Impact Coatings AB (publ) (IMPC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to today's webcast with Impact Coatings. With us today, we have the CEO, Jonas Nilsson; and CFO, Lena Aberg, presenting. [Operator Instructions] And with that said, please go ahead with the presentation.

Thank you. So my name is Jonas Nilsson, and beside me, I have Lena Aberg. So welcome to this Q1 report presentation. So the agenda for today is: first, some Q1 highlights and business updates; then Lena will guide us through the numbers and the financial update. We will have a summary, and we will end with a short Q&A session. So let's start with Q1 highlights. We see that the hydrogen market remains cautious. The hydrogen sector is sort of in a wait-and-see mode. But at the same time, we see a shift from symbolic pilot projects towards mature, scalable solutions with real commercial potential. A month ago, I went to the Hannover Fair and visited the Hydrogen Hall. You could clearly see that it was fewer exhibitors this year compared to last year, but the ones that were there were more serious. The hype is gone, but the serious players are still in the game. This year, you didn't see any 3D printed mock-up electrolyzer stacks. Instead, you can see the real ones. So we see that it goes more from hype to real stuff. Investment decisions take longer, but the structural demand drivers remain intact. So our long-term outlook is unchanged. We also see seasonal effects. Q1 is traditionally a slower quarter for us, and this year was no exception. The Chinese New Year led to a temporary slowdown in customer activity. We do have potential system orders in the pipeline, but decision processes have been delayed. And this is a recurring pattern in a cautious market. We believe it's about timing, not a lack of demand. Well positioned in an uncertain business climate. Increased geopolitical tensions, trade barriers and tariffs create an unpredictable environment. However, Impact Coatings is well prepared with production in both Europe and China and preparations for local manufacturing in the U.S. This ensures delivery capability even under shifting global conditions. When looking at the hydrogen market, there is, of course, also political aspects. With the new President in U.S. that likes drilling, some people were afraid that the tax credits for producing green hydrogen would disappear. However, what we have seen so far is actually the opposite. The tax credits for producing hydrogen has been extended to also include so-called pink hydrogen, that is hydrogen that is produced from nuclear power. For us, it doesn't matter where the power comes from. You still need an electrolyzer that need coatings and you still need a fuel cell with coatings to use the hydrogen. Another political perspective, South Korea is to issue new 3,000 gigawatt-hour low-carbon or clean hydrogen to power tender in 2025 under Korea's so-called clean hydrogen portfolio standard. This is to promote more power generation from hydrogen. Exactly what that will mean to us, it's hard to say. But in Korea, there is a preference for the technology called SOFC or SOEC. I will come back to that later. Also, I've heard that in the presidential election in the beginning of June, both candidates are pro-hydrogen, but the pro-hydrogen and pro-renewable party's candidate expect to win. This will also probably be good for our business in Korea. So looking at our business approach, continued growth: despite a slow start of the year, we continue to show growth both in the quarter and in rolling 12 months revenue. Last year, we had a large focus on new sampling customers, and now it's the time to turn these new customers to either recurring Coating Services customers or machine customers. We have systems in inventory prepared, allowing us to respond quickly once customer decisions are made. This supports shorter lead times and also strengthens our delivery capability. Tight cost control: we continue to maintain strict cost discipline, while also taking concrete steps to reduce both costs and tied-up capital. We are currently performing a cost-cutting program that also includes some staff reductions, which will primarily affect our team here in Sweden. Strong commercial focus: we remain focused on sales and are seeing continued strong activity in customer sampling and recurring customer dialogues. We are continuously taking steps towards larger orders. And when you go from sampling to large Coating Services orders or to machine orders, you must go through qualification. It's quite common that customers want to test for maybe 5,000 hours. Therefore, I'm really happy that we put a strong focus last year to get new sampling customers that we can now guide through the qualification process. Strategic tech development: we're taking key steps in expanding our technology base. Iridium oxide development opened up a new potential in PEM electrolysis. We also have progress in SOFC/SOEC, which position us for future growth in high-performance hydrogen applications. I will come back to that. So sales growth is a cornerstone of our journey towards profitability. And when looking at sales over time, it's clear that we have established ourselves on a new level despite a slow start now in Q1. The path to profitability goes through increased sales. This journey was started already in 2022 when the company got the first large order for electrolyzer coatings and the focus was set on North America. Mid-2023, everyone experienced a drop in the hydrogen market in U.S. We were focused on increasing sales, and we were committed to the hydrogen market. So we turned from looking west to looking east, and