GomSpace Group AB (publ) ($GOMX)

Earnings Call Transcript · May 7, 2026

OM SE Industrials Aerospace and Defense Sales/Trading Statement Calls 47 min

Highlights from the call

In the first quarter of 2026, GomSpace Group AB reported a robust revenue increase of 43% year-over-year, reaching approximately SEK 125 million. The company achieved a positive net profit of SEK 20 million, marking a significant milestone. However, free cash flow remained negative due to increased investments in scaling operations and hiring. Management maintained its revenue guidance for the fiscal year 2026, projecting total revenue between SEK 550 million and SEK 650 million, indicating a growth rate of around 30%.

Main topics

  • Revenue Growth: GomSpace achieved a 43% increase in revenue year-over-year, reaching SEK 125 million. CEO Carsten Drachmann stated, "We are very happy with that," highlighting the company's strong performance in a growing market.
  • Positive Net Profit: The company reported a net profit of SEK 20 million, attributed partly to SEK 30 million received in shares as compensation. Drachmann noted, "This is actually a first time as well," indicating a positive shift in profitability.
  • Negative Free Cash Flow: Despite positive earnings, GomSpace reported negative free cash flow due to increased investments in technology and personnel. Drachmann explained, "We hired more people to grow," indicating a strategic focus on scaling operations.
  • Guidance Maintained: Management reiterated its revenue guidance for 2026, expecting revenue between SEK 550 million and SEK 650 million, with a midpoint growth of 30%. This guidance reflects confidence in the company's growth trajectory.
  • Expansion into Ukraine: GomSpace is establishing a joint venture in Ukraine to develop independent satellite capabilities. Drachmann emphasized, "Ukraine wants to have their own independent space capabilities," indicating a strategic opportunity in defense.

Key metrics mentioned

  • Revenue: SEK 125 million (vs SEK 87.5 million last year, +43% YoY)
  • Net Profit: SEK 20 million (first positive net profit reported)
  • EBITDA Margin: 9% (consistent with industry standards)
  • Free Cash Flow: negative (due to increased investments)
  • Cash Balance: SEK 226 million (strong cash position for operations)
  • Revenue Guidance: SEK 550 million to SEK 650 million (maintained guidance for 2026)

GomSpace's strong revenue growth and positive net profit signal a solid start to 2026, but the negative free cash flow raises concerns about sustainability. The strategic focus on expanding into Ukraine and North America, along with significant investments in R&D, presents potential growth catalysts. Investors should monitor the company's ability to balance growth with profitability and the execution of its expansion plans.

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Michael Friis

Attendees
#1

Welcome to today's presentation where we have the pleasure to present GomSpace. Today's topic, of course, the Q1 '26 interim report first from the press this morning. As always, we are joined by you, CEO, Carsten Drachmann, to take us through you our results and, of course, answer questions in the end. [Operator Instructions] But for now, I will hand the call over to you, Carsten, and then I will rejoin when we come to the Q&A session.

