Studsvik AB (publ)

Welcome to Studsvick Q4 2025 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 CEO Carl Tadeen and CFO Peter Teske. Please go ahead.

Thank you and welcome to this Q4 report for 2025 and also the full year report for 2025. Just a short reminder of Studsvik. We are a services and product company serving the worldwide nuclear market. This year we did roughly 900 million Swedish crowns in revenue. We are active in 15-plus countries, and we have more than 500 employees, with the key markets being Europe, U.S., Korea, Japan. So we'll go to the next slide. Just also before we get into the results, what are we doing and what is the market we are addressing? So we are addressing a market to the left. We have the nuclear power market, which is dividing a new build, operating plants, and decommissioning. And in there, we have various services. And obviously, the new things over the last couple of years is the big focus on new build, which is drawing a lot of attention. But also, a lot of investments are going into the operating plans. to extend the life of those to 80 to 100 years. They were already planned for 40 to 60 years, so a lot of investment going to that. Also, nuclear is a lifecycle market, so decommissioning is also constantly a market that needs to be invested in, and we are very active in that market as well. There are also other markets outside the nuclear power market that requires our infrastructure and our competence, and mainly that is in life science. A little high level on how we divide our revenue, and this is the 2025 numbers, and we have seen a bit of a shift here where fuel, materials, and waste technology is now the largest by revenue and also by profit business area of Studsvik. The second largest is decommissioning and radiation protection, mainly driven out of the market in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland. And then specific scan for our software business, which is 18% of our business selling software to worldwide clients in the nuclear power market. So into the quarter four of 2025. And the quarter has shown a lot of positive signs in terms of very strong cash flow. This is a continuation of the strong cash flow that we have had throughout the year, but we ended extremely strong. We also have continued our journey with a very successful development of our fuel materials and waste technology business area, whilst we have continued to see a more challenging market for our radio protection or decommissioned radio protection business area and a comparable bit of a weaker quarter for our scan power business compared to last year. We delivered significantly stronger margins than Q4 of last year and also significantly better margins than we did in 2024. So this year has truly been a turnaround year for our profitability and setting up the company for growth. I also want to mention that the Board of Directors proposes to the annual general meeting a change in the capital allocation to support the pro-growth agenda. And as a result of that, no dividend is proposed to be distributed to the shareholders for the fiscal year of 2025. Looking to some of the key milestones for Q4 of 2025. So we continue with the financial discipline, leading to a strong cash flow in Q4 and full year. And that is obviously basic for any company, but we have done significant efforts and improvement in this area throughout 2025. We end the year with a strong quarter and full year for the business area of fuel, material and waste technology, leading to one of the strongest results to date in the company's history for this business area. And this business area is obviously predominantly serving the lifetime extension market, but also to some extent testing for the SMR market. So good proof that we're getting a good share of the new investment into that area. We have received new investments or a new large shareholder in Segra Capital that invested close to 10% of the company's shares. It's now owned by Segra. Segra is a well-known fund in the U.S., specifically focused on the new care market. Adam Rodman, who is one of the founders there, is also now part of our board. We see that as a good sign that there is a trust in what we're doing and also a lot of focus to support our growth journey, not to say the least, in the U.S. market. We have also seen an appointment of Julia Pike, who has a long career. background from the UK nuclear market, most recently as MD for the Sellafield nuclear power plant. We see this as very, very important with her broad knowledge, but also specifically that we can grow and get support from her to get more in the UK market. And Anders Bergdahl with a strong background from Uniper joined us already in Q4. We have received a new order from Rho Power, which is the Romanian power utility for our core fuel software, and they are working with a new scale and SMR vendor to build out SMRs in the Romanian market. And last but not least, we secured a very large order for fuel testing with the South Korean Kepco Nuclear Fuel, KNF, which is one of the four dominant nuclear companies. fuel manufacturers or vendors in the world. This test is focused on ramp testing to enable nuclear power plants to be more flexible so you can take the power up and down in a much more efficient way. That is very important if you're going to have a mix of wind, solar, power, and hydro, as we have in many of our grids that we support. And the deliveries of this order will start this year, but will continue for three years from now. So a very important order and also another sign of their investment to modernize and make the nuclear power plants more effective going forward. If I go a little bit into our three business areas, as I mentioned, decommissioning, radiation protection, we see a competitive market situation that remains. We have taken measures to change some of how we run that business. We see a better sign going into 2026, specifically in the area that's been most challenging in dismantling, which is cutting of steel and concrete structures. We are also moving more of our efforts into radio protection and moving away from decontamination. And by those measures, we hope and believe that our profitability will be significantly better in 2026. It's been a challenging year in 25 and also in Q4. If we go into fuel, materials, and waste technology, once again, a very strong year. We also see a continuous momentum in this business with strong order backlog. and continue a high level of customer engagement. And the KEPCO order from Korea is a very good sign of that. We also have increased interest from companies delivering SMRs for material fuel testing. So this is with our unique competence and facilities, we see that this market has a very solid journey ahead. If we then go to Stuttvik Scandpar, where we deliver predominantly our core fuel software, which is used by more than 50% of the light water reactors in the world. We reported weaker sales in this quarter compared to the same period last year. We should then know that last year was a very strong quarter for this business area. And it also is a very seasonal business. So when the license sales hits us, we are having strong quarters and we have less of license sales, we have less strong quarters. However, I'm happy to see and say that we maintained our profitability almost for the full year. But obviously this quarter was weaker than the very strong year of 2024. On Blackstar Tech, which is the safety system solution that we acquired out of Constellation Energy a year back, we have taken more orders in Q4. Many of these orders are with important customers, i.e. large potential customers, but the initial orders are of small scale. And we are now also building a new organization to handle Blackstar Tech going into 2026. So we are still positive about that. forecast for Flagstaff Tech to support both SMRs and new builds, but also modernize the existing fleet. With that, I will hand over to my CFO, Peter, please.

