Cavotec Group AB (CCC) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Cavotec Q4 Report 2025. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to CEO, David Pagels; and CFO, Joakim Wahlquist. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and welcome to Cavotec's fourth quarter presentation. I am David Pagels, CEO of Cavotec. And together with me today, I have, as usually, Joakim Wahlquist, CFO of Cavotec. I would like to start with a short introduction of Cavotec for those of you who are not familiar with us. Cavotec was founded 50 years ago by 3 entrepreneurs in Sweden. Since the foundation, Cavotec has focused on delivering innovative engineered solutions that enhance safety, reliability and performance in areas such as ports and other industries where our electrical cable reels or remote controls are needed. Our product enables electrification, decarbonization and of course, automation of ports, but also in mines and other industrial applications. As part of its global expansion, Cavotec moved to Switzerland in 2007. In 2025, we successfully completed the move of our registered office back to our roots in Sweden. This move will bring us closer to the shareholder base in Sweden and will enable us to become more efficient and agile. Presently across the globe, we have 719 employees. As you know, we report 2 business segments. Our service offering is reported into those business segments. Ports & Maritime, provides world-leading solutions for ports, ships and marine applications. We have a unique system, for example, automated mooring, shore power, crane electrification and connections and charging systems. All these solutions contribute significantly to improved environments and working conditions in ports worldwide. Our customer includes ship owners and operators, ports and terminals, port equipment manufacturers and shipyards. Ports & Maritime is our largest segment and represent the majority of the group sales. For the Industry segment, our unique selling point is our ability to drive productivity and contribute to customers' operational efficiency, electrification needs as well as occupational health and safety. The products include motorized cable and hose reels, radio remote controls, power connectors, spring-driven cable reels as well as host reels. We have customers in a wide variety of industrial sectors such as cranes, energy, processing and transportation, surface and underground mining as well as tunneling. Service is, as I mentioned, an important part of our -- and also a growing part of our offering and now stands for approximately 30% of the group's revenue. It is an integrated part of our business segment, and we have service engineers across the globe. The service offering includes system integration, maintenance, sale of spare parts, of course, inspections, refurbishments as well as around-the-clock service agreements. Our underlying market remains strong, driven by the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve port environments and increase customer efficiency. This, in turn, is driven by the strong mega trend to electrify society. At the same time, we see an increasing awareness globally to reduce noise and pollution levels, for example, in ports. The need to electrify society and improve environment, in example, ports also manifested in regulations, governmental requirements that affect our customers and drive their demand. Over our 50 years, we have built a strong expertise and experience in these areas and have a strong and attractive offering based on our leading technology. This gives us the ability to grow with both new and existing customers and thereby expanding our installed base. We have built a long-term customer relationship where we, together with customers, develop the best solutions for their unique applications. The installed base is important to us because it provides us the opportunity to offer our comprehensive range of service activities. We operate in large markets, and now we present a little bit how they are split here. As you can see, around 60% of our business is Ports & Maritime sector and 40% in the other 3 that fall under Industry segment. Within Industry, the mining industry accounts for around half of our business. Ports where the need for global trade is only increasing year after year, so electrification, safety, productivity are key. Shipping cannot really be more global with a large installed fleet of vessels and continuous growth to meet future needs. The mining industry has a clear agenda to become more sustainable and automated for tomorrow's increasing need for minerals. Construction, another growing segment with high ambitions for electrification and increased efficiency. General industry is a little bit of everything where our products can play an important role in supporting electrification, safety and automation. In summary, the segment where we have been operating in over the last 50 years are more relevant than ever. In Cavotec, we have 4 areas of strategic priorities. Ports & Maritime. In Ports & Maritime, we intend to keep and achieve a leading position with our core products, increased innovation in existing products and develop new products to complete our portfolio. We also focus our focused growth strategies for prioritized product groups. Moving over to Industry. For Industry, we want to grow with a more proactive approach and innovations co-developed together with our customers. We also strengthened our strategic partnership, and we have focused on growth strategies for prioritized product groups. When it comes to services, we will continue to grow our offering and realize the full potential in service from our large and ever-growing installed base for Cavotec installations worldwide. Fourth, we also have now created a platform for acquisitions that can enhance our market position, strengthening our operational capabilities and drive innovation. So a little bit more into the Ports & Maritime. During the quarter, we have presented several significant contracts that will demonstrate the strength of our offering. We reported in Q4 a report for -- with a total value of EUR 9.4 million, including shore power system for new build and existing container vessels. The customer, a leading global container shipping company, has signed orders with us during 2025, totaling up to EUR 17.5 million. It is a good mark of our delivery capacity and product quality when a leading player in the industry gives us increased confidence. A large part of the latest orders involves retrofitting of our shore power systems on existing vessels. This means that we install our solutions on the vessels when they are in operations between Asia, America and Europe. These are, without doubt, challenging projects that require a lot of logistics and technical know-how, and we are proud to have this competence and experience in our work team. We also signed an order to deliver the first shore power system in Maldives. We expect the system to become an important reference in the region and may create opportunities for more projects in the nearby areas in South Asia. We announced an order worth approximately EUR 2 million from a Danish ferry operator, Molslinjen, for our automated vacuum mooring technology, MoorMaster next generation. The system will be delivered to the port of Odden and Aarhus and support the operation of high-capacity battery-powered catamarans on one of the Denmark's most business ferry routes. This strengthened our partnership with our long-standing customer, Molslinjen. Excuse me a second here. So sorry for that. Moving over to industry, some recent events happening there. During the quarter, we strengthened our relationship with the customer, TAKRAF, by signing an order for cable hose reel systems to be delivered on one of Morocco's largest companies that processes and produces phosphate and sulfur. The order strengthened our positions in the growing mining and mineral sector in North Africa and in the bulk materials handling market. We have also announced first major orders from Australian construction and engineering company, Civmec, for the supply of motorized cable and hose reels for the Port of Hedland in Western Australia, one of the largest iron ore export ports. Receiving another order from the same customer reflects the confidence our customers have in Cavotec's technology and proven expertise in demanding industrial environments. By this, I hand over to Joakim for some more comments on the financial figures.