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#2

Thank you, Michael, and welcome all to this first quarter presentation. Exciting, back again. Spring is here. We started a new year and finished quite well last year, and we're off to a good start. But I thought actually, I'd start with repeating a bit the strategic outlook that I see because it's also telling a story about where we're heading and it's telling a story about why we made the changes that we've done to the organization. So first of all, space is here to stay. GomSpace is right in the middle. And if you look into why is space so important right now, why is it going? One area is space is a new defense front line. There's absolutely no doubt about it. And this is a change that has come over the last couple of years. It is really driving our business, that is setting the foundation also for how we are thinking and how we are structuring ourselves. Government are shifting from services to sovereign assets, basically having control of the assets that you need in order to secure your country. We'll talk more about Ukraine later in this presentation. It is a good example of that. We're enabling end-to-end solutions to create value, really important that we don't only offer a satellite, a technology, we're offering an end-to-end solution that is adding value to the customer. Growth is driven more and more by our growth by multiyear constellation. So we should see larger deals coming in. We have seen it, and we will see more coming into the future. So there's no doubt also that you will see larger constellations coming. Deep Space and lunar missions are also evolving. We have already a satellite flying out to an asteroid that we launched a couple of years ago. It's still flying, and it's still alive. LuNa missions are coming. We are engaging into LuNa mission with Blue Origin, that is Jeff Bezos, investment company. It's obviously in the news also. We have the first dealer part of that contract this year, and we are working on the second part, and we're executing that out of Luxembourg. So we see more and more also deep space and LuNa missions. There will be an increasing share of product revenue. You will also see that in the structure that we have set up that we see our product business with growing sort of products and systems. Volume capability and ability to scale is a differentiating factor. You have to be able to have the production facilities. You need to be able to scale your operation, both in terms of producing of components and assembling satellites. This is a competitive edge that you need to have. Obviously, for us to grow, it means we need to able to do more. So it's sort of a given, but we need to do more of that. We'll see a rollout and consolidation, as I said before, they are -- the business is growing. Everybody understands space is an industry that is growing and there are many people starting up. There are many new companies starting up. Everybody will be surviving. So we'll see a roll-up trend also coming. So some companies buying other companies. And if you read the news, you'll see every day, it's happening actually every week. And there will be more of that. So that's a baseline. But let's jump into -- yes, so there's 2 -- sorry, 14%, 40.2%, compound average growth. So this is the prediction over the next 5 years, the overall market growth for satellites up to 500 kilos. That's the market we are in. So we definitely want to grow much more than that, and that is also our ambition. So into Q1 highlights. First of all, our revenue compared to first quarter last year went up to 43%. It's very good, up to about SEK 125 million, and be very happy with that. Our EBITDA in absolute numbers also increased compared to first quarter last year, and we're keeping about 9% EBITDA margin. This is good. This is where we want to be. Industry is around that level, nobody is higher. A lot of the industry is not even making a positive EBITDA. So very happy with -- to able to deliver a growth with a profit. Negative free cash flow. This is related to that we are investing more. I saw the questions on you hired more people. What's your plan? Well, we hired more people to grow, to build more technology to increase our ability to scale, to increase our ability to capture more business in the market and is also costing some market -- some money. So as expected, a negative free cash flow. We have secured a further facility. We took EUR 7 million from the Hargreaves loan facility that we have. We did that simply to make sure that we want to have more than ample cash in order to execute our plans, which we're doing right now. So our cash balance is at a very solid, very strong, SEK 226 million. Small note on the bottom, net profit is a positive SEK 20 million. This is actually a first time as well. It's very nice. There is a SEK 30 million part of that, which is related to shares that we have received from the company that also has a lot of money. They owe us about SEK 150 million. It's been going on for some time. We have taken actions to have collateral. That collateral is also triggering penalty payments on their side in terms of shares for us. And right now, that's accumulated to SEK 30 million. And as this continues until they pay, we will see more shares with the value so that's why you see a fairly high net profit there. Further to this, it is a very, very interesting company. We strongly believe in the business case, they're doing -- they are raising capital and we have secured. We control assets, et cetera. So we've done everything that we can to secure that it's going to be fine, and I'm sure they will raise the capital we needed. It's a super interesting company, and it's a business case that the world needs. So I'm comfortable and confident about that. So structuring for growth, we made some changes. We announced that last year, we have -- last year, we had 3 business units. Now we have 4 plus 1, I call it, 5 engines of profitable growth. This is related to the market outlook, the strategic outlook that we have. The first 1 is Products. I mentioned that before. It's all the bits and pieces inside the satellite subsystems. We -- that continues to be a business unit as last year. The 1 that was called Programs are converted into what we call Satellite Systems, which are really focusing on building high-volume satellites. So we need to talk about standardization. We need to talk about optimizing for volume. We have our National & Defence Solutions, which are targeting very much governments and also for foreseeable purposes, dual purposes, building end-to-end solutions for customers, Ukraine is an example of that. Then we have our Advanced Missions where we're doing LuNa missions. Just mentioned the contract with Blue Origin that we are working on right now. We also signed some other contracts during the quarter with ESA, so this is where we see new innovation that's coming in here. And then we have our plus 1, which is North America. North America is selling all the technology solutions from across the other business units. But because North America is for the industry, the biggest market in the world, about 60%, 70%. We have a special focus on that. All of these business units are driven as many P&Ls, and we're also reporting on that. I hope you appreciate the transparency we're giving you. You can follow what each business unit is doing in terms of revenue and EBITDA, and this is also how we follow up internally when making decisions. Now I wanted to give you a little bit more insight into the drivers behind this. So if you take Products call it, an industrial scale engine. Revenue is driven by high volume sales of standardized subsystems. This is very much about repeat production of the same systems and volume is higher here because we have many smaller components that we are selling to