NCAB Group AB (publ)

Good morning and welcome to our Q3 presentation. My name is Peter Kruk and I'm very happy today to have Timothy Benjamin join us as our new CFO. Happy to be here. Thank you. Starting off with a little bit of background about NCAB. NCAB is a company focused on printed circuit boards and it's the product you see to the far left. The basics and the foundation for all electronic products. We are focused on serving high mix low volume industrial segments and our customers will then mount semiconductor products, microprocessors to create the intelligence in these products. Important to remember is that all of our products are bespoke, so unique to the end product they go into and no standard components. As a company, we are focused on serving printed circuit boards for demanding customers, delivering on time to them with zero defects, produced sustainably at the lowest overall total cost for our customers, even if we may not be the lowest in the price for the product. Our vision is to be the number one PCB producer wherever we are. We are already the globally leading supplier of printed circuit boards with outsourced production. We are working with partner factories with some main 30 out factories. We deliver more than 90% of our spend to our customers. We also believe in being local. We are present in 19 countries with local sales companies serving our customers in those markets. And as a company overall, we are a little bit more than 600 specialists of which more than around 120 are working only with developing the factory pipeline and securing quality and on-time delivery for our customers. We are a company focused on what we call integrated PCB production. So quite different from a traditional trading company. The strength of being local to our customers in our local companies enables us to work with our customers, help them optimize their design, give advice on how to best plan their production setup, and then match their needs with the best manufacturing location globally to supply the products they need in the quantities they need at the time they need. We are also in our model local in the other end of the value chain. So we have a very strong presence with the factories, even if we don't own any factories ourselves. That enables us both to secure leading quality on-time delivery performance, but we're also working to continuously develop these factories, both in terms of their technical and quality capabilities, but as well as sustainability. And we also have a qualified sourcing team to continuously look and qualify new factories, supporting new technologies in new regions, meeting the needs of our customers. Moving into the third quarter, clearly we have seen that demand in Europe has continued to be very soft, especially weak demand in Germany, and we can see that the weak German economy has had spread on effects over to other countries in the European region. also seeing effects of a weaker economy but with mixed performance we are seeing growth in areas like defense but we also see lower activity in areas like green energy with ev charging and heat pumps however we can see growth in the positive positive way in the segments of north america and east where we continue to grow winning of new projects and these markets even if they're not positive they are more stable and enables us to show year-on-year growth We are maintaining good gross margins, even if our EBITDA is lower as a consequence of lower sales. Gross profit is maintained at a good level. Factory pricing still remains at a low level. EBITDA and EBITDA margins, as mentioned, are affected by the lower top line. Cash flow still remains strong and is close, is around 100 million SEC. We also have had a good activity in M&A in the quarter, and I'll report on that shortly. So we have had four new acquisitions announced in the latest quarter. So we had first two acquisitions in Switzerland and Austria, which were announced in early part of July. We also had a smaller acquisition in Denmark in September. And in October, we closed the acquisition of DVS, which we announced around the 20th of July. We now close this on 10th of October, which brings in another 230 million SEC of annualized sales and 13 new employees who joins NCAB. If we look upon Q3, a little bit detailed in numbers, we can see that our order intake is down 4% to 887 million SEC versus 924. If we look upon order intake in US dollars, however, we will see that we are flat versus last year. Book-to-bill is 0.99. Net sales is down 11% versus prior year to 808 million SEC versus 1.5 billion SEC. Organic growth on comparable units is down 8% in US dollars. One needs to remember, however, that in Q3 of 2023, we still had a legacy order book that we were shipping from, and that sort of boosted or supported the overall invoicing and sales in Q3 2023. Our EBITDA amounted to 118.5 million SEC, slightly better than the guidance we announced here recently on the upper end of our guidance at the profit warning, and an EBITDA margin of 13.2%. Gross margin remains at a good level of 36.4% versus 36.2% prior year. We've had a strong operational cash flow of 190 million SEK, even if last year's number were even stronger, partly based on the fact that we were still working down and higher working capital. Our working capital is stable at 7.5%. So over to you, Tim, to continue.

