GomSpace Group AB (publ) (GOMX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to today's presentation where we have the pleasure to present GomSpace. The reason for today's presentation or the subject is the Q1 trading statement fresh from press this morning. As always, we are joined by CEO, Carsten Drachmann from GomSpace to help us through today's presentation, the results and answer questions. We will do the main part of the questions in the end. As always, there's a box down below where you can ask your question. Do feel free to do it during the presentation, but we will keep the main part or the big part of the questions after Carsten has taken us through the presentation. But for now, I'll hand the call over to you, Carsten.

Thank you, and welcome to this Q1 trading update. I thought, first of all, I wanted to extend a big thank you to everybody at GomSpace for 2 years of really, really hard work, which I hope you can -- you will see you have read our statements already, and I'll take you through it. But I just wanted to show you what we're doing in the morning. We roll out our sleeves because this is really -- it's a lot of hard work and it's starting to pay off. So everybody at GomSpace, thank you very much for hanging in there and for pushing forward. As we say to our customers, we make space yours. With GomSpace, it's possible to go further than ever before. And what we say to our customers are branding, it's yours to explore, it's yours to innovate and it's yours to reach. And that's really our mission. We are helping companies. We're helping people. We're helping the earth to use space, and we can go further and further. And recently you've seen we have sent a satellite out that needs to fly 200 million kilometers away. So that's GomSpace. Today, I'll talk about investor communication. It's a repeat as a service for you. We'll go through the highlights of the Q1 trading statement. We'll dive into the business units. This is new that we are reporting a bit more on those [Audio Gap] in more detail. What are we doing at GomSpace? And then there's a strengthening coming up of the balance sheet with a directed issue. I'll talk about that. I know there are a lot of questions. I'll try to answer the best I can, and then we'll summarize it. But first, clarity and communication, 2 key values for me. Things need to be clear. We need to communicate. We do that internally all the time, and we do everything we can externally to keep you up to date. So just to repeat how we do it when it comes to U.S. investors. We send out quality reports as required, as is normal, but we are now doing trading statements in Q1 and Q3. What you see today is a trading statement, so it's a lot shorter. It's really focused on giving you the key messages without having to give a lot of details. You'll get that in a midyear report and a full year report. We are guiding now on EBITDA and on revenue as well as in addition to free cash flow, this is new from 2025 that we'll dive into that. And also, remember the rules, if there's something news that really would impact the share price up or down, doesn't matter, I am obliged and I will communicate quickly. I have to do that. So if there's no communication, there is nothing that is necessarily we deem will impact the market significantly. There are other press releases that we send out more for information, not because we have to by the rules, but because we think it's good service when something has interesting has happened, we communicate about that. And in general, I urge you to check in on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, where we are posting regularly. And I know many of you are doing that. I have a feeling there are also new investors. We have increased actually. I think there's more than 2,000 more investors on Nordnet. So likely you're not all hooked up, go into LinkedIn and you'll see more information coming on a regular flow. Okay. However, let's get started. So I have some key messages for you today. First of all, we are entering into 2025 with clarity and with strength. As you can see from the numbers, I personally think it's pretty good. I think GomSpace can be proud of this. We have a strong start of 2025. We are ready to scale up and to capture the opportunities that has arisen over, I would say, over the last 3 to 6 months with a strengthened balance sheet. It will be strengthened in Q3. We'll dive into that. That's actually really, really a key in order to launch us forward. Global expansion continues. We are -- I will talk about Indonesia, and I mentioned here also Singapore, Southeast Asia, but also North America, clear message. Yes, there's a lot of tariff discussions and all kind of speculations. We don't care. U.S. is the biggest market. We are full speed ahead. We are not hesitating on that front. I don't see any reason to hesitate. So we are full speed ahead if anybody was wondering. And then we have a really good momentum now towards our strategic goals as well, towards marine domain awareness towards really building value for the company, for the investors, for the employees and for our customers. So we are on a very good track. So 3 -- 4 key messages for you, strong '25. we're ready to scale with an improved balance sheet from Q3, global expansion continues, and we have a very good momentum according to our plans. In numbers, our revenue went up 77% compared to the same quarter last year. We ended at SEK 89 million. That's a good achievement. I think it's the highest quarter we've had in a very long time, if not the highest. EBITDA, positive EBITDA, great, SEK 11.3 million in EBITDA compared to minus SEK 16.6 million same period last year. So it's SEK 26 million -- SEK 27 million improvement. That is really, really good. We couldn't put in a percentage because it's minus 177%. That was a joke, but it looks weird when you say minus percent. So this is good. Now we are positive. There's a little asterisk adjusted EBITDA. It's because we have the share-based program is by rules, it doesn't cost us any cash, but we have to include it into the P&L. And what we've noticed is that many of the peers that we have compared to, for example, Spire's and others, you'll read that in the analyst report, they're actually reporting an adjusted EBITDA, but they also take it out. So we thought, hey, let's compare apples-to-apples also for you investors, and you can see these are the same numbers you're comparing with. Last but not least, the free cash flow. We maintained a positive free cash flow in the first quarter. It's better than last year, was minus SEK 12 million, but cash always fluctuates up and down. The good news here is that we are on a track to keep the positive free cash flow, which is our goal for the year. We will invest more, so there will be some impacts, but we are still going towards positive free cash flow. But on the other hand, we also want to make sure that we are capturing a growth, which may cost a bit more cash this year than planned, but it's all for good reasons. Nevertheless, we keep our guidance free cash flow positive and it was in the first quarter. So let's dive into how we run our business. So we have the 3 business units, and we lead our business through that. We have vice presidents in charge of each of them, they are mini CEOs, if you like. We are measuring them all the way down to EBITDA, which we are now sharing with you, so you can see that. They're Programs, they're Products, which we will look into this distinction between those also as a service to new investors. And then there's North America, which is both. But because it's such a big market, we have decided to make that its own business unit, and we are measuring directly on that business. Some cool new pictures here. I recommend you read the annual report. You'll see some of this as well, but these are the programs, and these are the satellites that we're building on contract. Remember, we are building the full satellite on customer specification. It's typically a contract for 1, 2, 3 satellites, maybe 20, maybe 50 satellites. It's a longer