Kongsberg Automotive ASA (KOA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the second quarter earnings release call hosted by Kongsberg Automotive ASA. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Joerg Buchheim, the CEO of Kongsberg Automotive. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and yes, please let me welcome the entire audience here for our Q2 2021 earnings call. With me together is our CFO, Frank Heffter, who is going to lead us later on in the financials more in detail. So again, welcome very much, and I would like to start with the executive summary slide and a couple of insights here. Our revenue continuously going out at EUR 300 million and this is best Q2 revenue over the last 4 years, so a very good revenue trend and a lot of tailwind here. Our adjusted EBIT remains on the guidance, and we are at EUR 5.2 million, but it was massively impacted by the global material supply crisis. And certainly, the impact here, we will discuss and explain that more in detail. The impact was at around EUR 20 million, which was significantly. Nevertheless, positive adjusted EBIT. The free cash flow is, in a second consecutive quarter, in a positive trend. So we came out at EUR 4 million on positive free cash flow, and that's a very good trend and continuously strong trend here in Kongsberg Automotive. The new business wins ended up as a positive book-to-bill ratio in Q2 at a solid 1.3, very positively as well looking into the future. And the liquidity could be stabilized with a slightly increase, above EUR 200 million headroom. Looking a little bit on the next slide at a glance, more in detail. So our exact revenue amounted in EUR 295 million, which was certainly 92%, significantly better than in the crisis quarter 2020. And this is despite negative currency translation effects, certainly and it was EUR 1.6 million, even above the record quarter 2019. So looking into a year-to-year growth, the growth was, as said, 96% and significantly above overall market development in that quarter as the overall market development was at a level of 50%, and we will elaborate there later. But certainly, the escalating global raw material crisis and the semiconductor crisis impeded significantly our order conversions and our customer order conversions. So the crisis, certainly, and that's what we saw in Q2, is going on, and we will point that out more in detail what that means for Kongsberg. The adjusted EBIT in Q2 2021 grew and significantly if we're going to compare that certainly to the negative quarter 2020 as a peak of the corona crisis, but it was as well significant lower than Q2 2019, the record quarter of Kongsberg. And this was driven by the semiconductor and raw material shortage crisis, which have been impacted in Q2 alone by EUR 20 million on additional expenses. So -- and this is what we see as well. I mean the automotive industry is going to suffer under this ongoing global material prices. That's what we're seeing in Q2, clearly, but which we have forecasted in a certain way. And in particular, the increasing recent metal and transportation capacity shortage is going to continue according to our view throughout the entire year. In terms of free cash flow mentioned, very positively, we could manage our free cash flow on a positive level in a second consecutive quarter here in 2021 on a level of EUR 4 million. And again, looking forward, our new business win in Q2 amounted in EUR 86 million annualized revenue, which is corresponding in more than EUR 450 million lifetime revenues. It's with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.3, a positive -- very positive trend towards the outlook of Kongsberg. As well as the financials, the gearing factor, 1 of our key financial leverages and performance indicators is on a level of 2.7 compared to 6.1 in Q2 of the previous year. And it's back on COVID -- pre-COVID level Q2 2019. So looking then on the -- a little bit more in detail in terms of our revenues, and this is what we're going to see here from a sales perspective, Kongsberg has the second-best second quarter revenue since 4 years, where all business units contributed. And you see here with EUR 296 million, almost EUR 300 million on a very solid and very good revenue base. Looking then in the next slide of adjusted EBIT. The EBIT of Kongsberg's second quarter is at EUR 5.2 million, which is 1.8% relative. Without the significant semiconductor-related expenses, Kongsberg would have come out with an EBIT of EUR 25.8 million, which would be 8.5% relative of sales, which shows the potential of the company under normal, let's say, industrial conditions where we hope or the entire industry certainly hopes to remain back soon. Looking then in the next slide more in detail. When it comes to cash flow, Kongsberg delivered this EUR 4 million and as mentioned in the executive summary, the second consecutive quarter of positive free cash flow. A strict working capital management and disciplined spending behavior supported this positive trend; and certainly, Kongsberg is clearly committed to continue on this positive free cash flow trend. Next slide, more in detail the new business wins, encouraging as well the Kongsberg quarter 2 new business wins results, which, after Q1, are back on pre-COVID-19 level, and they remain strong and solid. And the book-to-bill ratio of 1.3 underlines clearly that KA is continuing the operational growth path, which is very promising in terms of future outlooks. And looking a little bit more in detail on the slide -- on this slide, Kongsberg's new business wins per segment per quarter in million euro are displayed, annualized and per lifetime revenue wins. We do see here as well in Q2, a strong company new business win in our less automotive depending, highly attractive special product segment. But as well Kongsberg's other business units remain on winning new business, as you can see. While P&C was certainly stronger in Q1 new bookings, Interior is going to show off in Q3 as the business unit had strong bookings in July, which we're then going to share in -- towards the Q3 earnings call. So very balanced booking here and a very positive outlook in terms of special products. This is underlying then in the book-to-bill performance. As mentioned, a stable positive book-to-bill ratio means new business volume exceeding Kongsberg's current revenues and fuel future growth, which is showing the upward trend here of our revenue perspective. So with this, I would then go from financial highlights and new business wins to the market summary. And we're