QleanAir AB (publ)

Warm welcome to the Clean Air Investor presentation for Q2 2026. My name is Sebastian Lindström. I'm the CEO of Clean Air and joining me in today's call is Fredrik Sanderlin, CFO at Clean Air. Fredrik and I will go through the presentation and then open up for Q&As towards the end. Thank you. So starting off with the numbers for Q2, we closed a good stable quarter but a quarter with continued significant headwind when it comes to FX, mostly related to the Japanese Yen. We delivered 118 million in sales in the quarter, which is just about even versus last year in reported numbers. In constant currency, we grew 6.1% versus last year. We have seen a strong performance in air cleaners and clean rooms and a stable cabin business. Our new products focused on solutions for critical problem areas of the industry are continuing to drive growth and mitigate the uncertainty out there in the market. Our launch of the FS60 has really gained ground and in the first half now ranks among our best-selling products. Our recurring revenues were 65 million Below the 68 million we had last year, but again, if we take the currency effects into account, we actually grew our recurring revenues by 2%, and our turn is back to a healthy 7-8%. Our gross margin remains stable and healthy in the high 60s, but slightly behind last year. Our EBTA margin of 12.9% was behind last year's 15.9%, But FX adjusted the EBITDA margin was 13.7. Our lower margins are due to two things. The FXFX and a change in relation between different revenue types. The FXFX comes from the weakening of the Japanese Yen and the changes in revenue types comes from three things. One. that we in Europe no longer sell contracts to finance companies. In the short term, this transition in Europe has a negative impact on results. In the long term, however, increased product sales and rental contracts held on our own books contribute to a more profitable business. Two, that we in Japan recorded a higher proportion of new sales relative to contract renewals to finance companies. This has had a negative impact on the earnings in the short term. However, this effect will be recouped when these contracts are renewed in the future. And three, our sales of products to customers were higher relative to rental contracts, driven by a small number of industrial customers undertaking larger investment projects where the rental model was not feasible. This has had a negative impact on margin as rental contracts which can subsequently be renewed are more profitable. Our cash flow was 18.1 million, a little below last year, but our cash conversion was in the higher range of our targets at 101%. Our EPS or earnings per share were 0.23 kronor versus 0.44 kronor last year. So, summing up the first quarter, our underlying business is developing well. We continue to hold our strong gross margin that we have improved significantly for both air cleaners and clean rooms over the last two years. Our systematic approach to product development is really paying off on the air cleaner side. The underlying currency adjusted growth on air cleaners was 18% in the quarter and 16% for the first half. We have over the past year driven up our commercial presence in the US with CE programs averaging about 100 attendees per month. of architects, engineers, general constructors, and so forth. In Q2, we as well launched a dedicated cleanroom website for the US and started our SEO and SEM work. All things combined, we've been able to attract more key clients and have the strongest 12-month signed contracted backlog that we've ever had in the US. And in the background of all these commercial activities, we hammer on with our transformation programs in supply chain and service. So let's see. We are having trouble changing. So sorry, we have trouble changing the slide. There we go. So, in our focus and plan, we have a clear target to grow both our cleaner business significantly and the cleanroom business in the US whilst protecting our strong position within Cabin Solutions. We've been at this for the past four years, and step by step, as you can see on this slide, air cleaners and clean rooms are developing in share. For a particular quarter, it may not be visible, but year on year, they will continue to grow in importance. We need some help changing slide. There we go. So, why is it that we grow so well in our air cleaner business? Well, our strong growth in air cleaners is the direct result of the focus we applied back in 2024, where we doubled down on industrial air cleaner segment and started a series of explorations to solve critical application areas of the industry, like oil mist and welding that I've spoken about before. We now have a comprehensive offering that can be deployed in many aspects of the air quality challenges of the industry, shown in the four pictures in the top of this slide. From the challenges with mold spore, bacteria and powder ingredients of the food and beverage sector, challenging the safeguard of their product quality, to the dust and particle causing health issues and negatively affecting process quality in warehousing and logistics. And the particles, gases, oil mist and welding fumes of the production and fabrication segment causing health issues and negatively affecting both process and product quality. Our unique range of both mobile floor standing units and ceiling wall or rack mounted units allow us to deploy in a variety of environments of our customers to create a healthier workplace environment and improve process and product quality. From the left to the right of the bottom of this page, we can lower Particle concentration in general through air recirculation with both floor standing and ceiling wall or rack mounted units. With our mobile units, we can deploy directly at the source next to the machine or process. We can also establish clean zones to protect an operator handling a