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

Hello, and welcome to today's Finwire broadcast presentation with Impact Coatings. [Operator Instructions] With that said, I'll hand the floor to you, CEO, Jonas Nilsson; and CFO, Lena Aberg. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. I am Jonas Nilsson, and welcome to this presentation of the fourth quarter and year-end financial report. Here is the agenda for today's webcast. We will start with a brief presentation of the company, mainly for our new shareholders. Then we will talk about our new strategy and especially SOFC, solid oxide fuel cells. Then we will go through the highlights from Q4, and some full year highlights. Our CFO, Lena Aberg, will take us through the financials, then summary and outlook and a Q&A session at the end. So Impact Coatings in brief. Impact Coatings is an advanced material science company with world-leading solutions in the areas we are active. We provide solutions consisting of coatings and machines for coatings. We have a flexible business model with both machine sales and coating as a service. We are active in several markets, but focus on energy where our machines provides a perfect fit. Today, we are the market leader for PEM fuel cell coatings in China. According to our calculations based on customer data, about half of the volume of stainless steel plates for PEM fuel cells that were produced in China during 2024 and 2025, have been coated in either an IC2000 or an IC500 machine delivered by Impact Coatings. We also have a strong position when it comes to noble metal coatings for electrolyzers. And now we are going to use this position to focus on the SOFC market. So before going into Q4, let us talk about our strategy. Impact Coatings has built a strong and well-established position within the PEM-related applications. PEM-related applications, that is PEM electrolyzers for green hydrogen and PEM fuel cells mainly for mobility, converting green hydrogen into electricity. But the market for PEM and green hydrogen has not taken off as expected. So now we use the position and experience from PEM to enter the solid oxide fuel cells market. And also here, we aim to become the market leader. So those of you who listened to the capital market update in November, knows that AI data centers consume a lot of energy, and it's problematic to build power lines to those centers in a short time. Earlier this week, I had a lunch with the Head of Distribution division at Tekniska verken, that is the local utilities company here in Ostergotland. He confirmed the challenge with data centers and the environment and legal framework they are acting from is not really designed for fast transitions, such as the demand for power to AI data centers. According to him, it takes a long time to build new power lines, much longer than building the data center itself. And this can also create competition and some friction in the local society when there's not enough power for all businesses. He didn't really have a solution, but to me, he confirmed the problem. One solution is high-efficiency SOFC, solid oxide fuel cells, which convert natural gas into electricity, which can be used to power data center without interference with the local infrastructure. By using containerized SOFC power plants, which are easy and fast to deploy, this can also be done in time. However, SOFC stacks, they operate at high temperatures and contain a lot of stainless steel plates called interconnect. Stainless steel at high temperature evaporates chromium, and chromium will kill the SOFC stacks. So to avoid chromium evaporation, the stainless steel interconnect plates needs coating. We provide solutions, machines, and services for coating of stainless steel interconnect plates. The emerging market for SOFC systems is commercially driven and is expected to grow much faster than green hydrogen applications. We do have a strong position in the green hydrogen market, and we are going to use that position to also grab the SOFC market. So we have been working with SOFC at low intensity for several years, but now it's time to scale up. Suddenly, the world needs data centers and data centers need power. The electricity consumption of data centers is expected to double by 2030, and power supply is a major bottleneck to deployment of data centers. SOFC power has now reached commercial scale and containerized SOFC systems has the ability to bring data center online about 3 to 4 years before grid electricity is available. Testing has proven our coating performance, and we are recognized as high-quality supplier for interconnect coatings. So growing in this market is our main strategic focus right now. We are currently working with Ceres, one of the leading technology players in the SOFC industry. Ceres licenses its technology to Doosan in Korea, Delta Electronics in Taiwan, and Weichai in China, which are all major global companies. We can't yet say exactly how large this market opportunity will be, but the top-down analysis indicates several hundred machines in just a few years. The picture on the right, that's actually a picture from outside and inside of Doosan's factory in Korea, where they are producing SOFC stacks. So it's a big factory. Well, you might ask, why do we start doing something new. Well, this isn't new. It's a natural step. From the strong position in the PEM fuel cell market, SOFC is the natural step. In terms