time of a contract. So it's a little bit of a different nature. There's risk involved. There's a lot of benefits in having that, and it gives a predictability because the contracts are running longer. Products. These are the insights. So the satellites are flying laptops inside those flying laptops we have power supplies, we have battery packs, et cetera. So this is the other business unit we have selling those products to universities, to competitors, to anybody who wants to buy. And we have a very strong portfolio, probably the strongest in the world in terms of being able to refurbish a full satellite pretty much with all our own products and components here. So take this other things, just such a cool picture. This is a -- it's a battery pack that's then packaged here ready to go out to customers. So Programs and Products. And then as I said, North America, more from a geographic perspective. All right. But let's take a look. So here's the revenue, SEK 89 million in Q1, great. You see the upgoing trend. We were significantly higher than last year, but we also beat Q4 2024, which was quite good. So we're on a good track. And this is driven by the backlog. Remember, we built a good backlog last year. So the order backlog is stable, which means we have a fairly stable revenue per quarter that we can rely on, plus/minus. But nevertheless, there's no particular reason to think that it's going to jump quarter-to-quarter significantly. You see the little orange one is the 12 months trailing 12 months average. You see it's trending towards the [ 300 million k ]. This is a weaker service to use, so you can see which way this is trending. If you break it down into business units, Programs is the biggest, SEK 49 million out of that. Not a surprise. They should be -- the contracts are bigger. It's the nature of the game. Products coming in at SEK 32 million is actually also a good result compared to previous year you can see it SEK 23 million there. And going back to Programs, we had a SEK 20 million same period last year. So all the business units are improving, the slight improvement in North America as well. So in general, trending as we wanted it to. Programs gives predictability. Remember that, lots of contracts is good. They run for 1, 2 to 3 years, so we know more about what's going to happen. Products is a higher turnover. So it's a little bit harder to predict, but it's a very lucrative margin, which you'll see on the next slide here. So EBITDA adjusted for a couple of million. It's going up now. It's going in the right direction. It's positive. We had a small positive in the Q2 last year other than that it's been negative for quite some quarters in a row here. So we are trending in the right direction. Breaking it down, so Programs at SEK 5.2 million, significant improvement from last year. Last year, remember also we were still sort of closing off the programs that didn't make a lot of money for us, and we were somewhat challenged in the past with that. I think we have cleaned most of it up. There shouldn't be much left, and it's also shown here that we're actually able to deliver a profit. But look at Products, even though they're lower on revenue, they give you a higher EBITDA. So that's showing is that you get simply more contribution for your dollar when you sell something compared to programs. There's nothing wrong in that. It's just the nature of the game. So Products are actually leading the pack here with SEK 5.8 million in EBITDA. North America, small positive EBITDA. This is great. Strategy for North America is not to make a lot of profit right now. It is to grow mainly organically. So we simply need to take more and more market share. We need to close more business and then we reinvest. So we don't have an ambition that we have a huge profit in North America. If you start seeing better profit, we will reinvest it into more resources, go-to-market system engineers, whatever we need. So all 3 business units well on track here. EBIT for the full company, slightly positive, SEK 0.8 million, great. This is really good. This is just not -- I didn't expect it will come here in the first quarter, so soon, but it does. Obviously, I knew a few weeks ago, but I didn't expect it in December. So this is good. And we are net profit positive even. And why the net profit is more for tax reasons and some other offsets that we have. But actually, we are positive SEK 1.3 million net profit. That is probably close to a first time in the company history. And it's adding to equity. So whereas we've been eating away at equity over the years, now with a net positive situation, we are actually starting to build a little bit of more equity. That's good stuff. Free cash flow, as I said, it's stable. We are still positive here as planned. Q4 is actually slightly higher than what we had reported earlier, but it's correct in the annual report, so at SEK 36 million. The note I want to make here is that just wrapping up 2024. When we started in March '23, cash flow was not at all at that level. EBITDA was not at all at this level. We set ourselves a target the first 2 years in '23 and '24. We want to be cash flow positive, free cash flow positive, and we achieved that last year. So I'm not going to show you the past anymore. Those of you who follow for a long time, I like to show that. But we're beyond that. We hit our mark and now the focus is forward also on free cash flow. Last but not least, order intake, indication of what may come into the future. I saw there were a couple of questions on order intake. We're sort of at par a little bit more than the first quarter last year. So you can say, hey, it's low. Yes, it's okay. We had a very good Q2 and Q4. Programs is really the reason where we have the big contracts, we didn't close any major contracts in the first quarter. As stated, and I have stated already, I certainly expect that to recover in Q2 and Q3. The nature of the orders from Programs is that they are relatively big, SEK 20 million, SEK 50 million, SEK 100 million at a time. So of course, you have these jumps and we don't get a lot of them, whereas on the Product business, we have a lot more orders coming all the time. Product business unit, though, take a look, SEK 44 million in the first quarter, that is a lot. That is really, really good achievement. So we would expect -- and I can see there's not a comparison to last year, but the order intake there was probably about SEK 20 million in that range. So we have a significant improvement compared to last year. A couple of big orders coming in to hit this number, but that's fine. That's the nature of the game. That's what we want to do. And then -- sorry, North America is steady, slightly growing. Reader service here, it's always good that if you look at the revenue for the quarter and you see an order intake is bigger because that means you are -- if it's the same level, you're sort of stable, you can expect that you get more or less the same results for the coming quarters. If order intake goes higher than the revenue that you had in the quarter, it means you have a chance of growing compared to what you have. So you can see we are slightly down here. As I said, I'm not concerned about it because we have a really, really strong product business unit result and the program business unit will pick up for sure. So all in all, good. We should be stable from where we are now, and we keep focusing on strengthening our order intake. Okay. Let's change gear. So let's go through what GomSpace is also service for new investors here. We are a world leader in satellite solutions. Yes, we have a lot of technology, but we're really -- what we're really delivering is solutions. We are enabling governments, commercial organizations to reach goals that they can only reach through space and not in any other way. And we are a world leader in this area here. We are transforming space capabilities into operational impact. We know how to put things in space. We know how to make it work. But in the end, it has to have a function, has to have some kind of operation, be it for