we continued to increase sales by addressing the Chinese hydrogen market instead. Many people would probably say that 2024 was a tough year. Despite that, we increased our sales. This Q1 was slow, but we still increased our rolling 12. We are on a clear path towards increased sales. This quarter was a tough one without machine sales, but it was better than Q1 last year. So looking at the figures, total Q1 net sales amounted to SEK 9.5 million compared to SEK 4 million last year. And as you can see, there were no deliveries of coating systems during the quarter. Given the fact that it was the Chinese New Year during the quarter, Coating Services continued to perform well, driven by increased sample volumes and stable recurring business. Aftermarket, SEK 3.9 million, growing on a year-to-year basis but with potential for more. The Q1 operating loss was SEK 14.2 million, a slight improvement compared to last year. Our focus remains on increasing revenue while continuing a strict cost control to reach profitability. And talking about cost control, as I said, we are currently performing a cost-cutting program that also includes a slight reduction of the number of employees here in Sweden. So looking at some of the technical development to expand our market, focused R&D in iridium oxide: we're expanding our role in PEM electrolyzers by developing coatings for iridium oxide, a crucial costly catalyst layer where we can reduce the usage of iridium. Typically, you put the iridium on the membrane. However, our INLINECOATER coater system can put the iridium on the titanium porous transport layer, a part that we are already coating with noble metals for some customers. This allows us to coat an additional functional layer in the stack, increasing the addressable market and commercial value. So we take a larger piece of the pie. This gives customers a more complete cost-efficient solution. It also enables push-pull. The iridium catalyst layer is so important for the performance and price that the technology is relevant all the way to the end customer. So it's a little bit like Intel Inside. The Intel microprocessor sets the performance of the computer. In our case, the catalytic coating sets the price, as well as the performance and longevity of the stack. So it's relevant all the way up to the end customer. Let's look at new technology partnerships. We are experts in building machines. We have initiated 2 partnerships with 2 research-oriented companies who have technologies and solutions for the hydrogen market, which could be incorporated in our machines. That is, with their technology, the catalyst layer can be improved and our machines will be the platform for this. Ionautics is making power supplies for so-called high HiPIMS, a sputtering technique to enhance performance of coatings, for example, catalytic coatings, but also other coatings. Smoltek has technology for making carbon nanofibers that we are evaluating if it could be incorporated into our machines. Also, carbon nanofibers can enhance the performance of hydrogen-related coatings. So in both cases, we act as the platform. Before we get into this slide, I want to give you some background. There are a number of different technologies for electrolyzers and fuel cells. One of the most common is PEM, which stands for proton exchange membrane. This is a good technology when you have multiple start and stop, and it's also suitable for mobile and mobility applications. However, there are other technologies that has higher efficiency. Solid oxide have higher efficiency. The drawback is that you have to run the stack at very high temperature, several hundred degrees Celsius. This makes it suitable for stationary applications such as power generation to data centers and also power generation to residential areas. For residential areas, you can also use excess heat for heating. I have also seen companies present the idea to use SOEC, solid oxide electrolyzer cell, to produce hydrogen in the summer from solar power. Then you can have a solid oxide fuel cell, SOFC, to get power and heat in the winter. So let's have a look at the slide and what we do when it comes to solid oxide. So first bullet, we are expanding our offering into solid oxide fuel cells and solid oxide electrolyzer cells. During the quarter, we made clear progress in this strategic new area. Test results: we have developed and tested coatings that show good technical performance and are compatible with existing system architectures. So we provide coatings designed for integration into existing systems, which would reduce our time to market. This means that we can enter an established segment. We have not invented the SOFC/SOEC. It's an existing technology where you often use pre-coated steel. What we do is we enable post-coating solutions for this market. Strategically, this expands our technology portfolio and relevance beyond PEM and position us for long-term growth in a segment with significant market potential. So we go from being a PEM company to becoming a hydrogen company. This also makes us more relevant to our customers' customer. Regardless of which technology the customers' customers choose, we can still be part of the solutions. And for stationary applications, there are some significant benefits with SOFC. The hydrogen market is sort of in a wait-and-see mode. And on a limited market, you must grab a larger piece of the pie. You can also see this as an opportunity. The slow market give us the opportunity to expand our offering and make us ready for the coming market expansion without having that much competition right now. So with that, I leave it to Lena for the financial update.