Thank you, David. We will start here with a quick summary of the fourth quarter, and we can say that the revenue growth was healthy. Cash flow increased strongly, and we strengthened our financial position. Order increase -- decreased slightly in the quarter compared to last year with 1.7% ending up on EUR 124 million. Revenue increased 9.1% to EUR 49.5 million, driven by a very strong development in the Industry division. Adjusted EBIT increased 0.9% to EUR 3.9 million. And here, Ports & Maritime contributed negatively, while Industry had a positive impact on EBIT and profitability in the quarter. However, we have continued to see that Ports & Maritime customers remain cautious. And for the full year of 2025, we report a negative result for the group. And in light of this, we have decided to initiate some cost-saving measures in 2026 to build a stronger Cavotec. Let's move to order intake. So order intake decreased 22.1% to EUR 47.9 million due to continuous cautious approach among the Ports & Maritime customers. This has to be compared though with a very strong Q4 2024. It's good to see that the Industry division showed a positive order intake, driven mainly by a good demand in the -- for motorized cable reel systems. Order backlog decreased 1.7%, like we said, to EUR 124.2 million and decreased slightly also from the third quarter due to increased deliveries also from Industry. Going into revenue. Like we said, revenue increased with 9.1% to EUR 49.5 million, driven by strong development in Industry, but also as a result of a lot of deliveries of orders that we took in Q4 2024 in the Ports & Maritime division. There's also a slight negative impact from currency of 2% during the quarter. Here, we also show a bit of the geographical split for the full year of 2025, where we can see that 55% of the revenue came from EMEA, while 35% in the Asia Pacific, and a bit of a smaller portion at 9% from the Americas. Moving over to EBIT. Adjusted EBIT increased with 0.9% to EUR 3.9 million, and the adjusted EBIT margin decreased slightly to 0.6% to 7.8%. Ports & Maritime contributed negatively, while Industry had a positive impact on EBIT and profitability in the quarter. EBIT has been adjusted in the fourth quarter for nonrecurring costs connected to our relocation of the registered office to Sweden with EUR 0.24 million. We now consider the relocation to be finalized. Now over to the net result. Net profit for the period increased with 3.1% to EUR 1.7 million compared to last year. Earnings per share, basic and diluted, increased with 6.7%. And I must say that even though we had a bit of a tougher part of the -- beginning of the year here, it's nice to see a strong ending of 2025. Let us move on to the cash flow situation. Cash flow has been positively impacted by strong deliveries and reduced working capital. It is pleasing to see how successful this work has been during the year and operating cash flow grew with 161% to EUR 6 million, due to the work in all areas, I must say, but also good advances from customers. Net debt continued to improve to EUR 8.8 million from EUR 15.3 million December -- 31st of December 2024. So good improvements there. Our leverage ratio is now back at levels below 1x again and amounted to 0.96x in the quarter compared to 0.91x in the same period last year and 1.44x at the end of the third quarter 2025. The equity and equity assets ratio decreased to 35.7% at the end of 2025 from 38.9% at December -- 31st of December 2024, but increased from 35.6% at the end of the third quarter 2025. So in summary, this is a positive development for our financial position. And let us now look into the 2 segments and their performance. Starting out with the biggest segment, Ports & Maritime. Order intake decreased with 33% to EUR 29.3 million, reflecting a continuous and cautious approach among the customers. To keep in mind is that this is, again, a comparison with a very strong Q4 of 2024. Revenue decreased with 4.6% to EUR 28.5 million, and the order backlog increased with 1.5% to EUR 103.9 million in the quarter. Currency had a negative impact of 2.1% and EBITDA decreased with 50% to EUR 2.3 million, and the margin decreased 7.2 percentage points to 8.2%, showing that we really are in need of volumes in this segment to keep the profitability up. Compared to previous quarters during the year, profitability improved at least, which is good to see since the previous quarters have been more challenging this year or last year, I should say now. Remember that though that Ports & Maritime has a project-driven nature, and it can fluctuate quite a bit between the quarters performance. Going into Industry. The Industry segment order intake increased with 4.6% to EUR 18.6 million. That said, the order backlog decreased a bit, but that's good. We managed to actually deliver out quite a bit here during the quarter. Revenue increased with 35.5% to EUR 21.1 million, following very good demand, mainly for motorized cable reel systems. Even here, we had a bit of a currency effect that impacted about 1.9%. So EBITDA amounted to EUR 2.8 million, and the margin improved 9.3 percentage points to 13.2%, which is very nice to see, reflecting higher -- reflecting the higher revenue and improved operational efficiency. And I think it's really good to see that increased customer focus, cost savings activities, efficiency measures that we've implemented last year is continuing to deliver results and the EBITDA margin more than doubled in the quarter. We still have more work to be done here in the Industry segment, but we are very pleased with the development, and we continue to see a very big market potential in this segment. And with those words, I will leave it back to David for some final words.

