Mentice AB (publ)

Good morning, everyone. My name is Richard Engberg, and I'm an equity research analyst here at Carnegie Investment Bank. With me, I am Frans Fenker, CEO of Mentis, and Ulrika Dross, CFO of Mentis. We're going to present the first quarter. Frans and Ulrika, welcome. Thank you, Richard. Thanks for having us.

So the scene is yours. Very good. Thank you, Richard, for us being here. What we have today is the quarterly results for the first quarter, which we are happy to present to you and all of you. So what I have is four topics for today. First of all, the highlights and also the interview, basically overview presented by me, the financial results by Ulrika Drots, concluding remarks by me, and then we go towards questions and answers. Overall, if we look at the quarterly summary, what we see is that we had solid revenue growth year over year, where the net sales was up by close to 20%. What we saw is that the EBITDA was negatively impacted by one-offs. That was due to restructuring, but also due to currency effects. The revenue came from all three regions, so we were positive from all three regions, specifically North America from an absolute standpoint. From a percentage point also, we saw significant growth by APAC, although from a lower base. What we are doing is currently addressing the weak developments in the healthcare systems market by addressing also our value proposition. So really the growth also from an order intake came from the medical device industry. Overall order intake increased by 15% year over year and it signaled also a strong interest for our Mentus products going forward. Now, if you then look at the business development activities. So, first of all, there are activities, and we have put activities in place in order to streamline the organization to make sure that we're really focused towards the sales areas where we're driven, towards medical device industry as also the healthcare systems markets. We are consolidating the production currently, what we had in Stony Brook, towards the Denver, Colorado office, and make sure that we are going to produce in one location our physical simulation portfolio for the globe. We have continued focus also from the integration from acquisitions when it comes towards Anquiras, as also indicated towards physical simulation. And especially the latter part, we saw continuous development and strong order intake also towards that portfolio. There's progress towards the next generation neurovascular simulation platform where it's linked or phased towards NVConnect and Ankyras. We have, especially for Ankyras, we have approval in Latin America and Brazil in order to start selling and we are about to get good news also from the United States in order to have our next release also available for the US. So in overall, the initial steps are being taken to improve and strengthen our value proposition, not only in the medical device industry market, but especially also in the healthcare systems market. And we start focusing there clearly also on the neurovascular market in order to make an impact there. So with that, I want to give it over to Ricard Roos, Arisit, for the financial results and details.

Thank you, Frans. So the Q1 highlights, net sales increase with 19.5% to 54 million Swedish crowns and a 15% increase in order intake. The main impact comes from the region Americas and the region APAC, and we will come back to that in a short while. EBTA level minus 19 million, and as Frans mentioned, this is affected by one of costs of 3.5 million related to the reorganization. and 5 million as an effect of the strengthening corona, which gives a negative impact on our effects. The order book, 180 million, with 75 million scheduled for 2025. And when comparing this to the first quarter 2024, I just want to mention what we... said at the Q4 report that at the end of last year, we reviewed our order book and we excluded some orders where we have a very unclear delivery time. So that needs to be taken into account when you compare year over year. The Q1 has an operational cash flow that is negative on $3.3 million. And as Frances mentioned, solid sales for MDI, an increase of almost 26% during the first quarter. And as we also see, the somewhat weaker performance of the healthcare systems, HCS. And that is, as Frances already mentioned, being addressed with actions from us. So we will see a different development going forward. Looking at net sales from a region perspective, all regions exceeded last year, both on a quarterly and on a rolling 12 months perspective. So the Americas region still represents the largest region and had a growth in net sales with 17% for the first quarter. And the EMEA region increased with 4% for the first quarter. And this is mostly related to the medical device industry. And looking at the performance on a rolling 12-month perspective, it's a 12% development. The APEC region has, from a percentage point of view, a really good increase of 88%. And looking at the actual numbers, we have an increase of 4 million in sales. And looking at the rolling 12 months perspective, it's still an impressive increase of 49% in development. I should comment on the recurring revenue from software. We see an increase during the first quarter and we also see the increase on a rolling 12 months basis. And finally, a comment on the water intake for the quarter, 15% above last year, due to the increase in the medical device industry. And again, we see the somewhat weaker performance in the healthcare systems part. Again, that will be addressed going forward.

