Note AB (publ)

STO:NOTE

Welcome to the NOTE Q1 presentation. How do we see upon the quarter that passed? And that I think it's, what you call it, a 2-sided quarter. When we went into this quarter, we had a feeling that there were quite positive views on this year. We were expecting a quite good recovery gradually during the year. We saw that 2024 was the so-called stock adjustment year and where we saw big decreases on some of the customer side due to destocking and so on. Then gradually when -- I think that everyone knows that the politics in the U.S. has affected our market quite significantly. How it affects us is not really clear. But if we look at the facts, we can say that okay, we have -- I joke about it a little bit. We have one of the less important numbers in our annual report until this year has been our direct sales to U.S. That is about 5% of our sales. I think it corresponded to SEK 198 million in 2024.

For some reason, that has become very important this year to talk about. So if we start with in this area, we can say that about 5% of our sales go directly to U.S., 10% of additional goes what I call indirectly to U.S. That means that we sell this to customers in other parts of the world that are then shipping the products to U.S. So roughly 15% of our sales in 2024 corresponds to our sales that will end up in U.S. How will that be affected by tariffs, by potential tariffs and so on? It's a bit early to say. One other number that we also see is that in 2024, about 8% of our sales from China went directly to U.S. That is a number that corresponds to a bit less than SEK 40 million. So it's a very small number, maybe 1% of our sales. I would expect that number if the tariff remains, that will change. I cannot see that any customer will buy products produced in China and ship it to U.S. with 145% tariff that is applicable today.

We are in dialog with those customers to move the production from China to our European facilities in NOTE. I don't expect that we will lose any of this business, but it will most likely move if the tariffs remain. So we have a plan for that as well. What is also important for you as shareholders to know is that when we get affected by tariffs, we are seeing that as the product owner's responsibility how they price the products. We will simply add the cost of the tariff on our products. We pass this along to our product owners and that is how we deal with, for example, spot purchases and so on. So this is what I would call standard procedure and there is no discussion with customers who should carry this either. So it's not a conflict. This is just the way that the EMS industry is operating. So for us; it's a problem, it's a limitation, it's not good for business; but this is how we do it and this is the expectations from both us and our customers. So there is no discussions or disputes around this. So this is just how it is.

Okay. So with this said, what do I expect? I don't expect that we will see any big changes in supply chain setups in the short time frame. The only change I see is the direct sales from China to U.S. that has to move if the tariffs remain. That is just how it is and we will facilitate that. We have all the information we need so we can do that quite quickly if the customer wants that. We have done it in the past and we will do it again if needed. But if the ambition is to build up all the industry that is needed to produce everything that the U.S. needs domestically, that is going to be a massive investment for anyone that is operating on that market. So to see that that will happen in the full extent, I don't see that. What I do expect is that the outlook of the economy for the world is going to be affected negatively on this.

We see that all the central banks, everyone that is following the national economists and so on are reviewing the forecast for this year downwards not much, but with a few point something in percentage. Maybe 0.5% lower growth for the world is somewhere in the range of what I expect at this point. The problem as I see it is the uncertainty. If they would say this is how it is, then everyone knows the rules and we could align and work on that. So what we do is that we have dialogs with customers that are affected. We discuss with suppliers that are affected and so on. We are transparently having those dialogs. I don't see that the tariffs as they are today will have a big impact on NOTE's performance. I don't see that we will have any negative margin pressure based on this. You can argue how my view is that the top line growth is what I see is the most challenging due to these tariffs. That is my view of this.

As you know, our biggest market is Europe with focus on Northern Europe and most of our sales are ending up in this region and we don't see any major change of our core business from that side. U.S. is important, but it's not the biggest market for us and it's not of such extent that that will affect us in that way. With that said, I still believe that we will have growth this year. I think the outlook of the year is getting less clear with all these disruptive demands or actions that is happening. So in summary, I would say that in the perfect world, we would not have all these uncertainties, but the world today is surrounded with uncertainties. We will continue to do whatever we can to operate in that surrounding and we are expecting that we will continue to be delivering strong results. We are expecting to continue to deliver strong cash flow and we are expecting that we will turn the negative growth into positive growth gradually during the year.

