Elekta AB (publ) ($EKTAB)

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Elekta Q4 Report Conference Call. I am Valentina, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] The conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Peter Nyquist, Head of Investor Relations. You will now be joined into the conference room.

Hi, and good morning, everyone, and welcome to Elekta's conference call for the fourth quarter and the full year of 2025 and '26. My name is Peter Nyquist, and I'm Head of Investor Relations here at Elekta. With me here in the studio in Stockholm, I have our CEO, Jakob Just-Bomholt and I would also like to welcome our new CFO, Klara Eiritz, as she started now, I guess, 3 months ago as new CFO of Elekta. Very welcome. Great to have you here. Today's agenda starts up with Jakob giving some key takeaways from the fourth quarter, including some strategic highlights. Then Klara will give us details on the financials and Elekta's outlook. After the presentation, we will have, as usual, a time for Q&A. But before I start, I want to remind you that some of the information discussed on this call contains forward-looking statements. This can include projections regarding revenue, operating result, cash flow as well as products and product development. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those set forth in the statements. With that said, I would like to hand it over to you, Jakob. Please.

Thank you, Peter. A warm welcome to all of you. Warm welcome to you, Klara. Throughout the year, we have really been very clear on that Elekta, we are not trading at our full potential. We are a wonderful company, but we are not at full potential. And to address that, we have said we need to drive significant transformation within the company. And the way we think about it is that we really have a transformation that will take place over 3 phases. The first one, Reset and Stabilize; the second, Improve Profitability; and the last one and most importantly, and long-term Innovation driven growth. If we look at Phase 1, I would almost say we are done, and we are actually a little bit ahead of what I expected now 9 months ago. We have been working a lot to reset our operating model really with the view of ensuring that we have empowered accountable teams. We increase our velocity and how we operate, how we execute, how we innovate. Then we have been going through a simplification of our org setup. Some of you may remember, we have now executed having 9 organizational layers to 6. We have decentralized. We are pushing P&L profitability to our regions. And as a consequence, we did really a zero-based review of the organization. And today, we have we have more than 500 fewer colleagues within Elekta than we were 6 months ago. Then we have been working quite intensely on strengthening leadership when you when you realize you're not at full potential, you have to look yourself in the mirror. And part of that is, at least in my -- our view, to strengthen the leadership bench. If you look at the Executive Committee, 4 out of 6 have been appointed within the last 12 months. We have seen 8 out of 17 members in the executive management being new. And I feel good about where we are. We are working on culture. We have many strongholds, but we also have things we want to change. More customer centricity, more performance management, more accountability. And then we are hardwiring that into incentives from the very top to further down and really linking incentive payouts with the value we create for our shareholders. And then lastly, we have been very clear on we want to improve the quality of earnings. The way we look at it as I say it really takes out it in 3 distinct pillars. First, to reduce the delta between what we capitalize of R&D cost and what we amortize. I'm happy to say this quarter, we actually deliver on that. So it's good, and we expect that also to happen going forward. Then with the plan of having you in, Klara, we said when you want to have quality of earnings, you'd also need a quality balance sheet, and we have been going through it in great detail. We are today announcing an impairment related to certain discontinued business activities, but certainly also other things, and we'll share the details. It's noncash items, and we don't expect that to happen going forward. And then lastly, you may recall in Q2, we did another impairment of our order backlog. And I was also very clear on that, that's it. And when you make such a statement, you have to be very clear on that. You take in quality orders going forward. So we have been, I would say, prudent in what we call in as orders. You shouldn't -- we leave the year with a book-to-bill of 1.04. I actually feel good about it. It's a better indication of future revenue growth. You shouldn't read into it that it's a weakening of our underlying business fundamentals, but rather it's an initiative stemming from us desiring to improve quality of earnings. As I said, we are now done, give and take with our reset and stabilize, and we move into improved profitability. And clearly, this quarter from our point of view, was a step in the right direction. I look at EBITC, and there, we have a very, very substantial increase of 4.5% give and take versus same quarter last year. Actually, EBITC is the highest in 7 years on the margin. So it's good. As part of improved profitability, we have focused innovation that also links to some of the impairments. We know what we need to innovate. We know what is important for our customers, and we'll unfold more of that at CMD in a couple of weeks. We are clearly working on strengthening the commercial execution. It also links to leadership culture and incentives. We spend a lot of time on pricing excellence. We do see cost of goods sold increasing from tungsten to microchips to logistics, and it's important that we have a very stringent structure to pass on those cost increases to our customers, and we expect to do so. And then we have programs on OpEx and COGS. And specifically for OpEx, I'll come back to it. It's fair to say that the OpEx savings have exceeded our expectations significantly. And we have a very significant part of that in Q4. So we can be happy about that. And lastly, we have ongoing work on simplifying and standardizing our processes. Then at the very end, I hope we can conclude improved profitability within this year, maybe part of next year, but the future of Elekta is really to drive growth through innovations. And we'll