still slightly negative for the quarter. We see a positive operating cash flow stronger than last year and we are still at the growing and a solid net cash situation. We do have quarter by quarter fluctuations. For those of you who know us, follow us, you see that. If we can compare first half years, we were up 3% on net sales and we continue systematically to improve our EBITDA and EBIT throughout the last three years. And I'll come back to that a bit later. We are an export company. Our sales is mainly in US dollars, euros and some in Australian dollars. More than 95% of our sales is exported from Sweden. Our cost base is mainly in SEK. Our employees, two thirds are in Sweden and our supply chain is in our sustainability focus and it is mainly in Sweden. This means that we have a high impact from any type of currency fluctuations. You have to follow the currencies to be able to analyze us in a good way. So when I summarize the first half year, I see that we've grown 10% in the quarter and 13% over the first half year, if I look at comparable currency numbers. That means that we ship 13% more solutions to our customers. If we break down the sales into regions, the Q2 highlights is the EMEA region and specifically the MEA region. You've heard me talk about the MEA situation, Middle East and Africa situation for quite some time. It started off with the US administration shutting down the USAID. It continued with tariffs and also the war in Iran. So geopolitics has impacted the sales in the MIA region quite heavily the last 18 months. But in Q2, I'm really glad to see that we got strong and good sales from several countries throughout the MIA region. Also Europe. Europe is strong and it continues strong also in the first half year and in Q2. So that's also very pleasing to see. If you look at APAC, you can see a decline in APAC. Two comments to that. I've talked about it before that China used to be by far our largest country in APAC. It has quarter by quarter been reduced and the trend follows in that direction. On the other hand, and I'll come back to that a little bit, we have quarter-by-quarter fluctuations, and we just sent out two press releases from strong order intake and strong sales from the APEC region, from Korea and from Malaysia. So I'm not concerned at all with the APEC situation. It's an important market for us. If I look at applications and markets behind the growth so far this year is that the infrastructure and utilities continue to be strong for us in all our three regions. In Korea, we won a really strong and important tender from an authority, Carlys. That was, for us, a big one, 3.8 million Swedish kronors. It was our modern Marlowe solutions, both our 3D solutions, our mirror compacts. and our 2D solutions of the Malo EL-Core. So a really important tender that has a big impact in Korea and in the region. A similar one in Malaysia. Also Malaysian Authority, a tender that we won in competition to both local and international vendors. Again here, both mobile solutions, 3D solutions, 2D solutions are newer, more modern platforms. Really strong sign that we're winning this. Also important is we have the product, we have the portfolio product, the breadth of GPR products for infrastructure and utilities. But we also have very strong local partners that provide competence, support, service locally to these authorities. That also is really important to winning these contracts. So I'm happy to see that. Groundwater, when we sell into MIA or in specifically Africa, it's into the water sector, into the mining sector. And this quarter was a lot into the water sector. And then we sell our solution that we call Eben Thermeter, the LS2. So that's great to see the bounce back in MIA. In Middle East, we sell both to the infrastructure markets in Saudi, for instance, but also the groundwater solutions. Customers from the mining sector, we got the second new order from North America on a RoiTech system for slope stability monitoring for open pit mines. So important for us, for the North American market, for the RoiTech business. And the last part that I want to highlight is the aftermarket sales. We have many customers out there and many customers using our solutions out there. That means that they have a need for continuous training or support or service or calibrations or an add on an accessory. So we are doing some efforts to grow the aftermarket business. We saw a pretty strong trend here in Q2. So that is also nice to see. I've talked about our channel, our sales channel, our partner network. In Q2, we held a partner conference for the MIA team in Tanzania. Mainly the African team came because of the situation around Iran and the Middle East. a strong team attended. And that is important to provide continuous sales trainings, product updates, get feedback from the market and build these important relations and networks to our sales channel. We also continue to fill the gaps where we have white spots, where we don't have a sales partner. And this quarter we signed a new partner in the Netherlands and a new one in Guatemala. If we look at sales and sales split per brand, per product line, you can see that the dark blue is the Marlowe solutions and the light blue is the ABEM solutions and the orange is the rest, which is quite a lot of the Reutek sales. And you can see that the trend is strong for the Marlowe solutions. And that was the case also this quarter. And ABEM, I've talked about MIA, and I've talked about the ABEM Thermometer LS2, the water solution from us that is stable and solid and a strong product for us. We continue to invest in innovation, but innovation is not only new own product development. Innovation is bringing a new solution to solve our customers' problems. And I want to highlight three news that we launched to our customers this quarter. One was an own development. It's an accessory targeting the water sector. What it does is it makes it easier to do large water surveys like dam monitoring. It can be a tailing dam to a mine or water dam monitoring. So making it easy to make large-scale water surveys with this new accessory. On the GPR side, on the infrastructure side, we have a collaboration with Trimble, and we launched a combined solution where we bundle what Trimble calls the Trimble Catalyst with our easy-locate decor, and we are launching this for the European market. The Trimble Catalyst is a real-time on-demand positioning service that you can see on top. There is a GNS antenna that we bundle with our own EL Core solution. And it is a SaaS solution where the customer buys and pays for the positioning position that they need at the time that they need it. It's a really nice solution. and first saw a solution for this solution, which is nice and exciting and that we believe highly in. And the third solution is also not a new product development, but it's another type of innovation. We've seen that the Mira Compact that I've talked about has been received really well. We've also seen that the tow hitch carrier has been received really well to make mobile, faster surveys using our Mira Compact. And now we've bundled the antenna, the mirror compact antenna with a tow hitch carrier as one separate really cost efficient bundle that we introduced to the market in Q2 and that we also have really high expectations on. So innovation in different forms. Profitability, I started off by saying that we have improved our profitability the last three years in a good way. We're not there yet, we're not happy yet, but we're on a good trend. But we do see quarter-by-quarter variations. In Q2, we had an EBITDA of 3.2 and an EBITDA of minus 0.6. And we also saw an improvement when we compared the first half-year results. This is a result of continued cost control and cost control measures, but it's also this first half year a result of the restructuring that we've done of our U.S. subsidiary. And I'll talk a little bit more about that. What we've done is that we have consolidated our offices. We've had three offices in the U.S., one on the East Coast in South Carolina, one outside Denver in Colorado, and one in Salt Lake City in Utah. So we are end of Q1, we shut down our South Carolina office and moved all sales and service into our Denver, into a new Denver facility. We do that because we believe in the one team, gathering, getting all the muscles in one place, and a strength and sales focus here. We also do it because of cost efficiency. Having two setups and two sites, it's a cost of that. But of course, it brings some one-time effects for the relocation and the changes internally that needs to happen to make this work. But we have now completed the restructuring. We are... The team is the right team and the offices are where we're going to be. And the service set and support setup is there and up and running. We will keep our warehouse for the Reutek business in Salt Lake City. It's a garage, a warehouse for the team there. Proximity to customers is key here, so we're not making any changes there. But the big change has been in South Carolina and in Colorado. Cash flow, we can see that we had a somewhat stronger Q2 than the same period last year. We now see that we have pretty healthy stock levels and we continue to work with a cost and cash control and that is what gives this result with a positive operating cash flow and a strong net cash situation. But as you can see, we do also have quarter by quarter variations in this company. That's how our business is set up. We used some of our cash to invest in a production line. We invested in an in-house 3D printing solution for production volume of some of the selected components that we use in our solutions. To us, it reduces transport, so it is a sustainability factor here, but it also, of course, shortens lead times. It reduces cost of some parts and It gives us the flexibility and speed that we need in our production to be able to deliver fast and with quality. And with that, I want to summarize the first half year that we see continued growth. If I reduce the currency effect, we grew with 13% the first half year and with an increasing profitability. The first half year and this quarter was strong in infrastructure. That means our smaller solutions where we shipped a lot of model solutions and that EMEA led their way in Q2. Also wanted to highlight that we have done a pretty large restructuring of our US operations and that is now completed. And with that, I'm open to take any questions that you may have typed into the chat. And you can see a nice picture from Denver with the mountains as the backdrop. Do we have any questions?

