I-Tech AB

Hello and welcome to today's webdecos presentation with iTech where we have the CEO Marcus Jönsson and the CFO and Director of Operations Magnus Haenel presenting. After the presentation there will be a Q&A so if you have any questions please feel free to use the form located to the right and with that said please go ahead with your presentation.

Thank you very much, Martin. And it's a sunny and crisp winter morning here in Möndal today. And Magnus and I, we look forward to present to you the highlights from the year-end report that was published earlier today. The first picture we have for you is this development of the sales and the profitability of the company. And as we choose to title the year and report, it was a top line sales sprint in the last quarter that crowned this successful year. And we will come back to the details on this in the presentation. But as you see, iTech is a growth company and we are in a very interesting phase at the moment. Of course, great accomplishments start with great people, and this is actually the entirety of the company. So IPEC today is consisting of 16 highly professional team members with, I would say, a very good diversity, both in terms of gender, ethnicity, languages, and of course, competences and key skills. You can see we have a strong R&D team, a strong marketing and sales team, And also then a support team, you could say backing this up with the regulatory affairs and production and synthesis and operations management. So if there are new people in the audience today, just a short recap then of what IPEX is focusing on. So we are in the maritime shipping industry and we have developed solutions to prevent fouling or growth of species on the underwater part of ships. And we are with our solutions then targeting a subset of selected challenges that is facing the maritime industry. If we start with the big and very important one, it's the emissions to air. So the shipping industry is representing about 3% of the world's release of CO2 gases to the atmosphere. And there is a strong drive, you could say, from nations and also the international bodies to reduce the carbon emissions from shipping. There is a number of initiatives that is launched in that direction. And we will come back to that, but fouling them or growth of species underwater is a major drag for the ships trying to run through water. And it's something that would increase the speed, sorry, increase the fuel consumption if you want to maintain the same speed of your ship. Another important topic is the transfer of invasive species where traditional or historically marine shipping has played a key role. Essentially, that is the transfer of different species from different places around the world to local coastal areas. With the risk, of course, of damaging the natural diversity that is present in the local environments. And here you could say ballast water and the growth on the ship's hull have been the key for this, historically. Another important challenge is the emissions to water. of various chemical substances. And of course, then biocides is a part of that, you could say. And that's a challenge that we want to minimize, of course. So Celecto, which is the main product of iTectan, is a Swedish invention from Gothenburg University and from Chalmers. And it's essentially then a substance that targets mainly hard fouling, what we call barnacles. So it is a substance that doesn't kill or harm the organisms, but it actually repels them from settling on the surface. So that has a clear advantage in terms of reducing the drag and thereby the fuel consumption of the ship. It is also then a key to have a clean hull if you want to protect the marine ecosystems from invasive species. And at the same time, Selecto is very, very much more effective and efficient than previous technologies. So the dosage that you need in a paint formulation to reach the desired effect is very low compared to traditional technologies. So it also represents a really huge step forward in terms of reduced emissions to our oceans. And this passion, you could say, for sustainability is really a key part of the DNA of Select Hope and of IPEC as a whole. And today we will actually be presenting to you some really fresh data from an in-docking study that we have recently performed in collaboration with the Safina Group. So the Safina Group, one of their businesses is actually coating consultancy. where they are supporting ship owners when they bring their ships into dry dock to have them repainted and refitted. They are there to advise in what type of coating system to select and what type of coating systems to also apply how and where, etc. And you can say that they target really the top quartile of ship owners that are really interested in performance. So you could say that the data set that we are showing here is also, you could say, among the best cases in the global shipping fleet today, because it is from customers that actually care about the performance of their ships. So previously, iTech have demonstrated a number of successful cases on a ship level, et cetera, where you can see the effect of select hope. And now today, then, we are showing some of the first data on the fleet level, so owners and the fleet level. And this is really exciting. So what we have here is the data is 761 inspected ships. So of course, a small subset of the about 20,000 dry dockings that are happening every year. And this is over a period of time as well, we should say. So it's probably around five to seven years. And since SEDECTO has not been around on the market for more than approximately two dry docking cycles, but we are now able then to find also ships that have been coated with SEDECTO. And that's the data we show here today. So if you start on the left side, this is, you could say, an overview picture of the result of the whole population of around 700 ship sets. And you see two bars here. One is the flat bottom. So that is the bottom of the ship, the underside. And then you have the vertical sides there. And these are two areas that potentially are problematic when you want to avoid fouling, right? And essentially what the data say here, more than 33% of all the inspected ships have more than 10% of animal or barnacle fowl, right? And this is really an unacceptable result in terms of fuel consumption, because this would sort of result in more than 40% additional fuel use to keep the same speed through water. Also, you could say the yellow bar is not the completely perfect result, and only 20% approximately of the fleet have a very good performance and prevention of particles. Out of these 761 observations, we have found then 12 ships that actually have been using Sevecto during this period. And that is the data that is represented to the right here. And you can see there are clear improvements, right? So the number of ships that has absolutely no barnacles has increased more than 50%. And also in general, there is a lower prevalence of barnacle fouling. There is one new, say, observation here, which is orange, which would then signal that you have more than 10% barnacle fouling on the ship's hull. But if you go in and study the report in more detail, you can see that at least some of this fouling comes actually from a coating breakdown. That is the picture you can see on the far right side here of the bow of the ship, where the coating has been damaged by the anchor. And of course, Selecto does nothing there to prevent the fouling. So this is really positive data for us. And of course, a strong group that we will use going forward as well to the relevance of the technology of SelectOpe. And we're really happy to be able to share that today. If we look at the market then, around 1,800 new ships were built during last year. And we have approximately 20,000 dry dockings happening each year where the ship comes in for maintenance and usually for a recoat of especially the anti-fouling coating then underwater. The majority of the market for us, both for new ships and for dry docks, are in Asia, where China is the leading country, but also then followed by Japan and Korea. These are the key markets for us to target. We estimate that the anti-fouling technology market opportunity for iTech is in sort of a gross level around $300 to $500 million. So a lot of growth to go for still. I take today then, we have a unique technology, intellectual property and formulation and process know-how, how to produce and formulate the product. So it's one of our key strengths. We are targeting, you could say, the top coating companies of the world that represents sort of more than 90% of all the antifouling coatings. And that is essentially nine companies where we have a contact and ongoing dialogue with all of them. So the company is asset light in the sense that we are outsourcing production and focusing mainly on the science and the formulation development and the sales and marketing of the product. We today estimate that our penetration is around 3,000 ships out of a global fleet of 110,000 ships. So much more to do. All right. That was short about iTech. So I will hand over now to Magnus to take you through sort of more detailed highlights of 2024. So please go ahead, Marcus.

