Modulight Oyj (MODU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. My name is Seppo Orsila. I'm Founder and CEO at Modulight. And with me, I have our CFO, Mrs. Guina.

Hello, everybody.

Today, we are pleased to present you our Q4 numbers. We will cover the progress with the pipeline, we will give you an update on our strategy and we'll finalize with the summary as usual. And at the end, we are very happy to answer any questions you might have. Some pictures from the clinics around the world. But again, as a recap, we, at Modulight, fight cancer with science and technology. We're a life science company that designs and manufactures lasers that are used in cancer and eye diseases, and we also sell the same laser technology for other high value-add applications: flow cytometry, microscopy, semiconductor industry, quantum computers and defense; and in all these sectors, we have several large global customers which have been our customers for quite some time. The end of the year, in brief. I'm extremely pleased to close the year with a record sales growth ever. Over the 26 years of the company history, we have never grown at the rate of 73%. And obviously, our profitability has been also going towards the better. We are not satisfied with the 37% EBITDA that we closed for the Q4, but it is really continuous development into the right direction. Also, the cash usage was improving, and we are on track per our plans. Our pipeline, which is our most important metric, is progressing. There is a little bit of growth in the number of projects, but more important is that the customer base and product mix has diversified, and this has enabled a more stable growth, even though there are obviously still ups and downs. But I must say that I could never be more pleased with the progress of the pipeline and the customer activity. I would especially like to highlight the customer activity that has been surging since last summer at what we said during the Q3 already at an unusual rate. This has continued also early this year in some of the events that are perhaps the most important ones to us throughout the year. These are namely JPMorgan and Photonics West in San Francisco. We're going to talk more about the progress with the PPT later today, but also let's go now to the financials, and Anca can share our progress with the key metrics.

Thank you. The highlights for the fourth quarter are increasing revenues and significant improvement of our profitability. The positive development of the PPT business continued in Q4 with more than 80 sites and exceeding EUR 1 million in revenue for the whole year. However, more significant than these numbers are actually customer willingness to transition to our technology, their plans for scaling and also the development of the clinical trials, which, in some cases, develop much -- developed faster than we expected and faster than if we compare it to a year ago. The revenue grew by 21%, and the key driver for that is the acceleration in the customer activity, which we already saw previously, especially in Q3, but also earlier this year, as Seppo mentioned there. Fourth quarter was, in terms of profitability, the best for us in the last 3 years. Operating result was up by 64%, while EBITDA, which reached 37% in Q4 was 163% higher than in the corresponding period of 2024. Also, cash development had a positive direction with a free cash from operations of minus EUR 538,000 compared to minus EUR 2.5 million a year before. Looking at the same numbers for the whole year. The revenue grew by 73%, and indeed, this is making a record in the growth of the company in the whole history. This development was mainly driven by the increase of diversification of customer portfolio and also by the progress and increasing the number of the projects we are running. In 2025, we reached the highest profitability in the last 3 years, not only for the quarter but also for the whole year. EBITDA improved by 97% from 2024 and operating result improved by 44%. So the increase in synergies between different customers, different products contributed to these along with the increase in the revenues and also the actions the company took to streamline the activities and improve the operations. We've seen a decrease of the cost of 18% in 2025 from 2024. Also for the year, the cash development had a positive direction with free cash from operations of minus EUR 4.5 million versus minus EUR 9.7 million. And as we also mentioned in the previous webinars, the U.S. tariffs did not have a significant impact on our sales. So basically, the conclusion here is that positive direction of revenue, profitability and cash flow are seen for the quarter as well as for the year. The headcount, full-time employees at the end of the period was 63 versus 66 in 2024.