military operation, early warning surveillance or be it for commercial services for environmental monitoring or imaging or what it could be. So ground space is really redefining how nations and industries leverage space. We're really getting there now where we are very confident in how we do it. We know how to make it work every time, and we understand how we can start helping the different companies achieve a lot more. We have close to 20 years of flight heritage, one of the oldest in this new space industry and very much also critical space-based infrastructure, for example, for early warning and surveillance. We'll get into the -- what's happening in Denmark later. I see there's a question, so we can talk more about that. So there are a couple of key areas, trends in the market today that we tap very well into. One of the key areas we have focused on is marine domain awareness. So what's happening on the oceans, which ships are there, what are they doing and are they supposed to be there and what they're doing, is that okay? So really monitoring that. We're very strong in that area, and that's also you'll see a number of the cases we've closed recently are in that direction. Secure communication is a key -- not only via Starlink, for example, and Elon Musk providing data services. There are other examples that we are working on secure communication to ships as an example, is important and also secure communication with airplanes. What is the characteristic of ships and airplanes, it is that the bridge on the ship or the cockpit on the airplane are not connected to the Internet. They have to communicate via other channels for security reasons. This is why you heard recently yesterday in New York, there was a big [indiscernible] that had no radio communication anymore, and then that actually was a very dangerous situation. So some of the things that we're doing with Startical is they're building a communication network that would cover all airplanes globally. Airplanes disappear. They disappear into the water. We don't know where they are. Why? Because when you're sitting in the back of the plane, you have data connection, you can do streaming, you can even do calls if they allow you, pay enough money. But the cockpit -- we don't want to know where the plane is, but that's because the cockpit is isolated. And when you are over vast oceans, there is no connection. But by satellite, we can do that. So these are some of the things. These are real issues that we deal with on earth that we can enable via space and GomSpace is right in the middle of that. In general, earth monitoring, climate, it is here to stay climate. It will be on our minds for a long time, and there are a lot of things we can measure from space, more than 50% of the parameters we are measuring ourselves against for the 2050 Accord is -- climate accord is measurable only from space. Now let's take a real example of ship sailing. I showed it last time also. I think it's such a great example. It's done together with our partner, Unseenlabs from France that we proudly support. We have been delivering technology for them since the beginning, and they have an excellent system for monitoring the oceans for ship traffic and including something that we can use on Friday in green and in the Baltics. We just need the government to start buying something. We are ready to go and rock and roll. So what does it do? Hey, this is the Baltic Sea. Orange one on the sea cable. One was caught not so long ago. Remember, outside of Bornholm and there was one damaged up by Finland. The white one is a ship transmitting its ID. It's done via something called AIS, a transponder. So this is me here I am. This is my intentions, and I'm okay. The red ones are the ones that do not transmit that information, but we still know they're there because we, via the satellite systems, can see their radars, we can see their walketalkies, we can see what they're communicating or how they're communicating. So we know who they are and where they are. So if I remove all the white dots, it's interesting and not surprised, if you get out closer to St. Petersburg, there's a lot of red ones, probably ships dark fleet from Russia that doesn't want to be recognized or known. But you see there are a few of in [indiscernible] and there's one down close to Poland. These are the ships that are not necessarily coming with good intents and good intentions. And I want to show you one which is a similar picture from around Bornholm. But we have identified this ship. The white line illustrates how the ship is sailing. It's a Chinese vessel. I think it's called Yangqu #2. It was a ship that actually broke the cable outside of Bornholm not so long ago by dragging an anchor. And they say, ops, we didn't mean to do that. Sorry about that. right, but it cut 25% of our data traffic. That wasn't good. So let's not do that again. But exactly -- but the ship was sailing in an erratic way. Those ship sails like that. And they did the same thing. This is Strait of Gibraltar. You see the Africa on the lower side, you see Spain on the other side. They sail in the same way, and there's a lot of cables going across here. So it's very interesting. We know that we can see that real time -- so -- and when a ship starts sailing like that, something is wrong. That's not how we do it. And if it's at the same time, it's not identifying itself, you know it's wrong. Better get your jet fighters or your patrol boats out there and stop them. It's possible to do today. We know how to do it. So let's get going, Danish government. So let's change gear here also into strengthened or strengthening the balance sheet. It will happen in Q3. Why and why now? Repeating from last time, where the market is changing. So since we did our budget in December, Trump has been in. He's been in for more than 100 days now. The whole threat level across the globe has gone up big time. We no longer know really who is friend or foe, can't rely on the Americans anymore. There's unrest latest now in India and Pakistan this morning, not good. So we -- in general, there's a heightened threat alert. It has increased the defense budgets also in Denmark. You're following that yourself and across Europe, and there will be more spending coming in that area. And there's a much greater sense of urgency where procurement cycles were very, very long. They're going to get shorter for sure. So that is why we're acting now because we -- definitely with the satellites, we have something that is very useful to understand what is going on, national security, how do we protect ourselves, how do we get early warning if somebody is trying to do something that they shouldn't be doing or we do not like. You need a satellite network for that, and you will be so much more efficient. So that's why we say, hey, this is a good time to do this. So what are we going to do with the capital that we are raising now? Well, first of all, it is strengthening the balance sheet. That's important. It's a permission to play because more government contract we will be looking for, you need to have a fairly stable company, which we indeed have as it is right now. But we want to reduce the time to market. We see an increased demand on the program side. We anticipate a bigger demand. And because there has been a lot of hesitation in governments around Europe, in particular, to invest in satellite networks. Once they get going now, they're probably not going to wait a long time. They want to have it faster and sooner rather than later. So we need to be ready for that. The other thing is illustrated by the product order intake we have is that we see demand going up, and we need to be ready. We could have stayed with a lower inventory. We've been very rigid on not spending more cash than we needed because cash was king. However, there is a limit to how tight a ship we can run. We need to unleash it a bit. We need to have more of our critical components, long lead items on stock so we can act quickly and capture opportunities and not lose them. Number 2 is accelerate solutions for