NOTE AB (publ)

Good morning everyone and welcome to notes year end report. How do we summarize this year and quarter? If you start with a quarter, it's it's quarter where we made a very where we came back to the profitability that we are hoping and expecting. Maybe we're in the higher end compared to where we have been and where our long term objectives has been, but that is not a bad thing as I see it. Profitability is very important for us because that builds a foundation for what we want to do in the future. Profitability and cash generation is what gives us the opportunity to be aggressive in the consolidation that is ongoing in the market. So this quarter is yet another quarter where we show our ability to adjust and adopt to the current surroundings. Our top line were not that high. We came in just barely in our guidance. We had some delays and push-outs from the defence area. We are also seeing that in the first quarter. And to be clear, those push-outs are not lost sales. Those are delayed sales. And that means that currently we have some issues with especially test... Getting products through tests, that sounds very straightforward and easy, but these are really complex products with a lot of different processes involved. So we see some delays there and we have had some push-outs from our customers from the fourth quarter and also now in January. We do expect the defense segment to come in really strong for the year. We have previously guided for our expectations of plus 30% year over year until 2030. We do not see any reason why that trend is broken. We see our order backlog in this segment is at the highest ever. So that means that we are fairly comfortable that we will see a very good security and defense segment development throughout the year and also if we look forward beyond 2026 we also see that the projections from our customers is continuing to be really strong and our projections for 2027 and onwards in this segment is yet even stronger. So yes, we see some push out from the fourth quarter. We see some delays that is coming in in the first part of Q1. But for the year and for the quarters to come, we are expecting really strong development in this segment. Moving on, sales 1 billion for the quarter, 3.8 for the year. Profitability, our underlying OP 11.4, I think the best we have done before in percentage is 10.6. But what I'm very pleased with is that we are getting the result all the way down to profit after tax. 304 Swedish per share is also one of the strongest we have ever presented. It's the best we have done underlying in both absolute terms, but also in percentage. We have had some higher results in some quarters due to one-time effects, but this is the best we have ever done. Operating cash flow, this is to me a bit... This is the weakest cash flow quarter we have had in, I think, nine quarters. I don't see the trend of having a cash generation exceeding the earnings after tax that that has broken. We had some customers that were not paying as they should in the end of December. Those have paid, so we will expect Q1 to be stronger in relation to Q4. So this is just what some of the larger companies are doing. We try to prevent that from chasing them hard. This year we didn't succeed as well as we did last Q4, so that's why we don't see the... operating cash flow coming in as we expected but we are as i said before we still expect that we have another say 100 million in positive cash flow compared to our our our the normal cash cash generation that we have so cash flow we do expect that that will remain strong What I'm very pleased with is for the year we managed to extend the Torsby site, continue to invest in equipment and capacity and on top of that we did acquisition of Kaston electronics and all of that we managed to do with our own cash generation. I think that's a big sign of strength for us. Also, where we stand on a cash position today, we are seeing that we can take an active part of the ongoing consolidation in the industry. I said that in 2025, I think it was the year with the most of what we call a high-level acquisition that has been made in the industry. We see some acquisition from our peers that have been quite sizable. We see good momentum in this sector. However, I still see that there is plenty or several of targets that is out there and are in dialogue today. So my projection is that we will see a continuous, quite steep consolidation period in 2026. And I think that Note has, we are still in the position to take an active part in that consolidation with our strong balance sheet. 48% in equity after this acquisition is, in my opinion, fantastic. So I think we do a very good job in that area. Moving on, if I look at what we have done in fourth quarter, the acquisition of Caston, it's a small company. sales about 12-13 million pound, very strong profitability, strong customer retention. I've been there a few times the last quarter and I think I've had five different customer meetings there and every one of them are targeting to extend the business with us. So we're really, really pleased with what we see from the generation of leads that is coming out of this this acquisition so this i think that this will will turn out to be one of the turning points when we look backwards for the for the group so i think that this is something that we are very pleased with We continue to invest in our expansion. We took the premises in Torsby in late November. We're now moving into the new site, 7,000 new square meters of production area. We've more than doubled the site in capacity. This site looks really, really strong. And what we also see is that we now are taking the last steps to make this site very... defense production capable. It was before, but we take more steps in this. So this will be one area where we expect good growth in