That outlook still remains and that is how we see upon this. I also think that it's a strength that we can continue to deliver good profitability numbers even in a very difficult market. I often say that it's easy to earn money when you grow. It's much harder to increase your profit when you decline because that takes a lot more efforts. And with that said, I'm very pleased with how our organization is gearing up in this problematic time that we see. So if we could get more normalized market conditions, if we could get some more stability, we would excel in our operations. I'm very optimistic about that. What we also do is that we are merging our business in the U.K. from 4 factories to 3. That will reduce our cost base going forward. That will also help us to sustain our margins. And we do all these activities because we think that that is what is needed for us to continue to be successful in these market conditions.

We are still optimistic that the underlying growth for our industry is still in a very positive trend, but we have a little bit more problematic year ahead of us than we expected a quarter ago. So with that said, I will go into our numbers. Sales ended up, I roughly say that we met what we said in our guidance. We guided for SEK 1.025 billion. We ended up at SEK 1.003 billion. Underlying operating profit in the mid of our guidance of 10%. I think that is very pleasing to see that we are up to double digits again. We have said that that is where we want to be and now we show that we can deliver that also with a quite weak top line. Especially pleased to see that the cash flow, we have talked about that for several times, that now we see SEK 178 million in cash flow for this quarter. I think that is a record for us in 1 individual quarter. So that is also very, very important for us to see that we are turning the profits into cash.

And for those of you that follow us, we know that in '22 and '23, we talked about the big inventory increase in our end and now we have seen that the decrease or the reduction has continued in a way that we are now seeing that we are less and less overstocked. We still believe that we can do more on the inventory side, but we're getting closer to what I call a normalized inventory position. So I think it's -- if I look at the numbers, I'm not happy with the sales; but all the other lines in our P&L I'm very pleased with. So we are working a lot to get our sales to turn the negative growth into positive growth. But under that line, I think that we're mitigating the cost in a very good way. We are agile in the factories. We see that our quality and deliveries up to precomponent crisis levels, which is very pleasing to see. That has been a struggle to get there, but now we see that we are finally getting there.

And so all the factories are doing very good job based on where they are. So I think this is for me a very positive sign. If we look at the segments. Western Europe continued to deliver very strong profitability. But I think also what is pleasing to see is that we now have turned a negative development in the Rest of World up to 7%. That is even though it's lower than Western Europe and, as you know, I've said that we will most likely always be lower in the Rest of World because we have lower margin customers there and that is how we build this. But we can do better than 7%. I think we have been up to almost 9% in Rest of World when we were at our peak level. We still believe we can get close to that level at least. For Western Europe, 10.6% is a good number. We have been slightly better, but we're almost up to our best quarter when it comes to profitability in this region. So also this I think is looking very good.

If we look at the different countries, we see that we're still struggling in U.K. We are growing in Sweden and Finland. And Estonia, we had some positive effects in Q1 last year so the underlying sales is more or less flat this year compared to last year. And China, my expectation is that China we have seen the last negative quarter in China. Q1 last year was still fairly good, then we were at the bottom in Q2, Q3 in China. So we will grow from very low numbers in China going forward this year as I see it. That is our outlook. We also believe that we will turn the Estonia sales into positive sales already from Q2 and onwards. So Rest of World, we see positive signs in Western Europe. We still struggle with some customers with destocking and other activities that are limiting our ability to grow top line. So that is basically what I see going forward.

One new thing that we have for this year is that we have extracted Security & Defense from our customer segments. We can see that this is a segment that we have strong growth in and we have been asked to see if we could show our Defense spend or our Defense sales to be clear on that. This is one of our key focus areas. For those that have been following us for many years, we removed Defense as a segment after 2020 and now we are reentering that. At that time, Defense was down to less than 3% of our sales. Now together with Security, we're up to 13%, 14% of our sales. Last year we had growth in this segment for almost 100%. So 2024 was a really strong year in Security & Defense. We're growing 23% in this quarter. We are expecting this to grow during the year as well.

What is a bit pleasing and finally I can say that I was right after 8 quarters being wrong is that Greentech is finally showing positive numbers; not very much, but still some positive numbers. And as I said before, this is a segment that we believe in. It is a segment that we want to be strong in. It's a segment that we want to succeed because this is good for the environment and for the climate. So we put a lot of efforts into being strong in this segment. And I also believe that if we look 5 years ahead, this segment will be very important for us and for many others. So we are very determined to turn this around and make this as a success going forward. For the rest: Industrial, yes, here we have again 1 or 2 customers that are reducing a lot. We have 1 customer in U.K. that are pushing out all the demand for the first, say, 7, 8 months for this year due to overstock situations.

