Clavister Holding AB (publ.) (CLAV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to our Clavister Q1 Interim Report Presentation. My name is Ora Gauter, and I will be your host for today's session. And presenting the report today are John Vestberg, Clavister's CEO; and David Nordstrom, Clavister's CFO. We will start today's session with the presentation of the Q1 report, and then we will have a time for Q&A. So please use the Q&A box to submit your questions throughout the presentation and we will get to them towards the end. And now without further delay, I would like to hand over to you, John, for the presentation.

Thank you very much, Ora. And again, welcome. As usual, starting with a quick summary of the quarter, of Q1. Taking a bit of an outlook first into the geopolitical situation, not dwelling it into it too much, but it is a very important point that I think sets the narrative for both current but definitely future growth of Clavister. So I mean, obviously, it's no news. We have wars raging close to our borders. We have all the hybrid warfare going on. We see attacks on critical infrastructure, on energy grids, on the financial systems. Just the other week, we had a blackout of the Swedish Bank-ID system as one example. What might be less obvious, but for us in the industry, it's very obvious these days, seeing a strong pro-European agenda driven by political leaders in Europe, by business leaders with the narrative to drive a European digital sovereignty. In other words, having less dependency on American, Israeli and other countries' technologies. Naturally, as a cybersecurity company, this is good news. I mean the reasons are perhaps not good given what's happening in the world, but the consequences for European industry is good, especially in the cybersecurity industry. So we see examples happening all days long now with companies driving anti-American technology agendas, looking at European alternatives to American cybersecurity products. And I think we've been quite clear in previous communication that the good news is that there are not too many European cybersecurity vendors with the type of portfolio that Clavister has. The bulk of the ecosystem is U.S.-based vendors. So that's good news, even though the circumstances are dire. If we look at some numbers, we saw a really, really strong order intake growth in the quarter, 190% growth. And of course, a key part of this is additional defense orders, but there is more as well, which David will dwell into a bit later. If we look at net sales, we reached SEK 53 million of net sales in the quarter. That corresponds to 21% growth even in the current very interesting currency effect situation that we have, which also David will come back to. So strong net sales growth. And altogether, we then have an order book of SEK 356 million. So if you recall from the previous quarter, we closed exactly at SEK 300 million. Now we increased the order book quite significantly. We -- at the end of the quarter, we closed the Series 9 warrant exercise with a fantastic outcome, 98.9% exercise rate, which is slightly higher than even the Series 8, which was good. So that adds good cash to Clavister and allows us to further reduce our debt levels, which is exactly according to the plan. Moving ahead to some of the key events and key business details in the quarter. So one very important aspect of the quarter was the growth of deliveries in hardware products or hardware units. We saw actually 111% year-on-year growth of shipments. That's probably the highest growth we have in shipments. What's important here is that this is typically sort of a 2-step process. The first step is delivery of hardware. The second step is the activation of software running on that hardware. So every device, every hardware unit we ship is typically, there are some few exceptions. But typically, every hardware consists of or carries a Clavister software license. So as a consequence of this, when the products reach the end customer, when they get deployed, when they get registered, when they get started, that also triggers the start of a recurring software license revenue. So all of these deliveries happening in Q1 sets the tone for upcoming software subscription license revenues going forward. That's a very, very important message. We've communicated before as well that given that we take the full cost of the hardware directly at delivery, when we have this high growth of deliveries, it also pushes gross margin slightly and that's temporary. But despite these high volumes, we're proud of maintaining a solid gross margin, 75%. It's a few percentage points lower than our average target of 80%, but it shows or it demonstrates that the gross margin is really resilient despite these really, really high volumes of