AQ Group AB (publ) (AQ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Welcome, everybody, to AQ Group's year-end report. On the picture, we see a beautiful transformer and inductor in an enclosure that is produced by mdexx in Czech Rep for a German railway customer. Beautiful products that we will produce going forward. Now let's go to some fancy numbers. First, we'd like to talk about why you should invest in AQ Group. So we have an earnings per share CAGR of 14% over the past 10 years. We have made profit every quarter since the foundation in 1994. We have exposure to industrial market segments with underlying growth, meaning electrification, railway, defense, med-tech. And we also have a long history of acquisitions, 2 to 4 factories per year. And in 2024, we bought a lot more. We bought JIT Mech, 2 factories, Rockford 3 factories in the U.K., TechROi with engineering and prototype office in West Coast of Sweden. We also signed an agreement in 2024 to buy mdexx and Michael Riedel Trafobau in Czech Republic in Germany who produce transformers and inductor for demanding industrial customers. We have an extremely strong balance sheet with a net cash position, and we have a very nice track record of more than 30 years of profit. Some quick facts from AQ. We are 8,000 employees. We have a turnover of SEK 8.5 billion. We have 7 business areas, more than 15 market segments, manufacturing now in 17 countries with 4,000 customers globally. We have made profit every quarter, as I said, for 30 years, and we have increased the earnings per share with more than -- a little bit more than 14% every year for the last 10 years, and we make acquisitions and we are part of UN Global compact since 2012, which is our sustainability initiative. So to the fourth quarter then. Net sales decreased by 4% to SEK 2.1 billion compared to SEK 2.2 billion in the year previously. And operating profit increased with 7% to SEK 206 million, and profit after financial items increased with 14% to SEK 209 million, which makes -- gives us a profit margin in the quarter, which is 9.8%, which is extremely strong. We have positive, good profit after tax and a very nice cash flow in the quarter. And this gives an earnings per share before dilution of SEK 1.69 per share, which is an increase compared to previous year, which was SEK 1.46. For the full year, our net sales decreased with 5%, which is well below our target. We aim to increase by 15% per year. We will come back to that. Operating profit increased with 6% and EBITDA increased with 9%. And our profit margin before tax was 9.6%. Cash flow from operating activities was, for the first time in AQ's history, over SEK 1 billion, almost SEK 1.2 billion, and earnings per share before dilution was SEK 7.27 per share. Our equity ratio is way above our target at 67%, and the Board proposes a dividend of SEK 1.60 per share, which is an increase from SEK 1.33 per share the year -- in 2023. Here is a nice chart with earnings per share growth. I think this is important because this will drive share price increase, but also make it possible for us to actually invest in the business going forward. And we have been very successful in growing this quite a lot over the past 10 years. The net sales development is a bit disappointing, I must say. Growth was negative with 4% and organic growth was minus 9%. We'll dig deeper into that a little bit later. Currency almost 0, and then we're happy to add about 5% through acquisitions. We see a decrease in demand from our market segments in trucks, construction equipment, buses, agriculture and food and particularly in Europe. We still see strong increases in electrification -- power electrification and defense. And here is the organic growth chart. We -- maybe it is so that in 2023, it was a little bit too good organic growth as well. But anyhow, we try to counter the headwinds that we have and we try to win new business. And I will come to a little bit of what we are trying to do. In the recent quarter, we have won big projects from several customers. So on the 2 pictures on the left, we see one electrical cabinet for pantograph charging of electrical buses that we have won to one of our larger customers. This is a first order for us, and we will deliver a number of pieces to North America from our factory in Europe. We believe that this can be a big volume going forward because these electrical buses need charging and this customer is very strong in that sense. On the picture below, we see a number of people from -- because we have won a big contract with one customer that do a high-voltage direct current transfer of energy, and they are producing the control, or they are designing the control cabinets for that, and we have won a big contract for 2025, which we believe is good. In the middle, we have won 3 new tools of plastic parts for one of our biggest customers. This is a breakthrough because we have never delivered plastic to this factory before, and there are more tools to be won. But these are the first 3 tools. So we are very happy with that, winning new products from existing customers. On the top right is an electrical truck for Volvo. We love Volvo. They are a fantastic company, and they deliver -- they produce and design a lot of nice new products. And we have won a lot of parts to the new Volvo electric trucks in sheet metal, especially over -- both in '24, but also now already now in 2025, we have won a number of new contracts for new parts. In the bottom middle is a transformer cab with an enclosure that we have designed in our design office in Germany, and we have delivered quite a lot of this in 2024, but we see a big growth of this product in 2025. Our customers sell this to data centers, and it is a way to get uninterrupted power for one more second if the power for the