defense. We already have solutions for defense. There's a lot more to be done. I saw there's a question about can we do something beyond oceans and maritime domain awareness for surveillance? Absolutely. Absolutely. We can build solutions for Ukraine. We can build solutions for air defense radar systems that are mobile. We can track them in the jungle. We can track them in the deserts. We know where they are. We can do all of that. And this is coming. And therefore, we also want to make sure that we are not falling behind on that. We are up to date, and we want to stay up to date and there are more demands coming. So that's also a focus area. And last is to capture the new market opportunities. There's a lot coming up. You have -- there is a question also on FMI or the Danish logistics procurement. They're having a lot of meetings, what can you do, more meetings to attend to. We simply are running low on sales capacity and business development. So we also want to have more people not only around Denmark and Nordic, but certainly globally, we see a trend. And in order to keep up with that, we want to make sure we have enough sales and business development people. So these are the 3 more operational actionable things, if you like. And then beyond that, as I said, we also want to make sure that our balance sheet stays strong. It's important in order to win contracts. Okay. So let's do a summary of the directed issue. It's the same information I've given you before, but I have noticed one thing that people have been puzzled about, but let's just start first. Peter Hargreaves today owns just below 30%. For newcomers, Peter Hargreaves is a British, a very wealthy man who's made his money on a trading platform, selling and operating a trading platform. So he invested 2, 3 years ago into GomSpace. And he came back when we started talking about we need more cash, and he said, this is really good. I'm so happy with my investment in GomSpace. You've done so well over the last couple of years. I am very happy to help you get even further. So we did a directed share issue -- directed issue to Hargreaves. It triggers in that he hits 40.1% ownership. So that has some consequences. But we agreed a share price of 7, which is about the market price at the time, and we will bring in -- it will bring in about SEK 196 million sometime in Q3. There's some administrative processes. But because he is now going beyond the 30% mark, he needs to make a mandatory offer to the market. This is a legal formality. It is not an indication or intent from Hargreaves to do that. He just wants to support the company. Nevertheless, he has to do that. You are under no obligation as shareholders to take the offer. It's completely your choice. And the offer price, let's get to that. The offering price will be the 20 days weighted -- volume-weighted average leading up to the final approval. So when the final approval comes sometime in Q3, hopefully, early Q3, we calculate backwards 20 days and you say that average price is the price you will offer in the market. I've seen there's been some speculations on is it the 7 or what is it, but no, it is the 20 days weighted average price at the time. Okay. So coming to an end, building momentum. I really truly feel that we are building momentum. The teams here are working very well. We have a lot of energy. There's a lot of opportunities coming in, and we are trying to keep up. And looking into the building momentum, we are keeping our guidance unchanged for the year, SEK 320 million to SEK 340 million in revenue. We stick by that. Adjusted EBITDA is a little bit different from before, but minus 1% to plus 11% and continued positive free cash flow. I would say it's unchanged, and we put it again here with confidence. Now other indicators for you, sometimes I'd be asked, what are the indicators? How can you help people? Well, obviously, we have a lot of operational focus right now that's delivering our results. So the discipline and execution is the key, and you see the results in the first quarter. We had a pretty good product order intake during the first quarter, which is helping us to get to a really good start of the year. We already surpassed what we were expecting for Q2 by having such a strong first quarter. So that's good. It's the best ever. And there's good contribution margin in that, as you know. Program business is executing with discipline. We were able to execute on the contracts. We delivered a very good revenue. No order intake didn't come in the first quarter. It will come later. I'm not worried about that. But we are really increasing our focus on discipline and execution. As the volumes are going up, we are strengthening our supply chain. We are strengthening our ability to put together the satellites faster and more cost efficient and with high reliability. This is an absolute key because I'm confident that we will close more business, but we also need to be able to deliver. So we have a lot of focus on that, in particular, in the program area. Last but not least, I said North America is full speed ahead. We have no particular reason to change the plans as it is. You have to pay a few tariffs, fine. It is what it is. I want to capture a market share over there, and I want to build the GomSpace brand because it will generate volume and it will generate a profit over time. So that's the momentum we are building. So let's close it off. Great revenue for the first quarter, up 77%, positive EBITDA, fantastic, 11.3%. Our operation is paying off. We are delivering positive results. Free cash flow is there and net profit also happened to be positive, fantastic. So we're entering 2025 with strength and clarity. We know what we're doing. We have a very clear road map ahead. We are ready to scale. Our balance sheet will be strengthened in Q3. Global expansion continues, North America and Southeast Asia, dwelling a second with Southeast Asia. Yes, I went to Indonesia with Lars Luke [indiscernible]. We were out there to discuss how to continue with our joint effort. I don't know if you're aware that Lars Luke was actually the one that signed this government-to-government financing almost 4 years ago. So he was there to help to progress it. We have a commercial contract. I was there to reconfirm the content of that. Some of you saw the pictures. We are still waiting the blocking point. We're still waiting for the financing from -- request from Indonesia to Denmark. The money is on the table, everything is ready. The new government with the President is still working through their policies. One of the key policies is actually self-sustaining food supply, including protein. And guess what, 85% of the protein consumed in Indonesia is coming from the oceans. It's coming from fish, seaweed and other things. Our satellite system is exactly that to protect that sovereign national resource as it is. So we are continuing, the government is making their decisions, not as fast as we want to. It's okay. And Lars Luke was out there also to restate together with me that our intentions from Denmark and what we're doing. So that's the best I can give you. Things take time in Indonesia. And actually, it's okay for us because we've got a lot of stuff to do already. And I wanted to say also Singapore. I also visited Singapore, very good traction for us there. We closed 2 important contracts last year, as you've seen. And being there is just reconfirming that we have a good relationship in Singapore. They're building a space, the space industry, and we are definitely right in the middle of that and a key partner to important players in Singapore. So I'm very encouraged about that. And in general, we see Southeast Asia activities are increasing Philippines, Vietnam. All the countries have a need for supporting their national interest via satellite networks. So it's coming. So clear strategic momentum. We are moving forward. It's aligned with our guidance for the 2025, and I strongly believe that we are on a very good track towards our strategic objectives and building long-term value for everybody. Thank you.