continue to invest. We just come out of ESTRO. It confirms that radiotherapy is highly relevant. It's clinically efficient, it's cost efficient. We can become more precise. We can adapt more. So we'll continue to invest in our road maps, and we think customers are absolutely willing to pay for that. So we look forward to sharing more when we meet in a couple of weeks. But if I then turn into the full year. As I said, book-to-bill of 1.04. We did see -- and we were a little bit negative surprised in the Middle East. We did see specific customers delaying decision. But most importantly, we have just implemented firmer order acceptance criteria throughout Elekta to ensure that the order backlog we have now is of very good quality and is indicative of future revenue growth. In the U.S. specifically, we have seen on our CT-Linac portfolio double-digit growth. We expect that to accelerate linked to Evo also this fiscal year. So we are on plan. We are positive. On organic growth, 1% linked to Europe, but actually also our EMEA region, our Middle East, Africa, India region. On gross margin, we did see an uptick despite the FX and tariff headwind, now at 38.4%. It's still too low. We need to be above. And on EBIT margin, 12.3%. We clearly see that a lot of the work in becoming more efficient is really starting to have impact. Keep in mind, this quarter, we did have a headwind from capitalizing less and amortizing more. So if you look at the underlying EBITC, it was an improvement from 8.6% to 11.2%. And that translated directly into cash flow. So the cash flow almost SEK 1.4 billion despite paying out SEK 300 million in severance payments. And we saw, for the first time in 5 years, a reduction in net debt which we are very happy about. And that also allows us to sustain the dividend. So the Board approved yesterday dividend payments of SEK 2.4 per share, unchanged from prior years. If we look then on the next slide, specific key takeaways. As I said on the book-to-bill, we did see lower Middle East, Africa. That's really where it stemmed from. Also a bit of India, but we were very clear on also saying no to a lot of orders last minute because we felt the criteria was not truly fulfilled, and we feel very good about that. Net sales decreased 1%. It was really driven a bit of Asia Pacific. Actually, we had some delayed project installation understandably so in the Middle East or Africa. I believe I also mentioned that at our last call. And had we not had those specific delays related to a very turbulent world in the Middle East, we would have had a positive organic growth in line with previous quarters, give and take. Then we will come back on the impairment of capitalized R&D and discontinued products. So I'll leave that for you. Gross margin, highest of the year, a little bit not lower than last year, but we actually exceeded our expectations. And keep in mind, we have an FX headwind and also a bit of bill of material headwind, but we managed to compensate through price increase. On the EBIT margin, we are at 18.9% and that really links to lower OpEx and lower service costs. So a lot of the things we have been working on is now materializing into EBIT margin. And this quarter, EBIT margin equals give and take, the EBITC margin. And then lastly, on cash flow, we saw a little bit lower cash flow in the quarter. But as I said, what really counts is the full year, and we are very happy to see that our net debt is coming down. On the commercial side, if we look at Americas, 1% growth, Evo launch continues as planned. We are positive about it, but more importantly, so is our customers. On APAC, we did see a decrease of 3%. We have seen a little bit of lower growth in some specific Asian markets. And then conversely, we see that the recovery in China that we talked about did actually materialize. So on orders, we have -- and revenue, we had 6%, 7% growth in the quarter, and we have had second half growth. And the outlook is positive going forward. Lastly, on EMEA, the momentum is still there. We have product launches. It's really Elekta Evo that is more than 2/3 of our solution sale. So that momentum continues. And then as I said, Middle East, Africa, we have just seen a pause, understandably so in the quarter. But the good thing is I met here at ESTRO a lot of both customers and resellers, and they are positive. Unfortunately, people still get cancer and radiotherapy is cost efficient. So I'm actually very impressed about the resilience, and we don't see this being a structural issue in the years ahead. If we look at our strategy progression, and if I'll just give a very brief helicopter perspective. On the first one, I think we're doing well. I'm happy with what I see, and we are ahead of plan. Focused innovation will unveil that, but we are taking a number of decisions, and we know what we need to innovate. We have the plans in place and we'll share that on CMD. There will be a strong systemic demand for what we will offer in the years to come. Expand in China, give and take, when we look at it, we are at 40% market share, 39% to 40%, a bit higher when it comes to value. So it's clearly a position we want to defend, and we are ready to compete. And in the U.S. we are really on the hunt for more market share, and the portfolio is shaping up. So we expect also high double-digit growth on orders this fiscal year. And then by the end of first half, it will start to materialize in revenue. On continued cost reduction here, we are challenged a little bit because we have the input factors hitting us. So we really have two tracks. One is the price excellence I outlined, that is just going to be a muscle. I'll also personally stimulate within the company because we need to see CPI clause increases coming out through the system. And then we run a lot of COGS, cost reductions throughout the company, and we will announce a new COO starting in the company 1st of August. So let me close here by saying on the operating model. The split between COGS and OpEx is maintained. We have no reason to believe otherwise. It's a significant impact in earnings Q4. It significantly exceeds what we guided at SEK 500 million. The restructuring charge is a notch below what we expected at SEK 421 million. And as you see, the last point, the workforce is reduced by more than 500 employees, and that translated into the savings. But as I said, the real core of the operating model is to innovate faster to execute faster to get closer to our customers. So with that, I'm going to close.

