Frequentis AG (FQT.DE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's virtual roundtable with the topic, Mission Critical Communications MCX as a growth driver of the Frequentis AG in English language. I am delighted to welcome the CEO, Norbert Haslacher; and Head of Investor Relations, Stefan Marin, who will guide us through the presentation shortly. [Operator Instructions] And having said this, I'm handing over to you Mr. Haslacher.

Thank you very much, and welcome also from our side for the Frequentis presentation with a little bit of specialty around MissionX, our product for mission-critical networks. So before I jump into the presentation, I would like to mention some historical data. So Frequentis is a family company. We are existing since 1947, have been established after second World War II to reestablish civil air traffic into Austria and from Austria. And from that year on so that's more than 75 years old now, we have been active in a very special field, which is safety critical infrastructures in multiple nations. And last year, we have delivered our solutions to more than 150 countries in the world. We are stock listed since 2019, still a family company from our behavior and 68% is with the family Bardach, who are the major shareholder of the company. So who is typically our customer? Our customers are organizations, which are responsible for managing national safety critical infrastructures. And these organizations exist in pretty much all of the countries worldwide. So the market is a real global market. On one side, it's the typical air navigation service provider who is responsible for the airspace. Therefore, a country has usually ANSP in Germany; that would be DFS; in the U.S., it would be the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration; in the U.K. it would be NATS. So every country has its own air traffic -- air navigation service provider organization. They are usually governmental organized or owned by the government as a majority as they manage safety critical infrastructure. So the privatization there is not really a topic. The other market segment and customer segment we are in is defense. Around 20% of our revenues are based on defense contracts. Why Defense? Usually, the Air Force also is a big user of the air space. So there has to be a coordination and also the same infrastructure and control center capability in place for having military flights. That's in smaller countries, only conducted by an Air Force organization, but in larger countries, there are also the Navy and Army have objects which are flying in the air. So they have helicopters, they have fighter aircraft-s, they have drones, they have different capabilities they use for their special missions. Another area where we are active in the control center is public safety. I think it's also obvious there that it's very, very safety critical as police forces, fire brigades and emergency and medical services rely on safety critical infrastructures to operate from the control center in cooperation with the assets and people they have out there on the street. Same applies to public transport. We have control centers managing rail traffic in heavy rail and urban rail environments. And also maritime is, of course, a safety-critical control center capability, countries need who have a connection to the sea. But not only in connection to the sea, also large rivers need control centers for authorities to manage ship traffic in inland waterways through the country on large rivers. So what you see is we are in a niche. We supply applications, and we are kind of the data collector from different sensors out there in the field. So we take the data from sensors, we fusion them to a radar picture or to a situation awareness picture to give the operator a chance to evaluate the situation based on accurate and consistent data. On the other side, we provide communication capabilities into the control center to be able to communicate with an aircraft or with a police force or assets out there in the field via voice or via data. That has to be conducted in a very secure way. So there is no compromise from the outside possible, and that has to be an end-to-end responsibility in the network as well to make sure that the data are not compromised. This is what we deliver. And as I said, we deliver that in around 150 countries in the world. So how big is the market? The market is pretty large, and we have created our own market model as you don't get studies for all segments, where you can evaluate how big the market for your portfolio is. So we -- for ATM and public safety, there are very good studies available, which we have purchased. On the other side, we have made our own assumptions based on historical knowledge, how much tenders our control center market is tendering annually. What we can see is that the tenders concerning the control center market in safety critical infrastructures is around EUR 14 billion annually. So the market is pretty large. And what we can address in that market is around EUR 4 billion with the current portfolio we have. We have extended that addressable market for us already since the IPO as we did merger acquisitions and also put a lot of money into R&D to develop new capabilities for our customers to make more and more addressable from the EUR 14 billion for Frequentis. Currently, we have around 550 governmental customers in 150 countries in the world. So I think we have a pretty good customer base out there where we can add products to our customer base and