data center is interrupted, which enable other power systems to be able to kick in so that they don't interrupt the power to the data center. We believe that this product will be increasing a lot in volume in '25, and we also will produce half of the volume in our new factory in Trutnov because we are lacking capacity in our factory in Hungary. On the bottom right is a bus from a company called New Flyer, who deliver buses to -- in North America. We have won a wire harness contract, which, in a way, will replace a little bit of the lost volume when Nova Bus closed its factory in Plattsburgh last year. So this is a good new contract for us with a new customer. So we're happy. And we believe we are already now won contracts for our Canadian factory, our U.S. factory, but also we believe that we will start deliveries from our Mexican factory soon. So these are some new customer wins. Despite these, we are not able to counter the decrease in volume that some of our customers have seen in '24. But we believe in, '25 would be a good year. Acquired growth, we are starting to get closer to our target. And I believe in quarter 1, we will -- if you just calculate, we will be above our target in acquired growth, which is good. We have managed to see a lot of nice deals, and I will speak particularly about some of them. This is just a summary of all the deals we made in 2024. We made 4 deals adding roughly SEK 900 million in sales on an annualized basis, and we paid about SEK 300 billion for that. We still have a good pipeline with companies that are interesting, but we are not really close to doing any deals in the first quarter, I would say. If we go into a little bit about mdexx and Michael Riedel that we signed an agreement in the end of -- just before Christmas. And now at the end of January, we managed to close this deal because we got the approval from German competition authorities to go ahead. So they are the #1 company in Germany to design and manufacture custom [indiscernible] transformers and inductors for industrial drives, railway, robots, electrical automation. There is a big design office in Weyhe, Germany; design and sales, I should say, with about 30 sales and design engineers. The manufacturing in Trutnov in Czech Republic is a modern factory with good equipment and a lot of capacity that we can now utilize because we have salespeople all over the world that can sell this capacity. So we're very happy to get this factory. They are very good also. You can see on the bottom right that they have been the Siemens Supplier of the Year 2 years in a row, and that is because they have very good delivery performance and quality. So it will be a great asset in the AQ portfolio going forward. And the people seem very engaged. We have met them now, and they are very hungry for new business. So it will be fun. This will increase our net sales together with Michael Riedel in Ilshofen, which is also a beautiful small transformer factory, will increase our net sales with about EUR 50 million in 2025. And we will -- by this acquisition, become then, of course, #1 in Germany because we were maybe #2 or #3 before, but now together with these 2 companies, we will be the biggest supplier of the dry type transformers in Germany, which is fun. This was just to show a little bit on the development in our inductive components segment. And the difference with this segment compared to many of the other segments is we have a lot of design content here. The map shows our design offices where they are located. So in every product we sell here, we also do the design even though we don't own the product in many cases. So for instance, let's say, Siemens come to us, they want to have a design, they will give us a specification, then we will do the design for them, do a type test and then if it's qualified, then we will start the delivery. Once that is done, it's very seldom that our product gets changed because if you pass the design and the testing, it's very hard to change. We see extremely good CAGR in this business segment, and we will continue to try to grow this business area going forward. And as you can see on the map, we are quite weak in both Western -- I mean, in U.S. and in Asia despite that we have 3 factories in Asia and only one now in the U.S. So there's good ample opportunity to continue to grow with these demanding industrial customers. We're very happy with this acquisition. On the margin then, is it sustainable or not? I don't know. But I think we have been able to show that we are very quick in adapting our costs based on our demands, and we will continue to do that going forward as well. I believe we -- our cost control is good, and we have an asset-light manufacturing. So it's quite easy for us to scale up and down and doesn't cost that much. We have -- despite our really good margin in quarter 4, we still have opportunities to improve operationally in a few of our companies, and we will do that in 2025. Mdexx acquisition, we can say, the factory in Trutnov combined with the design center in Weyhe was not very profitable because they were unutilizing the factory there. So we will make sure that we fill up that volume, but also we will implement the AQ culture of cost consciousness in this company, and it will improve the margin sequentially over the year. But we believe still that the margin will -- if we don't succeed in changing anything, then it will be a diluted margin because of this acquisition with 0.5 percentage points. Inventory and turnover development, it is not so easy to increase the inventory turnover in a declining -- when you have declining volumes, but still we are on a decent level at 3, even though our target is 3.5. We see a lot of good possibilities to improve this going forward. And we still have our project to