We thought we were through this, but we still see that some customers are coming back with this topic. For the rest of the Industrial customers, it's a flat or a fairly low activity in this area. When we talk about Communications that this has been a struggle for some quarters. It still is. If you read the report from -- I think Nokia reported today as well, negative report also from their side. The activities in this field is not very strong and this is still affecting us. Communication is -- we're reducing from a low level so this is very annoying as I call it because this segment should be much bigger and it's an important segment as well and we have a good footprint there. We also announced a deepened cooperation with Waystream. We believe that this will have good effects going forward. But still I think Communication is one of the areas that is dependent on that. The investment pace in the society is going up and I don't see that happen yet.

So I still believe that the Communication will be fairly weak throughout the year. I think the same goes for MedTech. I don't expect that to turn into positive growth either during this year. It's going to be a struggle here. So when I look at this, I think that Security & Defense and Greentech will show positive numbers going forward; Greentech maybe not as strong as Security & Defense. I also expect Industrial to bounce back to some normalized level. Communication and MedTech, I'm more hesitant to say that I expect growth in those 2 areas. Could happen, but with the order backlog we see into Q2, I don't expect that to happen in the second quarter at least. Then again any outlook that we make today is based on what we know today. And I would say that the surroundings are changing basically by the day with new statements from U.S. that is affecting how the market sees upon this.

But also again I think when I look at our customer base, and I said it before, we are following our Top 25 customers every month and see how they are developing. And there's a lot of very good market-leading companies in their markets and in their niches. So yes, I still believe that our footprint from these customers are so strong. So I would expect the growth to come already from these 25 customers. And I think we report that the 15 largest customers is somewhere around 48%, 49% and then the Top 25 is 58% or something. Also our biggest customer is now corresponding to maybe 7% of our sales. It has been between 6% and 7% for the last couple of years. And I think that is also a big strength when I look at us compared to some of our peers that we have. The biggest customer that we have has been changing for the last 5 years. It has not been the same customer 2 years in a row ever since I started in NOTE. And I think that is a strength that we have so many customers that are growing in different paces during the years.

It's still more or less the same 5, 6 that are among the Top 5, 6; but they are changing positions, which I think is very pleasing. So I think it's a mixed bag. I think the customers that are declining are still very strong. They are still remaining as leaders in their niches or segments. But again there is a lot of disruptive things in their supply chains that are still affecting us. When we saw that the stock depletion from our customers came into play I think in Q3 '23, we saw this as a 2, 3 quarters journey until it were back to normal. This has taken much longer time than we expected and than anyone expected. Our expectation is, as you know, coming from what our customers is telling us and then we try to make some clever conclusions based on that and that is not always correct. I think many customers has missed how much inventory there has been laying out in their supply chains after their internal warehouses.

That I think has been the biggest change or the biggest limitation when we look at the stock depletion at our customer side. Continuing operational highlights. I don't know if it's a highlight that the trade barriers have surfaced and that this has a big effect. But I have stated these numbers before. Our exposure is quite limited. We are not expecting that this will affect our sales more than, how should I say, marginal in the coming quarters. As I said before, we are expecting that any direct sales from China to U.S., that will be affected. We have a plan to relocate those customers into other factories to avoid the tariffs. Again on the purchase material, we are simply expecting to push that over to our customers if needed. We haven't seen that the tariffs have affected our supply chain costs yet. We buy very little from U.S.

I think we also looked at that number and I think it was like 1% of our purchase value is coming from U.S. into our factories. And that could be affected due to they have to buy products that will be affected on tariffs that they then resell back to Europe, but also a very limited number, 1% of our purchase spend went to American-based suppliers or shipped from U.S. Again this is one of the topics that we discuss with customers and our partners on the supply chain side on a daily or weekly basis. So we will keep this under good surveillance. As I mentioned before, delivery performance finally up to precomponent crisis levels. We're exceeding 95% on-time deliveries. That is very, very important. Quality, I think we are continuing to deliver PPM levels that are on the range of maybe 300, 400 PPMs, which is very low in electronics. So I'm very pleased with that as well.

Order stock is something that we are talking a lot about. I see that some of our peers is showing quarterly order stocks and so on and we are looking into how we can be even clearer in how we report the order stock. But we haven't changed it so it's the same way as we always reported. It's the total order stock for delivery during this year that we have and we are 4% lower than last year. We should remember that last year we still had orders from the component crisis level. So we are expecting that we will grow even though the order stock is negative. So this is how we see upon the length of the order stock. So if we will see our order stock coverage based on our forecast, then we see that the order stock is lower especially on the Q3 and Q4 numbers. So very technical answer on that one, but that is how we see it. We still invest in factory expansions. We still invest in new equipment.