hardware. So that's one of the key messages from the quarter. If we look at some of the main events, some of the selected events, in the defense sector, we had the opportunity to be selected as a supplier to a new defense customer, a major European defense company, drawback working in this industry is that we cannot disclose names typically. Anyway, this customer is a completely new defense customer to Clavister. So it adds to the overall portfolio that had started with BAE Systems and getting complemented with more customers as we go. This customer or this company produces a range of different defense systems that are used by over 100 armed forces worldwide. So it's a well-established industry, well-established company. In one of the new systems they have designed for some years now, they have then selected Clavister to be integrated as a cybersecurity component in this new system. The interesting thing, and I think we've alluded to that in previous calls that in the defense systems, even though the lead time to getting from initial contact to order is long, typically several years, once we're in these systems, we're sticky for a very long time. This specific system has an expected lifetime as communicated to us by the customer for over 20 years. So this means that as long as we play our cards correctly, we will likely see revenues coming from this customer for 20 years. If we look at the systems still within the defense sector then, of course, we were able to close a new contract for the CV90 infantry fighting vehicle, delivering our CyberArmour product family to yet another European nation that are deploying CV90s. This time, the contract is worth SEK 68 million and has an option as well to grow the contract potentially then to SEK 96 million. So quite a significant order in the CV90 family. The contract spans over 3 years. Series deliveries are planned to start early 2027 and then continues then for 3 years. With this, we have now established a footprint where our products are being used by not less than 7 different nations using the CV90 platform. So that's fantastic. That's really good. Worth to remember still that if you look at our P&L, there is still only one nation that has an impact on revenue and earnings which is the contract that we signed in 2021 that we are in series deliveries on at the moment. Additional contracts that we have signed, they will start providing revenue support from the second half from late 2025 essentially. So the bulk of revenue coming from the contract base will start 2026 and span over 3, 4 years. If we look at the civilian side of things, we were able to sign a contract with what we refer to a global technology provider. It is a company that delivers real estate technical solutions or technology to the commercial real estate industry. They needed a solution to basically overall increase the cybersecurity footprint across their infrastructure. They had evaluated a number of vendors for a while, including American vendors and eventually decided to go with Clavister, which we're, of course, really happy with. The first contract we signed with them stands at or is valued at approximately SEK 15 million, and we have already started on delivering on that. We also announced quite recently an interesting collaboration with NXP Semiconductors. If you're not familiar with NXP, they are a well-established leader in electronics. They build CPUs or controlling units and so forth for the automotive sector specifically. There is since a while back, perhaps a couple of years back, there is a UN directive, a UN resolution that mandates civilian car manufacturers to integrate technical solutions for cybersecurity in cars, in civilian cars. Even though Clavister has specifically not indicated or not selected the civilian car industry or the automotive industry as a target vertical, we are still, of course, exploring these type of collaborations where partners can bring our technology into other segments. In this case, what NXP is doing, they are integrating our AI component, our AI technology into one of their CPU platforms. And by doing that, we, together with NXP, are able then to basically push the narrative to the automotive industry. The demand is there, obviously, due to the UN resolution, but able to demonstrate to the industry that here is a perfect example of technology runs on well-established electronics components, being able to provide the level of security and the type of security that is required by regulations. So super interesting collaboration. Of course, it's a bit on the technology edge. It is more research than commercial, but definitely driving an agenda and sets the tone and spreads the Clavister brand where we need it. Moving then to David and walking us through the numbers a bit more.