improve, and we are learning by the month really. And several of the companies who have gone through our program have actually improved the inventory turnover. But then again, we add new companies that maybe haven't great inventory turnover to our portfolio. So then we need to teach them as well. So it is a struggle, ongoing struggle, but I think we show in our cash flow that we have a good turnover of our inventory. So we come to the cash. And the cash flow is really on a very good level, I would say. We are continuing to generate cash from the profits that we make, but also from turning the inventory in our factories. And this gives that we have a fantastic, I would say, we have the best financial position of all the contract manufacturers in the Northern Europe that are stock listed and that I know about. And this gives us, of course, opportunity to buy companies, but also to give a good dividend and also to invest together with our customers when they need increased capacity in some markets. So I think as a shareholder in AQ, I'm very proud to have a net cash position. It gives stability for the future. And who knows what will happen next year with everything that goes on, so then it's good to have some cash to be able to do funny things. Regarding investments, we are going to move one of our factories in Tallin. They have grown very -- a lot. This is AQ Trafotek, in Estonia, and they have grown a lot over the years since we took them over in 2019. And now we found an opportunity with actually a Swedish rental partner that they will build a factory for us, and we will move there. And it will actually not impact our costs at all, but we will get more space and be able to build a more optimized flow in that factory. This is a very well-run company. The gentleman on the picture, Tero, he is the Managing Director there, and he is an extremely good operations guy and running this company in a very efficient way. So it will be great for him to be able to set up his dream factory now, and we believe that we will be able to get more volume out of this factory without increasing the costs going forward. So it is a nice project. And it is, of course, the building, the red and gray building in the back that is going to be our new factory build in Tallin. This will be up and running in quarter 3 with full speed. And we don't expect any extraordinary costs or adjustments or so because of this. We have bought a new Mazak 15 kilowatts. It's actually a used machine, but it's almost no running hours. We bought it for SEK 10 million. This will enable us to grow in and in-source some of our sheet metal that we are buying externally in North and Europe, and also enable us to cut thicker material for defense customers that we have a lot. This will also reduce energy consumption compared to our old CO2 laser machine that we will put into retirement. This machine will be up and running in quarter 1 this year, and it will be a good boost to us, but primarily to our customers because we have been lacking a little bit capacity in this area. So it will be great. We have also invested, in 2024, quite a lot in renewable energy. We will continue to invest even more. This is a requirement from several of our customers that we reduce our CO2 footprint, and we are continually doing that. And the focus is, of course, to reduce the CO2 where the energy mix in the country is not great. So on the picture, you can see an installation that we have in India, the middle picture, and the right picture is from one of our factories in Bulgaria. Of course, in these countries where they have dirty energy, the energy is also more expensive, so the payback for these installations is very short. All of these installations are a mix of own installations where we own the equipment and in some cases, where we just buy the energy. So in the Indian case, for instance, we buy the energy from the supplier for 5 years, and then we own the equipment. In the Bulgarian site, we have bought the equipment. It depends on which business case is best and where we can reduce cost the most. All of these installations that we will do and that we have done have a return on investment of less than 5 years. So it makes sense to do that. But also, of course, we reduce our CO2 consumption, which is great and the customers love that. Quality and delivery precision. I see a small spelling mistake there. It should be January to December, but on-time delivery has improved quite significantly compared [indiscernible]. However, we are not satisfied. And you can see also that we have added some companies that maybe didn't have enough capacity, and we're lacking a little bit cash. So we are investing in them. It is Rockford , JIT Mech, but also in Transformer Solutions, in Inductives, Hungary, we're investing in order to increase our capacity in order to meet our customers' demand. On the quality level, I think we're extremely good. And of course, we have -- we are not perfect, but -- and we can still improve, but we are on a very high level, and that is super important for our customers. I believe that our on-time delivery will continue to increase next year and this year, in 2025. And we are really working hard to make it better. And one example of that is our Mexican factory that is now 100% on time with the deliveries, which they have struggled for a while. But we still have companies that need to improve this, and we have customers -- most of our customers are happy with our performance, but we still need to be better because we want to exceed our customers' expectations when it comes to delivering on time. And then we get back to why you should invest in AQ Group. You can read it by yourself. I know your time is precious and there's a lot of things that you want to do. So let's get into the questions instead.