Thank you, Carl. I will walk you through the financial performance of our three business areas, and after that, I will talk about the group results and our cash flow. And we start with our business area, decommissioning and radiation protection services. And we see that the sales in both the quarter and the full year is lower compared to last year. In local currency, it's a decrease in the quarter of 13.8% and 5.5% for the full year. And as well, we see the decrease in sales has a negative impact on the margins and operating profits. We see that the profit for the full year is 18.1 million less compared to 2024. The quarter and the full year were characterized by continued tough competition and a strong cost focus among our customers, and that continued to limit our opportunities for additional sales. And a consequence of that is that our margins and profits are lower than compared to last year. With that said, we have a clear focus on turning this business around. For example, during 2025, we have adopted a new internal organization to match the current market conditions. We have done changes in the management and also in the organizational structure. We have recruited new people, as well as reduction of headcount in the unprofitable areas. Therefore, we have also a restructuring cost for about 1 million during the Q4 2025. On average, the business area during 2025 has approximately 24 less employees compared to 2024. If we then move on to fuel, materials and waste technology, we see that the sales for the quarter amounted to 106.1 million and for the full year 319.7 million, which in local currency is an increase in the quarter of 13.2% and the full year of 9.6%. The sales growth in both the quarter and the full year was driven by continued work without productivity. For example, we implemented two shift operations in part of the production and we had a favorable product mix. The operating profit for the quarter amounted to 20 million SEK and for the full year 62.9 million SEK. Worth mentioning here is that in Q4 last year, we had 11.9 million SEC of items affecting the comparability. And we see the improvements in the margin compared to 2024 reflects our implemented cost efficiency program. We have improved our purchase routines. And also we have the high utilization rate within the organization. So overall, this business area has done a really good turnaround. And as Karl mentioned, shown one of the best results ever. Then if we go to StuttX Scampower. The sales at Social Security Scam Power didn't reach a high level compared to previous years, with lower sales and lower earnings in the quarter. This underlines the seasonal variation that characterized the business area. In local currency, it's a decrease of 18.9% for the quarter and a decrease of 4.3% for the full year. We see that sales of Blackstar Tech products remain low during the quarter as well as full year. However, the negative impact on the overall profitability of the business area is limited. We see that the underlying core business remains stable and we are continuing focusing on the profitability while managing the seasonal revenue patterns. So that was our three business area. If we then move on to the group results and looking first at the group net sales, we see that the fourth quarter, the sales in the fourth quarter amounted to 222.9 million compared to 247.4 million last year. So, in local currency, that corresponds to a decrease of 4.4%. And as you've seen before, the decline is mainly driven by lower sales within decommissioning and radiation protection services, as well within strategic scam power. But this was partly offset by the strong performance in fuel, materials and waste technology. If you then look on the full year sales, We see that the sales amounted to 883.3 million, which is less than last year. But there on the top line, we have FX effect. So in local currency, it corresponds to an increase in 1.1%. And the full-year sales growth is primarily driven by the strong development within fuel, materials, and waste technology, which increases sales by 9.6% compared to 2024. And we see also that in 2025, it's the biggest business error within the group, both in terms of net sales and operating profits. If we then move on to look at our profits for the Q4 and the full year 2025, we see that the operating profit increased in the fourth quarter to 18.4 million compared to 1.6 million last year. This corresponds to an operating margin of 8.2% compared with 0.7% in the prior year. Improvement in the quarter is mainly driven by fuel materials and waste technology. For the full year, the operating profit amounted to 68.6 million compared to 26.8 million last year. We see also the increase in the operating margin. It goes from 3% up to 7.8%. The improvement profitability is driven, as we said before, by the strong performance in fuel, materials and waste technology. We have strengthened our financial discipline. We have increased the cost awareness within the full organization. And then we have some one-off positive items, for example, the exchange rate affected by some remeasurements of the balance sheet items. And we see also that the efficient tax rate is 28.6%. And that's because we have some companies within the group that reported losses without deferred tax can be capitalized. Finally then, if we look on the free cash flow for the Q4 and 2025 full year, We see a strong development in the free cash flow because it's amounted to 42.7 million compared to 18.8 million the Q4 last year. And for the full year, it's amounted to 98.3 million. compared to minus 78.1 million last year. This significant year-on-year improvement reflects a stronger earnings, better control over investments, and also that we did an acquisition during 2024. We have also increased our focus on the working capital, particularly on accounts receivable. That has really contributed to our improved cash flow. We see also that during the year we have amortized 23.5 millions of our bank debt. And as a result of the strong cash flow, the net debt was reduced to 65.1 million. As Carl mentioned, the board of directors proposes to the general meeting a change in the capital allocation to support a pro-growth agenda. As a result, no dividend is proposed to be distributed to the shareholders for the fiscal year of 2025. And if we look on the financial targets, so we have the three financial targets. And you see our performance 2025 and 2024. Yeah, with that said, I will hand over to Carl.

