PowerCell Sweden AB (publ)

Welcome to the PowerCell Group Q3 2024 report presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Richard Berkling, and CFO, Torbjörn Gustafsson. Please go ahead.

Good morning everybody and a warm welcome to our quarter three report, live from a sunny Gothenburg morning. I'm joining today with Toru for the last time actually, reporting on quarter three, which was a very intense quarter with a lot of activity. We are happy to report that we have strong market activity. Previously in the year, we have communicated that we are operating in rather soft market conditions. We now see a significant improvement. Not necessarily all the way into the books of 2023, where we report a 3% growth in the quarter, 12% growth for the last 12 months. But especially in market activity and in the incoming order. We now, with the large order that we reported in September, 165 million of fuel cell systems sold to an Italian OEM manufacturer. that establish us in a position where we now have serial production for customers starting up. So we have a roadmap of more than 100 systems to be produced and that is for the first time in the course of history where we have an ongoing serial production which is really positive and a good trigger for what we see going forward. We also reported that we received approval in principle from Lofsky Veritas for the solution you see to the right here, a combined methanol reformer and a tube subsystem, which in essence is a five inflation solution where you have methanol as a fuel and then you have electricity out. Something that we believe is going to create massive value for the UB customers in the marine market and we will elaborate a bit more on that. Beside that we had a good order in July also from a European OEM manufacturer which was important to get the season started and we have seen a lot of activity after the summer. What is interesting to see in the market fundamentals is the fact that we see a rapid acceleration. And when we talk about that, it is from the start of negotiation to when we see a complete big delivery, where we see the invoice going to the end customer and money into our account. previously with the large orders to marine and also aviation typically it was a five-year period from initial negotiation to complete the delivery now we see that that time is limited to 80 months and that is a very significant indication of growth Because that also gives us an opportunity to grow faster, but also that we have more mature customers who have a good understanding of what to do with the products and how to put them into implementation. And it's also driven by the fact that we now have commercial customers that need to get products out there making money. So a significant change in the underlying characteristics of the business. which comes from the focus we have had on OEM business, where we now see marine and power generation driving the market, driving growth forward. As communicated, the order from a leading Italian marine OEM manufacturer is a milestone order for us we have talked about finding the first really strong OEM manufacturers designing in our solutions into their product offering and bringing it to market gives us a rather sticky business model but also strong value and large order numbers so for Powercell this was something that we've been working quite hard on and we're very happy to be able to So it is a milestone, not just for thousands, but for the full industry on the path towards decarbonization and the transition into new applications. One of the orders also that we were happy to report was agreement for a concept study for a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft confirms our very strong position in the aviation sector, where we have, as reported before, more than 20 Surabia is the leading entity pushing our technology and their point of print into aviation certification, which is going very good according to the plan. So aviation continues to be a strong segment for pharmaceuticals. We see continued growth and hopefully we can report on it in more progress with this. If we dig slightly deeper into the numbers of the three, I hand over to Tudor for explanation of this.

Thank you, Richard. And yes, regarding net sales development, we have previously in Quarter Calls also explained that we've been in a softer market situation. But with that said, we are then growing quarter over quarter, but also year over year now with 12 months rolling, growing with 12%. And given the fact that we've been in a softer market situation where the Dialogues have been more towards bigger OEM sales that have taken longer time. I think that the performance is good and like Richard mentioned before the order intake coming in supporting sales for the former. Gross margin development. We have seen Right now, a downward going trend on the gross margin side, but that is for powers of something that will happen quarter over quarter and not the trend that we can see going forward. So it's related to the product mix and how it works out. And at the moment, the product mix has been towards a gross margin of still healthy above 30% gross margin. But we also see that this product mix will change over time and will also vary then on the gross margin side.

And if I can elaborate, we see an improvement from 42, which is the result of a very close focus on this one because we want to have a healthy gross margin over time. We can also call conclude that quarter three was affected by exchange rates, which is the case for Parasite. But as Suneen said, quarter over quarter, we will see some shifts going up and down on the cost margin, but we have a strong focus on bringing the role in 12 months up to an average where we feel comfortable. And we think that we will be able to report stronger numbers in quarter four and over.