therefore, increase our share of wallet within the customer environment -- within the existing customer environment. So what are the major drivers for investing and given the total market size also a growth element. We have 3 megatrends influencing the availability of money in our market. As you can imagine, as our governments -- our customers are governments, they usually rely on taxpayer money. And governments always have money. It's only a question about what type of budgets for what purpose they put into their plans. And of course, these plans are very much driven by -- for our industry by one topic, which is security. I think it's very obvious that the security situation around the globe has changed significantly in the last couple of years. And therefore, governments are really threatened by the level of defense infrastructure and safety critical infrastructure they currently have in their countries. One of the biggest drivers for increasing their budgets based on the security situation we have in Europe is the commitment of the NATO countries to increase their military spending from 2% of GDP to 5% of GDP. So that's definitely something which is driving money into our market. The other point, which is driving money into our market is the recent threat of having drones in a regulated airspace and in the sovereign air space, not only in Poland, also in Estonia, in the Baltics, in Sweden, in Norway, in Finland and even in Munich, where I've seen last week. So there is a new threat coming up, which is in the air and it's called drones. And Europe has no answer to that threat at the moment. And therefore, we also expect an increase of budgets within the governments to address these type of threats. Another driver in -- to the infrastructure we are addressing is, of course, the growing mobility worldwide. So when you see the forecast of Boeing, Airbus, Embraer and other aircraft providers, but also drone producers, you can imagine that thousands of vehicles in the air will join the airspace. It will be more than 1,000 manned aircrafts from Boeing, Airbus and Embraer, but maybe multiple thousands of drones entering an airspace. For that, you need a proper infrastructure and a proper control center structure to manage that air traffic as there are a lot of strong regulations worldwide to make sure that passengers can fly safely from A to B. Therefore, these countries have to follow very strict regulations. And the more traffic is in the air, there are more working positions they need on the ground and infrastructure on the ground to be able to manage that growing air traffic according to the law and according to the regulation. That brings me to my third megatrend, which is driving investments into our markets, that's the technological advancements. The air traffic organizations and also the other public sector safety critical organizations have been very, very conservative. They have to be conservative because it's a 24/7, 365 days a year operation, you cannot put a maintenance window in for a couple of hours and stop the air traffic, it's all not possible. So they have to be up and running 24/7. That means that they are really reluctant to implement new technology and test or try something out. They usually take technology, which is already 10 years in operation in the commercial sector. Therefore, they are a clear follower. But what they face now is that based on the old technology they have, they cannot manage the growth of air traffic with the current processes and tools and applications they have in place. So there is a new regulation or was a new regulation coming out from European Union that also the navigation service providers have to go from spaghetti code to lasagna code in their applications, meaning that they have to think of implementing service-oriented architectures, microservices, virtual environments going more into private cloud environments, to be able to adapt much faster to changes than they have been able before. And that's the third major driver for investing into the current infrastructure, especially in Europe and the United States. So here are the figures from our first half year. We had a pretty good first half year, and we also expect to have a pretty good full year. Q4 for us is the most busiest quarter in the year as the -- our customers, our governments, and they want to close the programs before the end year so that the money can flow out to the vendor. I think that's obvious for all people who are -- who know the public sector business model, some programs we have already secured in the first half year is we got a pretty large order from the FAA as the FAA got the order from the new administration in the United States that they have to completely refurb their FAA current infrastructure. They are also part of the Big Beautiful Bill and around USD 13 million to USD 14 billion should flow into the refurbishment of the FAA infrastructure. And Frequentis is definitely part of that. European companies are pretty welcome in the U.S. because they know that the technology leaders, especially in air traffic management, are not coming from the U.S. They are coming from Europe. Due to the complexity of the airspace we have in Europe, our systems are much more advanced than the systems which are available in the United States. What's also important in the U.S. for us is the remote tower. So we have developed a remote tower capability for German ANSP DFS 10 years ago. And 5 periods ago, the U.S. Air Force was aware of that, then we got a contract from the U.S. Air Force to test