Fjord Defence Group ASA (DFENS) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2025 presentation for Fjord Defence Group ASA. The presentation will be done by me, Jon Asbjorn Bo, CEO; and also Øyvind Mølmann, the CFO of the company. As an introduction, I can tell you that we are very happy that yesterday, we closed up finally everything with the acquisition of Scanfiber. So that is now formally a part of Fjord Defence Group. If we look at 2025, in perspective, we have done a total change of what earlier was Aquila Holding and we have turned that into a compounder of the defense industry. We have done during -- since -- or since June, 2 acquisitions. We bought up Fjord Defence AS and we also bought up Scanfiber, which is now finally done with all the legal things that have to be done. So we have done what we set out to do in a tempo that we wanted it to be. If we look at the defense part and look at Scanfiber and Fjord Defence combined, you see the growth of revenue over the last years are quite good, I would say. We are now up to NOK 254 million compared to NOK 70 million in total in 2022. We have an EBITDA, which was about NOK 10 million in 2022. And now in 2025, we report NOK 69 million. So we have done what we say and a part of that is very good. If we look at the market, the growth in the defense industry over the next 10 years will be strong. I do always also think that it will always be a strong growth, both in Europe and also in the U.S. And I don't think Europe will stand down during this time because of all the global uncertainty for the moment. If we look at our Buy and Build strategy, which we provided already when we presented the Q2 results when we had only Fjord Defence AS. We set up the specifics for companies that we are going to buy. And many people request when are you buying the next company? And in our prospect, that will be 1 to 3 companies during this year without announcing any dates for when we think it's going to happen. And I hope the last page also showed you that we have the growth, the organic growth and that is a part of the build strategy and we are actually now also very focused on the build strategy for both Fjord Defence AS and Scanfiber to meet the requirement over the next years. If we look at specific, Fjord Defence AS have a high potential in the U.S. Army development contract that is finished and they start purchasing. There is also several opportunities for high-impact framework agreement in the different NATO countries. If we look at Scanfiber, we know that the vehicle programs in Europe is expected to double over the next 5 years. And Scanfiber, as it is today, they can meet the double revenue without any big investments. And in addition to that, we are now working on trying to expand their customer base. We see some top synergies between the 2 companies because they have very much many of the same customers as OEM. As I said before, Fjord Defence AS is 50% direct sales to the end users and 50% to the OEMs, while Scanfiber is basically 100% through the OEMs. If we look at the development over the last 3 years for order intake and order book, we see that the growth has been substantial. And as a part of the build strategy, we are now working hard with the 2 companies to make sure that we can do that and even more. Then I will let Øyvind Mølmann come in and do the next few slides.

Thank you, Jon Asbjorn. We have, as Jon Asbjorn mentioned, just closed the Scanfiber transaction and that is included in our numbers here on a pro forma basis as if we owned Scanfiber and Fjord Defence from the 1st of January 2024. If we focus on the right-hand side of the slide, you will see that the defense segment comprising of Scanfiber and Fjord Defence is dominating the revenue with a total of NOK 254 million out of the NOK 266 million in group as well as down to the EBITDA line with a combined EBITDA of NOK 69 million and a loss of NOK 6.5 million in the legacy part. So this will be the picture going forward also with the defense segment becoming more and more dominant as we go forward. If we move below the EBITDA line, you will see major amortizations. First, for the multi-client library. Those are -- those amortizations are tax deductible as opposed to the next line of NOK 15.8 million in the PPA stemming from the acquisition of Fjord Defence here. And that is purely for accounting purposes and has no tax effect and none of the amortizations have any cash effect, of course. When it comes to the legacy part of the business, there is a turnover of NOK 12 million, as you can see. But in addition to that, we have -- as mentioned, we have had a total of NOK 21 million in additional cash coming into that part. So in total, approximately NOK 33 million in cash from the legacy part and we expect that to be a contributor also going forward. So looking then at, as we say, the quarter. It is the same picture, NOK 51 million out of NOK 54 million stems from the defense segment and the story is the same here basically. I would just like to mention that as we have seen in the past, you will also be expecting going forward, great variations in the quarterly revenues as we go forward. So then, quickly going over to the balance sheet. The 2024 numbers here are solely legacy. No defense activity in the 2024 numbers, ending up with a balance sheet of NOK 326 million. That is more than double to NOK 723 million at the end of 2025. And that is the real balance sheet, which is audited now and contains few defense, in addition to the multi-client library. And also, you can see on the cash side, we have a strong cash of almost NOK 200 million, NOK 199.4 million. That is pending the transaction with Scanfiber that was completed and settled yesterday. So -- and still leaves us with a solid balance sheet, good liquidity, unused -- still unutilized bank facilities of NOK 60 million and equity ratio of 91%. So overall satisfactory flexibility, which we intend to maintain also going forward to keep the flexibility and prepare for new acquisitions going forward. So Jon Asbjorn, I leave it to you.

So to summarize, as a part of the build strategy, Fjord Defence AS is moving into new facilities during Q2. And that is because the growing demand and the need to step up their production capacity. And also, we are in a good position, hiring more people, both in the assembly area and also in other areas. If we look at the order book, as I was into earlier, it is absolutely all-time high and we are meeting the growing demand by building up those 2 companies we have to make sure that we are capable of the next part of the growth moving through '26 and also through '27 to '30. And we have, as Øyvind was into, we have the financial power to do that. As I said, with the M&A opportunities, we have a great pipeline and we will probably buy between 1 and 3 companies this year but also study always that they're meeting our investment criterias. We have a solid balance sheet that is ready. And we have to build and we are on the way of building a stronger organization for the next coming years, both on the build side and also on the M&A side. And with that, I would like to say thank you very much and -- for listening. And thank you from Fjord Defence Group this time. We'll be back soon. Thank you very much.