that segment. We also see that other segments in Torsby is doing well. So Torsby, we do have a very positive outlook for not only in the security and defense, but also in other areas. Some of our largest industrial customers are there. We have some of our largest Medtech customers are there, and every one of them is performing in line with expectations. We will relocate in Lund. That will happen in the second quarter. I don't know exactly which date. I think we will take the building in April timeframe, March-April timeframe. We will have a gradual move into that. That building is... We have built it to our wishes, if you put it like that. So this is a building that will be much more efficient than the current one we have. The current one we have is old. We have a lot of small rooms. It's not space efficient. We are subleasing premises in the building next to us in Lund just to cope with the steep demand we have there. So this will be a very good opportunity for us to streamline that operation and continue with the efficiencies that we do in that site. We're also expanding our Finnish site. We will take that premises in, I think, August, September timeframe. So we're in the last preparations of that move as well. In Finland, we're going from just below 2,000 square meters up to something 3,300 to 3,500, if I recall it right. But also here, the building is significantly more efficient than the current one we have. The current one we have is quite narrow. It's L-shaped. This will be a square box built to our needs in that area as well. So we have high expectations that this will be a very good step forward for us. What we also see is that we continue to build our competencies and technologies and processes to be stronger going forward. So our ability to meet our customers' demands are really aligned. We see that the products that we make, especially in the security and defense area, are quite complex. And we continue to invest in processes to support that growth. I think most of our peers that are in this area are doing very similar things, but we see that our position and our capacity that we have in this area is sizable. So we see that our customers are taking on big orders and we are trying to mirror that capacity growth that they are expecting in our factories so we can easily take on the growing needs in this segment. So that's one thing that we are also working heavily on. Order backlog 11% up. I've talked about it during the last quarters that we see tendencies of growth in this area. Now we see that it's turning into good positive numbers. What we also see is that Those that follow us during the component crisis in 2021, 2022 and 2023, we talked about the extension of the order backlog. Today, the order backlog is normalized, so we don't see that we have orders from industrial customers two years away. So therefore, we think the order backlog is a good indication of where we're heading for the coming year. The majority of our order backlog is due for delivery in 2026. There are some defense orders that are on the other side of 2026, but most of the orders are in 2026. That's also very important to keep in mind. We see that this is back to normal levels. We also see that if you talk about delivery times on components and so on, there is no indications of shortages if we exclude memories. And the AI storage is consuming a lot of the memories. So we watch that space quite carefully because that is, to me, the next possible problem area when it comes to limitation of availability of components. Looking ahead, our balance sheet, I talked about it, almost 50% in equity. 403 million in net debt that went up. We were actually debt-free, if I recall it, when we reported in Q3, so we took on some debt in the last acquisition. I think that we still have a very low net depth compared to peers and compared to industry. So we would not be hesitant to take on more depth if that is needed. We also think that our balance sheet is strong. We think our liquidity position is basically where we were some five quarters away. So we don't see this as a limitation either. Good preparation for the year to come, good expectation of a continued cash flow. So we are quite aggressive in the market that will be lying in 2026. And I've talked about our operational excellence. When I say that our delivery performance is back where it should be, that means that we're delivering above 96% on time in full. That is a really strong message to our customers that we will deliver what we promise. I was a bit annoyed in the early part of 25 when this took a little bit too long to get there. Now we are there. We have a few sites that are lagging, but the overall picture is very strong. From a quality point of view, we are continuing to deliver aligned with, for example, we were meeting, for example, the automotive industry demands when it comes to PPM levels. So we are doing way above what we have in our agreements and what our customers' expectations are here. and this is an area that i'm very proud of because the most annoying as a buyer is if your supplier don't deliver on time or if you have quality problems and then you always discuss that those rather than an extension of business so i want to have these questions should be off the table so our our focus is to be strong we should be better than the industry and therefore we are also not targeting to have our inventory turns about five because we think that that will give us flexibility to meet customers demand so even if I say that we have some hundred million still available to free up in our inventory but that's about when we have done that I think we are aligned now we are in the midpoint or just below midpoint of our our target for inventory turns but very important operational efficiency operational excellence and delivery performance is something