our equipment in U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marine capability environments and they were really impressed about our capability and has -- they have put us into Atlantic City into the tech center of the FAA to gain certification for that remote tower capability so that they can use it within the U.S. national airspace. That certification should come in Q2 '26, and then we are the only provider of that technology within the United States. What's important is that the U.S., of course, is allowed to take this technology to countries which are not part of the U.S. national airspace. So they have put our technology into Germany, into a U.S. Army base and operate the first system there of Frequentis already and are very happy with the capability they generate for the U.S. Army. What we also have acquired in the first half year is a very large contract with Thuringia, the state police in Germany. We are already delivering to Bavaria, Northern Rhine-Westphalia, Hamburg, Saarland. So we have already 9 countries in Germany. North Thuringia is the next one. It's a large contract where Siemens and T-Systems are our subcontractors, and we are the general contractor. So the technology for multimedia communication will be rolled out in whole Thuringia. Also important for us was the acquisition of Regola 3 years ago in Italy because this is adding a portfolio element in public safety to our comms platform in the area of CAD. So the CAD comps are the major applications in the control center for public safety. And with this acquisition, we started to address the U.K. market, where we could already save 2 opportunities for Frequentis, delivering the first systems of a kind to the U.K., which was awarded also in the first half year. So this is, I think, not much to say. We really had very good years in order intake and the jump from '24 to '25 was really huge. And we also expect, as I said, we have a very good order intake year until the end of the year '25. That also gave us a very good orders on hand visibility. So we have around 1.5 years orders on hand visibility currently available. And this is, I think, a very good starting point also for the next fiscal year. That's our revenue growth. I think we have also shown good revenue growth. It's only half year figures. That's not full year figures. And you know that we do around 40% in the first half year, 60% in the second half year. The split between ATM and PST is pretty much the same, it's 30% PST and 70% ATM, which consists out of civil and defense. Here, you can see already that the Americas is really appreciating our technology as the American share of revenue has increased significantly already in the first half year. So we have been jumping from 17% in half year 1, '24 to 23% half year 1 in '25 within the Americas. And the major driver for that was the United States. This will continue as there are large programs coming up in the U.S., for this refurbishment of the FAA infrastructure, and we expect more to come in the U.S. This is a slide I always want to show very openly to people who are not so much aware of the public sector business and are maybe a little bit concerned about a negative EBIT in the first half year. I can assure you that a very normal pattern every company has acting in the public sector field because usually, you produce cost in the first half year and when you get the milestones in, you can put the revenues out and create your margin. That's a pattern for all our -- for all project companies being active in public sector. Our margin is generated in the second half year. And thereof, most of it in Q4, as before the end of the year, the programs have to be finalized, closed and invoiced. Yes, today, we have a little bit of a specialty. So the guys asked me to talk a little bit more about our newest product, which is called MCX Mission-Critical Services. And I've brought a picture with me to you hopefully explain a little bit more the situation the countries currently have. So on the right side, the people you can see here are typically police forces, firefighters, railway staff, people who are out in the field, are operating for a national safety critical infrastructure. On the other side, you have on the left side, somebody is sitting in a control room to steer the operation of the people and the assets out in the field. And in the past, they have been communicating via very, very old infrastructure, either it was GSMR in the rail sector. I think most of you know GSM, it's a very old technology. It has a very low bandwidth. And blue light organizations or public safety organizations, they have been communicating via TETRA, digital radio network. That's not much better than GSMR it's very low bandwidth, and you can transmit voice and can transmit a little bit of text data. But for 2025, that's not really appropriate. So what the country started to think of is, is there a technology out there which can use 5G LTE with high bandwidth and high priorities to be able to transmit mass data, videos, voice, whatever is out there and is recognized by our police forces and law enforcement agencies and transport that into the control room to create a better situational awareness. So Frequentis has acquired a company called Nemergent in Bilbao in Spain 3 years ago, coming out from the Technical University of Bilbao, they have generated a software-defined network layer, which is put above the 5G network or an LTE network and make that current network available for mission-critical push-to-talk, video transmission, data