of product market fit, it's a perfect match. SOFC components that are flat plates, and we are specialists in 2D objects, they require advanced multilayer coatings on both sides with different coatings on each side. And the more advanced requirements, the stronger the need for Impact Coatings. The plates also have exactly the right dimensions for our IC500 and IC2000 machines. This means we do not need to invest in new machine development. Another important aspect of the SOFC market is that each system requires more coated plates than the PEM fuel cell system. So higher volumes means higher revenue, and that is regardless of if it is through coating services or machine sales. So let's switch to Q4 highlights and full year highlights. But first, some words about the market and business context. And to put the quarter into context, 2025 has been a challenging year. Investment decisions have been delayed across several industrial sectors and the growth in hydrogen-related applications has been substantially slower than what we anticipated a year or 2 ago. For Impact Coatings, this has meant limited demand for machines, which has directly impacted cash flow and liquidity during the year. At the same time, the organization has continued to execute well operationally, particularly within coating services. So the key message at this stage is that we have acted proactively to ensure that the company remains operationally strong and financially resilient in a difficult market environment. So we have, during 2025 and in Q4, taken important actions to strengthen the foundation of the company. We completed a rights issue in the fourth quarter to strengthen liquidity. The rights issue was completed in a quite demanding capital market environment. The outcome was below our initial ambitions, but it provided an important liquidity contribution, SEK 26.6 million before issue-related costs. Together with the rights issue, we have taken several structural measures to adapt the company to the current market conditions. During the year 2025, we implemented cost reductions across the organization, including a reduced headcount and a range of efficiency initiatives. These measures will take full effect during 2026. In addition, we have a new metal supply agreement, which gives flexibility and have materially reduced the amount of capital that needs to be tied up in operations. There are a number of things in this agreement that gives the flexibility to improve working capital. I will not go into details, but I can say that it is about who owns the inventory, it's about payment terms and other things related to recycling of metals. We have also worked with working capital loans, both in China and in Sweden, and we have managed to get favorable terms. So taken together, these actions strengthen the foundation of the company and gives us better control and resilience. And we can see the effect of these measures in the Q4 numbers. Operating cost is reduced by SEK 7.5 million compared to Q4 2024. Operating profit ended up at minus SEK 3.3 million, and we closed the year with a cash balance of SEK 37.4 million. Looking at more numbers, total net sales amounted to SEK 17.6 million for the quarter. We had a strong coating services, SEK 15.3 million, which was the main contribution to total net sales. Order intake was also in line with net sales and order intake includes also new sampling customers, both in SOFC and iridium oxide. The order backlog at period end was SEK 10.6 million, which gives a good start of the new year. There is SEK 1.3 million on systems, which originates from revenue recognition of previous deliveries. Aftermarket has been slow, which reflects the lower activity at many of our system customers during 2025. But to stay efficient, we have used personnel from the support and from the assembly organization to strengthen coating services. On a rolling 12-month basis, it's obvious that we are affected by very low machine sales. However, we do see stable development in coating services. And historically, this has been a good indicator of upcoming machine orders. So we expect orders during the year in all 4 business areas: energy, automotive, electronics, and luxury goods. Looking at coating services, it can be mentioned that we doubled the customer deliveries in number of fuel cell plates in 2025 compared to 2024. The company does not typically report incremental business progress outside of these quarterly reportings. However, during the rights issue in Q4, we wanted to provide investors with maximum information and announce more news than we normally do. So here are some of those news. More than $1 million in orders from our big North American customer, a new low-cost but still high-performance coating delivered to a customer. We now meet the needle standard that is required by our Japanese sampling customers. Lindberg, a luxury goods manufacturer, wants to buy one more machine. And as I said earlier, we have doubled the production in our Shanghai facility. If you add the production made by us and also by our machine customers in China, you can also clearly see that we are the market leader on the Chinese fuel cell market. We have a capital markets update on November 24, and this is a recap of the key points communicated. So focus on SOFC, we expect orders in all 4 segments, and we expect continued growth in coating services. So now I leave it to Lena, for the financial update.