Thank you, Joakim. Let me then quickly summarize some key points before we open up for questions. In summary, we could say strong Q4, but we were not able to compensate for the weak start of 2025. That's more or less in a nutshell. However, with some works, during the fourth quarter, Sales growth was healthy. Cash flow increased strongly, and we strengthened our financial position. However, we see that customers remain a bit cautious, mainly within Ports & Maritime at the same time as the mining industry is showing a strong positive trend. For the full year 2025, we reported negative results. In light of this, we have decided to initiate cost-saving measures in 2026 in order to build a stronger Cavotec. The activities and related costs for improved efficiency will be presented in the first quarter report in April 24. Within -- with a lower cost base, we are well positioned to increase -- to create value when customers -- when their customers -- our customers' willingness to invest returns, and it will. We have a long history and well-regarded brand, and we have built a strong market position during our 50 years in the business. Our underlying market remains strong, and we are well aligned with mega trends like electrification, automation and regulations. So by that, we finish the presentation.

Yes. And we're going to open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Albin Barnevik from ABG Sundal Collier.

This is Albin Barnevik from ABG standing in for Lara Mohtadi. So my first question is on the soft order intake within P&M, acknowledging there were tough comps in the quarter. Are these projects being canceled or just postponed? And are deliveries still being delayed by port authorities, for instance?

We have had -- we presented before that we have some delays due to port authorities approving solutions. This is more or less South European issue. We see light. We see improvements there. It's happening, but unfortunately, it should have happened earlier. But in general, we don't -- we're not worried for -- we don't have any canceled orders or anything. It's more that it takes a little bit longer time for customers to decide. And therefore, we talk more about pushing forward rather than cancellations.

All right. All right. I see. And yes, on that then, the visibility -- what visibility do you have on customer caution when that could reverse going into '26 now within P&M?

I think we're starting to see a trend that, okay, everyone is a little bit shocked what's happening in the world in general. And therefore, they wait. But at the same time, they can't hold back too long. So they need -- and they are coming and people need to realize that we need to go to business as usual and meet the demand. So we already see that it's softening up. But of course, when you have drastic decisions from one day to the other, people get a little bit nervous. But we see now that people are a little bit used to the nervousness, so to say, and need to move on anyway.

I see. And on the solid development for industry in the quarter, you had a strong top line development and margin expansion there. What were the underlying factors driving this? Could you outline and put some color on that?

I think it's a result of a couple of things. First of all, we have increased our activity in the field. We are more with customers. But at the same time, as also mentioned in the presentation, we are really stepping in and want to develop things with our customers. And we are working with our OEM customers in the mining industry, if we are involved early, we can optimize their design and we can help them to get the most cost-efficient solution that they need for tomorrow. And those early involvement is something which are very appreciated. It takes some time, of course, to build up that relationship. But when it's established, then we are the natural partner for them to cooperate with. Same thing happened on the radio side, where we also work with customer. We have developed our radio next-generation belly box, which also has been done in cooperation and getting inputs from customers in order to really reflect their needs and the future needs when we're designing our new radio. So that's the kind of things that gives a good relationship with customer, and we are then selected and we are the natural corporation partner with them. And that's, of course, the position we want to have.