Perfect. Let's jump into some questions, Carsten. I think there was a lot about Indonesia. I don't think there's any more to cover. You told where you are in the process. You told what you did out there with our foreign minister. So I think no matter how I ask, we will not be much wiser than what you have already told us there. So let's go to Startical, these IOD satellites. Two-pronged questions. One, have you gotten any feedback data or something like that from the launch? And secondly, how many of the satellites potentially could you build in this? There's a mention of a number of 287 on the whole constellation. So the first launch, any feedback from that launch of the first satellite? And secondly, how much do you expect to be allowed to build off that?

Yes. So let's take the first question first. It was launched. It was a live event. It was on TV 2 as well. Some of you saw it. The big antenna, it is a very long VHF antenna, I think it's 3, 3.5 meter long. It has been unfolded and all the test and so-called commissioning work is ongoing. So Startical is testing. We're not directly involved in that. Startical is testing and running their processes right now. But the antenna is unfolded and everything looks fine from a mechanical release perspective and now they're conducting the test and verifications and also starting to look at how to use it because this is also about understanding how to use the satellite for the communication with airplanes. In terms of volume, hey, it's a Spanish government with Indra and others who are putting the money into this. They will need at least, I believe it's 288, you can calculate that quite precisely, satellites over time to have global coverage. And the point with this is it doesn't -- you can't start and say, well, we just have 12 in the beginning because then you don't cover everything. So you have a limited capacity, should you need to get to plus 200, probably closer to 300. There will have to be funding coming for that eventually. It's not going to be cheap, of course. It's not going to be for free. So we'll see how fast Startical verifies what they need, how they put together the specification. I'm expecting it takes at least a year, probably 2 years. But are we well positioned from ground space? Of course, we are. We do build the first satellite that they launched. But we'll see how it plays out over time. In the question lies, can you build that? Yes, we can. I'm standing right here. We can do one satellite a day if we really have to. So yes, absolutely, we can build those quantities. That's not a problem. So we stay in there. We stay close to Startical. We stay close to the investors who's going to finance this eventually. So we make sure that once they're ready to go, we are also in that discussion.