If you want to ask a question please raise your hand and we will try to unmute you, if we can. Hopefully we can?

Yes, I can.

Now, Karl, you can unmute yourself now.

Yes, can you hear me?

Yes.

I have a couple of questions. Maybe regarding the demand outlook, I mean, minus 9% organic growth during the quarter. I read it's mostly driven by like truck, buses, construction equipment mainly. Are you getting any signs of better demand in those areas? Or do you expect them to continue to be weaker in the near term?

I think that it is very hard to predict the future and I've tried to do that in the past and have not been so successful in that. So I would avoid from giving forward-looking statements. I know that, for instance, that Volvo announced today that they will increase their production in Belgium, which is, of course, good, and this will have some impact on us, but I would refrain from giving any forward-looking statement like that. So I think we are doing a lot of sales work. We are taking orders. I believe that we will get back to organic growth. But when that will happen, it's very hard for me to predict.

But it sounds quite stable then near term, so to say, in those segments, so to say, tough segments?

It is not that we see any -- we don't see any major I mean, further increase. So -- but I wouldn't say either that we see that now it's going up again crazily. So I would be -- yes, it feels quite stable. And we try to win new business and grow anyway. But yes, it's not any rocket growth.

[indiscernible] rocket. Another question there on the German business that you've now taken over, and I think you owned it for almost 2 weeks now. So still early days, but I'm just wondering if you could give us some more information, I mean, on the profitability in terms of like the -- I think you said 5% EBITDA margin approximately for both of the businesses. But how is that on an EBIT level? Or -- yes, do you have a similar kind of P&L as you have with depreciation? Or how is that looking? A question for Christina, I'm not sure.

I mean I think we should be straightforward. I mean, Mdexx and Weyhe, they are not making profit. And we will need to do a lot of activities together with them. As I said, we need to implement the AQ core values of being cost efficient with everything we do, but also they have an underutilized factory in [indiscernible]. So I mean, we will focus on selling more to that, and we have already orders that we believe will fit there perfectly because now I get into details, but they are using exactly the same impregnation system, funnily enough as we are doing in Hungary and in one of our factories in Shanghai, which makes it quite easy to actually produce products in both places. So we have been lacking capacity there. So we believe we can fill it up. But then we also need to look on the cost structure of this business and make sure that we are getting the productivity that we want out of the whole business. On the Riedel side, I think they are doing maybe not a great margin, but I mean, they are still profitable. And I think there, it is -- yes, I think that will be -- that business will run okay. But we still -- we want to implement our ERP systems and increase the inventory turnover and do a lot of activities in order to increase the return of invested capital really. So there are a lot of work for us to do with these cases, and it's good that we have some more work to do. We like that.

And also they have been [indiscernible] cash, of course. So the financial situation has been hard. So we will look into that as well.

Yes, exactly. We will improve there. For sure, we will reduce the cost of capital in that sense.

Yes. So similar to JIT Mech maybe and Rockford?

Yes.

And actually, I have a question on the JIT Mech acquisition because now I just look through the report and their contribution on sales and earnings, and it looks like they had a quite weak or a little bit lower margin maybe than I would have expected for 2024. Is there anything we should be aware of there?

No. But I think in general, when we get family-owned businesses into AQ, there is almost always some things that can be improved. And I think here in terms of inventory management, there is some things that maybe we can help these companies with become better. So we see it also in the delivery performance. So I think they are very -- it is a very nice acquisition, and they will continue to grow for several years now with the customers they have. And manufacturing-wise, technology and the people are fantastic. So it will be a great acquisition going forward. But it is, as you say, maybe we found some something that was not perfect in the inventory in the end. But I think it is normal. I mean -- yes, so I'm not too worried about it.