hazardous process or to protect a sensitive product or component being worked on from the environment around. We can, through the versatility of our products, create positive or negative pressure workspaces to either protect what is done in the room from the outside of the room or protect the outside from the process inside the room. This versatility of our products and the knowledge of our teams is what makes CleanAir truly unique and is something that we will secure going forward when expanding our portfolio of products and technologies. The market environment is still uncertain out there, but we maintain a very high activity level. As seen on here on this slide shows a sample of where we've been pushing our solutions to help and support new clients and grow our business in the past quarter. The high activity level really cuts across all regions from Japan in the east to the US in the west. We are now in our fourth year of the transformation plan and the results from customer focus and sales efficiency activities starts to show up as increased sales of air cleaners and clean rooms. When it comes to our focus, our systematic transformation program is on track with three prioritized objectives, cost control, sales efficiency, and customer focus. And summing up the quarter, the key steps taken were, and if we start off with cost control, our transition from external service partners to own service personnel in France, Benelux, and selected parts of Germany is developing according to plan. We've managed to balance the increase in personnel costs with lower external services costs, even though we've had to run both setups in parallel in the transition. Our experience thus far is that we can improve our service delivery to the customer at the same or lower cost. We continue our value engineering focus within Cabin Solutions to improve our competitiveness in the Cabin Solutions market. First deliveries through this new supply chain were done in Q2 and product quality looks great. The full transition will take another six months and the transition has given us some delays in installations for the past quarter on the cabin side, but we foresee it to be back on track before year end. Moving over to sales efficiency. Our launch of FS60 has given us access to a part of the market where we can place more units per installation. This drives up the number of units per customer and thereby our sales efficiency. And we are unique in the fact that we can combine this ceiling wall or rack mounted solutions with floor standing mobile units directly at the source. Also on the efficiency side, our SEO work done over the past 12 months has really paid off as leads has tripled from these source versus last year. The result is more qualified leads than from other sources, and we've only started this journey. Bringinging in new customers is a priority, especially given our strong subscription model with rental contracts. Moving over to customer focus. We shifted more mandate and accountability in the past two years from the central organization Now, I think the slide is a bit different than what I'm talking about. It's lagging. Okay. So anyway, I continue to talk about our three prioritized areas within our transformation program, and I moved over to customer focus. So as I said, we shifted the mandate and accountability in the past two years from the central organization to the regions, including marketing and service management, ensuring a clear customer focus in everything we do. Our messaging, our campaigns have as a result become more direct and better tailored to the specifics of each market. I'm convinced that it is this, next to of course the successful product expansions on the air cleaner side, that is the key driver for our strong double digit growth in air cleaners and clean rooms. During Q2 we have built and launched a dedicated website for our cleanroom business in the US. It was necessary as our global website needed to become more and more industrial to support air cleaner and cabin sales in Europe and Japan. The new website allows our US cleanroom business to speak directly to the needs, regulations, and buying behaviors of American healthcare customers. rather than operating primarily as a regional section of the global Clean Air site. The key business values are stronger brand identity in the US, more relevant customer messaging, creating greater credibility and a better control over the US customer journey. We have made investments during 2025 on our website towards SEO and tailoring to the needs of AI. And we clearly see an uptick in lead generation for Europe and Japan, where we initiated the program. We're now bringing this to the US as well. And the response has been phenomenal in the US. Our search appearance is up. We see a clear increase in page visitors, followers, and post impressions. We have also in the past quarter summoned up the work from our regional workshops in Q1 and together with regional and product management outlined our product roadmap expansion plans to fuel our continued growth for the future. We have a number of very interesting new initiatives we'll be working on for the future. And in the next couple of days, we have our regions here in Solna to agree on that plan. And before handing over to Fredrik and the financial section, let me summarize the key takeaways from my perspective of the quarter. We continue our transformation work to increase our growth. The focus on critical application areas has been key in this. The currency adjusted growth of 16% in air cleaners is proof of this, and we do this with a stable product margin. We believe that by following this path, we will be able to grow our air cleaner business in the next three to four years to be a significant part of our product mix. We have aligned our financial targets to support this plan. And with that said, I hand over to Fredrik and the financial section.