Thank you, Peter. We go a little bit outlook to the external market. And here you have a snapshot of some of the press that we have seen throughout the year. And if we start to the left, it's some articles about our whole market. And now Sweden is never going to be the biggest nuclear market in the world. But for us, it's very important to have a strong home market with a lot of developments, both in long-term operation and in new build. And we definitely see that happening in Sweden. And as you know, Vattenfall announced that they're ambition to build new power plants at the Ringham site. We also have seen other big investments and ease of regulations in the U.S. We have seen an announcement or a plan by 38 countries, I think, to triple the world nuclear power until 2050. And even countries that haven't had a nuclear, like Denmark and Norway, are setting plans to do that. So in general, a very strong market. I also want to push on the German announcements on fusion. Fusion has similar demands on our services for the software, for material testing, for waste handling, for decommissioning. So we are engaging and having a lot of discussion also in there. in the emerging large fusion market that is happening throughout the world. Small modular reactors, SMRs, and sometimes also AMRs, advanced modular reactors. It's just a difference if it's light water or other more modern way or so-called fast reactors. This is a market that is emerging. We have seen announcements in Czech Republic, in the UK, in the US. In Sweden and in many other markets that this is a new way to build more efficient building. You get smaller units that can also be more flexible in the grid. So we definitely see that this market is going to take a significant part of the nuclear power market and we are well positioned to be there. and emerge and increase our business. Here is just a snapshot of all the SMR vendors that we see in the market. And many of those we already have contacts with either for material testing, for fuel, or for our software. And we continue to push into this direction, and we're going to have more efforts going into 2026 with these. So, final comments. Successful year and the start of the transformation. We have to remind ourselves that this market, the nuclear market, was very stable, no growth a couple of years back, and now it's pretty fast for our industry change in the sentiment. And we are adapting and transforming our company to really take advantage of that change. We have a quarter and a full year with strong cash flow, significant new contracts, acquisitions in a growing market. We have also the fuel materials waste that is going really, really strong this year, the best ever. We have a lot of incoming and outgoing calls with customers, significant amount of investor calls, and we are much more present at seminars, investor conferences, and trade fairs than we have been in the past. We have strong interest, which we haven't talked so much about in this call, for our in-ground waste solution for reduction of radioactive waste. We had 50 customers come into our site in Sweden to review the demo site for half of this. And we continue to see this as a strong innovation with strong customer interest that we will benefit from over mid to long term. Grow in demand and renewed interest for energy companies and government solutions, creating the long-term opportunities. We have a new board of investors that is strong and have a growth agenda set together with the management team. And we are turning around this company to be much more focused on customers, markets, and supporting that with our strong offerings. We have set a strategy and we have set that and we'll come back to that later throughout the year. This is our strategic house and maybe most importantly is the third floor here where we focus on market expansion, product services and innovation expansion and M&A and portfolio management to really take the three very relevant, still relevant business areas forward. and expand more and you can see some of the areas that us will become increasingly important for us to become bigger it's not our biggest market now but it should be over time to really advance and do more on our software where we have the entry ticket is also a key pillar of our strategy and also our site here in sweden is generating significant interest from from uh different players that want to work with us with our services, products, and our access to a nuclear site. Here you see some examples of those discussions. Everything from deploying SMRs to building a Nordic isotope center, to expand our hot seat operations, to build waste management with Indram, to put the fusion test facility here, or data center for secure data handling and managing our software. So the vision and the outlook for Stuttgart is very bright, and this is also one way to visualize that it will happen a lot of things at our site. So with that, I would hand over to the operator and take questions. Thank you.