Perfect. Then about the Danish defense organization, I'm very grateful that the one asking have helped me translate this to English also, the DALO. I think if you should break the question in about this Danish Defense Acquisition and Logistics Organization is have you come with a proposal for [indiscernible] solution for surveillance of Arctic? Have you suggested a solution for the surveillance of the Danish waters? What other suggestion could GomSpace make for DALO.

Well, the answer is yes. But to elaborate a little bit on that, of course, we have -- this is the first time that the Danish government and military start showing some kind of interest for buying satellites from Denmark, which is to me still a bizarre that Denmark is not investing in their own industry, having traveled the world and seeing how other countries are doing it. But now it's coming. So of course, we are in there. We are discussing with all the appropriate authorities on the military and defense side. We're discussing with the politicians. We are also on our own accord putting forward proposals. I think they have a pretty good idea of what is required. So yes, we are in the middle of all of that. Of course, we are. And remember, national security prevails here, which means Denmark doesn't have to do a public tender anywhere. They can actually invest directly into Danish industry. So there you go. How long time will it take? I don't know. I hope it goes fast. Our Prime Minister says, buy, buy, buy. So not bye-bye, but buy, buy, buy,. So hopefully, the people are listening to them. But we are ready, we are geared for that. And that is part of the investment I talked about being ready because it's going to take a lot of resources for some time in a sales phase to specify this.