Yes. Thank you, John. So we start with order intake. So as John said previously in the presentation, we see 190% growth of order intake for the first quarter. Definitely, the large BAE order is, of course, very important to land in this large growth, but we've also been seeing a very good momentum and strong growth in our civilian firewall business. So these 2 are leading the order intake growth in the quarter. Looking at the order intake trend, we see that we land on yet again above SEK 300 million over the trailing 12 line. So that's also, of course, very positive. Net sales-wise, we see that we've been able to translate quite a lot of the order intake in the period and also deliveries from the order book we had in Q4 to deliveries in Q1. We have quite big impact on FX effects. As you know, it's quite a lot of turmoil on the currency market. So the SEK has improved quite substantially versus both the euro and the USD during the quarter. And since roughly half of Clavister's sales comes from euros and USD, mainly euros, this, of course, has a negative impact on our net sales. So if you look at adjusted -- FX adjusted net sales, that lands on 24%, so well above our target. However, as I said before, when we're tracking net sales growth performance, we do that on reported numbers. So 21% growth, but with big FX impacts. And the biggest driver here is a good momentum in the civilian firewall business. I mean the -- we have seen good growth with the focus we're having and then clearly, the geopolitical risk that we're currently seeing in a narrative where more and more companies, government agencies and so forth are looking for European solutions to protect their cybersecurity, that has a positive impact. I think the majority of that impact is in front of us, but we see some impact on sales already in Q1 from the new administration in the U.S. ARR-wise, we have -- we continued the growth trend with an 8% increase in ARR. However, it is clearly then a decline from Q4 2024. So why is that then? Well, those who have been with us for some time might remember that we did a very big overhaul of our entire financial and our sales model back in 2021, where we moved from contracts with more of perpetual parts in them to a new subscription-based model. When we did that, we -- end-of-life -- announced those product lineups 3 years ago. So they were possible to renew them for the coming 3 years up until 1st of January 2025. And the absolute majority of the contracts we had back in that day has, of course, been transferred to the new business models. However, not everything, especially what is churning here is a larger volume of many small contracts, contracts where we do not have a direct engagement relationship with the end customer might be many small SMBs, and they are not very close to the reseller either. Many of them might not even know they have a firewall. So that's what constitutes the churn base. It's a one-off effect attributed to the product life cycle decision 3 years ago. So this has nothing to do with us trending downwards when it comes to ARR, but it's an impact isolated in Q1. Gross profit-wise, well, we grew net sales with 21%. Gross profit is growing with 12%. So there is a gross margin impact there. So we have increased hardware sales substantially in Q1. And of course, that comes with an impact on gross margins. So I would say with that high growth, I would say we're quite pleased with maintaining such a strong gross margin of 75% with much more hardware in the sales mix. As you know, Clavister is typically definitely in the civilian firewall market also in defense. But generally, we are leading with hardware. So when we establish new contracts, there is, in most cases, a hardware element associated with it. So day 1, there will be a hardware, a hardware revenue and a COGS element. Day 2, it will only be a recurring software component. So that comes with that impact. So we can say during this quarter, civilian firewall sales has been very strong. That's weighing heavily in the sales mix. Hence, there is a little bit of more hardware in the sales mix than landing on a 75% gross margin. That, in turn, we're looking at operating leverage. As we said during later part of 2024, we see that there is a good market opportunity for Clavister. The Trump administration with increased geopolitical risk has made that, I would say, market opportunity for Clavister even better. We have been saying for some time that we see that we come from a trend of lowering cost, holding cost, but now gradually with control increasing cost because there is a good market for us. So this -- the cost increases are in line with our plan, mainly constitutes of investments in sales and marketing and some increased R&D capacity for us to be able to utilize the market potential we see. So that's the main reasons for a somewhat increasing OpEx. EBITDA then. So of course, the combination of good growth, but with a gross margin impact driven by mix factors in Q1, together with larger OpEx investments. we have a somewhat impact on EBITDA in this quarter. It is not large, but of course, it's a setback, but mainly driven, I would say, by the mix factors in sales where I think the gross margin will likely be higher in coming periods, but still supported from good net sales. And I would say OpEx is under -- definitely under control, but some EBITDA and hence also EBIT impact in the quarter. So for the financial ambitions and current performance, well, sales CAGR will be at or over 20%, so landing on 21% despite big FX headwinds. Gross margin, well, not reaching the 80% mark for this quarter, but I think there will be other quarters this year where we will have -- where we have more margin support. EBITDA at or above 20%, so far reaching 13%. So that's a little bit below, but I think there's a lot of things indicating from our perspective, a good potential to come in with a higher EBITDA performance in coming quarters. And operational cash flow, we see the improvements of the growing business in our cash flow. So both cash flow from -- before working capital changes have improved, and we have been very successful in improving the working capital in Q1. So clearly strengthening cash flows after working capital effect. So that's in a good direction there.