Thank you very much. And as Marcus said in the beginning, we're very happy to stand here in front of you and present this report. And when we look on sort of the highlights of the Q4 report, we see that we had a very good growth in Q4, but overall also in 2024, we had growth. almost 50% sales growth, which is a very good accomplishment. One of the more important stuff is that our diversification continues. Today or last year, we had 33% of the sales from other than our main customer, Shibuko. Previous year, it was 80%. And I think both the development of going into the further customer base, but also it worth noting that Shibuco had a 20% increase of sales also last year. So it's not that this customer is declining, every customer is growing, but the new customers are growing a little bit more, so to speak, and that is quite reasonable. They're coming into the market, they're growing their product portfolio, etc. And taking these very nice revenues and the gross margin of the company, which I will come back to, where we show a very nice operating profit, which is growing by 94% up to 45.5 millisec. So taking the entire year into account, taking the position of the company, the board has decided also this year to propose an ordinary dividend as well as an extra dividend. They are increasing the ordinary dividend from 75 euro per share to one krona and remain with an extra dividend as previous year. So all in all, this gives a dividend to the shareholders of 175, corresponding to roughly 53% of the net profit for the year. And going a little bit more into detail, what does this mean? Of course, we have another record year. It's both a record quarter, but also overall record year with almost 180 million in sales we have a very nice still gross margin of 53 it's worth noting also here that that uh it's slightly increased during q4 also come back again but this is an effect of the investments were done in enhancing production and also in order to reduce the the production cost and that uh will continue over time. It will not be a step change, but we do see that we will be able to increase with additional percentages over the coming periods. And we talk a lot about our extra costs, but of course we have significant operating costs in the company as well, I think you all know that we have a business model with a lot of leverage in it. And now, for the first time, we actually achieved 30% EBITDA margin despite all these extra costs on the ED situation. So that is also indeed very good to see. And the cash conversion continues. We had... We were building quite a lot of network and capital over the year, and that is due to prepayments for production, as we have been discussing in previous calls, but also an effect of the significant increase in sales during the last quarter. And coming back to the geographical spread, we clearly see that it is Northeast Asia, just as Markus said before. Northeast Asia is where we really drive the sales. We increased the total sales to Asia to 97% this year. It's almost 3% in Europe. And it's so little to the rest of the world so far that it actually doesn't show in the graph. And when we look into the distribution of these 97%, we see that Korea today, which is the main market to go to in the beginning for all our customers. Shibuco started there. The other customers are starting there as well. But that is sort of the main market to start in. And that today represents 50% of our total sales. And Japan is very strong still. It's 30%. And China up to 13%. And hopefully we can grow that even further over the coming periods. And then the rest of Asia is going towards Singapore, the small 4%. But there is a Really nice picture showing, not showing the growth, but showing the importance of Asia for our products and how well they accept it over there. So it's been an eventful year. Sometimes you sit in the office and you think, well, nothing is happening, but a lot is happening. And on the operations side, we have going into new supply agreements and we have new products launched by our customers. On the leadership, it happened a lot. We had our previous CEO, he resigned and went up to being a chairman of the board. Previous this year, I took over as an interim CEO. And before coming in here with Markus, who will lead us in the future. And we also increased the additional capabilities in the team, so to speak. Marcus, you can have the happy announcement on the right.