going to have, in the next slide, look into the market trends. In regard to market trends and growth, we do see that China, after a strong quarter 1 growth and an extraordinary Q2 2020, returns back to normal level, while it is good to see that the other regions catching up strongly in Q2 and providing revenue tailwind and this, in particular, in Europe and North America. Remarkable is as well, even if slightly slowed down in Q2, the continuous growth trend in the commercial vehicle area, which you can see in the underlying graphic, which is really on a continuous growth plan even if China is as well here in the truck base more going to a normalized level in production and sales. So with this, I would lead then over to the segment highlights, and I would like to share then the details a little bit more of our segment. And I would like to start with the segment Interior. Here, Kongsberg segment here financially clearly displays a solid and stable revenue, if you're going to see in the overall segments, while the segments related adjusted EBIT figures reflecting the current automotive industry challenges of certainly temporary semiconductor shortage and raw material cost increases as a post-pandemic aftermath. But this alone, as you can see, drove, in particular, Interior as well in Q2 into a negative result, where I want to elaborate in a more detailed way on the next slide. And looking into Interior, this certainly remains our most challenging area because it's very much depending on semiconductor supplies. And just to remain here, revenues and earnings includes 2 negatively, and this I would like to underline, impacted by the semiconductor crisis. So this division, just to recall, has 2 different business units. The one is the Interior Comfort System, which is the seating business; and the Light Duty Cable business. And the revenue increased here by EUR 31.9 million in Q2 compared to the previous year and in the seat area but as well in the LDC area by EUR 10 million. And good to hear is here that this increase was supported by all regions. From an EBIT perspective, again, very strongly impacted by the semiconductor crisis and unrealized revenues. So this is going to a challenge here further, and it has impacted our EBIT negatively of EUR 11.5 million on adjusted EBIT in this quarter. From an operational point of view and perspective, all Interior plans, and that's a good news here, certainly, despite crisis, operating as well in Q2 2021 on a high capacity utilization and certainly benefiting from successful established improvement initiatives out of the previous years and quarters. From a new business win perspective, we could book almost EUR 100 million in Q2 on new business. And positively to point out here was the award on a large contract in the seat support systems on -- to -- from a Chinese automotive manufacturer. But as I said, as well looking into Q3, I can give already or state already further positive business wins here in this segment. Moving then over to the next slide on the Powertrain & Chassis segment. Here, we have a continuously improvement on revenues and adjusted EBIT performance after a very good operational turnaround in 2020. You see here really positive trends. And this Power & Chassis segment consist out of 2 business units as well known. That's the On-Highway segment and the Driveline business where major growth certainly come from the On-Highway business area. And as mentioned, the revenue in Powertrain & Chassis remains strong and solid and certainly with 87% much better than the quarter of the previous year. And this is generated despite some negative currency translation effects of more than EUR 2 million. The EBIT of the P&C segment suffered negatively by EUR 4.1 million, and this is as well caused by the global supply chain crisis. But this is, at compared to our Interiors division, very moderate and manageable. And in terms of operations, the operating performance here in the P&C area has been significantly improved during the last quarters. And we're running on a quite well capacity utilization rate, which is offering us, in terms of performance and efficiency, a very good upside. The global supply chain crisis impacted P&C as mentioned, so where were the EUR 4.1 million majorly generated? That was on secondary effects in terms of not only material availability but as well on downtimes, which just simply have been caused by missing material. The new business wins remain on a solid base with almost EUR 50 million of lifetime revenues. The good booking was certainly in Q1. This time, Q2 was majorly supported by the special products, but P&C has a continuous solid booking. And what is here very remarkable is that we got 2 significant contracts award and 1 in the vehicle dynamics at a European customer and 1 in the shift by wire in our very promising On-Highway business unit at the Chinese automobile manufacturer. So going then over to our special products segment and this crisis-resistant segment is further fueling our future with strong revenues and margins. So here, we're talking about 3 business units in this segment. This is Couplings. It's Fluid Transfer System and our Off-Highway segment. And we've grown as -- here as well above 90% compared to the previous year quarter, and we came out here with EUR 109 million on a very solid and very positive revenue base. And this was driven by a strong performance certainly majorly and certainly on Off-Highway in this quarter with revenues increase of more than EUR 20 million compared to the previous year. So very good outlook and looking into this adjusted EBIT we see that we moved here completely from a, let's say, negative result here in the adjusted EBIT in the previous year, corona impacted Q2 2020 to a very positive EBIT quarter in this year. And we came out here with EUR 14.6 million on EBIT despite negative effects in terms of corona. So even here, the corona crisis is -- slightly impacted this business unit. But what is certainly very good is that this business unit is less depending on the automotive industry area. All plants operating are back to normal and running very well in this segment. And in terms of business wins, special products segment was certainly the engine for the very promising booking in Q2. So this was amounted to EUR 307 million lifetime revenue. And within the quarter, Off-Highway was awarded a large contract with a major OEM in U.S.A. So with this, I would like to hand over to the group financial update, and I would like to let Frank introduce the financials more in detail.