Yes. That's -- last -- just one final one on the segment. I mean, it's the second quarter in a row, I think, where you have like around SEK 20 million in positive unallocated costs. So just curious about those figures and what it is?

I would say it's unallocated costs, managing the different reportings from the companies and so on. So it's mainly related to normal year-end adjustments and other corrections at group level.

Okay. So it's nothing extraordinary?

Not at all extra, normal costs, but we have difficulties in allocating to each of the segments. So they are unallocated, but normal running costs.

Thank you, Karl. So who will be next? Maybe we go to [indiscernible] then. Let's unmute him.

So also a question here on demand because, well, generally, this reporting season, we've seen pretty good order intakes from some of your customers like Volvo, both on the bus and construction equipment side. ABB, some mining companies also reporting really good order intake, but it doesn't seem like you're sharing that like picture right now. But could you maybe discuss when you could start seeing some of those orders trickle down to you then?

No. But it is tricky with the order intake because -- I mean, our customers, when they get an order, they are going to plan their production, they're going to -- let's say, their order intake is increasing. Then they will plan their production. They will ramp it up. They will place it in each of the factories that should be placed. And then eventually, they will release order to us. So of course, those orders should trickle down to us eventually. When it will come, it depends a lot on the different customers that you mentioned. So therefore, it's -- I'm reluctant to say that, yes, now it will go up there in that quarter and so on. But of course, if our customers receive a lot of order, if we are doing a good job and they like to place the order with us, then also our sales would increase eventually.

Okay. I have 2 more questions. One more on growth then -- could you discuss a bit how big defense is now as a share of total sales, and what you're seeing there in terms of growth for next year for 2025?

I would say like this, that it should be above 5% for 2024. And I believe that's so hard to calculate because in -- for forward, I mean backward is easy because then you calculate actual numbers. Forward is more difficult to say the share. But I strongly believe that we will continue to increase sales in the defense segment in '25. I would be very surprised if that will not happen.

Okay. And then a final one for me. Looking at the margin, it's so strong and despite the negative organic growth here. So are there any mix questions we should be considering here that is boosting the margin? Any help from you there would be helpful.

Yes. Maybe -- I mean, it can be a little bit product mix, of course, but I would say also that we have been very -- we are being boosted a little bit by the fact that we have reduced a lot of people the last year. And the people you reduce first are the ones that are rented or not on a permanent contract. And of course, the best people we try to keep in the businesses. So I would say a large part of this is that we really are able to -- the people that we have are more productive, that gives a big boost, I would say. And then -- I mean, we are trying also to move into doing more design work for our customers. And we believe that, that should give us better margin going forward. And I tried to write a little bit about it in the report. I mean adding more design should make our customer more competitive because we will design more, I mean, in a way that is easier to manufacture for us. And hopefully, our idea is that with that, our customers will become more profitable, but also we will become more profitable because that we are doing designs that are adapted to our manufacturing. And we have added a lot of engineers in 2024, both recruited and through acquisitions. And we believe that should be good going forward. Last one is also that in 2023, we had a lot of delivery issues, especially in the fourth quarter. And now we are delivering much more on time and in a better pace. Even though it's just 2 percentage points, it's actually a lot in days and weeks. So we're getting more satisfied customers, but also we are getting a little bit more profit because it's easier to plan the production at the moment than it was. So there are many things that will affect the margin. Then you can say also, I mean, I have mentioned in this presentation as well that we like this inductive component space because there is a lot of design engineers. We have doctors designing these kind of products. And there is -- we are very good at this for the market segments that we are in. And that should also be boosting a little bit the margin, I would say. And then we have maybe a question from Albin.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes.

All right. Perfect. Just to continue there on Forbes' last question. I think I saw a slide where inductive components was roughly the same 2024 as 2023. Is that correct? And if so, have you even with no increase there, increased the margins for inductive components?

I would say, I mean, we don't really report like that. But I would say like this that it is a -- the chart there is a little bit hard to -- it is actually an increase in the inductive components business area in '24 versus '23. So they have actually -- we have actually grown that segment organically, I would say, in '24. And as I said, I mean, we deliver -- it is -- if you design -- and we can go back to the first picture that I had. If you design these kind of things -- trying to see if I can go back, you saw it, but you move back in time. But if you design these kind of components, I mean, here, we have designed the enclosure, the inductor, which is closest, the transformers that are sitting behind and then we assemble it into a system. This one will be sitting either underneath or on top of a train and then it will be cooled by fans and air that is flowing from the train. And if you design it wrong, it will burn and then the train will stop. So these kind of components, they are very hard to do both on design and manufacturing. And we can do it now globally in AQ, even though we have the biggest footprint in Europe. And this should have a positive impact, we believe, on our margin compared to when we just delivered a simple bracket. I mean this is a testament to our -- that we want to do more difficult things for our customers because then we believe we add more value.