Thank you, Ulrike. So if we now look at the concluding remarks, there's also the outlook. What we clearly see is a more challenging market conditions at this moment with a potential implementation of tariffs. but also basically strengthening the Swedish crown towards a basket of currencies, specifically the euro and the dollar. And that also attributes to more macroeconomical factors that we need to take into account. What we see is that we are adjusting our production capabilities and supply chain also towards potential tariffs and making sure that we optimize accordingly. As also if you look at the foreign exchange with the dollar where we have a lot of sales also coming from the U.S., We need to make sure that we look at this and see whether we can get our cost base also in line towards that. So there's continued high interest also from the medical device industry. We see that going strong, and we need to make sure that we focus on really getting our healthcare systems value proposition to really resonate with repeating sales that can also scale towards the larger delivery networks. for hospitals. So it's really capturing the opportunities when they arise and making sure that we drive sales accordingly. So key takeaways, even I summarise also with respect to the business highlights. So we had a solid Q1 in terms of sales, but also order intake. Order intake with room for improvement. EBITDA impacted by one-offs related to organisational restructuring costs. but also foreign exchange effects. But we do see a very strong continued momentum from the medical device industry with almost 24% increase in order intake year over year. So if we then look at the strategic priorities that we're focusing on, is making sure that we drive the health systems market with the integration of NVConnect platform with VIST as also AnkiRAS in order to be prepared for pre-procedure planning. And this is an integral part of our strategy in order to address the hospital space. The second strategic priority is making sure that we reshape our organization and offerings to make sure that our value proposition really resonates not only with the medical device industry market but especially also the health systems market where the growth also will be going forward. So, yeah, that's our summary. It's a streamlined business structure which strengthens our strategic focus for operational execution where we're currently addressing also the current market challenges. And we continue to be a major player in a market segment where we really established ourselves with a strong organizational foundation, an attractive product, solid balance sheet, but also attractive customers in order to work with. So, Richard, that's what we had so far.

Thank you, Frans and Ulrika. So my first question is basically, can you please describe what these extraordinary costs affecting EBITDA are consisting of? Ulrika, you might want to come in.

Yes, it's reorganization that we've done. So it's costs related to that.

Okay, great. And also like, if we can discuss the development within the healthcare systems, especially year on year, what has been the reason for the weakness in growth and how have you been addressing it?

So it is what we see. First of all, Q1 is usually, I'd say it's one of the smaller quarters, I'd say it's a year of a year and therefore the effects are also in that sense bigger. But clearly what we see is that we need to provide propositions towards our healthcare systems market that we're able to scale. And that is also what we're currently looking at, to making sure that where the demand is and the needs are from our customers, that we provide our simulation but also training capabilities exactly in that space, and do that in such a way that we are also able to make this bigger in healthcare systems. And that's what we're going to address. So it is simply in our control in order to make sure that we adjust our value proposition and get the impact that we're looking for.

Okay, great. And please describe the rationale of merging the strategic alliance segment with the medical device segments, since you reported three segments before now you report two.

Yeah, an important question and also a change that we made. The strategic alliances remain a very important partnership for us. And so our partnership is also stronger than ever with the imaging vendors going forward. And what we see is that a lot of the activities that were happening with strategic alliances were already linked towards similar value propositions would be provided towards the medical device industry. And for that reason, also, it made sense to consolidate it with the activities that we do within the MDI. So it doesn't change our focus from a business standpoint where how we execute, it's simply how we operate and report our results and make sure that we make that part of the medical device industry business going forward.

Okay, great. And we saw really strong growth year over year of both hardware and development for Mentes Vist. Is this a sign of like the software revenue will catch up and increase the parts of sales later during the year?

Yeah, we expect that for sure. So especially it's all about creating installed base of hardware for our customers, both within the medical device industry as also within hospital networks. And the more systems we have out there, also we expect and also more recurring revenues if it comes towards software sales or licensing sales going forward. And for that reason, yeah, that's a positive development, what we expect for the outlook for the year.

Okay, great. And as a reminder, there is an opportunity to ask questions via the chat on the webcast. So wait just a couple of seconds to see for anything on that as well. No, I don't see any questions from the web. Then I might maybe end with one question. And that is basically, please describe the opportunity in Latin America now with Anchoress.

It provides us the opportunity to really provide our next version of Ankyras towards our hospitals, which is linked towards an improved user interface, has also improved software capabilities, and it will simply allow us to provide pre-procedure planning specifically in the neurovascular space towards our customers there. So it's an opportunity for us in order to be more focused towards the neurovascular segment in Brazil, but also grow from there. And so we're very pleased with the approval. And also we expect the approval, the imminent approval, also in the United States, also there, so that we not only grow with our Ankyros proposition within Brazil, but that we can also do that within the U.S.

Okay, great. And I don't see any questions from the web. So do you have any concluding remarks, Frans and Erika?

It is maybe concluding remarks. We are basically presenting in Q1 solid results. We are off to a decent start when it comes to revenue, but also order intake. We are seeing a little bit of more challenges towards the economical outlook, macroeconomical basically outlook of the situation in the world. But clearly, we stick towards our projections and growth projections that we have set for the year.

Okay.

Thank you, Franz and Ulrike. And thank you, everyone who has been listening. Thank you, Richard. Thank you.