Thank you, David. And with that, back to you, Ora, to set the stage for some Q&A.

Here I am. Yes, let's start with the questions then. Thank you for the presentation. Here we are. First question, how is the geopolitical situation affecting Clavister?

Well, as I started mentioning, it sort of affects Clavister in many ways. I mean I think everyone can conclude and realize that the practical effects of the ongoing wars increases defense budgets, increasing spending on cybersecurity in defense. I mean, obviously, that's a strong growth -- direct growth driver for our defense sales. Even though some experts have actually claimed that the main impact is still to be seen from the Russian-Ukraine war. So it hasn't really trickled down all the way to all the subcontractors yet to be seen, but I think there is something to that. If we look on the civilian side, we've been in a number of events and forums over the last months where the agenda is really, really clear. The narrative is clear. All the European nations are looking at agendas to maintain or increase rather to increase the -- what is a bit sort of in layman terms referred to as digital sovereignty. And what is that? Well, essentially, the ability for Europe to build an ecosystem of suppliers, technology that makes Europe less vulnerable to the geopolitical situation. I think everyone has been aware of the rumor on the market about the F-35 aircraft kill switch. where, I mean, the speculation is that if the U.S. government would like to shut down air forces of some European countries, they will essentially kill the operation of the F-35 aircraft. Naturally, Lockheed Martin being the supplier, they, of course, deny this naturally. But I think everyone realizes that a modern aircraft of that character is a super complex product, has a lot of software in it. If there is a government or legal decision that would prevent Lockheed Martin to provide upgrades or updates or defect fixes, that is essentially or implicitly, it is a kill switch. It's not really hard to translate that into the network security market. So given that a lot of European industries, European governments are protected by U.S. produced hardware products or devices or software, routers, switches, firewalls, access points and so on, I think quite many IT managers, CIOs and Board members are having a hard time sleeping right now, realizing that, well, my entire business could be shut off with one mouse click of the U.S. administration. I think our neighbors in Denmark have probably come the furthest in their thinking on this, and they realize that if the U.S. administration stops U.S. cloud services at 8:00, then Denmark will be shut down at 9:00. It is really that harsh. And we see that with inflow of requests, inflow of asks from both customers and partners or prospect customers and partners that we never talked to before. They are approaching us now and looking for European alternatives. So all in all, I think it's just the start of it. And even if there would be an administration change in the U.S. tomorrow, the lids are open. Now people have really started thinking about this, and there is no way back.

Yes. And may I add one comment here because I think clearly, there was an understanding in the defense sector before Trump that there is an unhealthy dependency on the U.S. and the risk for espionage and so forth. So we had a lot of good engagements in the defense sector for quite some time. But I think adding what we're seeing based on kind of the level of what the Trump administration is doing is causing a situation where I think many people are offended, which means that there is not only kind of technical and logical reasons for talking to Clavister. I think there's quite a large amount of feelings-based arguments also that, okay, I want to buy a European solution. I do not want to buy an American solution, which is kind of in a certain way, distancing from what people are thinking, and I think you might experience that yourself or in your relationships that this effect is actually happening. And that also has a positive impact on our sales from that perspective.

All right. Going back to the numbers. Is it possible to quantify the percentage increase in ARR, from the 111% hardware deliveries and in which quarter we will see this?

Yes. It is not super easy to say that it's a direct correlation between hardware volumes and ARR. But absolutely, this will have a positive ARR impact. The majority of that ARR impact will come in Q2. So -- but exactly how large it is, it is hard for me to quantify in this call, but it will be a positive effect, quite clear one, and it will be majority in Q2.

Thank you. Can you elaborate a bit on the EIB loan repayment plans based on TO9?

Yes. I can take that one. Well, okay, we did this, as you know, based on -- first of all, in the prospectus, we said the net proceeds from TO8 and TO9 warrants will be used to down pay the EIB loan. So that's the starting point. With TO8, we did this. We repaid with EUR 4 million plus used EUR 2 million from our cash positions. We brought that down with EUR 6 million, targeting repayments with higher interest rate, but also repayments closer in time, leaving those further away in time. So with TO9, we aim to also repay what's more closely here now in time to reduce potential pressure from repayments in the coming say, 2 years to try -- the aim to remove in principle, all contracted repayments up until late 2027. That is an ongoing dialogue with EIB. During TO8, we succeeded with EIB also waiving their rights to antidilution warrants on TO8 program. And of course, the ambition here, nothing guaranteed, but the ambition is, of course, to land on a similar setup with TO9 that we repaid EUR 5 million and that EIB waives their right to any antidilution warrants to that. That is not completed in any way, but that's, of course, being open with the ambition and to do this as soon as possible. But EIB is a quite large organization. And I foresee that ambition is to be done with this before summer, hopefully. But the time line is also highly in the hands of EIB, but that's our ambition.

Right. Thank you. On to the defense sector. Can you explain a bit more how the defense orders handle necessary software updates and support? Will there be any new revenues from this and when?