All right. So hello, everybody. Klara Eiritz here, new CFO of Elekta, started the 1st of March. So I will speak a little bit about the financials then. And starting with the full year. Jakob has mentioned some of this at some repetition, but we'll do it this way. Adjusted for currency effects, net increased by 1%, and the growth was driven by the EMEA region and recent product launches, especially in Europe then with Evo and Elekta ONE as well as also service growth and price increases also mainly for Europe. Adjusted gross margin was up a little bit year-over-year driven primarily by these price increases for Europe. However, partly -- or that offset then the negative currency effects and tariff costs year-over-year. Adjusted EBIT landed at 12.3% for the year, driven by said price increases and lower OpEx, of course, then due to the implementation of the new operating model, which allows us to run the company on a lower cost level. Adjusted EBITC margin improved as well, but the improvement was a bit less than for the EBIT margin due to lower capitalization and higher amortization. Then let's look at the fourth quarter in isolation. Okay. I'll just continue talking and see if we can get the numbers up. So adjusted for currency, net sales declined 1%. Business momentum continued in Europe and sales also increased in Americas. However, this was fully offset by lower sales in APAC due to the Japanese market slowing down. So despite growth in China during the fourth quarter, APAC sales dropped by 3% in constant exchange rates. And due to the ongoing conflict in Iran, sales in the Middle East were down a little bit also and this hampered the total growth numbers for EMEA compared to last year than despite the continued momentum that we see in Europe. And in constant exchange rate, solutions decreased sales by 2%, while services sales were unchanged compared to last year. Maybe I'll stop there before we move on? Or should I continue, Peter? Can the listeners here see the -- yes, okay. All right. Then -- yes, the book-to-bill ratio was 0.96 in the fourth quarter for reasons mentioned by Jakob here in the beginning of the call. And also for the full year, the book-to-bill ratio was 1.04 then. And gross order intake in the fourth quarter decreased by 15% in constant exchange rates. And this decrease is -- sorry, gross order intake in the fourth quarter decreased by 15% for the reasons that Jakob mentioned, a decline in the Middle East, but also stricter policy for order intake recognition at Elekta. So while these measures temporarily, of course, affected the book-to-bill ratio, they also reflect a more disciplined strategy focused on improving our order quality without impacting our growth ambitions, of course, going forward. So in the fourth quarter, adjusted gross income was SEK 1.9 billion, representing an adjusted gross margin of 39.9%, a slight decrease, mainly driven by changes in foreign exchange rates, while we saw improvements from price and product mix that contributed positively in the quarter. And then tariff costs, the strengthening of the Swedish krona against major currencies had a negative impact corresponding to a total amount of around SEK 200 million. And maybe also worth mentioning is that last year was favorably impacted by unusually strong software sales. So that's something to keep in mind also when looking at the year-over-year comparison. Adjusted EBIT came in at SEK 902 million, representing a margin of 18.9%. The higher adjusted EBIT margin derived mainly from a lower cost base than due to changes to the operating model as well as also lower R&D spend. And then what I mentioned in the beginning with, of course, price increases and all those things, they trickle down to the bottom line, of course. But we also see a somewhat higher amortization and lower capitalization that offset some of those positive effects then. Reported EBIT amounted to minus SEK 461 million, representing a margin of minus 9.7%. And the reason for the negative reported EBIT was the IAC or the Item Affecting Comparability of SEK 1.4 billion that we booked now in the fourth quarter. Gross margin was impacted by Item Affecting Comparability corresponding to about SEK 19 million. So most of the IAC can be found in OpEx and other operating income and expense. Right. Then we can go to the next one. Yes. But before we get into more details around the one-off items, a few words on currency then. FX had a negative impact on revenue of about minus 7%, mainly driven by the stronger SEK versus main revenue currencies, U.S. dollar and euro. The effect on COGS and OpEx, on the other hand, was favorable as the stronger SEK versus main cost currencies impacted the cost base favorably. And then we have some positive currency effects between gross margin and EBIT also driving from realized and unrealized currency effects on the balance sheet. Then if we move to the next slide, and we talk a little bit about the one-off item of SEK 1.4 billion. This amount is a combination of impairment of previously capitalized R&D costs and goodwill as well as provisions for other balance sheet items, mainly trade receivables. And if we start with the trade receivables part here, we have done some provisions for specific projects, but it's mainly an update of the general model for expected credit losses. We're essentially adapting more of a prudent approach to receivables that are long overdue. And in the balance sheet, we could see that these provisions have eroded over time, and we want to restore them back to more normal levels. The R&D impairment in Q4 is related to products that are no longer part of the strategic road map and they will not be launched. And we also have examples where we have similar product -- similar development projects that are being combined into one, and this means that we must give up some of the parallel development costs that are currently activated on the balance sheet. These decisions and the consequential impairments give us a balance sheet that is better aligned with current business assumptions and our strategy going forward. For competitive reasons, we will not disclose, of course, further details around which products, projects or initiatives that we're talking about here, but we can say that with these adjustments, we have a balance sheet that is well in line with our strategic ambitions and that will help us build our commercial success going forward. The impairment of goodwill is related to the Kaiku business in Finland and the strategic decision to start to wind down that business. Can go to the next one. Cash flow after continuous investments amounted to -- let's see, this is the full year, sorry, yes. One -- or sorry, for Q4 amounted to SEK 1.1 billion, including severance payments of approximately SEK 160 million in the quarter. And the full year cash flow improved SEK 336 million to SEK 1.4 billion. And the improvement year-over-year mainly is due to more favorable movements in working capital and lower investment levels. Then let's say a few words about the dividend proposal related to the fiscal year '25-'26. The board proposal to the AGM in August or September, I can't remember, is an unchanged dividend of SEK 2.4 per share. This would equal SEK 917 million split into installments as usual. So that is the proposal to the AGM. And then maybe on to a few comments on the EBITC margin. You can see those numbers in the gray boxes at the bottom here under the graph. And for 5 consecutive quarters, we now see an improvement in the 12-month rolling EBITC margin, which is encouraging and something that we are focusing on when we assess the business. Great. And then a few final words then on the outlook for '26-'27. We expect sales in constant currency to increase year-over-year. And with that, we also expect an improvement in the EBIT margin. And on our Capital Markets Day on June 17, we will present more details related to midterm financial targets going forward. So we will talk more then. Thank you. So I hand back to you, Jakob, to close out the part.