more than 200 customers around the world. Profit is driven by our efficiency, our supply chain ability to scale the supply chain, repeatable production. So we are really a chance to optimize here. So high volume and then strong margin, and we can control the margin even better by managing this. The free cash flow is very much driven by inventory turnover and low capital intensity. So we don't have a lot of capital tying up in addition to inventory. So this is how we drive this. So it's also very important for us to say we do it because we're addressing a market, but we also very well understand how we're going to make money on this. They have Satellite Systems, constellation execution engine, as we call it, as we are expecting to get larger and larger orders into the future, we are focusing more and more on our ability to actually drive these programs over multiyears, they need to be efficient. The profit -- the margin we get out of that is driven by repeatability, ability to also scale in the assembly and execution excellence. And here, you can see when you look into the numbers, you see actually quite high EBITDA on Products and a relatively low EBITDA in Satellite Systems. But there's a good reason for that. It is because this is where we need to scale it in order to get the margin. And what we've also done here is a Satellite Systems is actually buying from our Products business. So that means part of the revenue that we get from Satellite Systems, we're actually passing over and part of the margin as well. So this is a very clean. This is how we execute in the market, and this is how we also compare ourselves to our competitors. Then we have National & Defense Solutions. This is also by multiyear mission-critical contracts, sovereign customers. This is more than selling a satellite or a piece of technology. This is truly end-to-end solutions. Profit is more driven by value-based pricing. There's going to be a lot about program governance and risk management in this, but it's very much about value pricing. It's not what is the cost of the satellite? It is what do I get when I have launched a full system, including satellites and what is the value to me. So this is a very interesting space to be in and we are now perfecting that. You saw probably you noticed there's no revenue yet. No, there's not, but that will come, and this is why we are driving it. I'll give you a few examples of what goes into this, one would be Indonesia as an example, and we also have Ukraine that we'll talk about later, falls into this category here. Typically, cash flow is good here, free cash flow because you can negotiate advance payments, et cetera. So this is a predictable payment plan after the perhaps with export guarantees, et cetera, behind it. So good business for us here and definitely an area for growth. Advanced Missions, contract-based. Here, we -- it's more about securing strategic projects right now. There will be fairly complex. There will be some reuse, but there's also going to be a lot of new activities. The one that we do right now with Blue Origin is a Luna mission. We're going to have 2 satellites operating around the moon. That requires a new development, and we are learning from that. Profit is driven by ability to execute. It's going to be more heavy on the engineering side and less heavy on the assembly side, which means it's high value engineering that we need to make our money on here. So we have to be quite selective in terms of what we picked in order to make money. It's milestone-based delivery for high-value projects. So cash flow is we should be able to secure a positive free cash flow here. Advanced Missions is also an example. Some of you have heard perhaps about VLEO, very lower Earth orbit. So when the satellite even closer to Earth and start having some issues with gravity, but you have advantage that they are closer. This will also fall inside of advanced missions, and we did sign a contract with ESA in a consortium to start looking into this. So a good example of this is our innovation and capability building engine. But we still want to make money, and that's what we are focused on. North America, market expansion, biggest market, repeating myself. It's about driving regional pipeline conversion on local customer engagement. It can be Products. It can be individual satellites, it can be solution programs. It can be pretty much anything from our portfolio. Here is more about entering the market and positioning GomSpace. Profit is driven by scaling our commercial presence and then leveraging the facilities and capabilities of the other business units. Okay. So that gives you an idea. So 5 business units, 4 plus 1. They all have a very distinct focus in the market, something they need to achieve. They're all somewhat different. And now we define it further. We are also trading internally. So Products are actually getting paid for the products they are selling to the other business units as an example. Now with that in mind, let's take a look at our EBITDA here. EBITDA came in at just above SEK 11 million. So that's 99%, more than the first quarter, a little bit less than first quarter last year, a little bit less than the previous quarter, Q4 here, perfectly within a range of what we are driving for. If we break it down, as mentioned earlier, a lot of the margin, you can see lies in Products, it is a good business. And now that we've actually added that we have internal trading as well. What you see here is a real margin that if Products have sold with a very high discount externally, then this would be what they have. So Satellite Systems are basically buying at a big discount, if you like, in order to deliver their program. So this is a result. So with the Products business is a very good business, and we need to scale it. Satellite Systems, relatively low margin here needs to go up. And as I said, how do we do that? Obviously, by having more contracts, it's also done by having high repeatability. We are very focused on optimizing our assembly and we are also investing. There are some questions from you about what you're going to spend the money on where we're investing in making more and more standardized platforms so we can make better margin and deliver faster and then also improve the EBITDA here. National & Defence Solutions, we don't have any revenue yet. So this is reflecting this is what is costing us right now to run that organization. Advanced Missions just about breaking even because we do have a project that we are running right now, actually, we have a couple of projects that's more or less paying for the team that we have sitting there, which is about 8-10 people right now. North America, first quarter has been a bit slow. We're still living on income from last year. We do not have an ambition for a high EBITDA. I've said that before. If we can break even, it's fine. What I'm focused on is building presence. So we keep hiring in North America. We get more people coming in, we're very cautious about picking the right people, and we have some great new hires that have started recently. So North America is not about getting high profit right now. It's about capturing the market and getting a top line, and then we'll start making money over time. So that's the breakdown. Again, I hope you appreciate that you can see the details here. You can start following this, and this is also linking to the market dynamics. Order intake well above where we were first quarter last year. Order intake a little bit lower than revenue, so the net outcome and apologize for the picture here, we'll make this better for presentation later on, but in the summer, we have at the order backlog dropped a little bit SEK 10 million, SEK 20 million. It's fine. We of course expect to see more order intake later in the year to recover that and to continue to have