Yes. Thank you, Joerg, for handing over and also a warm welcome to the whole audience from my side. It's a pleasure to, for the first time, join the Kongsberg earnings call and to present the group financial update. Let's start with the sales bridge from Q2 2020 to Q2 2021. As you can see, all 3 segments contributed significantly to the recovery from the corona crisis, which I believe is very important and a little headwind we had from FX, but at the end, like Joerg mentioned, it was a record quarter 2, the best in 4 years. What you would expect with this high increase in sales is also a significant increase in adjusted EBIT. We have seen some EUR 38 million of improvement -- EUR 39 million, but unfortunately, it could have been even more had the supply crisis, not these negative impacts. And you see that basically all segments show roughly 40% fall-through from sales unfortunately offset by impact from the supply crisis predominantly in Interior, in the Interior Comfort Systems business unit as they are most exposed to semiconductor and to a lesser extent but still prominent in P&C and special products. The FX and others is basically meaningless here. So without these effects, Kongsberg would have presented this EUR 25.8 million and with that, almost EUR 60 million of improvement. Looking at the net income development. You find the adjusted EBIT improvement of EUR 38.7 million from the previous slide. We have had no restructuring, no major restructuring, a little less than in the first -- second quarter 2020. The negative Q2 2020 result was significantly impacted by the impairment of goodwill and assets of EUR 83 million, which did not occur again, so a positive bridging item. Interest basically at previous year levels as well as other financial items and FX. On the tax side, we had a significant tax income in 2020, which did not repeat in the same magnitude, only a small income in Q2 2021 leading to a delta of EUR 6.2 million, which then bridges the net income to the reported minus EUR 1.4 million. On a quarterly overview, you see that the EUR 5 million in Q2 2021 is not yet at the expected normal levels, 20 plus due to the semiconductor and raw material crisis. But even with these significant impacts, we can report a positive number that shows also the resilience of the business that can cope with this crisis very well, and that is promising for the future. Same applies on the net income side. Minus is certainly not where we want to be, and that shall change in the future. When we look in a bit more detail on the net financial items, you see that the biggest individual item remains the EUR 5 million interest on the bond, the EUR 275 million bond. We have certain services costs for our accounts receivable securitization program, which is not used but still available to us. We have also here some currency effects of EUR 1.1 million and smaller other financial items. But I'd say this is more or less in line with what you would have expected. When we look at the overall liquidity, I'm happy to report that our reserve, our flexibility increased slightly from last quarter to this quarter by some EUR 4 million. Obviously, the EBITDA from the quarter attributed to that with EUR 17 million. Other receivables and liabilities were reduced to an amount of EUR 11.6 million. We had an overall change in net working capital of positive EUR 3 million predominantly driven by a good accounts receivable collection and a negative swing on tax payments as we had to pay previous quarter's taxes in this quarter. On the investments side, still very diligent amount with less than EUR 10 million for the quarter. We need to invest and want to invest in growth but at the same time, preserve cash. So that is diligently managed and thus only amounting to EUR 9.4 million in the quarter. We have a normal amount of interest lease liabilities of EUR 4.5 million and a little interest that was paid in the quarter -- this quarter, not the bond but some other smaller items. Last but not least, also on the liquidity side, we had some currency effects of minus EUR 4.6 million, which, at the end, then leaves us with EUR 205 million of flexibility coming out of the EUR 70 million undrawn revolving credit facility, the EUR 60 million unutilized securitization facility and an amount of EUR 75 million in cash. Moving to the next slide. I think you see that in basically all accounts, we now see what -- the good work that has been done over the last quarters. Now that the COVID-19 impacted Q2 2020 moves out of the last 12 months average, you see these ratios improve significantly. On the gearing side, we dropped from 4.2 to a 2.7 level, which, I'd say, is still not a targeted level, can still become better but obviously, much, much better than 6.1 a year ago. Also on the adjusted ROCE side, you see a significant improvement of 7 percentage points, [ 6 to -- 6 respective ] 7 percentage points to a 10.2 or 9.7, including IFRS 16 level, also here significant improvement. The equity ratio is rather stable, but at a good 27.9%, and the capital employed even decreased slightly in the last quarter from EUR 629 million to EUR 625 million. And if you compare it to a year ago, then it's even some EUR 25 million less, so also here, a good improvement. Yes, so much to the group financials. And I'd like to hand back to Joerg for the outlook.