Yeah, exactly. No, it has been an eventful year since I started as well, right? Although I was only here for part of the 2024. And also sort of that was crowned, I think, with the award that we got from the Dagens Industri, sort of naming iTech one of the Gazelle companies for 2024, which we duly celebrated, you could say, in the end of the century, which was very nice. Also, one of the key themes this year has been the renewal of the approval of use of Select Hope on the EU market. And as the predecessor, Philip, then announced here a year ago, it was a bumpy road ahead. And we see that it's really been a bumpy road and it will continue for a good part, at least of this year as well. So we will come into that a little bit more in detail. but we won't take the whole background. So if you're really interested in that, I would really recommend our Q2 and Q3 announcements last year, if you want to dwell into the background of where we are. So I will more focus on the here and now, sorry, the here and now, as we say. So what happened then in November last year was that we closed what was called the public consultation phase of this regulatory process. So this is a standardized process that ECA and the European Commission is following when they are reassessing approvals of the use of different substances for biocides etc. And it's worth to mention then that all biocides that are used in Europe are under severe regulatory pressure. So I think it's only one of the substances, you could say, under scrutiny by our regulators. So in the public consultation, the general public and all stakeholders had the opportunity to send in input. You could say arguments for why Select Oak should be on the market and argumentations for the case that was presented by ECHA. And it was, you could say, a very good response, I think, from the maritime industry as such. We had various organizations, ship owners, shipyards and of course also our customers, the paint companies, submitting comments during the public consultation. I will come back to that in the next slide to give you sort of the highlight and the summary of what we know was sent in as input in this process. But essentially where we are now is that the EU Commission with the DG Santer, they would take a look at all this material that came in in the public consultation synthesize this and then come back with sort of a discussion and recommendation for the standing committee on biocidal products. And this will happen now in March to the best of our ability. Originally, we thought that the voting would take place in June, but due to this process, we now estimate that most likely the voting and the final decisions will be in Q3 this year. So we are talking anyhow about the second half 2025, when we hope to get sort of more of a final decision regarding the renewal of ITEX news in the EU region. So coming in then to the input in the public consultation that we know of, we can summarize it sort of in three main buckets here. We start with sort of the industry perspective where a lot of the stakeholders, you could say shipyards, ship owners, and paint companies all pointed out that this decision would actually weaken EU competitiveness. It is a global issue since shipping is a global business, right? Then although you could say, you could say that part of the building and servicing of ship is an Asian business. A lot of the industry and sort of the owners are still sitting in Europe. And of course, we still have a lot of ships running in Europe. And this would put severe restrictions on the shipyards and ship owners and actually make it a tough time for them to be competitive if they cannot use state-of-the-art technology to reduce, for instance, fuel consumption. Another thing is the potential negative impact on the environment of a non-renewable for Selecto. And essentially here, what the stakeholders emphasize is there is really a scarcity of viable alternatives. There are not many products that are registered in Europe for use as biocides for marine paint. And the ones that are there, you could really question their viability as suitable alternatives. And now, since the EU and the IMO is driving for really reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of shipping, this would severely hamper that, since SelectOp is and has proven now to be a key technology in helping to battle and reduce the emissions from the shipping industry. And also not to forget then the invasive species element to this as well, since selector is so effective to prevent hard fouling and barnacles from settling on the ships. The last point here was actually a socio-economic study. And this is actually also a standard part of this process. So this is an independent study, but it has been financed from ITEC. But we have no influence on the conclusions or on the results of this study. It was performed by Ricardo, which is a renowned specialist for making impact assessments of EU policy and regulations. And essentially, to cut the long story short here, their 100-page report came to the conclusion there would be no benefit at all to society of not renewing Select Hope's approval, but there would be substantial costs, you could say, both monetary and environmental costs of a non-renewable. So all in all, then, we feel sort of strengthened by a lot of the good support and, of course, hope that This will also shine through when we approach a decision point in this process during the year. So that on that. Also, we want to mention again the business development pipeline, right? We started to touch upon that in quarter three. And here now I can report that we have actually built a nice opportunity pipeline. Of course, we're looking to fill it with more ideas, but we are working now structured and with a clear plan of strengthening ITEC going forward with new complementing products and potentially targeting adjacent marine markets mainly. So complementing technologies is typically other active ingredients or biocides that could sort of complement the product offer we have today to our paint companies. And adjacent markets are other marine markets that also could be interesting except the underbody part of ships. And we're also looking into additional business models, but of course with this focus. All right. And we come to the outlook part then before we kick off the Q&A session. And we do see that the favorable market conditions continue and we anticipate new customer product launches also during 2025. So overall, we have a positive sentiment and view of this year as well. As mentioned, this EU process will continue to absorb attention and resources for the better part of this year, with hopefully then a conclusion sometime in Q3. And also, as Magnus mentioned, operational improvements have started to kick in, but I don't know if you want to say a few more words on that.