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 Caleb Solomon from Seb. Please go ahead.

Hi guys, just a few questions for me. Firstly on profitability, which was much stronger than last year, despite sort of lower top line and FX headwinds. That seems to be mainly driven by lower costs, which were down almost 17% year-over-year, despite adding Blackstar tech business. So my first question is, Are there any sort of one-off or timing-related effects there? And second, would you say the sort of cost savings you've been targeting this year is now fully reflected in the financials, or should we sort of expect continued improvements and efficiency gains moving forward?

Thank you, Caleb. Good question. First of all, I would say that we're always looking at our costs. So we are running the business so efficient as possible. So what we've done during 2025 is put a little bit more focus on that area. And we will continue to do that during next year as well. One time effects. Yeah, we have one-time effects and as always in this type of business we have effects this year. The 2024 was some negative effects as well. So yeah, there is some one-off items during this year.

And can you give just how roughly are those big, roughly how big are those one-off items?

I would say around 10, 15 millions around that during this year.

Okay, that's clear. Thank you. And second, on the cash flow, which was also a lot better year over year, a lot of that seems to be explained by working capital improvements. which was a positive contributor this year, was roughly 34 million compared to minus 15 last year. And you sort of alluded to the biggest difference being accounts receivables. But can you give some color on what you've actually done there and how much of that sort of working capital improvement we can extrapolate?

Yeah, I would say that what we've done during the year is go back to the basics in terms of working capital to just be closer to our customers, be closer to our vendors, and make sure that we pay the invoices at the right time and that our customer pays the invoices at the right time. And then during 2025, we also had some positive effects from, we received a grant from Energimyndigheten, for example, and that will have a positive effect on 2025, that will have a slightly negative effect on this year, the 26th.

Yeah, that's clear. And on the new service agreements with KFN and SEK, how soon will we start delivering on those, meaning when will it sort of start to be reflected in the earnings? And could you give us some sort of indication as to how big that contribution could be?