an increasing order backlog. Just to highlight a couple of the key orders that we got, we had SEK 60 million from Unseenlabs so our fantastic wonderful customer for 2 more microsatellites. Again, a confirmation of GomSpace is in microsatellites as well. We're starting to sit on that market, and we're definitely continuing with our good customer in France here. So this is great. So this is now a continuation. Then another measure is it's good to have repeat customers, and you have repeat revenue, top -- but we also want to have new customers. So in addition to it's a great contract value, SEK 80 million. It's a new customer, VirtuaLabs in Italy are buying 4 satellites from us for Signal Intelligence. New customer, always great while covering new customers, and I'm sure I'm looking forward to working very closely with VirtuaLabs and also building their business. And we do see that there is possibility beyond this. So a great ticking the box, new customer in the fold here. Outlook for 2026, no change. Revenue in SEK 550 million to SEK 650 million. We expect -- so the midpoint is about 30% growth, double up of the market. We will -- are expecting to keep the profitability in the 5% to 12% range. Right now, we hit 9%. So that's well in the middle. Free cash flow will be negative. Repeating here, we do more investments that we've done in a long time into development to R&D, both in our product portfolio, creating standard platforms to assemble investing and our ability to scale also gearing up for production. We're investing in testing facilities. Those of you who live up here, go by and see the building, a lot of digging. We've set up some long-needed facilities to be able to test faster and better. This is essential for us to capture the market to be able to scale, to be able to handle the volumes coming in. And also further to this, we want to have -- we have the flexibility for different opportunities as they come along. We need working capital available, but also we have to have the possibility to jump into opportunities when they are there. Ukraine is 1 example of that. So let's jump to Ukraine. You will perhaps be annoyed with me. I'll give you the facts that I can give you. There's a lot. Some have been meeting in the news, there's a lot of postings and rumors. I'll give you the facts as they are right now, and I'll let the rest be for other people's speculation. But what is happening right now is that Ukraine wants to have their own independent space capabilities. That is number one. And this is what you need to really focus on and understand. This is coming. This is what I predicted some time ago and saying individual nations wants to have their own space capabilities. Ukraine for very good, very sad reasons are obviously first aligned to do this. So what have we done so far? Well, on April 22, we have announced, we signed a partnership agreement with a company called STETMAN with Dimitra from Ukraine to build this Ukraine sovereign space capability or satellite capability. This was done at an EU Summit with the EU Commission, so-called [indiscernible] who is focused on developing business towards the east. So this is great. There was a lot of attendance, European Investment Bank was there, our Danish IFO was there. So this was under EU, an EU conference driving this and an EU conference with a focus on how can we do more for Ukraine with Ukraine and in Ukraine. It's a joint venture that we'll sign soon. That's the next step in the second quarter here. So now we have signed a partnership agreement. We want to do this. Now we need to do a joint venture, which is an actual company that will set up in Ukraine with an ownership structure that we are defining right now, and we will also put some capital into that joint venture to get started. What is the scope? I know everybody wants to know, hey, so what's your order intake? What do you expect? How it's going to be? Right now, the focus is driving advanced space capabilities, independent capabilities for Ukraine. It will be a communication network, satellite communication network, much like StarLink. We are right now in a phase where we're going to investigate how much is needed. There's an ambition to cover the majority of Ukraine. It's for [indiscernible] purposes. So right now, we are going into what it's going to look like this network. We understand how it needs to be used and why, but now we need to build it up. When I know more, I will tell you more. Support from EU and EU Commission is really important. This program will partly be funded. There's going to be funds coming from the EU Commission and from EU to watch Ukraine for this. So it's a very strong funding partner. It doesn't mean that the whole thing is going to be paid, but it means that there is a strong willingness to put money into this, which is definitely required. So what are our next steps? Well, first of all, once we sign a joint venture, which we will do, we believe, in the second quarter here, we are going to launch 1 satellite. Call it a test satellite, if you like, that is going to fly over Ukraine, and we'll start doing different kind of missions and trying to understand where do we need, how do we create the sufficient coverage, where are the challenging areas that we need to be aware of. We will be working on the scope. You can do a little bit of the math yourself that we need to cover all of Ukraine. So it's probably more than 1 satellite. It's probably a lot more than 1 satellite, but now we need to understand how much more and what it contains. There's a small market at the end in both saying another next step what we're doing right now, as we're speaking, is getting the necessary financing in place. It will be a financial framework of money coming from EU in shape of loans, guarantees, probably some money from Ukraine itself, money from private investors. So while we are building the necessary technical network defining the network, we are also in parallel building the different financial and partnership structures that are required to take this off the ground. So this is by no means a simple project. It's a complex project, but it is absolutely worthwhile. It's right in our strategy, and this is driven by National & Defence Solutions business unit here. So in summary, taking you to the end here last year, great. We made -- we had a positive profit. We had a 7% -- more than 70% growth last year. I would say, sort of validates our business model. We are very happy with the business unit structure we have chosen and it shows that by managing this tightly, we can make money, which we did in 2025 when we created growth. Expecting more growth into 2026, using the same mechanisms, and I just explained to you for each business unit, how we intend to scale it and how we tend to make money. So for the quarter here, revenue was up 43%, EBITDA at 9%, great, net profit of SEK 20 million. I explained that we have an extra income by receiving shares as compensation. Cash, negative free cash flow, we did expect that, but we have a very strong cash balance. We took in SEK 70 million in addition to what we had. So we're sitting quite comfortably here in terms of cash. Main events, Ukraine. We talked about that. Unseenlabs, with SEK 60 million. It's a good contract order, but it's for 2 more microsatellites, great. We love that. and also a contract with a new customer in Italy, super, and SEK 80 million. And we have 4 plus 1 new business units that you will be following. I hope we gave good information in the trading statement, so you can follow it. And I'm sure that during the year, we'll keep talking about it and you'll start seeing why it makes sense and also I think it gives you a lot of information for you and investors to understand how we operate. With that, thank you very much.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#3