transmission and also provides an interworking function with existing legacy equipment like TETRA and others. So this thing is the future of network communication in the area of public safety and rail. The first tenders are already out and we got the first award in the U.K. with IBM as a prime contractor, as this is also an IT program. And Frequentis is very much focusing on the software side of that software-defined network layer. And what we see is that other European countries already started trials to test it and also started tendering this MCX solution within 2026. So we have already, in some countries, conducted trials with police forces or rescue organizations in Germany. We did it with [ Maltesa ] to test the equipment out with MCX based on Vodafone or Deutsche Telekom infrastructure, and it really worked well. And there is also a European telecommunication system. The standard is really great. It was 3GPP standard is -- up to the detail. So it also allows them that with MCX, we can even operate across country. Up to now, it was not able that the German police officer, which is maybe coming to Austria to help in an incident can communicate with Austrian law enforcement agencies as the infrastructure is so different and MCX has now created a new standard for public safety that it can be a cross-border collaboration in all elements of collaboration when it comes to infrastructure, drones, radios, whatever is available as a communication can be used cross country. That's the vision behind this new European standard of 3GPP. Yes. I think I've mentioned already everything. We are really proud that we got even awarded for the software development standards we have created. And I think Frequentis is technology-wise a real frontrunner. And we have invested significant money over the last years to be able to explore that new business field where Frequentis has not been active over the last years. Yes. I would like to conclude with the outlook and management agenda for '25. So as I said, we have a pretty good orders on hand status by 30th of June '25, which gives us a good security level through the end of the year and also for the beginning of next year. We strive to increase our order intake in double-digit percentage range. We don't know how much it will be as there is always a risk of a slip into the next fiscal year. And the U.S. currently can award very fast, but it can also slip into next fiscal year as the U.S. has a different fiscal year than we in Europe. What we have changed is our guidance on the top line. We said last time, it will be around 10%, we have changed that to at least 10% as we are pretty confident that we can transfer a lot of orders into revenues already in 2025. And the EBIT margin, we have guided around 6.5% to 7%. And I always remind all investors that's an EBIT margin without any capitalization of R&D. We spent around EUR 30 million annually in R&D and finance. So that's paid by our EBIT and you won't find capitalization in our balance sheet because we -- as I said, the family still gives us the order that we have to be very risk-averse in our balance sheet, not to take loans on the next generation future. Therefore, we invest what we can afford, and we do that from our EBIT line. There are large programs currently in R&D, transforming our remaining hardware-centric products into software. That was the major task I've got when Mr. Bardach hired me 10 years ago into the Executive Board. I was coming from a U.S. American IT company. He said we have to change our portfolio as our customers are going more and more into the IT world. So we started to replace our proprietary engineering hardware products with software. We have all paid that from our EBIT, and we did that successfully in the PST segment, where we do already around 11% EBIT margin. And now 3 years ago, we started to replace our ATM portfolio with software. And this is an ongoing process for the next 3, 4 years. But we are, I think, in a good way, and we will also make the same business model implementation in ATM as we have done it in PST. Yes, I'm now at the end of my presentation, and I would like to give back to you, Judith for taking questions, which I can hopefully answer accurately.

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Haslacher for your presentation and the interesting insights. [Operator Instructions] We already had a very dynamic call in German language this morning already. And it seems like you were very clear, Mr. Haslacher because there are no questions coming in so far. Well, with this, we are coming to the end of today's roundtable that was a fast one. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation and your interest in the Frequentis AG. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to contact Investor Relations Manager, Stefan Marin. And if you would like to be added to the company's investor mailing list, please send an e-mail to [email protected]. I will put the e-mail address into the question field. So you can see it and a big thank you also to you, Mr. Haslacher for your presentation. My name is Judith. It was a pleasure to be your host today. I wish you all a successful business, a lovely remaining day. And with this, I hand back over to Mr. Haslacher for some final remarks.

Thanks, Judith, and thank you for joining the session, your interest in Frequentis. I'm looking forward to seeing you in a couple of conferences we are visiting the next months. And we go back to work as it will be a very busy Q4. And thank you, and have a good evening.