And on the operating leverage side, which is one slide that we've been using before and now again, and we can still see on the long run a downward going trend. And although we haven't had the net sales growth in the last quarters, we still are keeping the leverage and we also are doing this with continuous building capabilities in both our industrial offering and commercial offering together with keeping a high pace on developing the technology. So we are safeguarding operating leverage, but at the same time still keeping the development of the company towards future growth.

And just for clarity, this is one trend where you want to see down trend.

That's right. And cash flow impacted by working capital and then having an operating cash flow of minus 7.4 in the quarter. So an upward trend from last quarter. But then again, that we highlight also in the quarterly report that it had significant cut-off effects in the third quarter. And customer payments from increased OEM sales will increase the cash position beginning of the fourth quarter. And a lot of it has already happened to date. So a good situation and good momentum in cash flow situation.

And also here worth noticing the improvement from last quarter, the improvement through the year. So once again, strong focus on this one and we're happy to be able to report an improved situation. Still having a couple of effects as you pointed out. so if we then go back and look to what we have communicated previously what has been in focus for 2024 of course the OEM customer orders because we want to build a more solid order portfolio get repetitive business but also get the OEM customers that are actually using the products in commercial applications because that is the trigger that is indicating that this is now entering into a more of a normal market driven growth So the order that we reported in Q3 was an important step in that direction. And the part that we see, we don't go in the same direction. We also have continued to grow and expand in the U.S. with customers. The U.S. is continuously a strong market for us and will be even more important The position we have at the moment is to scale the current quality generation and driving Parcel towards break-even and balance the cash flow. We see that we are doing that in a very good way. As Tullio pointed out, we think that we have managed the situation on the market in a very good way of making sure that we are gaining market share, growing despite the softer market. we now see market accelerating that we are in full position for that with really strong product offering, really strong also industrial setup for production and also that we have continued to be presenting new product launches according to the marine system 225 where we improve the performance on the existing marine system with 12.5% which is really valuable And then in quarter three, the improvement principle for the methanol to hydrogen power plants, which will give us a very strong position for marine applications where you want to have complementary fuels of hydrogen to hydrogen in the form of methanol. That's slightly more of that to go forward. With all that said, we have been able to also industrialize and accelerate industrialization of the next generation of our portfolio, which is extremely important. Market leading when it comes to performance on output technology, which uses that technology that we have to get the production. We are not resting. With that leadership, we continue to build on that. So accelerating the development of our next generation FDU platform is important for us. So the balance between performing short term, having a clear path to the freight even, while still investing into more capabilities, that is the balance point that is so important for a company like PowerSoft to manage. And we are quite happy with the decision we have. We also indicate that it is a new phase in the market. We see commercial growth from the OEM business. That comes with new requirements and also new opportunities. As indicated before, the negotiation cycle is slightly longer when we are trying to negotiate an OEM contract because it's more complex and it becomes designed into an industrial system. So the technical and commercial due diligence from the customer is more expensive. with that said you also have a stronger position when you're doing this because then you are designed into their offering so a really good opportunity that comes with strong requirements and performance and we have developed abilities and capabilities to be able to support that with everything from the quality internal quality process to the manufacturing process and also automatically support capabilities so the order that we received in september was an important food part on that because it's not just the order value the fact that we are qualified to do those customers it's extremely And we have prepared for this by investing heavily into our product offering, not just having superior technology, but packaging products that are relevant for the customers. We have also invested time and effort into this slightly boring concept of productivity and internal efficiency. Quite often in the early stages of a technology shift, companies focus very strong on their core product and forget these really important traditional competitive advantages like productivity, like uptime on your product and internal efficiency. So the industrial stability and the capacity we have is something that we're quite happy for and we see that we have a structure that will lead us towards break even, even in a low volume market. So in this growth journey that we have started and are now accelerating on, we have a very strong industrial footprint. We have our offering industrialized innovation that is serving as a bridge between our industrial support components and the end customers need for adaptation. We have a strong first mover advantage from the fact that we are active in