Thank you, Jonas. So let's start with the profit and loss statement. As we have mentioned, total net sales were SEK 9.5 million, a clear increase compared to the SEK 4.1 million in Q1 last year. And there were improvements in both sales of Coating Services, as well as aftermarket sales in China as well as in Sweden. However, we didn't have any sales of coating systems in the quarter, which was, of course, a disappointment. The total revenue was SEK 19.7 million compared to SEK 7.5 million in Q1 last year. Besides the increase in net sales, there were also increases in change in work in progress and capitalized work for own accounts. Gross margin at 52% for the quarter was lower than full year, but with the low net sales this quarter, it isn't very representative and difficult to take notice of. As for other external costs -- sorry, other external costs were minus SEK 6.1 million compared to minus SEK 5.5 million in Q1 last year. The increase mainly pertains to increased rental costs and other premises costs. Personnel costs were minus SEK 15.8 million compared to minus SEK 13.7 million last year. This includes an increased number of FTEs, where Q1 '24 was temporarily low. The FTE increase was mainly in China, where the coating services were still scaling up during last spring. But the cost increase also includes a larger part of hired staff and some initiated cost-saving measures, including reduction in number of FTEs haven't yet had full impact during Q1 '25. And the work of efficiency improvements and cost savings, which started in the second half of '24, has continued. There was a slight increase in depreciations due to investments last year. And we had a currency exposure, which resulted in a foreign exchange loss of SEK 800,000. Interest income was close to SEK 1 million both this quarter as well as Q1 last year. And in total, this adds up to a net loss of minus SEK 14.2 million compared to minus SEK 15.9 million in Q1 last year. So we move to the balance sheet and starting with fixed assets. Intangible assets have increased in capitalized development costs, and this is mainly development in next-generation coating sources. As for tangible fixed assets, we only have minor investments for some installations and other fixed assets, in total, SEK 0.7 million compared to previous year's SEK 10.4 million where we had quite some assets under construction. As for total inventory, the increase from year-end is about SEK 2 million. And we have then increased in work in progress, while raw materials has decreased, and this is components, but also from the some noble metal inventories have been sold. Short-term receivables have decreased by almost SEK 25 million, mainly due to received customer payments. And as for cash, we will come back to that in the next page. Prepayment from customers have decreased, which is partly from currency effects, but also from some netting with the receivables. And I can also mention that short-term liabilities have decreased almost SEK 5 million from year-end, mainly due to decreased accrued expenses. So cash flow statement, we can conclude that we end the quarter with a cash balance at SEK 26.3 million. And of course, continued sales growth is vital to scale up the business, and we are well prepared for fast deliveries to increase sales and cash flow. The cash flow was negatively affected, of course, by the operating loss of minus SEK 14.2 million. But then, we had a positive cash flow effect from the decreased working capital. The total was SEK 8.5 million, mainly driven then by customer payments, where we had this large decrease, and that was netted then by some decreased liabilities and also a bit increase in the inventory. But cash flow from operations was minus SEK 3.2 million compared to minus SEK 12.1 million in Q1 '24. And then, if we go to investments, as we have mentioned, investments have been kept at a low level during the quarter, SEK 0.7 million in tangible assets. And then, we also had capitalized development costs of SEK 1.7 million. In total, this resulted in a negative cash flow of minus SEK 5.6 million in Q1 and a closing balance of SEK 26.3 million by the end of March. This was the financial update, which means that we move on to the summary.

