Cyviz AS ($CYVIZ)

Hi, and welcome to the Q1 earnings call for Cyviz. My name is Espen Gylvik. And with me, I have our new CFO, Lars Hjarrand. And Lars, do you want to just introduce yourself?

Sure. It's Lars Hjarrand, and I joined Cyviz at the end of March. And prior to joining Cyviz, I have about 20-plus years of similar roles and experience in different companies, both in Norway and abroad and both listed companies and privately owned companies. So I'm very excited to join the Cyviz team.

Thank you. And we are very, very happy to have you on board. So just going through the agenda quite fast. So of course, we will go through Q1 in a brief, the performance. Some business highlights, Q1 financials, a little bit around the -- how we see the market going forward. And then as we always do at the end, Q&A. So let's just kick it off. So Q1 was, I would say, an interesting and somewhat challenged quarter. The underlying momentum in our business in the U.S. and European market has moved on quite well. Both regions delivered more or less on plan. And we had a significant offset by the geopolitical situation in the Middle East, the war in Iran, impacting the Q1 numbers quite significantly. And I will go through that when we take the numbers by itself. So order intake landed at NOK 99 million. as I said, quite negatively affected by Middle East, approximately NOK 30 million that we didn't lose, but we didn't bring it in due to the conflict. There wasn't any chance to have formal meetings across Abu Dhabi and Dubai and parts of Saudi during -- I mean, 2 of the months in the quarter. We do see today a positive uptick in meeting frequency across the whole region. And as the world is right now, Q1 looks significantly better for the region. So we do hope and aim to at least be back on plan for the second quarter when it comes to order intake also in that region. Revenue landed at NOK 108 million, which is down NOK 27 million from previous years, of course, also impacted from the conflict in Middle East. ARR, which is important for us as a company. We have talked about -- I mean, the pivoting we are working on as a company, more towards partner-driven sales of Cyviz's core technology and of course, the ARR component and the subscription business, landed at NOK 66 million, quite stable since previous quarter has -- I think it's important to mention that we had one cancellation of a very, very old customer in U.S. on the support and maintenance agreement in the range of $350,000, which we have compensated with new customers in the quarter. Hence, balancing where we went out of Q4 when we go out of Q1. And I will talk more about the new software management platform that we launched the 16th of April, slightly later today. Gross profit of NOK 56 million, still very strong margin. We are still managing to deliver margins above 50%, so 52% for the quarter. It's still then down NOK 18 million from last year. Again, back to the order intake and the revenue side, of course, impacting also the gross profit. Hence, also the EBITDA, which landed at minus NOK 15 million which is NOK 16 million below what it was last year. And as you can see on the 12-month rolling, the order intake, year ago, NOK 641 million, now NOK 618 million,If we had added NOK 30 million in Middle East on top of that, we would have been at NOK 648 million, which would still be a positive development of order intake. And we are not incorporating the impact on the currency of dollars. In this case, this is like with actual dollars. Gross profit, same trend from NOK 315 million to NOK 284 million still would be in line with NOK 315 million without the impact on the Middle East business in Q1 and then a significant drop on the rolling 12 months on EBITDA, which also is largely explained by one defense deal for delivery that moved from Q1 to Q2 and the situation in the Middle East. If we look a bit more on the order intake and backlog development, also to put some color on things as we have -- I have mentioned a couple of times now, the order intake for Europe and North America is on track. So it means that the operational underlying business in those 2 regions is running as planned. Trend looks similar for Q2 and the Middle East part then went NOK 30 million short, making the numbers as it is. The geopolitical situation is also delaying some decision-making process in the federal space and also in the private enterprise space in Middle East. During Q1, we have seen a positive uptake in Q2, where we already have signed significant deals one with one of the largest energy companies in Saudi in the range of slightly more than $3 million. So it seems like that type of delay in decision-making is starting to pick up. There is no deals that have gone out of the pipeline. And the pipeline continues to be strong and continue to build up. And we talked about for, I think, 6 months, one of the additional bets we see for the company, which would be directed to the defense sector. And we see a strong buildup of pipeline and cases in the defense sector, especially in the European market, and we can talk a little bit more about that when we get to the outlook side. And of course, strong start to Q2 orders, and we do expect in the second quarter to get back to growth. However, the numbers, I think it's important to mention that despite the situation in Middle East that pulled us back NOK 30 million in Q1, the backlog, which is like cases signed, so future money is up 6% compared to Q1 in 2025. And I think that is an indication that the underlying business in the other regions are running quite well. Some