Thank you, Anca. So just as some of you may have noticed, we have also launched a new strategy. I'll talk about that more in briefly. But we achieved, during the strategy period, diversification in our R&D pipeline, and it has continued to grow. But more importantly, we see our projects progressing within the pipeline. And limited scale commercialization is now on way with several customers. PPT sites now today exceed 80 sites, and the revenue development has continued strong. There was a healthy triple-digit growth of PPT in '25 versus '24. And as Anca pointed out, it exceeded EUR 1 million, which is a small number, but it is clearly a milestone in deploying a cloud service. We have treated today or actually at the end of the year, more than 600 ophthalmic patients and on top of that, a much smaller number of cancer patients, but we are very certain we're on the track to treat more than 1,000 patients during this year in ophthalmology alone. This, we also view as a clear validation for the pay-per-treatment model because we are no longer talking about a very small number of patients here and there, even though this is a small number versus where we are aiming at. Our vertically integrated company continues to attract new customers and especially since last summer, we have seen a number of interests, particularly from companies in the other high-value applications that I mentioned earlier forward to us and say that they are really interested in manufacturing these products in Europe in our unique factory. Pilot production is now progressing, and we have more and more discussions of the upcoming mass production with customers. Just an update on our customer base, as usual: So overall, during the strategy period, we managed to diversify the portfolio and grow the proportion of the bigger companies as per our targets. This is the strategy of the 2023 to 2025, and we know that the strategy is sound, but requires more time. During the strategy period, we managed to increase and diversify the pipeline. We launched pay per treatment as a new business model. We have several customers now in Phase 3/pilot production. We did not reach 3 commercial rollouts. We established or expanded our U.S. operations and had growth in Europe and Asia, particularly in Japan. And our vertically integrated factory in Finland is increasingly appreciated and attracts current and new customers. This is for improving the time to market, but especially during the last year due to supply chain security considerations by customers in North America and Europe alike. We also achieved carbon neutrality in our own operations, as reported in the Q3 release. Here in the middle, we have the strategic programs, and we essentially continue with the same strategy. But as you can see from this slide, the strategic programs are now much more focused. This does not mean that we do not continue to follow the continuous improvement principle, but we feel that many of the things have improved a lot and we have achieved many things even if we unfortunately did not meet all the targets of the strategy, but we feel that it is right to continue with the same strategy, but with more focused activities. For example, our operations have improved a lot, and thus, we can focus mostly on sales excellence. In the cloud area, we have established the PPT. We have got a huge amount of positive customer feedback, but now is the time to scale more, what I would call, business kind of technology that aids the pharmaceutical companies and enables doctors to make the device even more kind of part of their daily life. PPT site recruitment and usage is an obvious scaling activity that we must invest. Productizing our platforms has started very well. And now many, many customers can right away use our product platforms, whereas 3 years ago, they required typically a lot of customization and tailoring. And last, and definitely not least, it is our key program to do a mass production ramp-up with several customers. Strategic key factors remain also essentially the same, but there has been more clarifications. Earlier, we said that we kind of scale new business models, but now we have already started with PPT with a very promising start and now it's time to scale. We continue to expand new applications and indications and thus get more synergy. But then on the pipeline side, rather than putting a lot of focus on increasing the size of the pipeline, we are more focused now on working on the existing cases within the pipeline. Today, we have more promising new cases to the pipeline than ever before, but I'm fully convinced that our pipeline now contains the ingredients for us to execute our strategy, and thus, we will be focusing on especially the existing cases in the pipeline, making -- bringing them forward. Operations has one job,, ramp up mass production, and as before, we continue to serve the customers with our unique technology and provide them state-of-the-art lasers. You may have noticed one difference in the strategy slide, which is to highlight what is our product. And this is because it has not been maybe clear to all that the company's product is the PPT and all the projects we do with our customers are for commercializing our own product. So this is just to keep it very simple and kind of have everything essential on the one slide. Business targets. We continue to accrue new customers, create platform synergies, mass production, increased number of hospitals and usage per site and cloud value for customers, business users. The most important thing at the bottom, financial targets remain the same with the addition of positive cash flow that is our target to deliver. We are still not issuing the outlook due to the same reasons as before. In summary, sales and EBITDA improved according to the strategy, and there is a nice sequence of events now. EBITDA being at 37% is nice, but not even close to where it needs to be. But I'm super proud of the team delivering the company's record sales growth for the full year at 73%. As said, pipeline is progressing and customer bases and product mix continues to diversify as per our strategy. We have record customer activity since the summer, and it has continued this year in the most important events that we annually have, and we are particularly pleased with the amount of customer feedback and interest to our factory and our products. If I would have to raise a couple of topics, I would say that especially the PPT sites and application to semiconductor industry are something that we will look very interested this year. Cost savings and increased productivity, Anca covered, and those are very well on track. And the revenue for the quarter was EUR 1.7 million; EBITDA, EUR 640,000; and free cash flow minus EUR 0.5 million. In all categories, very good improvement versus the previous year. So without further ado, we open the Q&A.