Carsten, let's jump into the question, as always, a lot of questions, so I'll try and group it. But let's stay a little bit on, and I all think you gave us a lot of information. So should I understand that you're partly 1 of the joint venture. So that will kind of be the military part, that cash flow stream, and then you will also sell satellites into it. Is that how we should understand how maybe this model will work for GomSpace?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#4

Yes. Let's make it perhaps a simpler saying this is the first step towards creating this satellite communication capability. So we are doing a joint venture in Ukraine with a partnership structure that we're defining right now. After that comes more. But right now, we are setting that up, so we can deliver this. And 1 of the key things is that in order to get the funding from EU as well, we need to have a presence in Ukraine, which we'd love to have for this program and potentially for other things. So first step is to set up a joint venture, get a company registered in Ukraine with our partner. And then based on that, there are going to be some next steps following that.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#5

And then can you give us a kind of a feel what normally in the land size of Ukraine would be a constellation covering that? Or am I asking me something you will shake your head to?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#6

Now I will repeat what I said before. This is a satellite communication network, obviously, it needs to cover all of Ukraine. We are understanding, trying to understand how the requirements how do we create coverage, what's the capacity, how many users, and that will define how many satellites are required. But as I said, it's probably more than 1.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#7

We'll take that. And then about the partner STETMAN, any thoughts about choosing here the capabilities here, there's a question here around -- surrounding that?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#8

Yes. No, STETMAN is a great partner because he is today, you're doing so-called ruggedized terminals also for the frontline in Ukraine. So there could be laptops, phones, sat phones, et cetera, that is then create -- that he's ruggedizing and that he can sell and distribute them out into the field, basically. So he has a very good relationship with the MOD down there with the military. So -- and we have been talking with him for quite some time now more than a year. And now we're coming to this stage where we say there's actually a need. There is a willingness from Ukraine and there's a clear expression. We want to do this is, EU is supporting this. So nothing is starting to come together. So STETMAN is a great partner for us and have exactly the network that we need in Ukraine.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#9

And then let's jump to Indonesia. We will do this as always. Any changes to scope, contract length? I know the answer, I will ask any way, as the scope, the lengths, the contract side, any news regarding Indonesia there?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#10