Thank you, Jonas. So we'll start with the income statement and all amounts are in SEK million, and let's start with the quarterly figures. As Jonas mentioned previously, net sales for the quarter was SEK 17.6 million, a decrease compared to the SEK 42.4 million in Q4 last year. But in Q4 '24, we had a coating system sales of SEK 27 million. If we go to capitalized work for own account, it was SEK 0.1 million this quarter compared to a negative SEK 1.2 million in Q4 '24, which was a correction from previous quarters. Change in work in progress was SEK 0.2 million and Q4 '24 was SEK 6.2 million. Other operating income was SEK 5.2 million compared to SEK 0.1 million in Q4 last year. And this is mainly revenues from metal recycling in the subsidiary in China. So total revenue amounted to SEK 23.0 million compared to SEK 47.5 million in Q4 '24. The gross margin was 83% for the quarter compared to 55% in Q4 '24, which then included machine sales, and we also have some other income with higher margins in Q4 '25. If we go down to other external costs, they were minus SEK 6.7 million compared to minus SEK 9.1 million in Q4 '24. And in Q4, premises costs were actually lower compared to Q4 '24, since we then had overlapping double rental costs and also costs for moving to the new facilities. Q4 2025 also had decreased costs for consumables, freight, and consultants. If we look at personnel costs, they were minus SEK 13.1 million compared to minus SEK 18.7 million in Q4. And the number of FTE for the group by the end of the quarter was 50 compared to 66 in Q4 '24. So that's, of course, the main reason. If we look at depreciations, they increased to SEK 2.2 million compared to SEK 1.7 million in Q4 '24, and this is mainly due to investments during '24. So the operating loss for the quarter was minus SEK 3.3 million, which is a slight improvement compared to minus SEK 3.7 million in Q4 '24. And it's a combination of lowering operating expenses and also better gross margin. We had interest expenses of minus SEK 0.2 million compared to an interest income of SEK 0.2 million in Q4 '24. And in total, Q4 adds up to a net loss of minus SEK 3.8 million compared to minus SEK 3.1 million in Q4 '24. If we look at full year, we see that the total net sales were SEK 47.3 million compared to SEK 109.9 million in '24. And again, the difference is due to the coating system sales in '24, which amounted to SEK 74 million. Coating services sales, on the other hand, increased by 67% compared to '24. And in aftermarket sales, we had a decrease to SEK 10.1 million compared to SEK 14.3 million with the main decrease in China. The total revenue for the full year was SEK 73.5 million compared to SEK 102.4 million in '24. And the changes beside the sales were that we had a change in work in progress of plus SEK 15.3 million while we had minus SEK 18.5 million last year. And we also had the other income of SEK 7.7 million this year, which was much lower last -- in '24. If we move down a bit to the gross margin, it was almost 62% for the full year, which is the same level as in '24. Other external costs were minus SEK 23.9 million compared to minus SEK 27.1 million in '24. And here, we can say that the increase in rental costs for the full year was compensated by lower costs for, for example, consulting, repair and maintenance, consumables, and travel costs. Looking at personnel costs for the full year '25, they were minus SEK 56.9 million compared to minus SEK 61.7 million in '24. And as I mentioned, the decrease in FTE by the end of the year was significantly SEK 50 million compared to SEK 66 million. Depreciations increased to minus SEK 8.2 million compared to minus SEK 6.4 million in '24, again, as -- following the lower -- the investments in coating machines during '24. As for currency exposure, we had a foreign exchange loss of minus SEK 1.5 million this year compared to an exchange gain in 2024 of plus SEK 1.0 million. Interest expenses were minus SEK 0.4 million, which are interest for loans, compared to the interest income we had in 2024, plus SEK 1.2 million. In total, this adds up to a net loss of minus SEK 45.9 million for the full year '25 compared to the minus SEK 29.6 million in '24. We move to the balance sheet, starting with fixed assets. We have intangible assets that increased in capitalized development costs, SEK 3.3 million. As for tangible fixed assets, we have some investments for upgrade of our own machine and some installations and also other fixed assets, in total SEK 4.5 million. There are SEK 9.9 million defined as long-term accounts receivables, a decrease from SEK 16.3 million at the year-end '24. If we look at inventory, raw materials decreased almost SEK 40 million from SEK 94.5 million, to SEK 54.7 million, and this is mainly noble metal inventories. Work in progress, on the other hand, increased to SEK 21.7 million compared to SEK 7.7 million by the end of '24. Receivables decreased by approximately SEK 28 million, mainly due to received customer payments. And the outgoing cash balance by the end of the year was SEK 37.4 million compared to SEK 32.5 million by the end of '24, and we will have a closer look on that in the cash flow statement. Equity increased by the loss for the year, but increased by the net proceeds from the rights issue, of course. In long-term liabilities, we see the long-term part of the raised loans at our subsidiary in China, and that was SEK 0.7 million at the end of '25. Prepayment from customers have decreased, and this is mainly from repayments following a new commercial setup with one of our major customers. As for short-term liabilities, accounts payables decreased, but short-term liabilities have increased due to the loans raised during 2025, about SEK 27 million by the end of '25. The loans are mainly in our subsidiary in China, but also including SEK 5 million in the parent company. Looking at the cash flow statement. The cash flow was, of course, negatively affected by the minus SEK 45.2 million in operating loss after depreciation. Then after adjustments for noncash items, cash flow from operations before change in working capital was minus SEK 38.0 million compared to minus SEK 22.2 million last year. There was minus SEK 1.8 million in negative cash flow effect from the increase in working capital; however, an improvement from the minus SEK 50.7 million in '24. And as mentioned at the previous slide, the positive effect was from decreased inventories and decreased receivables, but then there was a negative cash flow effect from the decrease in prepayments from customers. Cash flow from operations was minus SEK 39.8 million compared to minus SEK 72.9 million from the same period last year. Investments were kept low during '25. And as I mentioned, SEK 4.5 million in intangible assets and then capitalized development costs of SEK 3.3 million. So minus SEK 7.8 million in total compared to minus SEK 16.7 million in '24. Then we have the cash flow from financing activities, and that was SEK 52.1 million. Proceeds from the rights issue in December were SEK 26.6 million and then related costs to that of SEK 3.2 million. And loans raised during the year amounted to SEK 28.7 million. In total, this resulted in a positive cash flow of SEK 4.4 million for the year compared to minus SEK 89.7 million in '24, and the closing balance of SEK 37.4 million compared to SEK 32.5 million in '24. This was financial update, which means that we move on to summary and outlook.