different applications. building knowledge from the aviation industry where we have really strong requirements of performance safety robustness that we then apply in marine sector in power generation etc so the mix we have is making our application of this really really strong and that is a competitive advantage in the market We're happy that the growth is coming in the shape of commercial orders and not just the tech exploration early stages of project orders. And we are now ramping up production for serial delivery to customer orders, which is a first for PowerSign. We have had strong growth previously, but it's been a bit of a up and down when it comes to production volumes. Now we can see that we have a stable pipeline where we can have serial deliveries for now. The fact that we have Bosch as our key partner and key supplier, of course, gives us both massive stability, but also credibility to customers when it comes to the OEM customers with strong requests for industrial stability and credibility. So if we look at the market drivers and we attended the UN Climate Week in New York three weeks ago, we left there with a sense of a strong acceleration in the market and a very positive side note. Some of my colleagues went back feeling a bit discouraged because they felt that focus on decarbonization is not as strong as it's been previously. To me, that is a positive thing because decarbonization is no longer the only driver in this energy transition. It's still extremely important. We see massive commitment and investment going in to making sure that we are in alignment with the Paris Agreement, trying to keep global warming below 2 degrees. But at the same time, we now have a pretty strong focus on air pollution from fossil energy. And this is something that is important today. The climate issue is a big concern, but it has a 20-year, perhaps, perspective, where air pollution today is causing massive health issues and costs for society already today. So in urban areas, we see now legislation trying to cut especially emissions of nox and sox. And there, the fuel cells and electrification in general is viewed as something that we create value immediately. And this is also one of the drivers we see in the mining sector, where especially cruise ships will not be allowed to enter ports in urban areas and be portside idling the combustion. So either they will have to have an electric charger from the port, which is not available everywhere, or they need to have an electrification system on board for hotel logo ID. And this is the driver behind the OEM business that we now see in the sector. Time to market on those products is also shorter because they are not safety critical, because they're not concerned with propulsion. So it's a really interesting acceleration into the market. But then the overall increased demand for electricity in society. We saw a report from the International Energy Agency where growth in demand in electricity is at the highest ever, growing 4% year over year. And you would think that 4% It's not necessarily that high, but if you compound that year over year, you quite rapidly see that numbers are panning out. So society, we need to have different energy solutions. And while we see the green sources of solar and wind grow in contribution to the energy system, They are in their characteristic volatile, so you need to have an energy system where you can store energy to be able to control load and not cause stress into the grid of the rest of society. So the energy mix going forward will require different solutions where of course hydrogen and fuel cells are viewed as one solution. We can also see that the slowdown in battery electrification deployment is opening up a window of opportunity for hydrogen electrification in certain markets. So an interesting opportunity to be able to act on. And then we see continued strong initiatives when it comes to governments trying to accelerate the energy transition. for, of course, the purpose of climate change, for the purpose as we communicate it now, to be the air pollution and the hazardous particles in the areas, but also to be able to build a new industry and make sure that we don't have dependencies towards certain markets or certain suppliers of technology. So hydrogen as a central role in the upcoming energy system is recognized as very important. And we see now the hydrogen industry maturing at a rapid pace, where we see availability of hydrogen, both green and other sources of hydrogen, improving and then also being deployed So to summarize, we continue to see strong market drivers. We see that the energy transition is accelerating and it is supported by both the governmental initiatives, but especially of OEMs taking a new position, really investing into their transition towards what is a sustainable energy solution, but also sustainable business model. We do that with a leading technology and leading proposal where we have what we claim is the best fuel cell stack technology in the industry, best performance and best elevated together with much. It gives really a reliable, high power density and a compact product, which is important because size, weight and cost will always be a competitive advantage in any application that we have. The fact that we are starting serial deliveries to commercial applications is an important point and an important shift in the industry. And we also see scalable production within our existing industrial footprint that will carry us towards breakeven already in the early stages of this industry. Looking into where we will meet again, we will have our a quarter four report, a year-end report on February 13th, and then subsequently following, as you can see, this schedule. So with this, we open up for questions and comments from the forum.

The next question comes from Sofia Sorling from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Sofia here from Carnegie. Can you hear me? Yes.

Hi, Sofia.