And I guess building satellites in Denmark, which we already are doing are a little bit easier than building the big freight that we want to build in Denmark.

Yes. The satellite networks makes a frigate a little bit more productive, effective because a frigate, a ship or patrol boat can only see about 50 a little bit more kilometers with a radar. It's not very far when you're sailing over around Greenland. So with the satellite network, we can tell them, as I showed you earlier, where to go, who's okay, who's not okay, go there where there's a trouble instead of just sailing randomly, probably not what they're doing. But anyway, the satellite network will definitely help.

And then to stay in kind of that, there's a question here. You have a strategy on domain or marine domain awareness. But I think you already touched upon it. There's a question here. Could you build something for land surveillance in GomSpace?

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely, we can. We provide the satellite. We have the payload, which is specialized for marine radars. But if you go land, it's other types of radars that are being used, other frequencies, but it's the same principles. So we do see an increasing need in Ukraine, but also in other parts of the world. So absolutely, we can deliver that. That's -- we are not a limiting factor here. It's the demand, and we do see that the demand starts to grow.

Then a little bit of clarification. I think you gave us -- but there's a question here around the price Hargreaves has to offer. As you told, it's a weighted average pricing around the offer. But there's also a question about the 7. Is that a minimum, the 7, and then the new minimum will be this weighted average price if it's higher or else it's the 7. So I don't know whether you can comment more on it regarding the 7, the original offer, whether that creates a bottom?

Yes. I heard that question. I took legal advice just before to make sure that what I'm saying, I believe, is correct. No, the NOK 7 is not in play. The rules are that Hargreaves, whatever Hargreaves has traded in the last 6 months, it's not just Hargreaves, but those are the rules. The previous 6 months trading, but on a stock exchange would have set a lower price, if you like, or an upper -- well, it would be a lower price. But the rights issue is not counted as a trading on the stock exchange. So it is actually not relevant for this. Therefore, the default is a 20 days average weighted -- volume-weighted average price leading up to the approval. So that should be quite clear. So no, the NOK 7 has actually got nothing to do with this. And well, as things are going right now, it looks okay.

But that was nice to get that cleared out. Will the change in the timing of the capital raise, I think the FID process was delayed, no surprise. But does that actually affect your ability to go in and invest into this future to start to build up to this one?

No, not at all. We -- as I said, we did not actually plan to do the capital increase right now. But because of the way things were developing, we realized we needed the money. Not at all. I look at our cash balance, we are fine. We had a positive free cash flow in the first quarter. I have the money I need to execute right now. So we started executing the plans. It's not going to delay anything. The delay to the third quarter, well, what can I say, EU and a lot of administration, et cetera, it seems a bit silly, but it is what it is. So hopefully, we have it in place in Q3 and early Q3. But we'll see. I can't control it. I'm trying. I'm trying.

[indiscernible].

Believe me, I'm trying. I'm trying to control Indonesian President, but somehow he's not always doing what I tell him to. So sorry about that.

You must be Elon Musk, you must create such a big company. Maybe then you can [indiscernible]. There's a little bit of questions, actually 2 questions, but they are around the surrounding. What is making you confident about this Q2 and Q3 better order momentum in the programs business? Is this something you're seeing in your pipeline? Just some comments about why you are a little bit more optimistic about Q2 and Q3?

No, I say that because, of course, if you look at the first quarter order intake for programs, it wasn't a lot, and it was less than the revenues. As I said, and it's indicating your backlog is declining. Of course, we are working all the time. We have a large pipeline as we should have. So that pipeline just leads me to give you the investor service that I'm not worried about it. And if I'm not worried, it means something will come in Q2 or Q3. So that's why I'm saying it. Of course, we have pipelines that are running for 1 to 3, 5 years. Look at Indonesia, we are running now in year 4, 4.5 since we started. That's the time it takes to close this kind of deal. So we are already looking at things that will maybe close in 3, 4, 5 years from now. So of course, we have a long pipeline. And when I'm looking at it, I'm looking at what I think can close reasonably in the next 6 to 9 months. And from starting from almost 0 in the first quarter, I'm fairly confident we'll have more than that. So that's the background.

Perfect. Maybe a little bit of a question. I don't know how much you want to go into details. Is it improvement in OpEx or gross margin that positively impacted your EBITDA in this quarter? So is it the cost side? Or is it your -- all our cost, but is it the gross margin you're really seeing going up with the top line, better utilization? Or is it also the OpEx line that is giving you this?