Thank you, Sebastian. Let's now have a look at the numbers. As mentioned by Sebastian, in our plan, we have a clear target to grow both the air cleaning business significantly and the clean room business in the US at the same time as protecting our strong position within Cabin Solutions. For Cabin Solutions this quarter, we see that sales and gross profit are lower than last year, but we managed to keep the profit margin unchanged. Air cleaners increase sales and gross profit in line with the plan, while gross margin is negatively affected by changing the revenue mix. For clean rooms, we increase all three, sales, gross profit, and gross margin. Our strategy is to increase our recurring revenue, and as you can see on this chart, they are relatively stable over time. Here, we have the quarterly sales since beginning of 2023. Last quarter, revenue was 118 million SEK ahead of last quarter and on the same level as the corresponding quarter one year ago. Adjusted for the negative currency effect we had in this quarter, revenue was 125 million SEK, a currency-adjusted increase of 6%. The total negative currency effect in the quarter was 7 million. That was primarily an effect of the weaker Japanese yen in relation to the Swedish krona. The Japanese yen is almost down with 25% against the Swedish krona since the start of 2023. For the first half year, the total negative currency effect was 22 million Swedish krona. Here we see the quarterly split between recurring revenue, revenue from sales of agreements to finance companies and revenue from product sales. We have stable rental revenues with high margins from units we hold on our balance sheet. The revenue split is primarily affected by the decline for recurring revenue because of the cancellations from the German schools that started in 2024. Now there are very few of these contracts left on our books. And total churn is now back to the levels we saw before these cancellations started. The decline for recurring revenue over time is of course also affected by the negative currency effect for mainly the Japanese yen. I would like to highlight that our base renewals have come back to more normal levels in Japan. These renewals typically follow a three-year cyclical pattern. So to understand how this affects the president, you must go back three years and look at the sales to finance company at that time. We continue with our quarterly numbers. Here we see that our model with recurring revenue supports a strong gross margin. Gross profit Gross profit and gross margin are stable over time at a high level. Gross margin is higher than 65% for most of the quarters since the start. Last quarter, we introduced a new financial target. EBITDA margin replaced the EBIT margin. Our EBITDA and EBIT margins move in parallel and therefore follow the same underlying performance trend. The stable gross margins are also supporting our EBITDA performance. EBITDA in this quarter is negatively affected by the currency effect, lower renewals of contracts owed to finance companies in Japan, and that we do not use sales to finance companies in Europe from the start of this year. Over time, though, this change in the revenue mix will have a positive effect on our profitability. On this slide, we now see the rolling 12-month numbers. Also here, we see that recurring revenue are driving gross margin. You can see that revenue, relative share of recurring revenue and gross profit are relatively stable. With the exception of one quarter since the start of 2023 on this slide, gross margin has been in the range of 66 to 76%. And also on a rolling 12 month basis, you see that the stable gross margin support EBITDA margin. We are now back on the level of 15% after a couple of years with lower margins. As mentioned before, our strategy is to increase recurring revenue and increase the number of units that we have on our own books. On this slide, you can see that since second half of 2024, we steadily increase EBITDA operating cash flow and our cash conversion rate. Now we have an EBITDA that is generating cash. The operating cash flow for the quarter is 18 million Swedish kronor compared to 23 million in the corresponding quarter last year. The operating cash flow for the first half year is 13 million compared to close to 26 million SEK the same quarter last year. The difference consists primarily of adjustments of non-cash items relating to the Corexa settlement where we recognize revenue that was released from a previous provision and where the cash was paid during 2024. and a weaker underlying result in the U.S. operations as two planned cleanroom installations have been postponed until next year. Taxes paid are also higher this year. Both inventory and accounts receivable have been reduced compared to the same quarter last year. We have a stable financial situation. Net interest-bearing debt continues to be on a lower level. We amortize around 40 million Swedish kronor per year on our term loan. equity to total assets ratio continue to improve. Now we are at 38%. And with that, I hand it back over to you, Sebastian.