Yes. I'll be very brief. So we do see both full year and Q4, as you outlined, Klara, a strong improvement in profitability. We are happy about that. It translated into cash. Keep in mind, we said that we wanted EBIT to be closer correlated to cash generation. It's being delivered upon reduction in net debt, very important for us. We have done the balance sheet review. It will not impair our ability to grow and execute and deliver great products in the future. And I personally would say short term, above all, we'll focus on improved profitability and create the foundation for innovation-driven growth. But very soon, we will pivot towards pursue innovation-driven growth, and we will share that in greater details at the Capital Market Day.

Great. Thanks, Jakob. Thanks Klara, for the presentation. So we are now open for the Q&A session. So operator, we open that line now. So please?

I think we have the first question from Hassan Al-Wakeel, Barclays.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Hassan Al-Wakeel from Barclays.

A couple, please. Firstly, can you talk about the order intake you're seeing in the U.S. and how customer conversations are progressing, particularly as it relates to changes in U.S. reimbursement with level 1 to 3 reimbursement implemented earlier this year and whether this is triggering lower revenues for centers and an elongation to replacement cycles? And then secondly, on China, you talked previously about confidence of double-digit growth in H2 and beyond. Q4 looks to be slightly softer than that. What was different versus your expectations? And how do you consider the risk of new entrants in China impacting your ability to grow double digit, particularly given this is a market that isn't expected to contribute to growth from many other MedTech companies?