Thank you, Peter. And I think I'd also like to take this moment to say thank you to my predecessor, Anders Forsen, for a good handover during the third quarter. But diving into the numbers, if we look at the sales, we ended up with 898 million SEC, which is down 11 million SEC versus the third quarter of 2023. Bearing in mind, there was some FX impact here, which was about four percentage points. You see around minus 7% in US dollars. You heard from Peter also that our EBITDA ended up around 118 million SEC, which is down 33%. That's primarily linked to the volume decrease that you heard about on the revenue side. But bear in mind, there's also a one-off last year with regards to an earn-out, which resulted in around two percentage points impact to the EBITDA margin. So you see 4.3 percentage points down versus prior year, of which two were related to the earn-out. As you can see, we've had a very nice revenue trend over the past years. We had some decreases in the past couple of years as the markets itself slowed down a bit, but we've been able to maintain gross profits at a very nice level over the past year or two. When we look at the total top line, order intake, as mentioned, decreased about 4% to 887. from the comparable units, decreased by 1%, so fairly stable. What we did note was that we had some positive developments in Nordics, North America, and East, so all three regions there moving upwards, but some weak demand that you heard about from Peter in Europe, very much linked to the overall economy there. Net sales decreased by 11% to 898 in the quarter, so I think what's important to remember here is that quarter three of 2023 was very much impacted by a strong order book at that time. Whereas now we don't have that same benefit in place, but we do have a book to bill now of 0.99, which is stabilized and in line with quarter two. And we also see a good continued trend with regards to new part numbers and customers one. which is a good thing, especially for our customers as NCAB offers stability for customers, especially in weak market conditions. When we look at EBITDA, we see a decrease to 118.5 million SEC versus 176 million SEC last year. I think, again, what's important to remember here is that we did have a one-off item with regards to the additional purchase consideration of 21 million SEC, which, again, was around two percentage points of EBIT. That resulted in a full quarter impact of around 13.2%, which was quite close to the guidance that we gave, and gross margins were also stable year over year with only 20 basis points in difference there. from negative transactional efforts. So that was part of the impact there when we compare versus prior quarters. And then we also had earnings per share at 0.27 sec, most of which was again related to volume and then a small amount also related to the earn out prior year when we look at the difference.

over to you peter thank you so if we look into the specific segments a little bit more in detail we can see that also just first a comment that we are in since 2024 including poland as part of nordics and that is also restated in the q3 number of q3 and q4 numbers of 23 in this graph Our order intake was up some 9%. I'd say overall, the market in Nordics is still somewhat muted, but we have been able to be successful in some of the aerospace and defense projects. Some of these projects have longer lead time, so the majority of the revenue from those orders will fall into 2025. Other sectors like green energy and construction sectors are weak. We can see both EV charging and heat pump business is still on a low level. due to primarily inventory situations with final products at the dealerships. Net sales amounted to 202 million SEK down from 223 last year, so decreased by 9%. We also seen in the quarter a bit of a customer product mix and also some negative effects that has impacted the gross margin specifically in the quarter. EBITDA amounted 26.3 million SEC versus 42 last year, and EBITDA margin decreased then to 13% versus the prior year, 18.9. Looking at Europe, we can see the segment which is most heavily impacted by a weak economy. Order intake was down by 14% to 421 million SEC versus 490 last year, net sales Down by 20% to 435 versus 545. And we can see it's primarily the German market, which is the biggest in Europe, which remains very weak and impacted. And we can also see that this weak economy has also spread to neighboring markets like Italy, Benelux, partly UK as well. However, we see positive development in our sales to truck and bus industry, as well as to aerospace. We've also noted that there has been a number of European PCB factories closing down here in 2024, and this may create future opportunities for NCAB to capture further market share. Arabita decreased to 57.6 million SEC versus 82.1, and that corresponds to a margin of 13.2% versus 15.1 in prior year. uh moving to north america here we can see we continue the positive trend of order intake growth we grew by five percent to 185 million sec versus 176 last year our net sales was up 10 to 205 million sec versus 186. i think we are investing here to continue to strengthen our own organization our way of working as well as our external sales network we'll also be able to leveraging our technical support capabilities which is giving us good success with high-tech applications And we also have another benefit of being able to supply PCBs from Taiwan meeting requirements of the US aerospace and defense industry. And this is a positive. And we can also see some positive effects from our phase three acquisition in 2023, where we can see spin-off effects that we are generating further sales growth with this entity. So our EBITDA increased to 31.7 million SEC from up from 25.6, and our margin increased to 15.4 up from 13.7 last year. Moving to East, we can see also here good growth. Order intake was up 10% to 52 million sec versus 48 last year. I'd say that overall the market conditions in China remain challenging, but I think we are, as NCAB, very much focused on high-tech niches where we can add a lot of value and technical support, and that helps us to outperform the market at this stage. I think we can also report some positive signs in consumer confidence. As we can see, some of the recent stimulus by the Chinese government is starting to maybe have some minor impact. Net sales was up 7% to 56 million sex versus 52 last year. And EBITDA down at 8.2 versus 10.9 with an EBITDA margin of 14.6% versus 21.1 last year. Over to you, Tim.