Yes. That's clear. And also, you mentioned good defense demand several times. And I think I lost the some when you answered one of the previous questions. So roughly, is it possible to say how much you expect the defense demand to grow in '25? And also how is the margin mix for the defense end market compared to the group as a whole?

No. But I think it is maybe a little bit higher. I mean the demands in the defense industry are really, really high on traceability of materials and security, I mean, both IT and physical security in the factories need to be really on the top level. And of course, this should give a bit higher price, I would believe. So -- and in terms of how fast it will grow, it is a little bit tricky, I would say, because the -- if you compare to truck, for instance, truck factory, they are extremely easy to see the demand because they plan so well and they have a fantastic ecosystem to plan that. Defense has been -- in Europe, I mean, it has been almost nothing for the last 10 years. And they started to produce now and recruiting a lot of new people. And I mean, they need to build the whole ecosystem again almost. So it is a lot of disruptions in the production and in the factories and they lack capacity, they don't have space and so on. So it's going back and forth. So very hard to predict how much will it be in '25. As I said, I believe it will grow in '25 in absolute numbers compared to '24 because our customers has won a lot of new orders where we will deliver the parts to. Then if they are able to produce those in the first or last quarter of 2025, I don't really know. But I still believe that the defense segment will grow for us, and we think it's fun and good, and I think we're quite good at it as well.

Yes, that makes sense and very clear. So just 2 more here. So for one of the new customer wins, you mentioned that you delivered to electrical buses from Europe to North America. Should we translate that to the U.S.?

No, no, sorry, sorry. For that electrical bus, if I said it was from Europe, I didn't mean that. The win is for our North American plants will deliver to -- wire harnesses to North American customers. It's not U.S.-based -- or they are based in -- I think it's Canadian, but they are -- they have a lot of factories in U.S. And we have won several new items for them, both from our factory in Canada and U.S., and we're working to get also orders for our factory in Mexico.

All right. And then can you just remind and guide us of the impact of Pillar 2 here for '25 and forward?

As we write, we have significant business in currently low tax countries. So it will impact. However, we see already impact this year if you compare average tax rate this year compared to previous years. So based on not giving forward-looking estimates on where we are doing the profits for '25, we cannot provide more guidance. But on overall level, we think we have quite high average tax rate already 2024. It might increase somewhat next year, but that is totally dependent on where the profits are going to be generated. So we do not expect any super major impact because we already see a much higher average tax costs already this year.

Karl has some more questions, I see.

Yes, so much questions, so much fun here with AQ. So I have one question regarding -- I mean, I think it was in Q3 where you mentioned that you got some larger orders, I guess, from an inverter company for mechanical enclosures in your plant in Bulgaria, but you didn't mention it here. And I think you were quite optimistic about it back then. So if you could give us an update on the plans there, and what's going on would be interesting?

No, but it is in full swing now in quarter 1. So we are serial deliveries and our factory in Bulgaria is very busy making these enclosures for this customer in Germany. So it is -- it should generate a growth in '25.

Okay. And that will help already in Q1, but it was no sales in Q4 or...

There were some sales in Q4, but it would be more in Q1.

Okay. That's good. And then I have a question regarding your exposure to, say, lot of nuclear power. Is that anything where you see increased demand or where you see any activity?

Yes. I mean we are delivering electromechanical relays for one of our customers that sell them, but we don't really see any -- if you would build a new nuclear power plant, you would not use that technology. So currently, I don't see any major demand at least from any of our factories for that. We deliver some electrical cabinets for Westinghouse. So maybe a little bit, but it's not significant anyway. Any more questions? Okay. Then me and Christina, we would like to thank you so much for listening and see you hopefully for the quarter 1 report, if we don't see you before. Okay. Thank you all. Have a good day. Bye-bye.

Bye.