So to summarize, we are operating in a market environment that remains challenging, and we expect the recovery to be gradual rather than immediate. Coating services provides a stable base of activity while we continue to work towards converting customer dialogues into system sales. At the same time, we are building on our existing technology and customer relationships to develop opportunities within SOFC, while, of course, maintaining a strong focus on cost discipline and liquidity. So now it's time for Q&A.

Thank you for your presentation, Jonas and Lena. Now we open up for questions.

First questions come from Lara Mohtadi.

A couple of questions from my end. Just a little bit on SOFC. So you pivoted your strategy towards SOFCs. Would you say this is purely a coating services play in the near term? Or are there concrete discussions for maybe system sales within the sales -- system sales segment as well? And when can we expect SOFC segment to yield results in actual -- in system sales?

So the SOFC market, it's both coating services and system sales. And there are very big similarities between the PEM fuel cell market and the SOFC market. If we look at the PEM fuel cell market, we have been successful and especially in China, we have been successful in our push-pull marketing. So we approach the customers' customer, i.e., one step up in the value chain, and we get approved and qualified by those customers, and they, in turn, go to their suppliers of stainless steel plates and tell the suppliers of stainless steel plates that we want to buy coated plates and the coating should come from Impact Coatings. We have the same dynamic also in the SOFC market that it's the same or similar companies that do the stamping and the forming of the stainless steel plates. The initial market is more driven by coating services. But to reach volumes, you want to consolidate your production lines and you want to have the stamping and the coating at the same place. So that means machine sales to the stamping companies. And that could be new customers or it could be existing customers that invest in upgrades or new machines for SOFC.

A question on your North American customer that now accounts for a large part of your coating system sales -- services sales alongside [ SOFC ]. Would you say there are discussions to convert this specific relationship into a system sale maybe this year or next year? Are these discussions you're having with this customer?

So we announced several years ago that we have plans to start coating service center in U.S. We put that on eyes*. So we pushed the pause button on that due to lack of volumes. Now we see that the volumes starts to ramp up in Q4. We did have good volumes. We have good order backlog starting Q1. So it's also natural to have a look at having the coating, not in Sweden, but having the coating in North America. And that can be done in different ways. It can be done either by us, starting a coating service center in U.S. It can be done by managed services that we place a machine in U.S. at someone and that machine is operated either by our personnel or someone else's personnel. Or it can be that we sell machines to North America and convert that business to machine sales. So I would say that all those 3 doors, they are open.

Well, you mentioned that despite increasing volumes in China, the market hasn't really triggered any new system investments yet. So would you say that this is just purely a cyclical delay, maybe waiting for the scale? Or is it more a structural shift where these customers maybe they prefer outsourcing for coating services rather than actually purchasing their own systems?