Yes. So -- going back a little bit to what David mentioned earlier about the transition from perpetual license sales to more of recurring or subscription-based license sales. That is now dominating the majority of Clavister sales, except for defense. Why is that? Well, defense is still a very traditional industry. It is an industry where digitalization is quite recent. The industry is used to purchase caterpillar rubber bands, engines and so forth. And the maturity in purchasing software is, well, maybe not where it should be yet, but it's getting there. So we -- and I know the entire industry is pushing defense industry towards more type of recurring term-based licensing. And I'm sure we will get there one day, but it will take some time. In the meanwhile, we will have the more traditional perpetual sales of licenses and then support and maintenance contracts added on top of that or after that. As long as we are in serious deliveries of products to a contractor such as BAE Systems, all focus is on the perpetual licenses, getting the products delivered, getting the revenue recognition for those products. When series deliveries ends, then comes the next chapter, meaning support and maintenance and aftermarket, if you like. And that will, for sure, bring some kind of support and revenue -- support and maintenance revenue to Clavister. Exactly the portion of that, the ratio compared to the perpetual sales will be case by case, depending on the actual configuration, actual size of the project and so on. But yes, there will definitely be support and maintenance revenue. But it will start when series deliveries are done.

All right. There are news that Lithuania and other Nordic countries might buy up to 1,000 CV90s. Could you maybe elaborate a bit on the CV90 pipeline, meaning what is roughly the order intake per vehicle for Clavister?

Yes. I think the ones that have done their math, looking at previous announced orders and previously announced order intake from those orders and then looking at the amount of vehicles it corresponds to can easily figure out that we're looking at roughly EUR 50,000 in revenue for Clavister per vehicle. Typically, it depends a little bit on configuration and type of product and so on. But that's sort of where it is. If we look at the pipeline going forward. To start with, I think we should be careful, of course, of speculating. So far, however, what has been rumored in media has become true. That has happened. But still having some cautious about what's being speculated. When it comes to this Nordic country collaboration of a joint purchase, I think that will happen. Whether it will be 100, 500 or 1,000 CV90s, I don't want to speculate on that. It will probably be significant numbers. And I hope Clavister will be able to participate in that, but it's still a little bit too early to see.

All right. We've seen the effects of the partnership with BAE. Will we also see the partnership with Thales develop further?

Yes, we will. I think in order to answer that question a bit better than just saying, yes, we need to take one step back and look at what are we as a supplier trying to achieve here. The overall cybersecurity spending in the defense sector is huge. We're looking at USD 70 billion in a few years from now. That covers the entire cybersecurity spending that includes threat intelligence services, that includes data center security and so on. If we look at the niche Clavister has selected, we are focusing on the tactical security within defense. Tactical, in this case, meaning equipment, vehicles, drones, aircraft, ships, et cetera, equipment that are closer to the battlefield, if you like. That's tactical security. We have set out an objective or a goal for ourselves to be present with our technology, with our products in -- without saying an exact number, but some dozen of defense platforms where the CV90 from BAE Systems would be one such platform. The new defense customer that we announced in this quarter represents another of those platforms. And since before, we have yet another. So I would say we're established with commercial shipments with at least 3 defense platforms where the CV90 is one. CV90 is also the oldest, if you like. So it's no surprise that we see the most orders, most revenue coming from that right now. And Thales and their system, their Sophos system would represent another of those platforms. So the sort of the strategy is clear. We would like to be integrated in as many of those systems as possible, but we have a clear target. We have come the furthest with BAE. We are making advancements with others as the one we announced this quarter. And Thales is the one that we have announced previously, and we're working actively with them to position technology, position their products together with ours on the market. So I expect/hope that we will see a similar trend. But keeping in mind that we're looking at different time windows here because we started so much earlier with BAE. But the key for us here is to build a stack of these type of partnerships, so they continues to overlap and grow in time.

Okay. I think maybe you have answered part of this, at least, is it likely that other defense companies or businesses will have the same development as your business with BAE Systems? And if so, what time will it take? I think maybe you...

Yes, I think I answered that partly. And just to complement that, if we look at some -- I mean, of course, no deal is the other one alike. But in general, if we look at the typical lead time from the initial dialogue with a defense contractor or a defense system producer until or -- through the process of validating technology, being through the legal frameworks, being through the procurement activities, that's quite an undertaking. So we typically look at 3 years from initial contact to an order. And from the order, we start -- if there is hardware involved, of course, we start production. Otherwise, we can start shipping software more or less directly. And then comes the series deliveries, which might typically then span over 3 to 4 years. And after that, the long aftermarket period. In the contract we announced this quarter, we spoke about 20 years of expected lifetime. So I mean, typically, we could -- an engagement would span 25 years. So it means that we needed and we have done that. We needed to start a number of initiatives already several years back to start getting sort of reaping the fruits of those initiatives now and in the near future.