Thank you very much, Frank, for the overview. And I would like then lead over to the important outlook for the remainder of the year. So looking into our order book, the order book or the current order book is basically still on a continuously high level for the remainder of the year, which supports a very efficient capacity utilization basically. But the semiconductor crisis and raw material cost increase questions the reliability of the industry and as well the reliability of KA's order book as certainly the availability of subcomponents, as mentioned before, remains less predictable and therefore, difficult really to forecast. And that's an industry challenge these days to really forecast here in the right order book prediction. Therefore, for Q3, we are expecting to have additional top line risk from parts shortage, and this is going to be on top of the normal seasonality. So looking into the raw material supply crisis effect, and that's the major topic where all effects going around and the lack of sufficient global semiconductor industry, let's say, keep the industry further stressed. That's what we're clearly expecting, and this is the industry view at all. And that means for KA that this concerns primarily the segments, which have a high share of electronic components, which are highly demanded in the automotive market. And this is for KA, in particular, related to our Interior division and the P&C passenger car-related sales. Certainly to a lesser but still relatively significant, this concerns as well as the P&C truck business and partly our Off-Highway business unit, as shown in this segment detailing before. So the shortage causes much longer lead times, and that's going to continue. That's what we're seeing, and that's what we're forecasting. And the spot market purchase had significantly higher cost going to continue even if we see a certain kind of dry out and a more OEM allocation taking place. And what we see out of this is that we need to be prepared for production shortfalls in case a needed material cannot be secured in time or additional further ongoing in terms of special and expedited freights. So what does it mean in the financial impacts? And we -- just to recall, we saw in Q2 a EUR 20 million excess on direct material and freight costs, which hit our P&L here. And you may remember all in the earnings call, Q1, we anticipated in our outlook, EUR 40 million excess based on this crisis effect, and we would like to increase this effect by additional EUR 10 million. So we anticipate that the entire impact of -- from this crisis for our year-end result will be affected by EUR 50 million. But Kongsberg has started to strongly mitigate these negative effects. And we recently launched an intensified performance improvement program, which is part of our Shift Gear program, which I would like to introduce to you very briefly in the next slide. So this program, so coming on 1 side on a EUR 10 million additional impact in terms of crisis throughout the entire year, this program is going to offset -- we are confident that this program can offset here this impact. And that's why we maintain our full year guidance on an adjusted EBIT of EUR 60 million. So let me introduce a little bit more about our performance improvement program, and this is part of our vision to become second to none, which is our new Kongsberg vision here. And we locked in our first gear, and this has been fully set up and is related to our KA-wide introduced performance improvement program. We launched this program in May, and we have that controlled by a central program management office in the headquarter here in Switzerland. And we are ensuring by this program office that all business units are synchronized, harmonized and working diligently on reaching these targets. So how is it structured? We have 4 core work streams. We're focusing on commercial excellence. We're looking into direct and indirect purchasing. We have continuously improvement program here started and now continuing on operations. And we're looking very carefully and strongly in our cash management in order to provide here the expected countermeasures to offset these crisis impacts and not only that, as well making KA stronger and more stabilized for future impacts. So the strong performance infrastructure, including strong and diligent drumbeat, that's what we are ensuring. And this is overall worldwide initiative, and we have a cloud-based measuring tracking tool. So there, the whole entire 11,000 employees are motivated and encouraged to enter saving ideas, improvement ideas, and we are going in the central office to really [ canalize ] them and measuring them and then enabling our organization to get that into our performance program integrated and executed as quick as possible. As mentioned before, this is an initiative not only driven in certain areas. It's Kongsberg's worldwide initiative, and each and everybody is here motivated to participate. And we are expecting here not only for 2021, but we see here as well in continuous improvement in terms of improvement DNA. So currently, this program focuses certainly on, as mentioned, short-term improvements to counter these effects, in particular, the additional negative effects operationally out of the crisis of this EUR 10 million. And we started with a very quick spend control tower initiation, and it is going to continue by structural measures. So this program is on and really now gaining speed, and we see here a lot of good ideas coming every day in. And now it's from the program management office and business units that has to get that implemented, executed in order to be more stabilized in Kongsberg to resist this current crisis impact but as well getting prepared for, in future, coming fluctuations or additional crisis in this automotive industry. So first gear is set, and we are looking here forward to this very exciting program in order to counter the crisis impacts. That would bring us then into our well-known outlook 2021. So -- and again, we think that we are having here further impact certainly from the crisis, but as well what we are seeing here, we actually want to remain on our outlook and our guidance as Q1. So our very good book-to-bill ratio is giving us as well a good outlook beyond 2021. That's very positively. So we're guiding here on our revenues further on EUR 1.13 billion for the entire year. We, despite this negative impact of the crisis of EUR 50 million, countered by our performance improvement program Shift Gear, first gear on an adjusted EBIT of EUR 60 million as in Q1 earnings call and as well we would like to underline here our ambitions to deliver the free cash flow towards the end of positive EUR 10 million. So for sure, our forward-looking statements are based on several key assumptions. It's certainly important as well to know so the exchange rate impacts, the market demands and certainly, the electronic components situation have been considered further into our outlook but certainly considers as well that there is not an extraordinary or extensive additional impact that's certainly subject to this disclaimer. All right. With this, we would end our presentation, and we would like to go to the Q&As.