So these contracts are sizable, but they are sizable over quite a few years. There's transportation, there's irradiation in a nuclear power plant in Belgium involved in this. So the revenue here will be distributed over the next three years. So I wouldn't say it's materially impacting as I look now on the FMWT revenue. Having said that, as we stated in the report, we have strong background. We have a lot of customer engagement. We have growth in FMWT of 10% this year. So obviously these kind of contracts are important to continue to see the growth opportunities and the profitability improvements in this business. It is sort of material in one way but not in another way. It's not that we take the full revenue in one year. And it's also strategic that to show that we are a significant vendor to a fuel manufacturer on the other side of the globe states something about our competence and our facilities.

Thank you. And on Black Star Tech, you sort of mentioned seeing opportunities for larger volumes in 26. Can you give some more color, perhaps, or maybe a range on what sort of contribution we could be talking about?

Black Star Tech is in its build-up. We have the product today is certified for the U.S. market. We will continue to drive it. We will launch it there. sort of European certifications in the second half of this year. I foresee that to become 10, 15% of the scan power revenue over time. It is a bit tricky to judge the volume pickup on this. We typically take test agreements or small agreements, and then it's up to the customer to get to know the products and then start to build volume. A little bit difficult to forecast, but we definitely see it should be contributing significantly better than we have seen in 2025. It's been a bit of a slow start. As it typically is, we took over technology. We didn't take over a sales floor. We didn't take over that many contracts. So we are in building mode of the sales and go-to-market model.

Okay. So maybe a follow-up on that. How long do you think that sort of ramp up to getting to 10-15% of Scandi Power revenue will take?

I think we will see that later this year or going into next year that we'll get, you know, those kind of volumes. But the long-term view on this, that this would be, you know, should have possibly to become 10% of our total revenues. But that will take longer time. This is when we get into the bigger volumes and we start selling big portions of these batteries and software to go with it. That is significant orders.

Okay, that's clear. Thank you. And just one last question on the sort of proposal to scrap last year's dividends. I mean, you already have a mandate to issue shares corresponding to 10% of the total, which will be somewhere around 250 million. So why scrap the dividends, given that it's relatively small in size compared to that? And should we interpret that as you intending to be very aggressive on the acquisition side this year?

Well, it's obviously a proposal from the board today, Jim. As management, we think it's good and prudent. I think it's good for the shareholders to use cash for the growth agenda that we set for M&A, for other investments in organic growth. So I definitely think that this is the right thing for the company to do at this stage. And we are driving an active M&A agenda. where cash at hand will be important, but also working with equity will be important. So all in all, I think this is the right thing to do for the company and for our shareholders.

Okay, that's all for me. Thank you. Thanks.

The next question comes from Lara Motadi from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.

Hi, Lara here. Just a couple of questions from my end. You previously touched on the profitability a bit with Caleb on the one-offs, but if we just solely focus on the fuel and materials and waste technology segment, which has a standout quarter in terms of margins, do you see this as a sustainable margin going forward? Obviously, you said there are one-offs, but how much would you say is a temporary mix in projects? What I'm trying to ask is what is permanent improvement?

Well, this is a business area that I took over when I started as CEO as well. And I think the first question I asked myself is, what is the competitive situation here? And actually, it is very favorable for us. There are very few opportunities to do what we do for our customers elsewhere. All other sort of these kind of labs are state owned. They can't promise timelines. They can't promise exactly what the quality is. And with our labs and our competence working with these international customers, I think we have a very good position. We have to some extent used that to make sure that we get more favorable payment terms and also more favorable margins. So I definitely think in this market environment that those margins are sustained.

Okay, very true. Thank you. And on decommissioning, unfortunately it swung to an operating loss in the quarter. And you mentioned some actions you're taking to improve the profitability, but what's the timing of this margin recovery through 2026?

I think that will come through 2026. It's also some seasonal variation here, so I don't think it will be a strong recovery in Q1. But when we go into Q2, we should see more of that. We should say that we have had most of the people in this business working for clients. But the revenue for clients have been tougher. There's been no overtime. And specifically in this month, we've had some stop times, if you like, that has not been favorable. So we do see that the transition we're doing now should pay off into, I wouldn't say the best year for DRPS, but a significantly better year for DRPS going into 2026. But that is a pickup that will happen throughout the year.