So rolling 12: despite a slow Q1, our rolling 12 months revenue shows ongoing growth. Hydrogen market: we continue to see delayed investment decisions, especially in system sales, but our long-term confidence in the market is unchanged. And as mentioned earlier, there continues to be a positive political driver in the hydrogen market. Systems in inventory: with prepared systems in stock, we are well positioned to deliver on short notice once customer decisions are finalized. Active cost management: we have taken concrete steps to improve cash flow in the quarter. Cost management remains a top operational priority. And as I mentioned, we are currently performing a cost reduction program. Strategic tech development: key development areas are progressing well with promising test results and new partnerships. Focus on sales and cost control: we continue to focus on increased sales to reach profitability with an increased focus on cost control. This means that we are well positioned. 2025 will be a challenging year, but with a clear strategy, a competitive offering and a committed team, Impact Coatings is ready to scale when the market gains momentum. So with this, we go to the Q&A.

Thank you very much, Jonas and Lena for that presentation. [Operator Instructions] And we have Henric Hintze from ABG.

This is Henric at ABG. So first of all, you mentioned that you're seeing increased volumes of customer samples and that you think that this means more customers are approaching commercial decisions. I was just wondering if you could mention anything regarding how good of a leading indicator this has been for you historically.

Yes. So during 2024, we put a clear focus in increasing the sales funnel, so getting more customers in. That meant that we charged everyone for samples, we stopped giving away free samples, and we were more serious in bringing new customers in. In total, this led to 29 new paying customers. To compare that historically, it's hard because this was a new strategy. It was a strategy to get them in early and work with them through qualifications all the way to large Coating Services orders or machine orders. And now in 2025, we have those new customers and other previous new customers that we can work with through qualification. So this is sort of the material we have. And what we can see in Coating Services for the quarter is we have an increase in Coating Services, quite big increase compared to Q1 '24. And Q1 is typically a slow quarter in Coating Services, but now it's much more than last year. And a portion of that is recurring customers that come back to us, but a quite large portion is also sampling customers who are not buying 1 or 2 samples, but substantial amount of samples to do trials in real stacks. Maybe it was not an exact answer to your question, but was it good enough?

It was very interesting, nevertheless. So thank you for that. Moving on to the cost side of things, I was just wondering if you could mention any details on sort of what areas you see cost savings potential in and if there's any way to quantify what the potential here is.

Yes. So the program we're doing now, we're sort of shaving off costs from everywhere. But of course, our focus is on sales. So we try to take as little as much -- little as possible on sales. Development is also important because we need to develop new things to sell in new areas to make the sort of our piece of the pie bigger. So we shave off a little bit from development, but majority of the cost saving will be on operations, on deliveries.

All right. Next up, I saw you wrote in the report, and I think you mentioned it as well, you reduced like customer-specific inventory of precious metals and moved more towards customer-independent inventory. Could you just explain a bit more what this means and what effect it will have on inventory levels going forward once the transition is complete?

Yes. And to give background, when coating with noble metals, there is a recycling. So all the coating does not end up on the customer piece. So if you're coating, for example, an electrolyzer plate with noble metals, all the noble metals doesn't end up on the plate. Some of the noble metal ends up on shields in the machine. And this means that those shields are sent for recycling and then you get the noble metal back and you can use it again in the machine. So there is a recycling cycle of the noble metal. And to keep track of this, we have had some customers where we have charged them in a cost-neutral way for the noble metals. This means that you have to have a customer-specific inventory for noble metals and you also have to have a customer-specific inventory for sort of all the steps in this recycling chain. We are moving away from that. And by moving away from that, we can reduce the total inventory because if you have a customer-specific inventory, that tends to grow the inventory, so you have larger inventory. So we are moving away from that. So we are selling off some of the customer-specific inventory and moving towards a generic inventory.

All right. And does that also then mean that you will stop charging customers for this inventory?

We will stop charging customer in a cost-neutral way. So it will be included in our offering, and we will also have margins on the noble metals.