that we we see that as a necessity so this is one of the areas that we focus on the most going into our segments fourth quarter strong both in for the group I think a lot of companies talk about their profitability on EBIT or EBITDA level. I think that for us, we also watch how do we perform on the financial net and how do we manage to get the profit in of the tax. I think that's often neglected in today's reporting, that if you're just positive on EBITDA, then everyone is quite happy. I think that we work on all aspects of our P&L. I think for us to generate the cash we do, we need to be efficient in how we do with our financial activities. I think our finance net went down this quarter, partly due to low debt, but also due to that we work heavily on ensuring that we have the right setup here. um for the year i think 10.1 percent underlying op i think we have reported one year better than that i think that was 22 we were slightly above this but that was during a very extreme period of the ems industry where growth were just astro astronomic we i think we ended that year with 42 growth or something So this is to me much more difficult to do. So this is one of the, I would say 2025 is to me probably our best year from an operational performance side. Cash flow, as I said, to be able to generate cash flow also after this acquisition of Kasten, the extension of Torsby and the extensive COPEX program that we do on our investment side. I think that is really pleasing to see. So very proud of that. Moving on into our segments, I think this is also important. We were seeing that the rest of the world has developed very nicely during the year, 8.2%. I think that is the best we have done in that region. For Western Europe, 10.4. We have been higher than that. I remember a number of 10.9. I think that also must have been 2022. But we're closing in on that, and the last quarter is higher. So yes, we expect that we are where we want to be on this side. If you look at the different countries, Sweden continues to be strong, plus minus zero. Yes, there is a lot of ups and downs in that number, I can tell you. So it's not a straightforward line here. But I think most activities in Sweden are done fairly good. UK, we talked about it before, 30% or so down. We are expecting growth in UK for 2026. It's a bit like the EV segment. We are at the level where it cannot go down if I put it like that. But not only that, we see also good signals from some of our largest customers. The customer we talked about last year that has seared out their demands, we are forecasting for them to go up to a level of maybe four to five million pound this year. So that is a good recovery on that customer alone. So we also see that other of our larger customers are coming in with slight increases. So UK, we have good expectations of that. We will do a good turnaround in that country for this year. The rest of the world, yeah, good growth in Estonia, fairly good growth in China, and these numbers are also excluding or after currencies, so the growth in local currencies are quite much stronger. For the year, I think we expect some growth in Estonia. I think China is a bit soft for 2026. We will see where the rest of the world will end up during this year. But Estonia looks good, Bulgaria looks good, even though it's a small site. We have a lot of very interesting programs aligned in the pipeline for Bulgaria. China is a bit... I wouldn't say problematic, but I would not be surprised if I see a few percentage down when I summarize China for 2026. But all in all, I expect the rest of the world to continue to grow, but with small numbers for 2026. Moving on, segments. If we take industrial, that's our largest segment. We saw slight growth in the fourth quarter. I would say that we are still running this on a fairly flat level for Q3 and Q4. There's a lot of ups and downs in this segment. I am expecting this to normalize and that we gradually will start to see better and better growth number for the year. Security and defense ended up on the same level or slightly below. This is a segment that I think, I showed a slide, I don't remember where it was, but we had 92% growth in 2024, good growth in 23, and we see that 25 is some kind of flattening, but on the trend line, we still expect this to grow. I said that our expectation is that 30% year over year until 2030. That is still valid and our order book is supporting that growth in the quarters to come. However, we are a bit cautious of the first quarter of how much the delays that we see will affect us. Communication. This was Note's second largest segment for many years. We have seen a decline. We see some hesitation from customers to invest. Now I see that some of our customers are indicating that this is a growing trend. For example, one of our customers, Waystream, another listed company, they have announced a few wins. We see that the order book to them is growing and growing. We also announced in the spring of 25 that we are taking over all the supply to them. So they discontinued their other source. So that's one customer that we expect to see good growth over for this year and the years to come. They have a very interesting product or product portfolio, I would say. Medtech, I said it before, there's just a few customers in this segment, maybe five, six that are sizable. And the overall picture is fairly good. We see that we had some big deliveries in the Q1 and Q2 to one of them, and those may not be coming into this year. They might come later on. So we are seeing Medtech that we flat or slightly negative outlook for the year. But that's related to one customer, I would say. Green tech, finally, 22% for the year. Driven by a few customers, but especially we introduced one new EV customer in the spring. And that customer alone is standing for at least half