We continue to, how should I say, adjust our business for a higher level of sales. We believe that this will happen and we also see that the customers are supporting that with the long-term forecast and so on. So we are expecting that we will bounce back into good growth numbers going forward. So we still do that. Our return on operating capital is 19%. It's the lowest we have shown in many years. So we need to be a bit better in managing our capital. Our profitability is at a good level, but we are a bit overcapitalized as I see it. Equity 50%, also good number. And our available cash is at all-time high. So that is very pleasing to see. We are geared up for acquisitions. We are geared up for continuing our investments and so on. And we have a good balance sheet to work with from that perspective.

Finally, we can see that our operating margin is increasing. I like these trend curves until somewhere in the mid of '23, then it became a bit more problematic to talk about. But we still believe that we will turn the curve also on the left hand side. We see that the sales is still declining. We are expecting that this will start to bounce back in the coming quarters. It's a bit hard to say when that happens. There is a lot of uncertainties in the market. But as I said, we are pleased to see that our operating margin is finally climbing back up towards the 10% line that I think should be our bottom line of profitability. So I think this shows that we are on the right path going forward. So all in all, it's very hard to make an outlook and we had long discussions in the Board, should we say something about this or should we just say nothing. And my personal view is that we should always say what we believe in.

We have been wrong sometimes and we have been -- I would say that we have been right more times than wrong, but the last year we had a few instances where we were wrong. And that is, how should I say this, it's not very pleasant to be CEO when we are underperforming towards our guidance. But again we should be the best to guide on where we are heading because I think that we have more information than anyone else. So we should be, how should I say, bold enough to say something here and we still do. But there is a lot of uncertainties. We still believe that Q2, the best guess that we see today is that it will be fairly much in line with last year just over SEK 1 billion. But we see the uncertainty so we have a little bit of a wider range to guide from because there is some uncertainties. We still believe that our profitability will be in line with what we have shown in the last 2 quarters.

So we still believe that the operating margin will continue to be in the range that we have been talking about for the last, say, 2, 3 quarters. So this is basically where we are heading. We still attract new customers. Our win rate is at the same level as it has been. The implementation of the new business is taking some longer time due to the customers are not pushing that hard to get the new products out. But we also have a good pipeline of new wins that we will implement in our sales. So that will add on to our top line. And with this knowledge, that is why I'm still optimistic even though we have seen 1 year of decline of our top line. We should also know that some part of the decline is component pricing. We have been open with that that some of the growth we saw in '22 and '23 was driven by higher purchase prices.

Since we are working very transparently, that will be negative when the purchase cost is going down. But that is also one of the effects that we have better margins on the work content than on the material content. So that is part of our profitability increase that we now see higher percentage number when we have a higher degree of work in the product mix than on the material. So that is basically what we see. I will stop here. We look forward to a very interesting second quarter and interesting rest of this year and we hope that the market conditions are getting more clear and that, how should I say, there is no more or bit less turbulence when it comes to new statements and discussions. But it's very interesting times and we are doing everything we can to mitigate all the things that happens.

So thank you for that and I open the floor for questions.

And we start in the room. If no questions here, I will go to the questions from the web. I have one from [ Christoffer Enell ]. Sales to new customers is difficult in EMS sector and Defense is one of the most conservative segments. There will be likely a lot of demand in Defense in the near future and also a need to ramp up production. Do you think that it could be a bit easier to break into Defense segment for companies like NOTE under these circumstances than it has been previously?

I would say yes to that. I think the companies that are used to produce for Defense will be more attractive as suppliers for new business in this area. There's a lot of, how should I say, security regulations when you produce defense material and if you are into this segment, that is something that will be. It's easier to grow rather than to adjust and cope with the demands that are in this segment. So I say yes to that to Christoffer.

The follow-up from him is have you seen any changes in the lead times on Defense orders during or after the quarter? Do you expect this to quickly revert to historical patterns meaning long lead times if we would see a peace agreement in the short term or are these shorter lead times a structural change in customer behavior in your view?