So I don't know, do we have Antti or Daniel on the line? Do you want to -- Antti, for example, do you want to go first?

So I wanted to ask about your OpEx development. So you had some savings in Q4 and OpEx was lower, but can you comment on 2026?

Mrs. Guina, this goes for you.

Well, I cannot give you numbers. As you know that we basically just announced that we will not give guidance, but of course, we started the measures of improving our efficiency like more than a year ago, and we will continue that.

Okay. And on your personnel number, it was a little bit lower than I thought. So would you say that the headcount at the end of the period was at the normal level going to 2026?

We have the exactly same people more or less working today as we had at the end of the year.

Okay. And then on the U.S. operations. So can you comment on what effect the U.S. dollar-euro exchange rate had on your numbers? And also what were the effect of tariffs in 2025?

So I can say that tariffs didn't play a significant role outside the informal coffee discussions. But maybe, Anca, if you have more fact on this?

I would say that the exchange rate losses and gains are kind of under control. It's a balance between what we buy and what we sell. So not huge impact.

Okay. And then finally, I guess part of your PPT income is from clinical trials, so can you comment on 2026, will the clinical trial income be higher or lower compared to 2025?

It will probably be continuing development. But there will obviously be at some point a moment when if a trial goes to follow-up period, then typically in the trial, there will not be a kind of patients treated, and in that model, the PPT will generate limited fees. But on the other hand, we're not dependent on one single trial. So we are -- as Anca said, we are not giving an outlook, but on a kind of aggregate level, we feel that we are making progress with the PPT this year. But yes, clinical trials are still a major part of the total revenue as in those cancer patients, which are clearly a smaller number than the ophthalmic patients; there, the fees are significantly higher, which is just coming from the logic that the total fees related to cancer patient treatments are many times, sometimes even more than tenfold compared to typical ophthalmic therapies per patient. Daniel, do you want to ask something?

Yes. It's Daniel Lepisto from Danske Bank. Congrats on the quite good report. And I guess I'll continue on this cost topic, unfortunately, because I mean, the other operating expenses they look very low on Q4. I think it might be lowest in the company's history, if we look back even several years. So how sustainable is this kind of run rate looking in '26? No need to guide, but maybe give us a little bit of help here.

Well, as I said, we started, I would say that not even that drastic changes in our operations, but really took a look at everything which can be improved, and this is the result. And we -- I truly hope that we can continue improving even more the efficiency. And yes, keep the trend, I will not tell you that we will have 0 operating expenses, but that's my target, basically, as CFO, you know.

I fully understand.

And I believe that -- this is Seppo, if I may comment that I believe we kind of discussed about this significant savings that we have been able to obtain outside the formal [indiscernible] process already in the Q3, but we said that they would really kick in only properly in the P&L during the Q4.

All right. That is clear. And the follow-up question on the gross margin, which also appears extremely high. I mean, there is obviously things related to mix and so on, but once again, I mean, how sustainable are these levels? I think you commented that you foresee even further improvement, if I understood it correctly.

Yes. So we continue to see economies of scale that we'll probably realize or are expected in the future. We cannot promise it, but we are expecting to see economies of scale, but it is also clear, I believe, during the summertime we shared with you some numbers on our cost analysis and below-material analysis and some products have been performing a little bit better than earlier in the history of the company. We continue to work meticulously on the bond management, but expect to kind of have positive tailwinds behind us on this topic, and obviously, the faster the PPT scales, that will then have a positive impact also on the margin side as we go forward.