of the growth for this year. So the underlying demand in this segment is not that strong, even though it looks that way here. And this is to me, I've said it before, I mean, without the charging stations, without energy savings and so on, So I think Europe is struggling with the productification of the electrification. So we see it. I think the companies, the ones that we supply to and the companies outside in this segment, they are not doing fantastic. So there has to be There's no real incentive from the politicians to make this happen. There's a lot of talk, but very few initiatives at the moment. I think Sweden tried to put in a new EV car contribution, but that was really a lot of conditions for it, so we will see how much effect that will have. If this should have a big effect, I think that it needs to be a broad subsidized that covers more people than what this will do to have an effect. So we are, yeah, my outlook of Greentech is probably that it's flattish or slightly negative for the year. So when I look at this industrial security and defense and communication is the areas that I see more positive outlooks from related to the others. And when I say more positive, I also see that the order book is supporting what I'm saying. So that's a bit easy. If you look at these graphs, what I've said before, if you grow 10%, you should grow your EBIT margin with 0.5 to 1%. That's just the nature of fall through or drop through or whatever concept you're using. So if you don't get that, you should be really careful with what you do. Then you can argue. If you want to win new customers, you might go down a margin and then that relation might be broken. But generally speaking, that is how this industry is working. If you can push more business through your existing factories, that will give you a good fall through. That's just how it is. So if you look at the first half of my two graphs, they are very closely linked together. Good growth, good profitability increase. Then we had the decline in sales, and that was mirrored with the decline in profitability. So that's what I said that I'm really pleased in that we have broken that relation. So we managed to grow our profitability without growing our top line. That is significantly harder than to grow your margin without or with the good growth. So what I see is that when our growth is coming back that we expect, we also see a good profitability development. I said it before, I think when I started that note, we introduced that 15% of our sales increase should land on bottom line, maybe for the low-cost countries, that number might be 12, but in some generic terms. So that's what I mean with that. If you grow heavily, your profitability will grow. And that's basically what we are expecting, that we will turn back into growth and we will also see a good profitability development for the year. That's what we are targeting internally. I'm not so much about acquisitions, but there is always... I normally say that we talk with a few different targets. Some are more active than others. I think that is still valid. We have a few very active dialogues. We have a few initial dialogues where we're assessing if we should go into more active discussions and so on. And my expectation is as always to close at least one acquisition for 2026. I think our balance sheet is supporting that. And I know that our owners is expecting that we should be active in this area. And the question is always, how do you find the right ones? That is what is challenging because there is a lot out there. What we are looking for is probably a slightly more sizable acquisition than small. about the same type of work to close them, and then the additional value is lower. So I think Custom was one example of this relatively small company, but good profitability, so that added some extra things. But what we really like with Custom is that they have such a strong customer pipeline. They're doing small parts to some customers, but now we're in dialogue to take over the volume parts that they don't do. for other sites. So I think that my expectation on this acquisition is really strong, not only for the acquisitions in such, but for the pipeline that they have generated. And I was in UK last week and participated in our our sales meeting for UK and the pipeline looks really, really good. Pipeline means the customers that we are in dialogue with or negotiation with and so on. So that was really positive. And a good part of that pipeline is coming from the old custom customers. or dialogues so that's what we see yeah as you know I can speak forever but I will summarize now that we are we are expecting 26 to be a good year where we are seeing that our profitability is where we expect it to be If we manage to get some growth on this, we will see good fall through numbers for the year. Good balance sheet, strong equity. We are prepared to take on more acquisitions and continue our investments in the future. And we also see that our order backlog that we have struggled with a bit in the last year is starting to increase and is coming in more and more into our expectations. So good ending of 24 or 25 and I am very positive in 426. So that's basically where we stand. So I close there and I open up for questions. Should we as always start with questions from this room and then I move on to the web. Anders?

Thank you, Johannes. So I was wondering first on the security and defense end market. Yeah. I mean, in the quarter, you saw some deferrals driving, you know, 17% year-over-year drop in the segment. Yeah. And is your view that this was pretty much exclusively deferrals or is there some sort of lumpiness in Kaston that we should consider?

No, Kaston came in just spot on to what they said. So this is purely due to our, how should I say, the old security and defense customers.