No, that is of course a continuous work that we are doing, but as we have informed earlier already the year before, this year, we've made some investments in going to new producers, looking to enhance our synthesis, etc. And that work is going well and hopefully we'll be able to show that also on the finance side moving forward.

Yeah. So that sort of concludes the highlight presentation, and we're eager then to accept and answer your questions.

Thank you very much, Marcus and Magnus, for that presentation. And let's dive into the Q&A section here. Starting off with the first question. If the US implements its threats of import duties against the EU, how can it affect ITEX expansion in the short and also long term?

In the short term, of course, it would have no impact. As you saw in the sales bit that Magne showed, unfortunately, we don't have any sales to the U.S. today. As we mentioned in the report, we are in the regulatory process to register Selecto on the U.S. market. However, it's very difficult for us to give a clear timeline here because it really depends on the authorities and the EPA on the U.S. side. So we know that we will be conducting additional testing and hopefully submit an updated dossier to them during this year, 2025. But it may take up to two years, as far as we understand, to get an approval of the US market. So by that time, of course, if there is import duty, it may have an impact on the business. But it depends also, I would say, on the relative competitive position of Selecto versus the solutions that then would be available in the U.S. market. We, of course, would have an option to start production locally in the U.S. market if we wanted to. So as a way to mitigate that, if it would be a serious barrier to import.

It is promising to see that your customer base has diversified with CMT now constituting around two thirds of your sales. However, can we still assume that CMT sales have increased in terms of absolute numbers or are they somewhat flat?

Well, I think we already gave the answer to that question. As I said during the presentation, the sales of C&P increased by more than 20% also during 2024. So, no, they haven't flattened out. Of course, we can't anticipate 40-50% growth every year on those, but they are in a positive momentum as well. And as I said, during 2024, they grow with more than 20%.

very significant additional potential still with CMP.

And during the quarter, you grew your total share of sales in Asia to 97%. Do you foresee this share staying this high?