No news is good news, right? So we still -- we are in regular contact out there, our partner are -- they have an office there, so they are there all the time. So we continue working. And yes, no news is good news. I'll tell you something major is changing, but the case is still there, the case is still alive. It's going to take a long time, short time. I'm not even going to guess. But what I can say is that Indonesia will buy satellites, that's for sure. Like Ukraine is moving, like other nations are moving. Indonesia is going to move as well. And they are also in a process right now of understanding actually to also our engagement with them saying what is this capability that we're building? Why do we need it as a nation? And they understand that quite well now.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#11

Then there's a little bit of questions surrounding your employees here at stated 11 new employees. Can you give a feel on how many you're going to hire this year? And maybe also whether you are good at retaining those employees, you're hiring?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#12

We're going to hire a few as possible because we are -- I'm not in a business of hiring, but we do need competent people because we are growing. So the recruitment we are doing is based on needs. There is a need for, let's call it, the operational part where we are generating revenue and EBITDA for our programs, is our production facilities, we need people there. But we're also hiring a lot of people for so-called CapEx or the investment side. So more R&D, more people to be able to scale. So it's sort of twofold. We are hiring with the revenue growth is 1 thing. And then we're also hiring more people for the investment part. Yes, that's -- and we will stop hiring when we don't need it anymore, but right now, we need more people.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#13

And there's also a question on the cash outflow and that you have used your facility, this SEK 75 million. What the money has gone to? I think you kind of alluded to it working capital investments, you said you brought ground to some testing facilities, employees is that more to kind of elaborate there, why you have taken the facility and what the money has been used for?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#14

I wanted to have a strong position, so I can act and act fast. You have to be quite agile in this market. I also want to take you back to what I have talked about earlier. The industry is growing. There is more and more demand, everybody is scaling up. And I can tell you that people are looking for cash, and you can -- if you read and use, many of you are doing Google or ChatGPT, et cetera, there's a lot of money flowing into our competitors as well, and it's very clear that everybody is gearing up and investing and so will we, and we have to. I can probably run this business for profitability for a period of time. But if you don't invest, if you don't renew ourselves, if you don't prepare for scaling, we will not be able to capture that train where we are right now standing in front. We are running the train. And if we stop investing, we don't do anything, we will be behind. So it's a very clear reason for why we are having cash flow and why we're taking in this extra cash.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#15

And then there's a question -- there's some questions regarding exactly this point here. There's 1 here stating that you are maybe walking a little bit away from profitability instead of growth. I don't agree, you're walking into scaling up and investing heavily. So there are some questions out here. Do you need more capital injections? And I know you will, of course, not give us a clear answer, but yes, people are a little bit worried about whether you need more capital to kind of follow your plans through scaling up and maybe focusing on growth instead of profitability. Any general comments to that.

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#16

Yes. Let's take -- maybe take the question a little bit in a different place. Why would you want to invest in the space industry? It is because, as I said, it's an industry that's growing. Space is part of defense. Defense is growing. You see a look at the budgets for Europe right now. You look at for Denmark alone, we went from 2% to, I think, 4.5%, almost 5% right now. EU is spending more money than they have ever done before. U.S. is spending more money. Space is defense. So you are investing in an industry with a growing market. So the way I look at it is that it's a pie that's growing and we want to capture a bigger part of that pie than we are right now. So we will grow with that. So really, the way to look at it is to say how do we make GomSpace even bigger, even more profitable. And that's what we are looking at. So I think that is a better way to look at it. I don't have fears. Look at what do we need to do in order to grow it. And that's my job to make you sure that U.S. investors are truly benefiting, especially those who have been here for a long time. And thank you. I am reading. I can see some people say they have been made rich on GomSpace. I'm very happy for you, if that's the case. But of course, you require capital along awareness also why we took the loan facility from Hargreaves, which is great to have, so we can keep this momentum going.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#17

And I know you are now joining a lot of conferences. And spaces, as you said, IPOs are coming. There's a lot of private investment going into this space. What do you feel that out there if you need the cash? Are investors willing to that, I guess, SpaceX will even jump this attention into here. So kind of your feel when you are talking to investors maybe more than customers, the willingness to kind of fund this journey there. Is that out there?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#18