I would put it like this. Yes, I see that the cycles are shorter; not much, but shorter. I would say that the Defense customers need to speed up their internal processes to cope with the demand because I think that the demand in these times are much higher than what our customers in this segment are able to deliver. I know that they are working a lot to increase their capacity and their capabilities, but this segment has a lot more to learn from the fast-moving areas. So I sincerely hope that our customers are increasing their demand. We are investing to cope with these demands for sure. We can grow another 100% in Security & Defense this year if we have customers for it. That is not a problem for us. So we are open for new orders if I put it like that and we have very good discussions with our customers in this area of course. So this is very good. But I still believe that the need for defense material today is significantly higher than what the defense companies can produce. Therefore, the expectation is a very long cycle, maybe up to 10 years until the Western part of Europe has, how should I say, grown up or invested enough for the defense requirements and I think that is too long. So I hope that our customers can speed up their process.

Second question also from Christoffer. Does NOTE have customers in the portfolio that have significant business in U.S. and that could be impacted by the tariffs?

I think I've answered that one.

Then I have from Thomas Blikstad at Pareto. Thank you for the presentation, Johannes. In Q4 you mentioned that production volumes are slightly higher today than they are a year ago, but top line is the same due to lower component prices. Could you tell us more about the development this quarter? Aside from Defense, how did the backlog development this quarter? What sort of lead times do the orders received have? According to Q1 '24, Greentech sales was SEK 146 million, which is different from what was stated in the Q1 '25 report. Is there something I have missed?

Okay. I think that that question comes from that we haven't -- it could be that we have restated a customer or so. I don't know, but I have not noticed that, Thomas. I can get back to you on that one on a separate mail. I take a note of that and I come back to you. Yes. If we talk to the first question. You mentioned that production was also slightly higher today than they were a year ago, but top line is the same due to lower component prices. I would say that that is still valid. We see that our contribution margin that we call it, that means the margin after material has increased. So that means that our value-add is higher. So yes, I think that the same conclusion that I made a year ago or a quarter ago is still valid. On the order backlog, it's as you see, I think that also Defense is slightly lower on the order backlog side today and that is that the defense order you often get an order for, say, the next year delivery. And if you are on the back end of that order, the order content is lower because you have delivered on it. The forecast is very high from Defense, but the orders are coming what I call disruptive. So it could vary between the quarters even though we expect the sales to continue to grow. And that comes from that many of our Defense customers are adjusting the product to the customers' demand on the late stage. So that means that they don't want to put the firm orders too early. They want to put it when they have finalized the content of the product at their end and therefore, we get order slightly late even though we are still securing material to facilitate this. So that could be a change on that as well or it could vary between the quarters is a better way of putting it.

Okay from Karl Noren from SEB. The weakening of the USD against the other currencies, how do you think this will impact you in the coming quarters?

As I said before, I think a weaker USD will have a positive impact on our margins in the quarter. We report that as or we show how much that is affecting us so everyone understands it. In Q1 it was almost SEK 10 million in positive deviation on our margin, which is removed when we talk about the underlying OP. So in the short time frame, a weaker USD is good for our margins. In the long term, the best is that there is few fluctuations because that is much easier for us to navigate in, but that's another story.

Also from Karl, what is the problems in U.K.? Is it only demand driven or why would you say some of the acquisition made not being as good as planned?

The factory that we are closing is the old factory we have. It's the smallest factory. It's not one of the latest acquisitions. It's the one we acquired in 2009 I think. We have been struggling to get top line sales in that factory up for many, many years. And in this slowdown we are simply relocating some customers to fill up the other factories. So this is not one of the new factories that we are closing, it's the old one. But U.K. is not performing very strong when it comes to industrial production that is for sure. So it's a weak market at the moment. Their economy has been struggling from many different reasons. We have seen quite high salary inflation as well. So it's a market that is a bit under pressure. We are expecting that we will see better numbers coming out of U.K. in maybe 2 quarters from today, but still it's a weak quarter.

Then we have from [ Tia ]. Could you give some comments as to your M&A pipeline?

Yes, we are actively looking at new acquisitions. We are not in final negotiation with anyone. We will come back to you as always when we are closing some 1 or 2 of these discussions. So that is where we are around acquisitions.

What similar sales in Q2 -- with similar sales in Q2 as in Q1, would you expect EBIT margin to be on similar levels around 10%?

Yes, that is my expectation. So that is in a perfect world, you can say that if we reach the same top line and if we have now closed the factory and reduced the cost, we would see a positive effect. I would say that there is a lot of mix into this as well. So my best guess is that we will remain in our span between 9.5% and 10.5% in Q2. That is the best guidance I can give and that is what we guide for. So yes, Karl, that is my expectation.

And that is the last question I have from here. So if there is not anything more from this room, I will close this information. Thank you for listening. Thank you.