But we don't have any strong indications that Asia will decline. Of course, when you're up to the level of 97% for the full year, I would say. Then, of course, the way down is a little bit easier than the way up because we should take even more. But we have ongoing customers in Europe as well and with good traction on the market. But... we have even better traction on the Asian market, so to speak.

I think it also will depend how the EU process pans out, right? If there wouldn't be a positive sort of result of that this year, of course, there would be a basis for continuous growth also in Europe, right? If not, then that may have to wait a little bit, right? To finally conclude sort of what is the potential for the EU market going forward.

Can we get an indication of how much the external costs were linked to the regulatory process? And were these in line with other quarters or higher? And what can we expect going forward?

Well, I think for the last part of the question, we should expect that they will continue. We will put in efforts and do it in. It was a slight increase during the Q4, roughly 2 million SEK compared to in average 1.5 during the previous quarters, but it's no huge change, but a slight increase for the Q4.

What was the board's argument as to why not proposing a dividend on 100% of net profits, given that you already hold a significant net cash position?

Well, we are also looking to invest for the future. So I think that is one of the key arguments as well.

And very impressive growth in the quarter. Are you seeing any inventory built up at a customer level or what's your view on that?

That is really hard to say. Of course, there can be some inventory build-up end of the year, but also the main reason for the growth was the eagerness from the customers to have the deliveries. So I wouldn't assume that that is a huge build-up. But as we have been discussing over and over on the quarterly calls, that it will have ups and downs in the quarters over the year. But as Marcus said, we still see a very positive momentum at customers.

I mean, as an example, you can see that Q2 2024 was higher than Q3, right? And then we can bounce back with a higher Q4. So you will definitely have the quarterly variations. And of course, their stock buildup and inventory management is part of the reason that on our customers.

You mentioned that a portfolio of opportunities have been identified. Without being specific, of course, can you reason as to what type of opportunities you are looking towards and how they could be expected to affect the organization?

Yeah, the real low-hanging fruit, so to speak, would be if we could find complementary active ingredients that would sort of further strengthen the value proposition that we have to the existing customers today, which we believe there is, right? And there is something that we are exploring along those lines, right? So that is, of course, a key focus, right? Something where we can tap into significant additional opportunities short term, right? But there is also then, of course, various, a little bit more longer term initiatives. And we also need to keep an eye on the future and the horizon to see other upcoming technologies, right? Whether that would be bioscience or other complementary things that could help service our customers better.

Can part of the exceptionally strong sales growth in Q4 be explained by any kind of one-off or startup volume demand from a new customer or product?

Well, I think we responded to that question also before, but we can say that it's no startup of new customers that effectively is like this. But we have elaborated a little bit about potential effects from stock buildups and stuff like that. I think that is a good answer to that.

And what can you say about the seasonality of sales in this product segment? In a steady state, is it expected for sales to be lumpy over the calendar year or is it primarily other factors?

Well, it's really hard to say, right? Since we are in the growth phase as well with the company. Very far from a mature sort of stage of the business, right? There are, of course, seasonalities and variations in the ship maintenance business as such. New build has been the key market for where iTech started, which is maybe a little bit more steady over the year. But of course, services and servicing ships also depend on things like seasons and climates and so on, right? So it's really hard to say how it affects, but we know that there are quarterly variations in the demand. And that has to do with the varying demand at our customer side, but also then inventory management considerations.

Can you talk a little bit about the regulatory approval process in Northeast Asia? You mentioned that SelectOpe is already approved for usage. And is this a time limit approval or how does this approval work in practice?

Yes, it has to be renewed in most markets at a certain time. I cannot recall exactly for Korea now, but I think it's in one period. 28, 29 exactly, there is a renewal. So, I mean, we would have to continuously invest, you could say, in regulatory compliance and sort of staying ahead and in tune with authorities on a global scale. And it does vary, for instance, how the different regulatory bodies in the countries view different issues and challenges with chemical substances and with biocides. But we have no indication so far we would have face similar challenges in the Asian markets as we are facing in Europe, for instance.

And about the EU process, you present a lot of positive feedback about the public consultation. Was there any negative feedback?