Yes. Maybe I'll start China, then I get into the order intake in U.S. specifically. So in China, it's absolutely right. On revenue, we came at 6% orders, 7% in Q4. So that was slightly lower than double digit. It was one with the installation. So sometimes we operate at these margins. I do think we saw what we outlined back to growth second half. So that's important. The market recovering, that's important, strong market share, and we also expect to grow in this fiscal year. Specifically on new entrants, absolutely, it's there. I mean, we don't want to name them. You know them. We see a host of smaller having struggling to really get a foothold and then we have one larger. But we compete, and I actually consider China being a good lab for strengthening the competitiveness of Elekta because when we compete in China, we can also compete elsewhere. I outlined when we look at units, we assess that last fiscal, we roughly had between 39% and 40% market share. If I then turn on to U.S. first on reimbursement, there's actually a reimbursement crisis within radiotherapy. We see a lot of independent clinics struggling. It's less an issue for us, I would say, first, because we have not had our full share. So -- and -- but secondly, also because we worked a lot towards adapting the treatments. And there, the reimbursement environment is actually much more favorable. So you're well compensated when you do replans instead of one treatment with the same dose for 30 fractions. So all in all, challenge in the U.S., but specifically for Elekta, we actually feel it serves us well. Does it then extend the buying cycle time? Yes, maybe it does a little bit but given where we are, we are less focused on what's happening in the market, but more focused on actually selling to existing and new customers and get back to our fair market share.

We'll move to next question, and that's from Mattias Vadsten at SEB.

Can you hear me?

Yes. Perfect.

I have two. So the first one, continuing on APAC, it was a bit surprising to me where it decreased in Q4. So I mean, you are heading in the right direction in Q3, I thought. So if you can maybe comment on Japan because you outlined that quite clearly. And I guess I don't know if Japan is around 15% of APAC. So it must be a quite steep decline there. So maybe, yes, explain Japan a little bit more in detail.

Yes. So the market in general is roughly 1,100 Linacs in Japan. And then if you assume a 5-year or 15-year lifetime, you can expect how many will be purchased every year. And we saw a dip relative to that equilibrium last year. The outlook, there's been change in the reimbursement code. So the outlook is actually favorable this year. So we expect to bounce back. And just give you a little bit of color. I was with the Head of Gastro Society in Japan. And there outlook is from government that in 15 years, we will see 24% more patients being treated by linac accelerators than today. So the long-term potential is good in Japan. But we saw both Japan, actually also Indonesia, where there's a big government tender being softer than what we expected. And yes, it also surprised us a little bit coming into '25-'26.

You had the second question, Mattias?

Yes. Thanks for that answer, very clear. Then it is this order criteria changes that you have. Some questions to that. So if you could give maybe some examples of orders that you no longer consider? What regions this is mainly relevant for? I guess in the end of the day, also anything you can say to give a sense of the margin improvement you see by these initiatives is helpful for us. And I would say in Q3 orders were quite good, if I remember correctly. So -- and I guess you have had this initiative done as well. And so yes, if you could comment on that a bit as well.

Yes. I mean, first, I'll just direct you to the nominal order intake. You look at it year-on-year. I look at it also a nominal. As such, it was not a bad order intake, but obviously with a significant decline to Q4 last year. So on order intake criteria, if I just speak at it broadly, we have, for years, seen that our order backlog grew much faster than revenue, and it became bigger and bigger to the point that we said we impair it. And we also said we don't want to see that happening again. So for private sector orders in general, we need a prepayment. We need a very clear site delivery. So we have high -- it really boils into, we need to have high certainty that, that order materialized into revenue within a 3-year time period. Then we have, by the way, also on service orders in general tilted towards more yearly orders than multiyear orders. So I'll just come back to -- we did see some softness particularly in the Middle East, and I can give you some specific examples. But all in all, the way I encourage you to read it is that the order -- our book-to-bill of 1.04 is now indicative of future revenue growth. And that's at least how we look at it, and we wanted to create a stronger link between what we report at the order intake and what we expect as revenue going forward. Then on a very specific example, I could tell you, we got some deals we said no to every exception from the rule. And some of them, we actually got prepayments, but that was from the distributors but we still didn't get pen to paper from the end user and then we said no. And we have said no to end year discounts, we have said no to airfreighting equipment into installed within the fiscal year. And that's part of the commitment we have been very clear on. We want good quality of earnings.