Thank you, Fredrik. So what we do at Clean Air is really important. We dedicate our work to improve the health of people, the quality of products and the performance of processes. and we do so throughout all our three product categories, cabin solutions, air cleaners, and clean rooms. And looking at the amount of clean air that is delivered through our solutions, we estimate that clean air solutions out there cleaned over 23.8 billion cubic meters of indoor air in Q2. And it matters, as air pollution is a key challenge for human health People die prematurely from exposure to polluted air. We spend an important part of our lives in indoor environments, and indoor air can often be more polluted than outdoor air. And to close off the session before, in front of the Q&A, I want to highlight the key takeaways from Q2. Our new industrial air cleaners are are already our best-selling products for 2026. We have our strongest 12-month signed contracted backlog in the US ever. And in the background, our transformation program is progressing well. So with that, I hand over to the Q&A.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. To enter the queue, if you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Anders Roslund from Pareto Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Good morning. I start off with a question regarding the growth outlook for air cleaners and clean rooms. I thought that you said that air cleaners are sort of the star performer here. Do you have any differences in growth outlook for air cleaners versus clean rooms?

No, I think when we look at these two product categories, this is the kind of growth level that we're aiming for, to be closer to the 20% growth. Okay, so...

I don't know if I heard you in the wrong way, but you mentioned that you expect air cleaners to be a far bigger part of the business, but you don't make any big difference between those two.

No, it's both these areas that we want to grow.

Okay, excellent.

Then I would like to go back to the second quarter again. Before you said that you had more three-year rental contracts up for renewal in the second quarter versus the other quarters in 2016 in Japan, rental contracts up for renewal, and now you mentioned that it was new contracts sold to fund companies that have larger share and that's taking down margin somewhat. How come...

So let me explain. So we overall, when we look at which is an important factor, the renewals to finance company, the cyclicality of that over the years, it is so that the first half of this year is a strong renewal to finance company in Japan. But when we compare to last year, they've been more successful or not more than renewals to finance company, but their new sales to finance companies have increased more. So therefore, and when we do new contracts, then we have a negative effect. So it's really just the relationship between the two. But it's still true what you're saying that the first half of this year is a strong renewal. We had a strong renewal base to finance companies. But in addition, we also sold a lot of new contracts to finance companies. And I think that's really the push that we've talked about in the past two years where we've come out with some smaller cabins, we've focused more on the hotel and restaurant, the Horeca segment as it's called. And of course, given the low Japanese yen, that sector in Japan is growing tremendously and we've taken benefit of that. So that has driven up our new sales quite significantly in Japan on cabins.

Yeah, that was my next question then. I expect, and you have indicated that the second half of this year will be lower sales in Japan than in the first half, but now will this new sales catch up for lower rental rates? So,

We don't make forward-looking statements, but on this point, you can easily go back three years and see what our base for renewals to finance companies are on the different quarters in this year. We will have a lower base for renewals to finance companies in Japan for the second half. and whether our traction on the new sales to finance companies, how well that will mitigate, that I cannot answer.