Not really to our knowledge. However, as you know, the public consultation, you could submit your comments either publicly or you could submit them confidentially. So we have been able to, of course, take part of the things that have been sort of publicly submitted, but also then where customers and partners have potentially shared with us what they had sort of submitted. But to our knowledge and awareness, we have not seen any negative.

Have you given or can you give some kind of rough estimate as to the amount of economic resources that the EU process is currently consuming from ITEC?

Well, I think I already answered that question as well. We had external costs during the final quarter of roughly 2 million SEK and roughly in average 1.5 million during the other quarters. And of course, it also takes time from the organization, from me, Marcus, but mainly Cissi. But in pure external costs, those are the numbers.

And you communicated a supply and license last week. How much have that customer contributed to sales prior to the agreement?

Well, we cannot comment on that specifically since the customer has asked also to remain anonymous at this stage.

And your gross margin improved in Q4. Do you have any guidance of how many percentage points it can improve from here?

No, of course we have a view of it, but we don't have any guidance. It will increase a few more percentages over time, but it's also, as I said, it will come over time. But no real guidance on where we will end up.

thank you and can you give us some more color on what an adjacent area could be are you looking for acquisitions or continue to grow in adjacent areas organically both i would say but adjacent areas we mean more uh sort of other markets within the marine technology sphere right so now itex business is very focused on the anti-fouling coatings of ships there are other sort of oceanic installations and other marine applications which is adjacent. But I will not comment sort of specifically in detail what the projects are.

Do you feel that your odds for a derogated approval is better now after the public consultation phase?

Well, at least we feel strengthened, I would say, by the support of the maritime industry. And I think we found also encouraging is that sort of the key arguments that that we brought forward to the process right of sort of both on the scientific side you could say on the classification of select topaz and ed but also this analysis of alternatives that the competent authority of norway conducted right that that is is a really uh yeah it's not correct right and then that was echoed again and again, you could say, from the support that was submitted by other stakeholders. So we sort of got confirmation, I would say, in our views of the processes such and the conclusions that ECHA has made so far.

Thank you. And on the customer pie chart you just showed, does the figure rank their importance by volume?

You should see that that's a market share of the paint companies, right? That is actually something we show mainly for illustrative purposes. So to assess exactly the shifting market shares of the global anti-fouling paint manufacturers is a really difficult task, right? But we are mentioning these top nine companies as really the ones with the biggest share. And you would say out of those, there's probably four as a really significant share of the global market. But we are not giving sort of any additional detail there on the relative sizes of our customers.

Okay, thank you. And SG&A cost excluding depreciation was 41 million in 2024. Can you give us an idea of the expected developments here for 2025? Do you expect to make any major increases in your SG&A cost base?

When we look into the development of the company, of course, we will increase cost over time. We will continue to strengthen the organization. We will make efforts in other areas. I don't have any major shifts that we are planning right now. That should increase it significantly. But there will be an increase also next year. I'm pretty sure about that. Then, of course, coming into the business development work and there is, of course, a potential that we will increase the cost over time in that area, both in identification, assessment of opportunities, etc., but also driving the opportunities moving forward.

And do you expect to have a fairly good idea on the outcome in the EU-ED process after the discussion in March?

It's really difficult to say. At best case, we will have an indication, right? But nothing is final until you have a voting taking place, right? And the decision, right? And that, of course, can still be channeled. So, of course, it will be a final in this process that we're in now. But the final say, of course, in the EU going forward will not be settled by the closure of this process.

Okay, and we take one final question here. Good growth in China in the quarter, albeit from low levels. What do the prospects in the Chinese market look like going forward?

Well, the potential is really big in China and really huge and we could say that the use of select oak in newbill is not as sort of, let's say, as needed in the Chinese market as it is in the Korean market. Many of the Chinese shipyards are actually situated in river deltas, where you could say the growth from barnacles is not such a big problem as it is in Korea and Japan, etc. That is specifically on the newbill market, which has been the historical first penetration of itech right and selecto in the korean and japanese market however of course the relevance for the dry docking and maintenance market is as big for the chinese market and there is huge potential here and of course a focus area for us going forward okay thank you very much marcus and magnus for presenting today and a big thank you to everyone who followed this presentation with itech and i wish all great rest of the day and thank you very much Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye bye.