Yes. For sure, let's take a couple of things that's happening. You mentioned Starlink, as an example. SpaceX basically going IPO as the rumors, right, holy cow. That's a big one, right? That's going to create even more interest in the market. And anybody who is flying just behind Starlink, which we, in principle, all out because they're so big, we'll benefit from that as well. Another example, you can Google Hawkeye 360. Hawkeye 360 is doing signal intelligence surveillance, much like Unseenlabs. We actually provided half of that technology in the early days. You can go back and find press releases. So Hawkeye 360, when the Americans realize this is really absolute key to have, they said, maybe we can't buy the technology from Denmark. We have to do it ourselves. It's too bad for GomSpace, but showing well how important this technology is. Hawkeye 360 has filed for IPO in New York, I believe. So you go in Google, it's all public information. We have delivered half of their technology. They have a little bit more their service-oriented company, so they have a slightly higher revenue than us. Go look at the initial IPO value. It's about $2 billion, holy cow, right? So yes, there's a lot of interest. I was in Washington 4 weeks ago. I spoke with several bankers that came over. And funny enough, wake up, wake up, Nordics, they know very well who we are in the U.S., and they know very well the journey we are on and they are commending us and saying, "You guys have done a great job. You've taken something that should be successful. It wasn't as much, but now you're truly making money and not many are". So there's a lot of interest also from the U.S. market. So I have now -- for the first time, I tell people, I've been raising capital and running these types of companies for 15 years and for the first time investors are calling. Not that I have anything to sell for them other than I say go in the market and buy it, but it's a very different situation now.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#19

Perfect. And then maybe a little bit because we will not get around some more direct questions on this debt. You have taken in the collateral but there's a question here. When do we expect the money in Q1, Q2, Q3? I know you probably can't give us an answer, but I guess it also ties into the willingness because I guess they are also seeking cash in their markets. So I don't know how much you can say, you can probably don't give us a timeline, but feel about this customer owing you money.

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#20

Yes. So first of all, I want to repeat, I truly believe in their business case, they are also raising the capital. So it's taken longer. Sometimes it takes time. It's okay. We have a very good relationship with them. We truly believe in what they are doing. I see a great need for that. The technology that they have are buying from us has been quite important for them in the early stages, also raising capital. We have done everything we need to secure it. We have collateral to cover this. We control the assets, so we haven't sent anything to them yet until they pay. And we have a great relationship. How long time it takes? I don't know. Things take time in this market, but I think you should tie it back to the story. I just said, there's a lot of capital going into space now, more than ever before. And there might be some delay in the triggering from governments saying, now we want to do this, we're increasing the budget. So it ripples all the way out and the investments are coming and the investments will follow contracts and our own Prime Minister, saying buy, buy. She wasn't leaving. Well, maybe she is. We'll see how it ends up. And that's not -- it takes a little time before it to -- same goes with investments. Once you have the contract, you get the money.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#21

So as I expected, no, you can't give us a timeline, but you're very confident on this one, yes.

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#22

Yes.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#23

We will keep getting these questions because, as you said, we are talking about scaling up and so on and I need to ask it to you. I know you can't answer it, but I'm really being asked.

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#24

Then don't ask it, Michael.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#25

Can you promise that -- okay, can you give an indication on if you are raising capital, that it will not be as a big blot but be preferred before private investors? Now I have asked you to, Carsten, I know you can't answer it, but I was really asked here by the audience to ask that.

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#26

Okay. So let's go back and say that we are -- we've done a great first quarter. We have delivered a significant growth. We delivered a positive profit, which means our operational cash flow is positive. I told you that we are investing into the company to grow with the industry. The industry is growing 14% year-on-year. there's huge investments going in also to competitors. We have 2 big IPOs coming up in New York, everything is going in the right direction. And I think that's what you need to focus on.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#27

I asked it at least. There's a little bit of question, so regarding some of the specific orders, let us jump to the Danish one. We also need to have that. Have the Danish government finally seen the light and are starting to be more granular on this observation, Greenland, I get the Baltic sea and so on. Any comments on the Danish governments?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#28

Well, right now, we don't have one. So I guess that's the first comment. So things won't move until we have one, at least the 1 that sitting can't decide anything. We continue to talk in Denmark, of course, and we have contacts with all the right people. Right now, there is some slowdown due to the change in government, and we'll see how quickly they sort that out. If you look across the board without going into politics, but what's interesting is that I think all the parties in the parliament right now agree on investing in defense and national security is something we're going to do. There's no political difference on that. So we should expect whatever government comes out that trend continues and the story continues. So that's what I'm expecting. And of course, we are heavily engaged. So of course, that's our job.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#29

And then I will jump into some of the orders. There's -- whether you can give an update on the project with 18 satellites and whether you can clarify the 2 extra stellites? I think you addressed this order as something you sold to a big disruptor in the European tech space, but aging satellites was the 2 on top of that coming in and a little bit about the execution on this order, how that is going because I think that was kind of a short order showing that you actually needed to scale up, right?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#30