Okay, but it's at least a positive sign that you're growing the business in Japan.

Yes.

And you have no reason to sometimes it could be just that you have happened to have a large number of sales Those three contracts you see it sort of an underlying trends of better sales In those areas you mentioned here in Japan

Yeah, so it's really along the same lines that I've spoken to in the past one to two years, where we used to be really focused just on the premium large corporates. And then we have expanded our market reach by reaching out more to the small and medium segment. And that is really paying off. The team is doing great.

And the very strong outcome here in air cleaners is really impressive. And now you're in the industrial segment more than before. And normally that means that the third quarter in industrial companies are a little bit lower due to vacations, et cetera. A sign that you don't see for the rest of the business. So will the third quarter be more seasonal or will this underlying sales trend be stronger?

So I agree with you that the third quarter has these effects that you're talking about. And we saw it last year where we finished the year very strong in the air cleaner business. So I expect that we will have a similar seasonal effect.

But the underlying growth here is something that should really be maintained.

Yes.

Excellent. Which are the strongest markets? Is it Germany still or is it also France and the Nordics? Or how does it look like in the space?

So when you look at the air cleaner space, the main contributors are, of course, Germany is our largest market on air cleaners, and that has been coming back after a pretty tough couple of years. France is our new focus market. They're growing, you know, in the 30-40% year to date, but from smaller base, so to say. So from a size point of view, you have Germany, Sweden, Japan, and then it's a pretty even between a few countries. And we are, as I've said before, we're trying with France to build another pillar on the air cleaner and cabin side on the side of Germany and Japan.

So the order is what you said, Germany number one, Sweden two, Japan three, and France four. Yeah. And I guess you mentioned in the report that Japan growth was relatively flat organically. It seems then that Germany, Sweden, and France has to be in very strong growth mood.

So when you look at air cleaners in Japan, we still had a quite strong first half in Japan last year, where we managed to sell HEPA-related units towards more pollen and allergies and these things. So we're meeting a little bit tougher comps in Japan. If I look in local currency, year to date in Japan, we're still growing in the 15% range.

Are we now yet for the first half?

Yes.

Okay. And this HEPA filter, which is more COVID related, I guess they are sort of clean more or less. That business remains in Japan.

Yes. So they use it a lot for the pollen and allergies and an overall view on virus spreading and so forth. So they have had a different view on it. So we've been able to... It started a little bit like... in Europe with the COVID, the attention to it. But in Japan, they have chosen to continue to provide this healthier workspace environment also in office environment.

Okay. But the industrial part that you've been seeing so strong growth in Europe now is also very strong in Japan.

Yes.

That's excellent.

So we really try to pair between our regions, looking at what particular market segments or sub-segments where we're strong, where we've been able to get a good grip in the market, and we go for the same segments also in Japan.

Excellent. Okay then going over to clean rooms where you are stepping up now and you've got orders of 4.5 million dollars and I know that this will start to be sold and delivered now in the third and fourth quarter. Will it be a very big difference between the third or fourth quarter because it's quite substantial amount now that you have to deliver?

Unfortunately, it's gathering together in the first quarter quite a lot. And we're pushing hard. You know that from the first quarter, we unfortunately had two projects with a longstanding customer that was shifted into 2027. So the team in the US is working hard on, you know, filling up the fourth quarter to make up for that.

Yeah, but now I missed something here. This order book, when those orders were published, it was meant that the major part was going to be distributed in the second half of this year. Are you now saying that that will be more related to 2027, everything?

No, when we talked about in Q1 the two contracts, we were clear that that was going to be in 2027. But when you read the press releases that we made this year and you see that we're delivering in the fourth quarter, then that's what we're doing. We're trying to even get more into the fourth quarter to make up for those two contracts from the first quarter. We only have two projects that have slid.