of the highlights in the quarter, we signed a very strategic important energy deal. In Texas, U.S., it's continued on a customer we started to develop in 2025. We do anticipate that journey to continue during 2026 with a lot of interesting cases. So hopefully, by next presentation, we will be able to talk more about additional deals within that customer. And one of the first, really, significant strategically important defense deals in Europe, slightly more than NOK 30 million was signed in the quarter. And we are now capitalizing and building with our partners on that deal with additional opportunities for defense. A smaller deal in the financial district in Saudi, a new technology customers, the long-term customer with Cyviz that has come back in U.S., which is positive. A customer that hasn't bought anything in the last 5, 6 years, and now they're starting to look at upgrading. And I think it's a strong sentiment for the technology that we provide that they choose to come back and ask us to do the upgrades. A Fortune 500 global consultancy company, we delivered a solution for them in Dubai and a retail health customer and a new educational university in India which is important for the journey we have in the Indian market. I think the key message here is quite clear. If you look at order intake by vertical, you see that we are starting to increase the verticals we work with. That type of diversification is important also to reduce risk. If it's a small drop inside one of them, we can compensate with other verticals that has higher investment appetite in the period. And you can also see that the defense has been a tiny, tiny portion of verticals historically is now the largest vertical in the quarter with 36%. And energy continues to be significant, the same as corporate. And I think those are the 3 key verticals for growth going forward as well. And on the right side, it's just like a visual view on the world. Europe had 51% North America 35% and then Middle East with 13%. And for those of you that have followed us quarter-by-quarter over the last years, would probably recall that Middle East normally accounts for 30% to 35% of the business by quarter. So this is just a reflection of the situation that region has been through in Q1. On the ARR side, which is very important for us. We have ambitious targets for ending this year on the ARR side, quite stable in the quarter. We grew that -- I mean, if you compare to the cancellation of the deal with roughly NOK 3.5 million in the quarter net. And these are like real ARR numbers. It's not an aggregated view. This is a billable number. Maybe the most important thing, we have talked about the new software management platform for many quarters now, the future of the company. The really, really new software management platform launch happened during August -- April 16. And I think an important factor, we did that on a -- with a global launch and also launch for Middle East and APAC. And I think we had more than 400 participants joining in for like 90-minute presentation. and the feedback has been fantastic from all of them. And we are now starting to run paid POCs or proof-of-concept with a lot of partners and customers. This is where the ARR growth going into the second half of the year is going to come. And important note, we have already migrated 3 of our largest global accounts over to the software management platform, which will generate significant software subscription revenue to the remainder of 2026. The effect of those 3 is not incorporated in the numbers here that says NOK 66 million. So the pivoting we have talked about has largely been centered around finding, educating and initiating the right partners to go out and sell Cyviz Core Technology, which is our controller software, our video processor and our software platform and enable and allow partners to go out and actually deliver complete turnkey Cyviz solutions to customers in a larger reach than we can do with our own people. We already have 25 partners signed I think that's more than significant, and it also has a good distribution geographically. The important thing is now to help them start selling more, so that, that scales up. We continue to build partner pipeline, but I think the key thing is to really start scaling up the sales funnel with these partners on the CCT. And we see now into Q2 that a much more significant part of our forecast in the quarter is related to Cyviz Core Tech sold through partners than it has been before. And then one of the key elements of the future of the company, the software management platform partners have signed by the end of Q1 to go out and sell and deliver and install and build managed services around our platform to customers. I think that's a significant important number. We have advanced discussions and paid trials with 13 more partners. So there is a good type of influx of partners that would like to work with us. Some of them are global. Some of them are regional and some of them are local. So the spread related to where we are and where we do our business is quite important. We already have 8 end customers hosted in this new Cyviz's Cloud. So they are payable customers, and we continue to actively build the partner pipeline. So when we get into Q2, when we will start also to report by product group and not overall, we will dissect on the Cyviz Core Tech and the development on the ARR software management platform to give more insights also to how these business areas are developing for us as a company. And then I think I hand over to Lars to talk about the financials.