Thank you. Someone has raised their hand in the audience, so we can maybe take a live question. I don't know how that will work. Can you open your microphone maybe, should be allowed to do it. Or was it accidental hand raising?

It is Simon Jönsson at ABG. So Simon, did you do it by purpose? Or did you accidentally raise your hand?

Maybe I can do this. Now you should be able to speak, Simon. No?

Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes. I had to enable your mic. Sorry about that.

Thank you. So on the defense area, just first on deliveries this year. Could you maybe talk a bit about how you expect that the deliveries will be distributed for the year?

Overall, in general, we have a fairly even distribution of deliveries. So you could expect more or less the same type of size of deliveries every quarter. There might be slight deviations, but it's fairly distributed by quarter.

But defense-wise increasing from the second half of this year.

Yes, yes, that's true. If we look at sort of Q3, Q4 last year, Q1, Q2 this year, more or less the same and then a slight ramp-up in Q3, Q4 and then additional contracts are kicking in.

All right. Got it. And then I want to continue on the sort of potential future contracts you have with the current collaborations that haven't really yielded any orders yet. But on those sort of optionalities that you have, is it just lead times? Or is there sort of competition for those potential orders? How should we view that?

The ones that we have announced, such as the one in this quarter, there is no competition on that. That's just pure lead time. So just to give you an example, the collaboration we announced or the contract that we announced this quarter was initiated 2.5 years back. And after maybe 6 months of initial collaboration, the customer went ahead doing -- the proof of concept with the technology at the same time as they were completing their design of their new defense system. So it's a new system we get integrated into. And we have received initial orders on that for the initial proof of concepts and initial first system and so on. And while we were in the evaluation phase, of course, there was competition. But now when we have been selected as a supplier, there is no competition. Any system they sell of that new kind will have Clavister integrated. That's done. So it's only about the lead time for them to ramp up their production and deliveries on this new system.

Okay. Good to hear. David, on the cost side, we had increased OpEx. I understand you need to have some investments in the sales organization here to scale up further. But is it fair that development costs and other costs should remain more stable in general? And do you expect to recruit more in the sales organization here this year?

Yes. So there were many questions in the same question so I take them kind of by part. So we have no cost increases in kind of general administrative costs in Clavister. We're not recruiting more managers. We actually have ongoing initiatives to see, okay, but how can we ensure that we are organized in such a way that when we're growing, we don't need to grow with that type of costs. So of course, in order to minimize OpEx impact. Yes, from a recruitment perspective, the majority is sales related and marketing related. I mean, of course, the Clavister brand known is not that well known. And of course, it is something to be considered about that, okay, we have a situation now where there's generally in Europe, a big willingness to buy European rather than American. But then, of course, they need to know that there exists a great alternative in Sweden supplying firewalls made in Sweden for Europe. And of course, that generates more marketing costs than before. So to be -- of course, to have control over that, but that's still important. The same with sales. We have more leads, we have more potentials. If we would hold back too much on investing in the sales organization, yes, that would, in the short term, boost EBITDA and EBIT, but what about next year. So I think that's trying to balance that. Investments in the tech organization are relatively smaller, but there are some selected investments with, I would say, the same reasoning. We have clear identified verticals that we're chasing, especially I mean mission-critical applications within government, energy, defense, telecom in Europe and sectors who care about technology origin. But we can see, okay, we need to speed up our delivery -- our development capacity where we see certain bottlenecks or where we need to see more strategic growth. So some investments there, but smaller than sales and marketing investments. A bit long, but I think I wanted to elaborate a bit on that. So let me know if that answered your question.

Yes, yes, it did. Just a follow-up on sort of how we should think about coming quarters and what you have done? Have you done this already recently? Or is this that you have just started to scale up new organizations in other countries? Just trying to understand how we should think about [indiscernible] couple of quarters.

Yes. Exactly. I mean a lot of the planned investments for this year are in place. There will not be many recruitments throughout the years according to plan and more recruitments than we have done. we're looking at to add some more sales capacity in one of our European markets outside of the Nordics. But I mean, then we talk about very -- then we get quite granular. So some more investments in -- together with our sales network [indiscernible] Europe.

Well, we have -- David, maybe you can answer about the increase in the Swedish crown value during this quarter. What kind of effect did it have on Clavister?