Thanks, Peter. So just looking at our return on equity at 20.7% for the quarter versus 32.4% last year. Now that's with a very stable equity year on year. So a lot of that change comes down to volume, which we talked about earlier. When we look at the net debt to EBITDA, we're fairly stable year over year at 1.1 versus 0.9 last year. That does give us room for opportunities as we see them in the marketplace. Looking at the equity to asset ratio, 41.3 versus 40.5 year over year, fairly stable. And then I think you heard a little bit from Peter earlier on that we're working on keeping our networking capital fairly stable and fairly low at 7.5% versus 6.9% in the prior year. When we look at available liquidity, you may have noted in quarter two, we expanded our debt facilities to take this up to 1.5%. versus 0.9 last year. Again, here, this is so that we can be ready for acquisition opportunities when they come to play.

Thank you. As I said, acquisitions is an integral part of our strategy. Our focus has been mainly on continental Europe, US and East, and we now have a long list of identified companies trading in printed circuit boards of around 300 companies. We look for companies that fit our model, so we look for companies who are active in high-mix, low-volume segments. generally working with more high technology and as a quality supplier we are also not interested in acquiring companies that have in-house production and we're also looking for companies that are generally well run and well managed making a decent profit We have on our shortlist, we continue to have around 50 companies that we are actively looking at and approaching. And I think we're very happy that now in this year we were able to close five transactions and we continue to have a healthy degree of number of companies in which we are in dialogue with. Summing up our strategy, we are a company working in a large global market. The global printed circuit board market is more than 70 billion US dollars. The high mix low volume share of that market is estimated to be somewhere between 20 and 25 billion dollars at present. So our aim is to continue to develop our share within this market and you doing that with an asset like model without in-house production. So we are investing instead in more in our ability to serve our customers by providing better technical support and developing the factory's performance as well as sustainability to further gain market share in existing markets. We're also continuously looking to how we can expand the number of markets where we are locally present. And I think we see M&A as one step to accelerate that process of entering new markets. But we also see M&A as an important part of a market consolidation. Many companies that are trading in printed circuit boards today started their business maybe 20, 30 years ago as a lot of the manufacturing in Europe and North America moved to Asia. Many of these companies have remained smaller local regional players, and many of them have been quite successful at that. But at the same time, they are struggling to meet increasing demand from customers, whether it be technical, quality and sustainability. And it's a good opportunity for us to help these companies move into the future. And it's also quite often a transition stage for these companies where the people who started the companies in their 40s or 50s, 20, 30 years ago are now approaching retirement age. So there is an opportunity for us to consolidate this market, which is very fragmented. And that is why our acquisition strategy is an integral part of our strategy. And with that, we close the meeting and open up for questions.

Yes, so welcome and thank you, Tim and Peter, and welcome to put your questions.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Jacob Edler from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Gunilla, and thanks for taking my questions. Just the first question on capacity utilization. Historically, Chinese manufacturers have dictated the pricing in the industry. We've now heard the announcement of stimulus programs in China. Are you seeing capacity utilization in your supplier base already creeping up, or is that something yet to be seen, so to speak? Maybe historically, you know, prices started to be hiked at, let's say, 80% utilization. Where are we now? Can I get some indication on that? Thanks. That's the first question.

Yeah, I'd say that the utilization with our main partners have improved somewhat. So I think you could say we are not back at, say, an 80% or a plus 80%, I think. But I think they've come up from maybe 50%, 60% to maybe be around, maybe more around 70%. So I think the situation has improved somewhat. But we are still sort of a step below where they are on kind of an average level. So they're still sort of low in terms of utilization, but it has improved slightly versus, say, six months ago.

Okay, perfect. And then just hopping on to price, Dan, you write in the report that the price effect in net sales was a minor negative. Is that like a low single-digit number? And how was it in order intake? Is it relatively neutral there right now?

I would say on order intake, there is almost no impact. On revenue, maybe a slight impact.

Okay, perfect.

Because a large part of the price decreases happen from, say, end of 2022 down to middle of 2023. Since then, prices have largely been stable. I mean, there are some ups and downs for sure between different technologies, but largely stable in the second half of 2023 and onwards.

Perfect. Then I just had two more questions. First on North America. the order intake is down a bit sequentially. Is that mainly related to that you received, let's say, an extraordinary amount of projects in Q2 related to aerospace, or is there any deterioration underlying in the trend here sequentially in North America?