All right. That's clear. Then maybe next question on this pay-per-treatment revenues. I mean this exceeded EUR 1 million in '25. I think you had 60 sites in operation in Q3, exceeding 80 now after Q4. So that's EUR 15,000 annual revenue per site, give or take. So can you maybe comment anything on this revenue potential per site? I guess there is a lot of variety between these sites, but can you give us any help or examples what could be a site operating on full or high capacity worth to you?

I guess it's difficult to predict at this time when the numbers are so small, but we have shared with you earlier that the typical fee ranges from $1,000 to $10,000 per patient. The cancer patients are on the high -- very high end of the range, whereas the ophthalmology is at the low end of the range. And this -- the faster the number of oncology patients scales, the more there will be, but you can very easily calculate from this one that it's a small number of patients per site. And while I was still telling everybody during the summertime that we never treat more than one cancer patient per site per day, and in reality, that time is actually much longer. But during one recent day, we had 3 cancer patients in 1 single hospital up in Sydney during the same day. So obviously, if that were to happen across our entire install base, the revenue would be on a completely different scale. We are not predicting that to happen as we are in clinical trials, but you can easily do the math that if there would be many patients treated per year, the revenue would scale accordingly. But at this time, we cannot predict what is the potential per site because it will be highly speculative calculation.

Yes, I get it. That's very interesting. Maybe...

Maybe one thing that you might want to refer back to is that at some point last year, the year before, we shared some patient numbers for United States. You can very easily, with Google, expand those numbers to the global, if you want. But that will give you an idea about the number of patients per indication, and then you will just need to estimate that what would be the relevant share that could be captured using these therapies. It's not an exact science, but at least it will tell you what is maximum possible because we will hope that while the cancer prevalence is increasing, we'll definitely not treat more patients than there is. And yes, this is not to suggest that even a very large portion of the patients would be treated with our technology, but the potential and the need for treatments is very big.

All right. That's helpful. Then maybe the final questions on the strategy update, '26-'27 targets. You aim to be cash flow positive. So first of all, is this by the end of '27 or during '27? And are you referring here to that operating cash flow or free cash flow?

Yes, it has not been specified in more detail externally than what is in the release. So obviously, we have continuously strived to improve the cash flow not just in a year, but every single quarter for quite some time. But we want to emphasize that this is a very important parameter for us, and thus, it is also in the financial targets. I don't think that this implies a change in operation or conduct, but now it is just among the key targets as the other important numbers, revenue and profitability.

Okay. And then a follow-up on these commercial rollouts, which you touched upon earlier. You target previously 3 commercial rollouts by the end of the strategy period. I mean, I don't think you specify this in the new strategy period. So what's the aim on these commercial rollouts? And maybe give us an overview of what's the maybe status -- a number or a status with these projects that are actually nearing commercialization from your point of view during the strategy period? So are there more than 3 of such projects on your books?

There are 33 projects currently in the pipeline with the potential for commercial rollout. As we discussed in oncology, some of the projects have, for a change, progressed faster than we have typically, I would say, in the history reported delays. Then there is a very interesting surge across the other high value-add applications ranging from flow cytometry to defense, semiconductors, microscopy. So today, there is more of this kind of projects where we are talking about scaling and mass production than ever before. And maybe it is not well described in our letter, if I interpret your question, but our intent was to say that we are seeing the future with more opportunities than ever before.

Okay. That is fair. I mean -- but I guess, from these 33 R&D projects, not all of them will be mature enough in '26-'27, I guess, so there must be some portion which are -- which go-to-market is during this strategy period and every one of these will not materialize by...

Yes, for sure. That is clear. But as you know, we don't have a breakdown. And I would say that if I had, I would probably need to do it through a company release before I said it here. But this is definitely something that we will keep in mind and address this question in the Q2 release -- sorry, Q1 release. If there are any other questions from the people on the line besides the analysts, please raise your hand. If not, we thank everybody for participation and let's reconvene at the latest in April when we share the Q1 progress. Thank you, and have a nice weekend.

Bye.

Bye.