Very clear. And EBS added some revenue but modestly. What would you say is the integration status and what should we expect in terms of margin profile when EBS fully ramps up?

I think you should consider EBS as part of the change we will see in DRPS. We have maintained a decent business with EBS, but we haven't succeeded to really get it into the bigger opportunities in specifically Germany. That is a very high focus now, and we have changed some of the organizational setup. But I don't think you should view EBS that separately. It would be one very key part of the improvement or margin for DRPS.

Okay. And on scan power, well, there's seasonal variations in that segment, as you know. But would you say is that the only reason beyond the seasonal variations? Are there delayed licensing deals or maybe shifts in customer spending patterns, maybe other things that we should be concerned about for the first half of 2026?

No, I think you should continue to view this as a business that is, to some extent, a bit difficult to forecast exactly when these licenses hit us. So you should continue to see seasonal variations throughout 2026. We do see good demand. We will also release some new products into this area. So we are definitely positive about the business. But it is tricky to exactly say when and how these comes in, which have a big swing specifically on profitability quarter by quarter.

Okay, great. And while you've mentioned SMR software wins, including the one in Romania, what would you say in terms of profitability? As you've mentioned that there's been market momentum, but is the competitive landscape changing in the segment?

SMR is – we have to view what SMR is today. It's the predominant discussion for SMR is to use our software for their development, going into their licensing activities, and going into their operating activities. And we are now somewhere between development and licensing. And specifically development and the competition here that they can use open source and other tools to play around with as they develop different concepts. When they go into licensing, they need to work with proven software to prove their case. That's when they need to talk to us. And then, obviously, as they start operating plans, We need to make sure that typically the utilities will then demand software that they are used to work with. So the initial phase we're in now is very much a positioning phase to make sure we'll get into as many vendors and sort of products as possible. moving them to licensing and after that into operations. So we are in a build-up, which is a very important build-up because we have to view SMRs that, you know, 50, 100, 150 SMRs going to be built over the next 15 years. And then it's very important for us to make sure that we are in a very, you know, high share of those our software is running.

Okay, great. That was all from my end. Thank you very much. Thanks.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Fernando Pertini from Milenia Asasora de Inversiones, Costa Rica, SAW. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking my question. First of all, I want to say I've been positively surprised by the recent changes in the shareholder base and the board, which actually feels like a real step forward. But building on that and fully supporting the decision to prioritize growth over dividends, is it possible for you to share which growth initiative you believe will be the most value-accredited for the next 12, 24 months, and how this will somehow strengthen your long-term earning power? Thank you.

Thank you. Good question. We have several initiatives, as I sort of flipped through my strategic house there. If you take the U.S., we can start that. There we are investing in a broader, bigger sales force. We're investing in Black Star Tech, go-to-market. We are, if we then go to the other discussions we had around software, we are in discussions with several large clients about software in adjacent areas to what we already do. And as those products, innovations, and discussions carries on, we will need to invest into organic, you know, development resources to do that. So that's software development. uh we also obviously see m a we carry an m a funnel we have a very good and strict process for that and that will uh deliver i hope one to two m a cases throughout this year that will be value created and so all in all i think that we have quite a few of those kind of initiatives both organic and inorganic that we are you know, basically doing as we speak, and they will require investments and also during this year. That I obviously hope and believe are value created for our shareholders.

Fantastic. Do you see room for, you know, to strengthen investor communication and digital visibility as you, you know, as your strategic relevance increases?

Obviously, that is a key priority. I don't know for how long you have followed the company, but I took over a company that was basically having a very low profile on the stock market. I think we are doing things to improve that. We are, you know, We are meeting, we have a lot of inbound investor call requests as we speak, and we are more present in investor seminars and so on, and also on trade fairs, whatever. But this is something we are looking into, and we need to do more, of course, with our communication also on social media. So thank you for pointing it out. You have done a lot, and we know that we need to do more.

Okay. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

There are no more phone questions at this time. Back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.

I think we have no written questions. So with that, thank you for listening. And we look forward to speak to you again in April time frame when we release our Q1 report. Thank you.