We've been on track with that one. And maybe answering the 2 additional, it was not two additional. It was an extension of the contract by reworking and adding more to the contract value, but it was the same amount of satellite in total.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#31

And there, so there's a little bit of questions regarding the M&A strategy. Do we have any -- is the stock as you said, it's an evolving space. There will be consolidation, there will be not deconsolidation, there will be consolidation in this industry. Any thoughts about having an M&A strategy or is the organic strategy enough for you for now?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#32

There will be consolidation. Constellation is another thing. So that when you buy comp shares and it goes up and then that's a constellation. No, but there will be roll out, as I said. And you see, if you go look in the news there are acquisitions happening right now, Rocketlab bought a company in Germany called Minarik, which is doing later communication. So this is happening. And what I'd tell you, and I'm happy to repeat it, is that we are here to stay. We are here to grow. We have come to a situation now where we have grown our top line very well. We have done that profitably. Remember when I set out 3 years ago saying, okay, we need to figure out how do we make free cash flow, positive cash flow, how do we grow the top line and how do we become profitable. We felt we owe that to our investors to show we can do that. This is what we've done now. This is what I meant by the validation in 2025, the structure we have. We understand how to execute and we can deliver on all parameters. So now we are moving into a growth stage and in order to grow, you can go different routes. You, of course, grow organically, you get more contracts. But things are moving fast. You might want to complement with some technology where it doesn't take off -- payoff for us to develop it ourselves. There might be other reasons for entering into a market where you say why you can do it organically, meaning you hire people, you do something there or you partner or you acquire something. So our strategy is to grow. I've told you that we're going to outgrow definitely outperform the market, and there are different routes to that. So of course, we are considering all the options in our strategy. We should -- that is my job to do that on your behalf.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#33

It's my job to ask a follow-up question on that. Do you see any holes in your technology? I think you are kind of very broad-based with products and everything. But is there line side any holes in your technology? You set up a production set up. I don't know whether you want to answer that, but...

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#34

Yes. No, no, no. We are -- as I say, scaling is something that is important. We have 18 satellites from last year, which has helped us scale our assembly, but also the production of individual bits and pieces. We started outsourcing. So this is part of it. Of course, as business cases evolve as use cases evolve, there can be different technologies that come in addition, that is we don't yet have that can well be. Of course, we are evolving the platform we have. We have a very strong heritage. And don't forget that the flight houses is important. You can introduce something new, but then does not flight heritage, and that's a different story. So we are constantly evolving upon the platform that we have already over many years secured and say, listen, it works. We have flown it many times and the customers love it, and we have the quality that they're looking for. Will there be holes over time? Probably I see more opportunities than holes, of course.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#35

Perfect. And then the final question to round off because we have -- we are actually at the time, I will ask it. Defense space ETFs is on and if they doing anything actively. That's very important for investors because we know a big money flow will automatically go in there and thereby, of course, automatically flow to your company. So anything on the ETF space, where you are joining defense on the space ETFs? Are you trying to do that and have you succeeded in that?

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#36

Well, now it's not really something that we do. It's not for us to do. It's for the ETF to select us. And I think you did see that we were selected by a U.S.-based that GomSpace together with 3 others was on their list. So that has happened. I don't look at it as something I focus on specifically, but I think what we need to do is we continue to deliver the performance the market knows, the U.S. market knows it even better than the European market that we are performing well. And by delivering on that and delivering on the value for U.S. investors and our continuous success we are bound to get into more ETF, but it's not a specific target. You can also take a look at and I shouldn't talk about share price and market cap, but nevertheless, you look at the market cap we have right now, you're sort of moving in a different category. We talked before the call here, Michael, about small cap, mid-cap, where we are, we actually sort of moving out of a small cap to mid-cap but that's opening up something else. There are a lot of investment funds out there that are saying they don't get out of bed for investments less than USD 100 million. Okay, wait a second, we are more than USD 100 million that is. So the dynamic is changing. So it's not something we are pursuing specifically. I think my job is to make sure that we continue to deliver with a strong strategy, strong execution and through that, all those good things will come also to benefit investors.

Michael Friis

Attendees
#37

And Jeff will also do to the market going up actually potentially choosing you. So that is -- I know you can actually drive that, but that's not a side effect -- a side benefit of increasing market share. Perfect, I have already taken a minute or two minutes over the allotted time. So I will let you go now. Thank you for taking us through the results and willingness to answer questions, and thank you for your audience.

Carsten Drachmann

Executives
#38

Thank you very much. Always a pleasure. Thank you.

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