Great. Hi. So a couple of questions from my side. So if we start with questions on markets, you mentioned quite soft market activity. But could you elaborate a little bit on that and which end market segments? But you also mentioned that you see progressing activity on your own. So could you also elaborate a little bit more on that as well? And also, if you refer to discussions regarding add-on orders on current or existing customers? Or did you see like a higher activity level related to more new customers?

I'll try to remember all the questions. I'll start with the last one. We actually see follow-up orders and incoming new customers. Which to us is equally important. The fact that customers who have been working with us for a number of years continue to trust in us and continue to invest in the deliveries from us is an important point. So having customers that are satisfied and returning is of course really, really important. But equally important is the fact that we feed the customer pipeline with new additions. So it is a good mixture of both. Commenting on the soft market, that is something that we have described in 2024 as a software market. because activity was slightly lower. It's not necessarily just because of lower activity, but also the transition away from the early stages where you have project sales, where you might be selling to a customer that is a one-off, which has one budget that would be just for a single purpose. That decision process is faster than when you negotiate an OEM contract. perhaps soft market is a bit exaggerated, but at the same time, for us, the result is the same regardless of what is the drug behind it. After summertime, we see a complete shift in that where we have more market activity, more orders coming in at a higher average value. And as I also pointed out previously in the talk, the fact that you go from negotiation to complete the delivery and invoice in 18 months, compared to five years previously. It means that we are accelerating through the order book in a faster way, turning prospects into revenue in a much faster way. And that is not just one customer, that is actually throughout the whole scale of segments. And then I think your question was also related to how it is distributed in the different segments. Of course, with this marine order, that was a milestone order. The value in marine is very high, but we see activity actually in all different segments, both per generation, where we now have interesting dialogues, but also aviation. So I think it's evenly distributed and it will be interesting to see how we can report progress going forward.

I thought there was some new information about this marine order that you actually will have some recognized revenue of this order already in Q4, but deliveries will not be until 2025. Can you give some more details on why is that the case and also should we interpret it that the deliveries will be earlier than previously expected or is it still as according to the press release?

Deliveries will be according to expectations when we sign the order. And then on how this is reported, I will hand over to my very qualified CFO.

Yeah, so exactly. The delivery days hasn't changed. What is the case with this marine order and will be the case without exactly knowing potentially future marine orders and other big projects, it will be revenue recognition according to percentage of completion. And then since, and I think Richard talked about it also previously in the call that from order to delivery, the time spent there is much quicker now or less than what it used to be. So from now on or from signing the order and then starting the work within this project, it's very quick and we will be working with it. And that's what we also wrote in the quarterly report that there will be work being done already in the fourth quarter to be able to deliver according to plan and deliver on this.

Okay, that's clear. And then maybe a final question on profitability. So you mentioned that the gross margins still were at quite decent level with this 32%. But what would you say is the main reason for still this is a lower margin compared to your historical margin of at least around or above 45%? And would you expect Or should we interpret that we should expect and extrapolate this type of cross-margin levels? Why not? If you can elaborate a little bit on that. And also what you expect is the normalized cross-margin levels for power cells in the midterm.

Yeah. And unfortunately, you will receive the answer that you don't appreciate that we are not commenting on forecasts or on details like that. But the variation is related to the fact that we have a number of revenue sources. I mean, we have the quality sales, we have the engineering sales, we have the royalty sales. So we have a number of those that will vary over time. Unfortunately, in quarter three, it is affected by currency exchange. That is to our disadvantage. The royalty development with Bosch is, as always, stronger in the end of the year. So hopefully we will see some improvement in quarter four. But there are some delays. Quarter three last year had a very strong report on royalty. So comparing it year over year will always give some variances. We are happy to see the improvement compared to quarter two with a better quality mix in quarter four. Hopefully we can see the improvement, but it will vary. But it's been a priority for Pausam over the last three years to have a strong and solid gross margin where the level will be going forward. There will be for us to prove to you and for you to follow. We are not making any comments on how it will be developing, but it is a main focus for Carlsson because you cannot have a healthy long-term sustainable business without a strong loss model. So that is a number one priority, especially if you want to be able to continue to invest into new innovations that we're doing, being able to present product updates and product news every quarter. Not necessarily having that activity in every quarter with new innovations, but this is the only way to kind of control your investment. You have to have a clear path.