Can I just have a quick follow-up because I think it was a very helpful answer. This -- that you said around yearly orders on the service side compared to multiyear orders. Would you say that, let's say, I'm expecting you not to contradict but would you say it's a material impact on what the development that we see in...

It depends from -- yes, it depends a little bit from region to region. But I would say, in general, we think it's more favorable for Elekta to do single year service contracts with -- that we can then renew because we -- the cost, I wouldn't say it's captive, but we typically have a long-lasting relationship, and we have been very clear on it. We don't want to incentivize the behavior within the Elekta, whether it's an incentive to make a 5-, 10-year service agreement when it's better for the company to do yearly. And over time, we will reflect on should we show the full order intake or should we more show the solution order intake because it's actually more descriptive.

We move on to the next question. Erik Cassel at Danske Bank.

I also want to talk a bit on orders and maybe start on the stricter acceptance criteria. I mean, good color on it previously, but I just wanted to see if we can try to single out what sort of effect that had. For one, like if you can talk about the solutions part of it. What sort of orders did you say decline to book now and on what basis? And what was the impact? And then also then on service, what was the service impact overall? Any sort of color on that, I think, would be super helpful today.

Yes. I think actually, I gave a lot of color towards Mattias. So just in general, we just say no to all orders, recognizing them in our book-to-bill. They are part of our funnel if they don't live up to their criteria. And I believe I also said now half a year ago, that we hold our regional managers highly accountable to that orders coming in should materialize to revenue because we incentivize not them but salespeople on orders. So of course, if you pay commission, you expect revenue.

Yes. I appreciate that you gave a good qualitative color on it. I was just more asking on the numbers side. If you can say anything on numbers, what the actual impact was so we can sort of distinguish between what was more market driven, so to speak?

Yes. I think the best -- it doesn't directly answer, but I think the best guide we give you here is that we have worked fairly hard on getting an order intake that is more descriptive of future revenue growth. In the past, we saw our CAGR significantly higher for our order intake than materialized revenue, and that's not a sign of a healthy order backlog. And then the way we look at it, we look at it distinctly from service, from software, from solution, but we don't share these numbers here. Maybe we will consider it going forward, but we don't here.

Okay, fair. Then just a quick follow-up on the service yearly instead. I was just wondering, does that open up for competitive tendering on the service side of your business every year? Or do you still have some sort of, I guess, multiyear agreements on it to make sure that you actually get continued service?

I mean in many regions, we, in general, see a very high, what we call service attachment rate close to 100% in the mature market. Less so in development market and then we have a certain perspective on how to increase that service attachment rate, both within our product and in our commercial execution. So I actually feel we have untapped potential in the service area.

Okay. Just last question then. I saw that the regional adjusted margins were down quite a bit. And then obviously, global costs were down dramatically year-over-year. So I was just trying to reconcile is there any sort of change in reporting now that you're running a more decentralized business or costs just moved around? Or are there any like nonrecurring items, you can talk about in terms of like central costs when it comes to, say, more hedging, et cetera, so we can understand that a bit more.

Yes. So the Q4, I understand and it's a good catch. It's a little bit of a transition quarter. We changed a lot of reporting lines, 1st of February, and that then linked into cost centers. So we have a number of global functions now being decentralized into regions. So it's really the total number you can look at. And when we look at it, we can just say cost have come down very, very significantly, both supporting our gross margin because we actually had bill of material increase, but there was more than -- that was strongly compensated by service and installation efficiency. And then obviously, on OpEx and what I said in the beginning, stands, of course, that we expect now the cost savings to significantly exceed the SEK 500 million.

Next question is from Ludwig Germunder at Handelsbank.

Ludwig Germunder from Handelsbank. I'd like to start with a more general question on the cost savings, and pick up on where you ended there, Jakob. So you've been talking about those SEK 500 million in annualized savings before and now you predicted, I think, that you expect cost savings to exceed the SEK 500 million. Would it be possible to give any number of how much you expect them to exceed the SEK 500 million? And also a second question to that part, since you mentioned that a significant share of those were realized already now in Q4, would you be willing to give any sort of ballpark number, what the significant share is equal to?

Yes. I think we would like to reserve that for our CMD. That's our thinking because then we very quickly get into a more detailed guide for the year, and we think it's important we deliver that as a total package. But I think we take a step in that direction by saying that a significant in part has been achieved in Q4. We saw that accelerating throughout the quarter that I can say. And then we do expect the amount to significantly exceed SEK 500 million. And we are ahead of plan actually on it. So -- but most importantly, Ludwig, if I just come back to, we did it really to accelerate the pace of the company. And I see that's happening throughout the company. But we'll give you a very detailed OpEx, but we feel good about where we are. And that's, of course, also evidenced in what we report in EBITC. It's quite a big improvement year-on-year by 4.5%. And a lot of it stems from these operational efficiencies.