So let's start with the first question. When you reported Q1 results, you indicated that you were in negotiations with customers that can get compensation. Have you seen any results of these discussions as far? And do you expect results going forward? Yes. Thank you very much for these questions. Yes, in particular, in terms of forward-looking effects but as well in terms of already happened effects, we could, on a corporate way, found with almost each customer a compromise in terms of share the burden, share the pain or even in certain areas on stronger commitments from our customer and partner base. So there is a willingness to share here the impact and we were, let's say, in particular, in terms of forward looking, quite successful on that. Can you please bridge guidance to H1 performance? So yes, Frank, probably you can say here a bit.

Yes. So the question basically asks how we will manage to reach the EUR 60 million with the EUR 25 million in the first half but potentially even higher impact from the semiconductor and raw material crisis. And the answer to that is that we are dealing significantly differently with the semiconductor crisis as, in the first half year, we had these significant impacts from spot buys that shown in the Q2 only impacted by EUR 20-plus million. Going forward, we only do spot buys when the customer is also willing to compensate us. And thus, the impact will not be bigger. It will be smaller in the second half. In addition, the mentioned Shift Gear performance improvement program concentrates on also short-term measures that will already have a positive impact in the second half of the year. All this, on top of a healthy top line, will allow us to deliver these EUR 60 million.

Yes. Thank you very much, Frank. And then the next question is related in terms of new business wins, why we are not promoting more actively in press announcements or media these wins. Certainly, you always need to make a certain kind of trade-off. We have a lot of business wins coming in weekly, more smaller, a little bit bigger, but it's very balanced in terms of revenue. So we need to check how we can here, on a regular base, going to provide more active information. So we took that up. We're going as well, just to let that know here, for establishing an investor relationship manager again. So it's part of our communication road map to come here with a more proactive communication in future, always respecting certainly the governance and the, let's say, obligations, which we have in terms of stock market rules and orders. Next is despite results, as expected, are very good, Q2 versus Q2 last year, the media reported incorrect economic figures and negative angle in the article about KA this morning. How will the company handle this? Thanks a lot, [ Arild ]. I didn't read this financial statement so far, but we are going to look into it. I think our presentation have answered questions here in terms of our Q2 performance and in terms of our activities, counter the effect of the current crisis. And with our continuous guidance towards the EUR 60 million, I think we're going to give a strong message in the activities here in KOA. Today's third quarter presentation in a row where the share price falls dramatically despite relatively good results. What do you think is the reason? Maybe, Frank, you can say here a word.