Yes, I understand the question. No, it's -- I would answer it this way. It is certainly a better profitability on the revenue that we are getting. Going back a couple of years again, we were running a number of projects where we were making no money. So even I could have made SEK 100 million in a quarter, but I wouldn't make any profit still. There would be actually no contribution. So all the overhead costs would be negative. So we have a better profitability on what we are selling. As you can see, the product business unit is trending upwards. There we also get good coverage. So it's definitely a more solid profitability on the revenue we get. And the other side is that, yes, we are managing the costs all the time. We will keep doing that. We're very rigid. We need to grow, so we have to invest more and we have to increase capacity. Nevertheless, we are monitoring it tightly and we're not going to let it go out of control. So it's a combination of things, and we also had some projects that had a fairly high margin that we're closing in the first quarter, which is helping here.

And I think maybe you answered it, but let's dive a little bit into it. Have your U.S. business been impacted by the trade war turbulence?

No. I was there in Colorado Springs a couple of weeks ago, meeting with our customers and partners over there, including SAIC. I see no wavering from our customers. Will there be an impact for tariffs or not? Who knows? I mean the whole world is speculating and nobody really knows what's up and down. So we've decided we're just full speed ahead. Our partners, our customers want to continue to work with us. Nobody is indicating anything different. Will there be a bill to pay? I don't know. We'll see. But it doesn't matter as long as we keep growing our market share because eventually, we will be nicely positioned to make money there.

What would you say are the key areas to where you can improve your EBITDA in the future, product optimization, better contracts, material prices. So a little bit of thoughts about what you could work with on your margin in the future?

Well, the answer is yes, yes and yes. Of course, we're running a professional business, so you need to monitor everything. We are honing more in on supply chain now as volumes are going up, we need to have better contracts and a better flow with our partners in a win-win situation. So our suppliers understand what we're doing a little bit further ahead and then also that we have good prices from them and also if things are delivered on time. So certainly, we'll focus on that. We are focusing on efficiency in the room here behind me that as the volume is going up on satellites that we can build them faster, more repeatability in what we're doing. So that will also help the EBITDA. In general, I would say we will keep growing the top line, and we will do that with focus on a decent profitability. It will vary a little bit which kind of projects you take. But growing the top line, I think, is a key thing. But in order to optimize your processes, supply chain and also production speed, you need to have a certain volume. It's very difficult to do on a low volume. So volume is important. And I think the trend you see right now that we have close to SEK 90 million revenue in the first quarter with a quite decent profitability is giving you a hint on which direction we are going and what we need to do.

And there's also a question there, but you are also ambitious not only growing top line, but also your margins in the future. Is that correctly understood?

Absolutely. I'm really very focused on, first of all, the EBITDA. Love to keep doing a net profit positive. But right now, the EBITDA is the expression of our operational capabilities, very focused on that. There are not that many companies of our type. I've said that before in the world that are making money. Some might be a lot bigger in terms of top line, but they're not making money. So we have a very clear ambition that we want to be one of the first companies to really start making a profit here. I don't care that we are not the biggest. That doesn't matter. But I want to make money because from making money, you can also build a much more healthy business for everybody into the future.

And then let's end with a question I think you often get. Is it your ambition to move from the first NOK to the main market on NASDAQ Stockholm? It was once mentioned in the past. So a little bit about your thoughts. And I know, of course, it's not you to decide, it's your Board to decide that. But if you have any comments about it?

Yes. I will -- like you say, it's not really my decision. I would say, no, why would we? There's absolutely 0 benefit from going there. My focus is building the business for you as investors. We're going to keep going out into the world, closing more orders, more profitable orders. We will make GomSpace a significant brand. It already is. We're going to make it even bigger. And based on the volume growth and a tight operational efficiency, we will make revenue. That's all we need to do. The rest comes by itself. It really doesn't matter which stock exchange you're on. When we are big enough, we can move to New York, but we have to be even much bigger. Otherwise, it doesn't work. So no -- absolutely no speculation in that because it really doesn't matter for our share price and our access to investors.

Perfect. And so one question more, but it's more like inspiration to maybe you should invest more into your website. So I don't think that's so investor related.

I think that's fine. That's fine. Let me -- I can answer that. I agree. I absolutely agree, and we are. And I hope you see that we have a little bit of a different layout in our annual report and the slides here. So hint, we are certainly moving in that direction.

Then I was too short of the head to not ask you this question. But that was the last one. Thank you, Carsten, for taking us through your results and answering questions. I think we again got very far and around in the case. So that's very good. And thank you to the audience for listening in.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you for investing in GomSpace. Thank you, GomSpace's for really sticking with us and taking us to this level. Now we are -- momentum is building, and we are ready to move on. This is very good. Thank you.