Okay. I see. And then just one more question, please, on the impairments that you take in the quarter. Would you be willing to give any comment around why you're doing this now and not together with the order book write-down back in Q2, for example? I'm just trying to understand what's happened now and how to think about how things are going.

All right. Yes. So I'll do it very short and then to you, Klara because -- but the reason why we did it now was really coming into the company, first priority was on order intake. I do think we have guided that we wanted to improve quality of earnings. And then I wanted a new CFO in who could look at the balance sheet with a fresh perspective. So that was one of the first assignments you got. So we have your view, Klara?

Yes. No, exactly. I mean as a new CFO, I think it made sense to do that as part of me coming on board. So -- and I wasn't here when you did the rightsizing of the order backlog.

And just a quick follow-up, if I may. How does this impairment now change the year-on-year amortization levels going forward? How should we think about that?

They will go down a little bit, but the amortization levels are also, of course, dependent on what products that we commercialize and so going forward. So it's a give and take. But if you just look at the effect from the write-downs now, there is a small effect on the amortization going forward. But also some of the write-downs that we did are related to things that were not set to start to amortize in -- it was set to -- start to amortized in a few years also. So you need to -- it's hard to be super specific on that, but of course, a small effect, yes.

I think you should model that capitalization will equal amortization. That's at least our base assumption.

And we will have Kavya Deshpande from UBS coming up here.

Two from me, please. The first on the order revenue -- sorry, the order criteria. Am I correct that it was nearly applied in Q4? Is it stricter than the criteria that had led to the previous backlog cancellations that we've seen over the last 12 months? And if so, could we see a further review of the backlog going forward? And the second question is on service revenue growth. So by region, it looks in the Americas, it was flat in constant currencies despite a very weak comp. Is there anything to call out specifically for Americas service sales growth in Q4?

Yes. So on the order intake, no, same criteria that has been applied throughout the year, I would say. So same criteria, same interpretation. Those criteria were not to the same extent in place Q4 last year and hence part of the comp difference. And then we did get fewer orders than expected, particularly in the Middle East. Yes. So on the service side, we do show overall growth for the company. I don't have specific comments on the U.S.

We'll move to the next question from Veronika Dubajova at Citi.

It's Giang Nguyen from Citi on behalf of Veronika. I have two, please, and one modeling follow-up for Klara if I may. So the first question is, and apologies back on the order intake growth. Can you comment on the dynamics in order intake in Q4 outside the Middle East and Southeast Asia? So the U.S., we talked about it, but how about EMEA, ex Middle East and the rest of APAC? And the second question is related to the reduction in absolute R&D spend. What was behind this in the quarter? And what's your outlook for gross R&D going forward? And then I will ask a follow-up for Klara after.

Yes. So we did have substantial impact by specific orders in specific North Africa and Middle East countries that led to lower than what we expected order intake in Q4. And then as I said, it really also linked into fairly firm interpretation of what we put in the order backlog. And I'll come back to what I've said that with the order backlog, it's now a more appropriate guide for future revenue growth. So that's where I would say we are on the order backlog. Yes, what was the second question again?

That was on R&D spend.

On R&D spend, yes. I don't want to give a guide for next year. But part of our OpEx savings is linked to a more focused R&D strategy and more R&D efficiencies, and we have been also delayering and setting up a new organization structure within R&D that reduces the overall R&D spend. But we still expect to maintain a very healthy and high R&D spend, gross spend in percentage of revenue because we can see there's a lot of innovation to be harvested.

And then you had a detailed question or...

Yes. For Klara, if I could. Can you provide any color on the FX impact for fiscal '26-'27 on revenues and also through the margin -- gross and EBIT margin, please?

Yes. So for the full year of -- sorry, you mean the full year of '25-26?

You mean the quarter, right?

No, sorry. Yes, for the coming fiscal year.

For the coming fiscal year. No, I don't think we speculate any currency effects going forward. So I don't think I'm going to -- is that okay, Peter, to say that?

Sure. Absolutely. We'll move to Oliver Reinberg at Kepler.