I don't want to speculate on the reasons, but I think this is a clear mandate for us to intensify our communication towards the capital market and the investors that the story -- the value that Kongsberg can provide is more visible and understandable to investors. There's a related question to that, why should I invest in Kongsberg, and me just joining, I find a lot of good reasons why to invest. It's the innovative power. There are big OEMs and Tier 1 automotive manufacturer trusting in Kongsberg since decades; the good quality products that they demand; the growth perspective that Kongsberg has on an organic side, obviously more potential on the profitability side shown also this quarter; and last but not least, a solid balance sheet that even allows for additional movements going forward. So a lot of good reasons. And maybe we need to make this even more clear to the capital market that it is fully understood.

Thank you very much, Frank. Heading me to the next question, which is related to 2 questions. Actually, the first one is to elaborate a little bit on our raw material impacts and how could that be passed through to our business partners. And certainly, we have binding contracts, but those contracts having a certain kind of flexibility depends on per customer, per business partner. So nevertheless, we are confident that at least certain share, similar to the semiconductor side, can be in mutual discussions and partnership approach shared with our business partners. So we are confident on that, but it's certainly limited because if customers playing tough, just referring to contracts, then it's a different discussion. But that's not what we are in general experience. So the second topic here, EUR 50 million headwind, yes, it's including the EUR 20 million already seen in Q2.

If I may add, Joerg, on the raw material clauses in the contract, it needs to be understood that there is normally a time lag of when this is being effective. So the prices go up and only a certain amount of months later, you are getting the reimbursement from the customers. What we are currently doing is, again, under this performance program, to negotiate with individual customers on a one-on-one basis to get monthly true-up payments upfront so that this time lag shortens, and we get already additional reimbursement this fiscal year.

So the next question is related to the outlook of EUR 60 million, and again, we are confident to have a really good chance to reach the EUR 60 million on EBIT throughout the entire year. And again, the Shift Gear program should very strongly support that. And that's why, again, we are, from a management perspective, confident. If there are not further significant extraordinary and nonpredictable impacts, we are somehow very confident to come out with EUR 60 million throughout the end of the year. And the next one -- the next question is certainly interesting as well. I mean why should I invest in Kongsberg shares in the future? Frank, a sentence on that.

I think I already answered that with the other question earlier in terms of innovation, growth, balance sheet, profitability potential, so I think that should have been answered.

And adding to that, certainly, our Shift Gear program is really our change program towards our company vision here to become second to none in whatever we are doing in operational performance in product -- future product portfolio in terms of efficiency of SG&A, of administration but as well into a very productive development. And in this regard, I would like as well to share here that we are going to have a CTO, a Chief Technology Officer, who is going to join from August onwards, and this is as well underlying our ambition here in terms of developing Kongsberg from development, product portfolio and development capabilities here clearly to the next level. And as well here, we are heading towards the second to none mentality in the future. So why does Sparebank 1 Markets no longer cover KOA? As mentioned, we are going to have here investor relationship management installed again, and we will certainly talk in this regard as well with Sparebank back here.

Absolutely. And we will be in contact not only with SpareBank and Kepler Cheuvreux and motivate them to also regularly report on Kongsberg but also reach out to additional equity research institutes to also leverage this to broaden the information flow and visibility of Kongsberg in the capital market.

Last question, Frank. Will the liquidity increase by the end of 2021?

I mean our guidance to deliver EUR 10 million of free cash flow stands; and thus, as a logical consequence, liquidity will increase.

Good. These have been the webcast text messages or questions. And I just see that we have as well to audio questions. So please feel free to issue your questions.

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions in queue right now.

We might have answered them already.

I would now like to hand the call back -- indeed. I'd like to turn the conference back to you for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much. And I would like as well thank each and every share and stakeholder here in supporting Kongsberg further. So what we are going to continuously report here as well, how we are progressing, and what are the next gear shift in our improvement program. And as I've mentioned, I will share that more in detail. The first gear this year, definitely our performance improvement to counter currently the effects and secure here our business plan for 2021. But we are going beyond that in terms of our second to none road map in terms of modernizing product portfolio, focusing more on sustainability, and I'm more than glad to inform you over the upcoming steps in time. The clear takeaway, Frank, certainly, and we are working on that, is to involve you more in an active and active communication and a more broadened one-to-one.

Absolutely. And also from my side, thank you very much for dialing in this morning, taking the time and listening to us. And hope to see you and hear you latest at our Q3 results on October 29.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. Stay safe. You may now disconnect.