No, there's no underlying deterioration. It is exactly as you said. I mean, we had certain larger projects in Q2 that sort of further boosted the already good development in the second quarter. And now we've not seen those same projects fall into the third quarter. So underlying progress is good, but we had some specific orders in Q2 that boosted the numbers a bit.

Perfect. And then just on Nordics then, on the electric vehicle chargers, you're seeing some signs that the market has bottomed out. And I agree with you that if you look at, for example, electrical vehicle registrations, that appears to have bottomed out. Looking at some of your customers, for example, Subtech, their inventories are still very high. So when do you think we'll see the demand come back for you, so to speak?

It's a little bit hard to predict specifically, but as you said, I think we're still going to see a weak development of EV charging in the near term. So I think it may be a couple of quarters before we really see that sort of flush through the system.

Perfect. I think those were all my questions. Thank you. Thank you.

The next question comes from Gustav Bernerblad from Nordea. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. It's Gustav here from Nordea. Maybe just to start off with the gross margin. I mean, it's up 20 basis points year over year, but down 150 basis points from Q2. I was just wondering if you could help us understand what is sort of driving this and if there's other factors impacting this rather than just the lower volume, so to say, because it sounds like the pricing is still relatively suppressed, as you say.

Yeah. I think pricing is still sort of fairly stable in the market, but I think there's always, say, you can always have some mixed influences that we saw, particularly, say, in Nordics, especially in the third quarter, which is a little bit lower generally from seasonality, and that we've also had some negative effects. I think dollar versus SEC, for instance, moved sort of down in the third quarter versus second quarter, so we get some transactional effects, which are A little bit complex for us to quantify specifically exactly how big they are, but that has some impact to the sequential development there.

But so on an overall basis, what are the largest drivers? Is it the volumes or is it the effects or is it the mix or is it all of the above?

I'd say it's a combination of the above. To some extent, it's a mixed combination between both. different segments, how they're playing out between the different regions, as well as an FX effect that comes on top of the other mix effects.

I see a fairly equal spread between the two.

Okay, perfect. Then I was just thinking longer term. I mean, it sounds like some of these are more temporary. How would you think about the modding? It feels like you have been quite confident that you would... potentially maintain a higher than historical margin for the gross gross level so to say how are you looking at the gross margin if we are to see also prices increase should we see another leg down on the gross margin from here or

I think, I mean, as you said, I mean, we've moved up from historically, we were, say, in the low 30s, around 31, 32 for a number of years, and we're moving up like half a percent every year. And then we made a jump up from 32 to 36, from 22 to 23. And during 24, we have been higher here in the years, maybe slightly higher, but maybe stable from second half of 23. I think you can expect maybe, as we said before, that maybe can we keep all of that margin hike that we have had in between 22 and 23 if prices start moving upwards? I think our view is that we believe we can maintain majority of that, even if we maybe cannot keep all of it.

Yeah, okay, perfect. And then I was just thinking if you could give any more color on the sort of comments you're making regarding signing of new customer contracts. Because I mean, can you set this in perspective sort of to one to three years ago? Has it increased dramatically here? Or are you taking market shares organically? Or what do you think?

Yeah, I mean, we are measuring, say, the number of, say, if you talk part numbers, article numbers, which basically reflects the number of products we come into. And I think we can see that on overall, we are up and have been up the last couple of quarters. We're up roughly, say, 20% versus the prior year. And typically, that is a good indicator of the amounts of different product versions you're coming into. So it generally indicates a good foundation for future growth, as well as also adding new customers to start buying from us. So from that perspective, we feel that we're making good inroads into new markets and in gaining market share position. But what we can see is, let's say, with a general weak economy in basically around the world, all customers are quite cautious. They're uncertain about the future demand of their end customers, and thereby they're also very place only say smaller orders in maybe more frequent manner which gives us a little bit less of visibility and until they see say a second follow-up pickup from their end customers we don't really see the pickup in volume from our side.

Okay that's clear and then just the final one I was just wondering if you gave any more color on As we are now heading into Q4, it sounds like September was also weak, similar to July and August. So just wondering if you can say anything about the momentum here going into the fourth quarter.

I mean, we cannot really comment on the fourth quarter, but I mean, the third quarter, generally September is the month that sort of really picks off in the second half of the year, because I mean, July, August are vacation months. And I think clearly September was a lot weaker in our industry, as I think we've seen with other companies as well. It's a little bit too early for us to have a view on what that translates into the Q4 for us. But we're not expecting that the market is turning around within the next two quarters.

Okay, that's fair. Thank you very much. That was all for me. Thank you.

So we have no questions from the web. So I would like to thank you all for listening and watching and remind you that our Q4 report is on the 12th of February. Thank you.

Thank you.