Yes, in the first half materials and supply has increased with about 10 million Swedish crowns. Could you explain the reason behind this?

If I remember this right, it is of course mainly driven by the growth. And you have to take the currency into consideration here. We ship 13% more solutions than last year. And of course we need more supply, more materials to be able to build that, to ship that to our customers. So that is the main reason behind that. I would say it's probably also around a little bit behind the portfolio mix, the product mix that we're shipping that requires higher cost of goods. But the main driver is the growth. And then you have to take the currency into consideration.

We have a question here or two that will break up. Will there be any one-time cost in Q3 from the consolidation of offices or has the cost been taken in Q2?

Most of the cost has been taken in Q2. So I would say most of it has been taken. We are now in the right position. We now have the right team. We have moved everything and taken the relocation cost and signing new office spaces and building the service stations and the support stations is there. And we have also taken some recruitment costs because we have had people leaving us and recruited new ones and that has also been taken.

Gross margin was weaker year over year. Could you explain?

Yes, the gross margin also of course impacted by the currency effect, but it's also mainly driven by the product mix and we have different margins on different products. So we always look at product per product and product mix per quarter to be able to analyze that. Some of you know that we do resell RoiTech solutions when we have a new system sales in RoiTech. The margin on that is lower, obviously. It's not our own product. The same goes for the TEM products that we have rebranded from the TEM company products. When we sell those, we have a thinner margin than on our own developed product. We pay for those new products in margin. And in December, we launched a big new TEM product, the Ground TEM Trek, and we started shipping them mid of the first half year. And those products have a thinner margin, so that affects the margin. So portfolio mix is a big driver behind that. But then it's also, especially on the model side, it's pretty fierce competition out there. And competition is around... Who knows the customer best? Who has the best feature? And of course, obviously also on price. So we can see it's pretty tough competition and that also is a factor influencing our margin.

At what revenue level do you estimate the current cost base to deliver your 8% margin target by 2027?

Could you repeat that?

At what revenue level do you estimate the current cost base to deliver your 8% margin target by 2027?

Oh, that was a math that I think I need some thinking to be able to respond to. So please send that to me and I'll be happy to see how I can respond to that in email without providing any kind of insider information, of course.

And that is the last. I don't have anything. I wait a little bit to see if we have something coming in. I believe that is the last question. I think everybody has our contact information, so please send an email if there is something that we are missing.

All right. Thank you for listening in, and I'll see you again in a quarter.