My question is, I expect a step up in sales from the third quarter this year? Or will it be very much that the third quarter is like the second quarter and then everything comes in the fourth quarter? Or is it anything we have to look at here?

No, I think step by step. I don't have the numbers in front of me now, but step by step we increase during the second half. Is that your view also, Fredrik? It's hard. You want forward-looking statements, and we hold back a little bit on forward-looking statements. But I think we try to communicate quite clear in the press releases when we will deliver those projects. And it's only two projects, and they were signed way back that has moved from 26 to 27.

Okay so yeah then we expect then a gradual increase of sales here for the second second half this year. Okay and then I would just talk about the margins a little bit. This trend that you are selling more products in the air cleaner business versus rental is that sort of one-time effect or do you expect that clients in general, they are industrial clients and they prefer probably to buy the equipment versus rental?

No, I think that when we look at the strength of our rental model, there is no change. But these were some really particularly big engineering projects where the whole setup for the project is that they purchase equipment. And that shows up in our numbers. So it's nothing that our customers are more lenient towards buying product rather than renting products. I think the the flexibility of rental and and so forth is and and the the carefree sort of handling of it as we have performance guarantees we manage everything is very attractive okay so we shouldn't expect violence to be low at the lower end now in industrial land cleaners no

Okay and then the service costs you mentioned here that you're switching from external service supplies to your own service people. That sort of you mentioned double cost here. Is that something that will be also not saying one time but that you will have lower service costs when you have a more streamlined organization?

That's definitely our aim. So as I speak about the transformation program, we have a couple of underlying projects and one of them is within service. And on the point that we are in certain markets moving more to our own service organization also has to do with that. If you remember back in 23, 24, we had some serious challenges on the external part as we were switching to new partners. So it's both to take the control because it's so important on our rental model that we deliver our service at the best. so so but we've also seen that when we do it and we do it in in the right sort of environment we can we can deliver that service after a better service at the same or lower cost yeah that sounds excellent I think that's most my questions I had just say

The final one regarding air cleaners. It seems to have been very successful with the project development here. Will that sort of support further product development and how do you look upon this industrial part of the air cleaner business? Could you do more in that respect?

Yes, so we have the Clean Air Wheel that I picture on one of the slides in the investor presentation, where we start the beginning of the year, we pull together all the region, actually the product managers together with myself go out and do workshops with each individual region, with all the sales and service people, and learn where they see the gaps from the customer perspective. We couple that with also having some key customer meetings to understand where the customer is going, whether it's within welding and oil mist or what have you. And based on that, we do explorations and find new solutions to these critical problems. So that wheel where we take that, we meet again in May, we narrow down to a couple of projects, and then in the next couple of days, I have the regions here in Solna, and we agree on that plan for the next three years. And that wheel just keeps on spinning. And the way we connect our R&D through our product management directly to the people in front of the customer is really giving us a lot of new opportunities to develop products towards. So I think that is really working like a clockwork. What I'm mostly proud of in the last year is the commercial development of our regions. The fact that we took away all marketing personnel centrally and invested in marketing people and so forth in the regions. And I think that together with all the new products is really what is driving the growth, that they are closer to the market, more direct messaging and communication to our clients.

Very good. Okay, I think that's all the questions I had.

Okay, thank you, Anders.

Thank you.

Can you open it, Anders?

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more phone questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions and closing comments.

So I we don't see any further questions in the feed. So if there are no further questions, I would like to reiterate Our approach to operational and strategic development is very systematic. We have a clear focus to grow our air cleaner business and cleanroom business to be a significant part of our revenue base in the next three to four years. We stand out in the market with a very attractive rental model and we have aligned our financial targets with our focus on strengthening this part of the business. We have a targeted go-to-market approach. For quarter two, we delivered an underlying growth in our regions of 6.1% and the currency adjusted EBTA margin of above 13.7%. Thank you for your participation and interest in clean air and we wish you a great continuation of the day. Thank you.