Three questions from my side. Firstly, just on inflation and tariffs. Can you provide a bit of color what you have in mind in terms of the inflation impact for the new upcoming year and whether tariffs are still a headwind or potential tailwind? And any kind of quantified guidance would be helpful. Secondly, on services, I mean, it's usually a stable growth driver. We had, I think, overall globally now flat sales in Q4. Also, the full year was a bit more moderate with 3% growth only, while normally pricing should provide a support. I assume there's not any kind of large impact from moving from multiyear to single-year contracts, but any kind of color on that would be great. And then thirdly, just checking, it sounded like on the outlook for this year, which is a bit weak. Can we actually expect this to become more granular as part of the CMD?

Do you want to start?

Yes, absolutely. So when we look at inflation, it has two dimensions, cost and price. We clearly see on cost certain inflationary impact from logistics. We have -- we put tungsten in our machine. Prices have come up a bit. Now it's dropped by 55%, by the way. And -- but also other microchips that we put and apply in our software also. So we are under pressure on bill of material, but we expect to offset that by operational execution and then price increases throughout the system. It goes back to the point I said on price discipline. So we really come in with some very strong floor pricing requirement and margin requirement. On service growth, yes. So we have a 3% growth, you can say it's modest. But it's service growth. And in general, our business is on the service side, predictable. Many of our contracts have a CPI clause. Those who do not have, we will review and renegotiate because cost is coming up. We don't want to be further specific on the outlook, except we'll come back to that at CMD, where we hope to be more granular or we expect to be more granular on this year and our midterm target.

We'll move to the next question from Kristofer Liljeberg at Carnegie.

Just one question on orders and this more stricter criteria. Could you comment on what you think the average time now from order to sales is? And the reason I'm asking is your comment also that the book-to-bill of 1.04 is a better indication of sales growth. So would that imply that you could grow 4% or so in the new fiscal year?

Yes. As I said, we don't want to give the guide for this fiscal year until we meet on the 17th of June. So book-to-bill, it actually varies a lot from region. So if we take our Asia Pacific region, it's faster, it's actually a little bit longer in more mature markets, but give and take, 12 months. But as I said, there are quite significant regional differences.

Do you have another, Kristofer?

Sorry, I was muted. but do you think it's fair to assume that orders that has been booked now this fiscal year is a better indication of sales growth in the new fiscal year than it has been for many years. I remember, if you go back to a long time, that was a pretty good indication, but it hasn't been for at least 10 years, maybe more.

Yes. So it's not a guide. But as I said, part of our quality of earnings is to make sure we have a backlog that is actually a better indicator for future revenue growth. That's really the purpose of disclosing it. So what I can say, it's a better guide than prior years. And then we will share the specific guide with you when we meet on 17th of June.

We are now open for the last question for this session, and that's from Sten Gustafsson at ABG Sundal Collier.

So a lot of good questions on the order criteria. So I think we can maybe move to something else. In terms of sales and just to clarify, you said something like your sales growth for the quarter would have been in line with previous quarters if it wasn't for the Middle East. Can you confirm that I heard that correctly and preferably also maybe quantify the -- what you're referring to? Is that like 2% or something like that?

Yes, I think we would have been 1%, 2% organic growth if we didn't have specific projects being delayed in the Middle East.

Okay. Perfect. And my last question then would be, do you think that some clients mainly in the U.S. or other regions are hesitant to book Evo until they see the new Siemens machine coming up during the fall or expected to be launched in the fall?

It's not what we see, Sten. I mean we see our funnel, our orders developing as per plan. But keep in mind, we come from a small base. So we are the challenger, and not the incumbent. And there is a strong systemic demand for having a vendor competition in the U.S. So we actually just don't see it play out. And that's why we also call out here, we expect double-digit order growth in the U.S. for this fiscal.

And that concludes the Q&A session for the Q4 earnings call. And maybe Jakob, some final remarks before we close the call.

Yes. So we closed the year. It has been an eventful year. I think a lot has been achieved, but we -- as I started out by saying we are not at full potential. We are not happy with the top line growth, Middle East and up Middle East, but it was in line with our plan because we are focused on reset and stabilized. Now we need to improve the underlying profitability. Here, I will say the quarter is a significant step in that direction. We see a very significant EBITC uptake from Q4 last year. We see that translate into cash flow. We see our net debt coming down. But as I also ended up by saying long term for Elekta to be at full potential, we need to grow at or above the market.

Great. Thank you, Jakob, and thank you, Klara, for the first presentation here at this call. And by that, we close the call. And I look forward to see you all at the CMD in Stockholm on June 17. There is still opportunities to sign up for that on our web page. So please do that. And it's going to be an exciting event. Thank you, and goodbye.

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