Yes. Okay. Very good. Finally, maybe I was just wondering, with the U.S. tariff situation, does this in any way affect your plans and decision-making in the U.S.?

So since a long time ago, we have a ready-to-go plan for establishment in the U.S., and this doesn't really change the plan. We have been well prepared for this situation. So when needed, we can very fast be up and running in U.S. So this is a way to avoid tariffs. So I would say that for us as a company, we are not that affected of the tariffs. We have ways to move around the tariffs. However, of course, our customers may be affected. So it delays investment decisions from our customers.

Okay. We'll move on with the questions here. Is the collaboration with Smoltek driven by Smoltek, Impact or possibly end customers?

Well, it's a collaboration between 2 companies. So we are both driving that collaboration. So we see a potential. We have machines. We are very good in making machines. Smoltek, they have a carbon nanofiber technology. Those carbon nanofibers could potentially be grown in our machines. So this is a way to scale up to commercialize the Smoltek technology. And we see an interest in the hydrogen market for the Smoltek technology. So together, we can offer this technology to the market.

Considering that Smoltek is low on funds, what is the risk here for Impact in terms of potentially being able to complete the ongoing work?

Yes, of course, it's a risk when working with collaboration partners. However, the investment from our side is fairly limited. So we do have our machines. That's our expertise. Our expertise is to build machines. We sell machines and coatings. And in order to improve our offering, our coating offering to be able to do more with our machines, we see that this collaboration with Smoltek is a good way to sort of increase that offering to have someone else's technology that can be provided with our machines.

Thank you, Jonas, for that answer. Bosch decided to exit the solid oxide fuel cells business due to slow market development. Is it wise to invest in this kind of technology?

Yes. Bosch decided to go for PEM only. So they had quite big departments, both for PEM and SOFC/SOEC, and now, they are focusing only on PEM. Our strategy is to focus on the hydrogen market. And the tactics last year, when the U.S. market was slow, was to get new sampling customers. And some of those sampling customers were in SOFC/SOEC. And there are a number of big players in SOFC/SOEC, especially in Asia. So Bosch is not the only big player in this market. Well, Bosch is not there anymore. But there are other big players. So we do both PEM and SOFC. We come from PEM, but now we have added SOFC. So we don't have to have an opinion about which technology is the best. Regardless if you choose PEM or if you choose SOFC, we can do the coating. So for big companies, regardless of which they choose, we are still relevant to them.

Impact Coatings has a history of changing focus. Is that what we see here again here with SOFC/SOEC?

No, we are not shifting focus. We are not doing new things. It is coatings for hydrogen. So we stay focused for -- stay focused on the hydrogen market. We have learned that push-pull has been very successful for our fuel cell coatings. And to get the push-pull to work, you have to be relevant for your end customer so that the end customer can say that, yes, we want the coating from Impact Coatings because we know that will affect the performance of what we're doing. And both in iridium oxide and solid oxide fuel cells and solid oxide electrolyzer cell, this is a way to enable push-pull because with the iridium oxide, we will get relevant to the end customer. So it's a way to increase our piece of the pie. We continue to do what we're doing, but we add more to our offering, and that addition gets us more relevant to the end customer.

Thank you for that answer. And we'll take one final question before wrapping up the Q&A section here. There was a press release last week about FTXT buying coating services in China for the rest of 2025. Is this a new agreement?

Well, it's new, but it's not an agreement. It's not FTXT that is buying. So FTXT is actually the customer's customer. So we initiated a collaboration last year with FTXT. We are developing the new coatings, and they go to their suppliers and tell their suppliers that they need to use the coating from Impact Coatings. And their suppliers can do that in 2 ways. Either they buy coating services from us or they buy a machine from us. So the answer to your question is, yes, it's new, but it's not an order from FTXT. It will be orders from the suppliers to FTXT.

Thank you very much for that answer. And thank you both, Jonas and Lena for your presentation, but also answering all of our questions. And thank you, everyone who followed this presentation with Impact Coatings. And I wish you all a great rest of the day. Thank you very much.

Thank you.