Micro Systemation AB (publ) (MSABB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So good morning, and thank you for joining the Q3 Interim Report Presentation for MSAB. This morning, we will have Peter Gille, CEO; and Tony Forsgren, CFO, who will be presenting. If you have any questions, then please put those into the chat, and we will handle those at the end of the presentation. And I think we're almost at time to start. Yes. So with that, I'm going to hand over to CEO, Peter Gille.

Okay. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the quarter report. So Q3 was a very good quarter for us. We made around almost SEK 147 million, which is an increase with 27% and almost 35% in the currency adjusted growth. Even though we had one big deal that came from Q2, we still have a good growth both in the quarter and even more interesting over the 9-month period where we actually also have a growth. So I think everything was good in that sense. We also have the costs on track with the planned investments we're doing and the increased investments in product development, which shows also in the EBITDA and the EBIT result. If you look on the different regional developments, we see that EMEA, which is one of our core market is -- continued to execute really, really well. We see that our best-selling product nowadays, which is the XRY Pro is performing very well in EMEA. And we are fulfilling also our engagement with the military and the defense sectors, where we see some interest, and we have good discussions. In APAC, we have a very strong growth in this quarter. We also see that as a coming market for the next coming quarters. There are big potential all over the region and a lot of interest in our products. In the U.S., we have had very high expectations with Mr. Trump coming in, and we thought we would invest a lot in border control, which actually did and -- but also in the different federal governments, but we have not met the expectations in the U.S. when it comes to investments. It's been budget cuts and also a lot of confusion in the administration where the people that has been forced to leave and difficult to understand if they have budgets, and if they were allowed to buy things and so on. So it's been a little bit of disappointment in the U.S., still, we have performed better than last year over the quarter. So it's not all bad, but we have higher expectations for that. Also going forward, in Q4, of course, with the shutdown that currently is in the U.S. of the federal government, which is our key customers are in the federal government. So of course, one difficulty that we have to calculate with going forward. So we have -- we're hoping for the shutdown to end and that they will be able to put the orders that we are waiting for there. Yes. In the product side, we continue to invest in XRY Pro. We see now that the market really appreciate it. We have also had some KPIs for the sales of the number of XRY Pro, which we achieved the yearly target already now in Q3. So it's really a high interest of the product. And we can see that the things we are doing and the things we are investing in is appreciated by the market, especially the latest versions that we have, which is the brute-force and the RAM extraction capabilities. This has been very, very appreciated in the market. We have also added a new functionality, which is called BruteStorm Surge, which basically makes the capability to get data quicker than anyone else in the market. It's -- you can scale it over the servers and have a lot of power to achieve then -- get access to the data quicker. So -- and we continue to invest in there. We also have the iOS, which is also -- we also have actually got to the benchmark we set for the whole year in Q3. So it's a big interest. If we look on the market then, we see that the things we've done in the products exactly as we have planned in the strategy, is starting to pay off now in the market where customers really are buying our products in a bigger scale than earlier. We see that we have big potential in the emerging markets like in the APAC market, but also in other emerging markets where there is more an open market, where customers really buy the most -- the hottest products there is right now. But we are cautious down of the shutdown of U.S. administration. We don't see that it will affect that we will lose business, but we see that it might be the effect that it will delay business in Q4. So that is, in a sense, the market dynamics that we are looking at. And the shutdown is, of course, not affecting only us. I think they are affecting everybody. With that, we go to the financial summary. I'll leave the word for Tony.

Hi, everyone. Let me introduce and present some numbers for the quarter. So as Peter mentioned, we did a record sales isolated quarter with recognized revenue of SEK 147 million. That represents a net growth of 27% and FX adjusted growth of 35% since we have approximately 95% of the revenue in foreign FX, we are a little bit hurt by the strong Swedish krona. Rolling 12-month sales amounted to SEK 439 million, which FX adjusted corresponds to approximately SEK 460 million. The growth are mainly explained by underlying growth in our core business in addition to the orders received and previously communicated in the quarter. Accumulated revenue are slightly ahead of our business plan for 2025. Looking at our different regions. All regions contributed to the growth in the quarter. EMEA was up 23%; Americas, 34%; APAC; also 23% compared with the same period previous year. And sales of our most advanced product, XRY Pro continued to increase in all regions, and we are seeing several customers choosing to upgrade to Pro from our historical best-selling product, XRY Logical/Physical. This is very positive for us in terms of revenue since the Pro version is priced at around 4x higher than the Logical/Physical. So in addition to the record sales for the quarter, we also reported a record high operating profit with an EBIT of SEK 46 million and a margin of SEK 31.3 million for the quarter. Gross margin-wise for the quarter that was negatively impacted by a one-off cost in the form of a write-down of inventory. The write-down amounted to SEK 4.1 million and are mainly related to items that had not moved in the past 2 years. Approximately, SEK 3.5 million of the SEK 4.1 million was consisted of MK 3.5 kiosk that we scrapped as we introduced the new MK4 Kiosk. Gross margin for the quarter was 19.5% and accumulated gross margin for 2025 was 92.3%, and we expect to improve the gross margin slightly in Q4 since we have taken the write-down in Q3. Investments in marketing activities, particularly in the APAC and EMEA regions continues. And the transition to permanent employees replacing high consultants has reduced other external costs. However, since approximately 75% of our OpEx consists of personnel costs. Our long-term investments in personnel are reflected in slightly increased personnel costs. We continue to maintain good control over our operating costs, and they are within business plan for the year. Finally, let's have a look at the balance sheet and some cash flow. We continue to have a debt-free balance sheet that provides a stable platform for future growth. During the quarter, we invested in Android FFS of SEK 2.3 million that was balanced like previous intangible investments. This will be written off over a 5-year period. The investment strengthens our product offering, and we currently consider ourselves to be at least on par with competition in both Android and iOS. As mentioned, an inventory write-down took place during the period. The write-down was related to other items that had not moved, as I mentioned, and the balance sheet with regards to the inventory consists of all the current items that move going forward. The increase in sales, particularly in its later stages in the quarter is expected to significantly strengthen the company's cash flow during next quarter. Since a lot of the received -- accounts receivable was taken in September. Other short-term receivables and primarily the other accounts receivable has resulted in a negative working capital, but that is going to -- expected to be changed in Q4, as I mentioned. Closing cash position was SEK 86 million.

Yes. So in summary, we had a really great quarter. We also have a positive overall trend if you look over the 9 months. Of course, we will -- still have volatile quarters depending on when the deals come in. But now we have one deal that came in Q3 instead of Q2, which affected Q2 negatively and Q2 positively then. We are gaining ground in APAC, but also in other emerging markets where we see big potential, and we will continue to focus there. But we are growing in all the markets basically. We will continue to closely market, and what's happening in the U.S. We don't see that we will lose customers or lose deals, but that the shutdowns might cause delays indeed, depending on when it stops, and how much they will have in the queue to handle after that. We also see very clearly that the strategy we have taken is now paying off. The product investments we have done is really appreciated by our customers and the market and the regional strategy we have will drive growth going forward. So with that, we conclude and wish you all a great day, and then we will take questions, of course.

Okay. Thank you, Peter. So far, no questions in the chat. Okay. So if there are no questions, I think we wind off there, and thank you very much for listening in. Thank you.

Thank you.