Yes. I would say it's more of a cyclical delay. And selling machines in the market, you need growth rate, quite high growth rate in the market to sell a lot of machines, or you need a big installed base, so you exchange the old machines for new machines. There was growth in the market previously. But if you compare '24 to '25, dependent on which market report you read, it's -- the market has increased in China, but it's like 10% to 20%. And with such market increase, you don't install new machines or it's not necessary to install new machines. So we expect the Chinese PEM fuel cell market to grow. We expect that China will continue to be active in this market, and looking at things that have been published from the new 5-year plan, it looks good. So we believe in continued growth in the Chinese PEM fuel cell market, but we believe that growth in the SOFC market will be faster and it will happen more in the SOFC market. But long term, yes, it's -- we are still working with PEM fuel cells in China, and we still believe this will be a good market for us, and it will grow.

If we just move on to maybe cost savings. In the report, you mentioned that there are further effects that are to be realized during the year. Could you maybe quantify how much of the savings actually have been reflected in the current figures versus how much is still left to maybe filter through?

Yes. So in total, we have reduced the staff with 38% in the mother company. So that equals about 20 full-time employees. And there is some delay to get full effect on that. But the major part is we have changed our -- we have made major changes to our purchasing function. We now have a much more technical purchase, and that will reduce COGS. So the COGS reduction will come during this year. And of course, the COGS reduction doesn't come until we sell machines.

You're mentioning COGS. Maybe just could you elaborate a little bit about how we should think about the gross margins in the coating services segment. You reported quite a healthy gross margin of around 60% this quarter. Should we think of this as the sort of gross margin level for this segment as it's been the majority of your sales this quarter?

Yes. So typically, we have higher gross margin on coating services than machine sales. So we are working on increasing the gross margin on -- also on machine sales. When it comes to coating services, we are also working on increasing the gross margin on coating services. And the press release we sent out about the new coating, which is a high performance but lower cost coating that has been delivered to one customer, that is one step in that direction to lower the material cost of the coating. So we expect that we can also increase the gross margin also within coating services.

The press release you said with the new supply agreement, it's supposed to reduce working capital needs by around SEK 30 million. You also mentioned this in your presentation. When can we actually see the full effect of this?

Yes. And in this agreement -- it's different parts in this agreement. So one part is who owns the inventory. So we can reduce the inventory that has to be owned by us. And of course, that has an effect. Also, it's about recycling. So we do not have to have that much inventory within the recycling cycle. The third part is payment terms. And to utilize the payment terms, there's, of course, a cost. Everything comes with a cost. So there's an interest on that. So that is something that we can use if we want to, but we will not use it if we don't have to, because we don't want to take the cost for it.

You also mentioned recycling here. In your -- in the income statement in the other operating income item, you had quite some significant revenues from metal recycling in Impact Coatings, China. Could you just elaborate a little bit on this?

Yes. So when you coat in a PVD coater, you evaporate metal. And some of that metal you evaporate lands on the thing you coat for your customers. So for example, if you coat fuel cell plates, some of the metal lands on the fuel cell plate. Some of the metals lands on shields. And the purpose of those shields is to collect metal so that metal can be recycled. So those shields are sent for recycling and then you get that metal back. And sometimes you get that metal back as metal and sometimes you get that metal back as cash. And in this case in China, we have got that back as cash. So that's why it looks like we have some sales, but it's actually that we get the value of the metal back.

Now we can go ahead with the written questions that we received via mail. The first one is, how large a reduction in personnel have you had?

Yes. As I answered before, it's 38% in the mother company, and that is equal to 20 full-time employee equivalents.

Your next question is, you have communicated that you are looking for an industrial investor for a directed share issue during 2026. What type of investor could that be?

Yes. So we are -- we have communicated that, and we are looking for an industrial investor. So it could be the corporate venture arm of an industrial investor or it could be someone in the value chain that we are active and preferably higher in the value chain that we are active. So someone who doesn't only see this as a financial investment, but also someone who can see business benefits with the investment.

The final question that we received is, is it still the American customer who accounts for the majority of coating services?

It's a big important customer, and we sent a press release that we passed USD 1 million during Q4 in orders from this big American customer. So it's a big one, but we also have big customers in China. So yes, it's a big one, but it's not the only one.

Thank you. There are no more questions at this time. So I give the word to you for some closing remarks.

So thank you for listening to this webcast. And to all the shareholders, I would like to say thank you for your continued support. We are looking forward to 2026.