Okay. That was all from me. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Henrik Alveskog from ReadIAB. Please go ahead.

Hello, gentlemen. Do you hear me?

Yes. Good morning, Henrik.

Good morning. Okay. My first question relates to the Siam order and the deliveries to the Norwegian ferries. As far as I can recall, you said before that that delivery will be finalized in 2024. Is that still the case? And also, when we are trying to figure out how much remains to be invoiced from that order, is it fair to assume that the sales that you are reporting in the notes to Norway is mainly related to this order and that what you have invoiced since Q4 last year to Norway is regarding to this SEAM order. I hope you understand my question.

Yeah. First and foremost, I don't think that we have said that it will be completed by 2024. On the contrary, the shipyard was selected later than expected. Still, we have been able to develop our business in a very good way. So we have not been affected in that way, but we don't have any effects on cash. But we are building up the value as we go along. And the absolute majority of the revenue from Norway is related to that customer. But we are not giving any more details of breaking down the Norwegian sales into the customers. But you're right in your conclusion that it's the absolute majority. But we will continue to have revenues also in 2020 prior to that total.

Okay, thanks. And then relating to the stationary segment and power generation and then your partnership with Hitachi. First, I'm wondering, are you also working in parallel in this segment on your own, so to speak, or are you focusing entirely to the partnership?

No, the partnership with Hitachi is important to Parasoft. They represent an OEM customer who have designed in our technology into their product offering. With that said, as many OEM customers, they have long internal processes, which means that they sometimes have a long time to market. But on the other hand, when they go to market, they have a massive organization to push out products globally and to be able to manufacture in substantial volumes. So we still value the collaboration with Hitachi really, really high. We hope to see... It materializes into actual orders and deliveries rather soon. So we have a good dialogue with them. But we have not just been waiting for them. We have a number of other applications out there in the power generation segment. It's been reported previously with the customer, Tyson, who has been touring the world with formula Extreme E, where they have actually the methanol reformer to the fuel cell to generate power to charge the cars so they have also massive market and application knowledge and expertise from this so we have products deployed in that segment we have reported also that this is one of the segments where we expect to see the highest volumes but it's been slow in transition so hopefully we can report on progress in this area because we don't feel that this segment has reached its potential in any way. So let's keep an eye on that.

Okay, thanks. Just finally, a question on OPEX. Maybe you already explained this in the presentation. Sorry if I didn't catch it, but selling and admin expenses were a bit lower here, quite significantly lower in Q3. compared to what we've seen lately. Is it something temporary or is this more of the run rates going forward?

I think also on selling an admin, there will be some variances depending on what kind of projects or what we are doing. Looking at an overall trend, going back a couple of quarters and then relating it to NetSense development and knowing that we are focusing on operating leverage, you will find sort of a way forward on putting that in the trend.

OK, excellent. Thank you. That was all good.