Thank you, Espen. So looking at some of the key financials for the quarter, Espen has been through some of it. But on the revenue side, we ended at NOK 107.5 million. And it was negatively affected by the situation in the Middle East, but also some delayed contract and FX that hit us. When it comes to gross profit, the absolute value of NOK 56 million is low, and that is obviously related to the revenues for the quarter. When that said, the gross margin in percentage was 52%, which is quite healthy and in line with the previous quarter's average. The EBITDA ended at negative NOK 14.8 million, and this is obviously based on the gross profit, coupled with the operational expenses, which has been stable at NOK 70 million for the last couple of quarters. We have, as a result of this, implemented a cost optimization program where we look at different activities and how we can reduce the cost going forward in response to the quarter that we have had. Related to that also is that we have increased the RCF credit limit from NOK 75 million to NOK 100 million, and we have also then received an improved waiver for the covenants for the coming few quarters. Looking at the order intake, I think Espen has been through it, but we were definitely negatively affected by the situation in the Middle East. And the underlying business activity levels in Europe and North America has been quite good, and we see a good trajectory in Q2. Looking at the operating cash flow for the first quarter. So we had, obviously, starting up with the negative profit before tax, but then we have actively worked on the working capital part. So we have a positive impact from the accounts receivable, which has been reduced. Inventories are pretty stable, and we also then reduced the accounts payable, which had some negative impact. And couple that with the add-back of depreciation, we ended the quarter with a positive operating cash flow of NOK 5.3 million.

Okay. So let's spend some minutes on the outlook side. So as you can see, the slide is somewhat similar to what it has been over the last quarters, and that is just related to that we have a very clear 4-year plan for the company. And the task ahead is to capitalize on the fundament we built in 2025 on the technology side and the partner side to drive core business, new products and services and, of course, the cost optimization. We are very focused on looking at how we can improve margins, how we can balance cost versus what we do and add new services that is largely subscription-based to enhance the margins and also the revenue growth. And we have, for a period now put a much tighter process in place for collecting cash improve the contractual agreements we have with our vendors so that we have better terms with vendors than we have with our customers. So shorter payment terms from customers longer with vendors, also to secure that the cash flow component is more under control. Look at Q2, good start on the Q2 orders. I think the pipeline growth in defense, in particular, and also in corporate business, is significantly improved during the first 4 months of this year. We do expect significant uptake in deals in the defense sector during the second half of the year. I mean late Q2 and in the early stage of Q3. The same goes for the corporate enterprise space, where we have customers that wants to modernize and upgrade their technology centers across multiple locations around the world. And some of the key elements is the thing I was talking about when it comes to our core technology kit. We need to scale through partner ecosystem because selling Cyviz Core Tech to partners would reduce cost of selling, it will enhance the margin because we have significantly better margins on the products, both software and hardware we develop ourselves, than adding the third-party elements. So it's a key element to reach broader out in the market, enhance the gross margin and the margin on the products we sell and through that also improve the profitability of the company. And then on the software management platform and the services related to that, which is a pure subscription-based platform. The key thing is to upgrade all existing Cyviz customers that is on a perpetual on-prem Cyviz's platform today and over to the new one and then, of course, enable the partner ecosystem to bring that platform out to a much, much broader set of customers. so that we can build and increase a much more predictable revenue stream through subscription-based revenue. And last but not least, capitalize on the increased defense budgets we know is present in the European market and also partly within NATO. And we have a very strong position today within defense in Europe. We are one of the few companies that has all the 4 NATO certified agreements in place. We are capable to deliver NATO secured solutions, both on-prem but also in a mobile context. So we are already today providing customers with stationary operations centers and control rooms, but also mobile operation centers and control rooms. That has the tempest NATO certified security clearance. So we are quite positive when it comes to the development of defense, not just in 2026, but for the next 4, 5 years. and we are in a position to capitalize on that. And we are also now working on additional partnerships to enhance our offering into the defense sector. So with that, I think we move into Q&A. And I'm going to change my specs.

Okay. So we'll start. [Foreign Language] Pexip is selling off cloud systems while you have developed a strategy in cloud. Pexip is performing better. Why? [Foreign Language]