Well, yes, so as I said kind of earlier, I mean, roughly half of our sales are in SEK and the other half in euro, mainly in USD. And of course, when the SEK improves this drastically versus SEK -- euro and dollar, well, then our sales in those currencies are worth less when we exchange them to SEK. So if we have had constant currencies, we would have been having a growth of 24% instead of 21%. And of course, it also has a certain cost and OpEx and cash flow impact as well as we had quite strong sales in the end of last year, beginning of this year in, say, if you sold something for EUR 100,000, and then the SEK strengthens quite significantly versus the euro. So when that invoice is paid, of course, we get paid less than it would have been in another currency level. So there are some effects that have some impact on us. So in -- all in all, mainly negative impact, but with one important exception that means that in total, the currency effects for Clavister are yet positive, which means we are planning to, as we spoke before, repaying EUR 5 million to the EIB. And of course, we have a totally different exchange rate now than we did during the autumn when we paid EUR 6 million to them. So meaning, of course, that is less costly to repay EUR 5 million of loan now than it was before. And we have been able to, during these latest periods, secure almost all that. So we feel that, okay, this will be done from a financially much better position than last year. So yes, we are losing some on net sales, and we're losing some with negative impact on OpEx, but we're gaining more in the financial net and repaying our loan from a better cash position or a better FX position. So all in all, a positive total effect.

On to the telecom business, and we have a couple of questions about the progress of it. Clavister has previously focused on 5G networks. Is this still a strategic priority? And are there any developments or ongoing work in that area?

Just as David alluded to, telecom is one of our 4 key verticals still, so public sector, energy, defense and telecom. So we still maintain telecom as one of our 4 verticals. We did not expose in the report or in this presentation any significant events because there hasn't been any significant events in the telecom sales. It's quite uneventful, a bit flat, if you like. We still maintain it given that we have the same sort of macro conditions that would sort of govern a push towards European technology. But then again, we all know the challenges that the mobile operators have had and still has to some extent. And we're still seeing the likes of Nokia and Ericsson and others being challenged and streamlining their organizations to sort of better match the market conditions. So it is a tough market for telecom. Important to state, however, is that Clavister is not maintaining a cost base specifically for telecom. We are using the same technology, the same products and so on, although better packaged or better marketed towards the telecom industry. So I mean -- the proof is in the pudding. We'll see if that market will recover in general, the 5G market in general. When it does, I don't think if it does, but when it does, then clearly, it will drive security investments and the partnerships we have with Ericsson -- sorry, with Nokia and others are strong. So that's why we maintain it as a key industry and looking forward really to see a boost in that, even though we haven't seen it yet for some quarters.

Thank you, John. I think that was all the questions. So now you get a couple of questions from me. So John, first, what are you the proudest of for this quarter?

I mean, 2 things essentially. The fact that we keep on maintaining a really good growth trajectory, seeing that, yes, it's really not that many years back when growth was non-existing, it was flat. And then slowly but surely moving that into single -- low single-digit growth numbers into high single-digit growth numbers into double-digit growth numbers and now hovering around or above 20% for some time and being able to sort of sustain that. So that's good. I'm proud of that. I think there is merit to -- even though looking at the effects on EBITDA, it's easy to be self-criticizing and look at the gross margin is impacted by 5 percentage points, it is 75%. That is a high gross margin, especially given the fact that we're shipping so many hardware units. So I'm proud of that, even though, of course, the numbers it translates to in the exact period has a negative impact. But I think we have to remember where we're coming from. We're not talking about a 16% gross margin, 75%. It is a strong margin.

Thank you, John. And David, anything you'd like to highlight?

Yes. I would say I fully stand by what John said regarding the gross margin. I mean it's -- I think it's showing resilience. I think that's important. And to add something else also, I would point to the fact that the severely increased geopolitical risk and tension that we're seeing, it is highly impacting our lead generation, our pipeline much more than it has yet impacted our sales. So I think the outlook, it is a very interesting market for Clavister. Then it's up to us to scale that successfully and do a lot of business in this market. But if I -- I've been in Clavister for 4.5 years, it is a totally better understanding on who we are and what we do and a market that really favors the positioning of Clavister in a totally different way than it was a couple -- only 6 months ago. So I think that it's an interesting future going forward.

Thank you, David. Well, thank you, John and David, for a very insightful presentation and for addressing all the questions we had today. Thank you, everyone, who attended and shared their questions. Your input means a lot to us, and it really adds value to these sessions. A recording will be available shortly on our website. And with that, I wish you a pleasant remainder of your day, and thank you again for joining us.