And then we have a question here on screen. on elaborating on the approval principle for methanol reformer and how does that fit into the growth strategy of Powerzone. Our growth strategy is quite simple and in any technology shift in the early stages you need to focus on building more installations, a larger population and you also need to focus on increasing your value for that installation. And value is not just sales value, but you also need to contribute. You need to create value in every installation. So the methanol reformer to hydrogen fuel cell is a very important plug and play solution. So PowerCell will be integrating a methanol reformer from Rix Industries, very strong supplier from the US with experience to both naval applications and military applications. So they have really good knowledge on safety critical applications. But the fact that we do the integration is short in time to market for our customers. It's also complementing customers that are not either comfortable with using hydrogen or they cannot get availability. So methanol as a fuel carrier is something that will also open up more markets that will drive a number of installations. And then for Powercell, by doing this integration, we actually doubled sales value. So per installation, we will have twice as much revenue, which is then fully according to our growth strategy. So that is perfectly in line. And we were really happy to be able to report the approved principle. which indicates that we have a safety system and solution that is according to marine industry standard. Hopefully we can report even more progress in the following quarters on this one, but this is a very important step forward to accelerate the growth strategy for power supply. We also have a question here. With the order that you have already signed, do you have capacity to take more orders from new customers? Yes, we do. Tell me how much you want to deliver. No, but we have, as we said before, we have an industrial footprint where we can scale up production quite rapidly and in great numbers. The collaboration with Bosch is of course a very important contributor in that sense because the fuel cell stack manufacturing is the most complex part of the manufacturing and MSMV process. And having a small leading industrial partner like Bosch in your corner is a strength. And then the assembly of different systems towards either marine or aviation or power generation applications is something we do in-house at Powercell. And then we can scale up numbers quite rapidly and in a good way. We also have this asset-like business model where we can set up production close to the customer. So would we have a breakthrough order from the US market, which is another question here on the screen. We could have an assembly of systems in the U.S. market in a very short lead time without any substantial investment. So the setup for Powercell to be able to supply greater volumes and also in different locations geographically, we're quite happy with that positioning and that investment setup. So yes, we can do that. Do you see that there will be service and aftermarket sales for you in the future? Yes, we have reported previously that, especially with the Norwegian Torhjärten deal, there will be an aftermarket contract where we have a performance guarantee over 15 years. So that will be like a subscription-based fee annually, which is a solid revenue, or when this boat is commissioned and deployed. And we see the same for a number of customers, both in marine but also in other sectors. As soon as you have your products in a commercial application, the customer is requesting what is called an SLA service. So yes, we will see recurring revenues. We don't have any guidance on to what extent that we match the product sales, but in more mature industrial market, the auto market sale is a very good contributor to top-line growth and an even greater contributor to cost margin and bottom-line profits. So yes, this is something that we are exploring and developing. We have two questions about collaboration with Seraglio on the progress there and also whether or not we are part We have a commercial order for the driveline Cirelia 600, which we sign in 2022. This is the driveline that we are now certifying according to aviation processes. It's a certification of the actual technology, but also certification of power cell, where we will have an audit in our facility for the weeks from now to be able to be certified according to AS9100, which is a very demanding quality process. So that is progressing well in its mission business. And then, of course, we have a good dialogue with Surabia. They are exploring other alternatives as well for their larger installations. But with this good collaboration, we hope to be able to deepen this going forward But nothing is decided and we fully focused on providing value on the existing business. That is the best way to do the following business as well. So good question, but nothing new to report there. Let's see if we have something else that we want to answer. One question, and this might be the final one because we're running out of time. It seems like the marine segment is growing. How do you see opportunities in this industry? Well, marine is really important because we now see high market activity from OEM customers, as we said, designing in our solution into their industrial offering. And we see also the market drivers and why. Because the marine industry both need to decarbonize and electrify part of their operation. And they can do it. It's quite easy for them and a rather short lead time to market because you can have hybrid installations. For example, in cruise ships, you don't need to electrify the full propulsion. When you do that, that is something that will have a longer time to market. It will have more effect on how you operate your vessels. So if you instead electrify part of the installation, it could be that you use fuel cells for electrification on what they call hotel mode, which is in idling state or the internal energy supply of the vessel for air conditioning, elevators, etc. And then you can also use it for going in and out of ports, taking out the emissions, which we talked about before. The air pollution in urban areas is becoming a focus from society. So if you could have that hybrid installation, then you can start your electrification journey or your energy transition without taking too much risk as a vessel operator. So marine, yes, it is a very interesting segment because they have the... perfect application for it, but they also have the logistics in Harvard, where they are used to having different kinds of fuels, from gaseous energy to liquid or pressurized energy in the form of ethanol, etc. So it is a really interesting market development that we see, and we see the right activity from the right actors in the value chain. With this, we I would like to thank you. As always, reach out if you want to have a dialogue. You're always more than welcome to come to Lussefälles Låtland in Gothenburg to visit us. Otherwise, I would like to extend my gratitude to Torbjörn for serving along me for a number of years. And we still have some months to continue together, but this will be his last quarter performance with you. So a big thank you. and good luck going forward but you still have some months to join me here so thank you very much enjoy the rest of this report period and as we said reach out if you have any questions