All right. All right. And on the announced cost-saving measures that are to be detailed in Q1, what magnitude of costs are you targeting here?

Yes. I think that we will hold off on the magnitude of that until the Q1 report. We have continuously worked with cost savings measures and efficiency improvements over the last few years. Obviously, there are a bit -- a need for a bit more measures if the cautiousness on -- from the customer side is being prolonged here. So we have a battery of activities that have been planned. We will quantify them a bit more for you in the Q1 release.

I see. And can you expand a bit on the strong operating cash flow? Is the net working capital reduction in the quarter sustainable going forward? Or how should we look towards that?

I think that you need to keep in mind the project-driven nature of our business, so -- which also obviously impacts cash flow from one quarter to the next quite significantly. Having said that, we have had continuous work on all areas and how we work with accounts receivable, prepayments with customers, also inventory management, volume planning and so on and so forth to optimize working capital and increase the cash flow. So we have been working on all areas, and this continues to be a focus for us. Okay. We have a couple of more questions here from the audience. So how do you see product innovation? And do you have any interesting products in pipeline? David?

Yes. We have, since a couple of years back, clearly set up new effort, time and money for new product development in order to continue to be in the front line. We will do -- we have done so, and we have several things in the pipe. We presented the highest number of new products in 2025, but we'll continue with that trend. And of course, we have interesting things to be launched during 2026 as well. However, we don't really want to give the hint to our competitors what we are planning to launch, and you will hear it from us when it's ready to be launched. But it's across the entire company. That's clear.

We have one good question here. Has services as a part of the business provided some stability during this more difficult times? And how do you see this part of the business develop in including the margins in 2026? Yes. I can say that the services business has been a big focus in Cavotec over the last few years. We realized that we had an untapped potential in the already existing installed base, but also that we could do more with the new sales. And we continue, obviously, to build new -- build the installed base also giving us further potential. We have increased the field service technicians out there, the people that are working -- generating the services business also across the globe. So we have increased the capacity there. So all of these things -- and obviously also strengthened our service offerings in many ways. So it's been -- we've worked on all angles on the services business over the last few years, and these are -- we can see the effects from that. And obviously, this is an important part for us because there are -- there is an element of cyclical impact in our industry also. So we need to have a strong service business to be able to cover periods that are a little bit tougher, which 2025 has been. Okay. We have some more questions here. We can see -- what is your exposure to the mining trends?

Yes. No one has been able to miss the fact that the mining is going very, very strong in general with the raw material prices going sky high and at the same time, of course, the need and the opening of new mines worldwide is also booming. We are a key supplier to the OEMs delivering critical equipment for mines since many years. That's really how we started for the underground. At the time, it was called Atlas Copco, now it is Epiroc. So of course, those customers is important for us, and they see a positive trend going forward. At the same time then, we have been more or less focused on the electrification underground. At the same time, the trend is now going that the electrification is going to happen also for open mines on surface mines. And therefore, they don't do it for their environmental purpose of -- environment, but they don't do it for the pollution in the mines. They do it for the need to electrify also and reduce the greenhouse gases on the open pit mines as well. So it's a strong trend. What we have seen in the underground is also not going to come in the open pit mine, which is the majority of the mines, to be fair.

Okay. I think that was the questions we had here today. If no further questions popping up here in our chat. Yes, we have one here, one more coming now. The order backlog was stable. What are the lead times in the order book and when will the order book be delivered? It depends a little bit on the 2 different divisions here. I think that in the Ports & Maritime division, it varies between 1 to 2 years, the order book -- the lead times in the order book. And on the Industry side, it's typically 3 to 6 months, but some projects can be up to a year. So that's a little bit different depending on the division.

And on the -- to add there as well, on the service-specific things, the portion of that business, of course, is that we're selling everything from spare parts, which is more or less a very, very short lead time as well as the service level agreements, which we signed with our customers where we are then engaged and that is normally 1 to 2 years that they sign and after that, they renew the service level agreement. So it's a mixed business there, which reflects even Industry and in Ports in a way.

Yes. Correct. Correct. Okay. I think that wraps up the question -- Q&A part. So thanks, everyone, for all your good questions. I leave it to you. Thank you, David.

Yes. Thank you very much for listening in and for supporting our business going forward. We are really looking forward to 2026. 2025 didn't turn out as we expected. However, we finished the year strong, meaning we are in a strong direction and momentum here in 2026. So we're definitely looking forward to drive the business also in this existing year. Thank you very much for listening.

Thanks, everyone.