Nimbus Group AB (Publ) (BOAT.ST) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Nimbus Q4 2025 presentation. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to the CEO, Johan Inden; CFO, Rasmus Alvemyr; and Head of Investor Relations, Gunilla Wikman. Please go ahead.

Welcome to the Nimbus Group quarter 4 report. This is Johan Inden speaking. And with me to present today, I have Rasmus Alvemyr on my side, and we'll get going with the report. Well, first of all, I want to say that we continue operating in a soft market. We see that in our numbers. If you compare quarter-to-quarter, we are lower on sales, and we have increased losses. At the same time, and as we will present through the presentation, we are executing a number of decisive measures now to turn the trend. Those are both on the commercial side with new product launches, restructure of our organization, but also on the cost and the efficiency side. And through the presentation, we'll take you through the measures we are taking. But let's start by summarizing the numbers and give you some additional information on where we stand. First of all, fourth quarter then and full year in summary. Net sales in the fourth quarter amounted to SEK 233 million. That's a delta of SEK 40 million less than last year. And as we have pointed out through our presentation and also consistent with Q3, the North America market is the lion's share of the losses. And if we look at the full year, 2025, net sales amounted to SEK 1.366 million as compared to then SEK 1.619 million for last year. That's a delta of SEK 253 million. If you look at the gross profit, we are delivering a gross profit of SEK 6 million. And if you look at the delta towards last year of SEK 28 million, the majority of the reduction in gross profit is related to running with overcapacity in our factory, but also related to the commercial side where we are still selling out inventory and therefore, have rebate structures out on those sales. So that is pressuring our gross margins right now. And if you look at then the quarter EBITDA results, it's minus SEK 52 million as compared to minus SEK 25 million last year. And if you break that down, I'll come to the full year in short, minus SEK 18 million of this quarter 4 result is related to our operations in Finland, which we have been closed by the shift of the year and another minus SEK 18 million is related to EdgeWater, which is then the business we run out of Florida in the U.S. If we take that to the full year numbers, the EBITDA of minus SEK 84 million, whereof then Edgewater represents minus SEK 47 million. And Finland then, again, the business we are closing by the shift of the year represents minus SEK 43 million. If you look at the cash flow, operating cash flow for the quarter is minus SEK 7 million and for the year, minus SEK 87 million. And then we come to order book, and I will give you some more details on the order book on the next slide, but for commercial sales amount to SEK 357 million as compared to SEK 484 million. And available cash end of quarter 4 amounts to SEK 233 million, where SEK 33 million is cash in bank and SEK 200 million is a credit limit with the bank. So this is a summary of our performance through the quarter. Let's move to the order book and talk a bit about the market environment. First of all, market volumes are at the lowest point in over a decade. I mentioned this already in Q3. We see a careful market across the board with the softer side in North America, consistent with quarter 3 and a stable market, stable and careful market in Europe and Nordic. And what do we mean with a stable and careful market? Well, if you look at the order book in Europe and also in our Nordic retail organization, we are coming in at the same numbers as we had last year. So we see that as stability, but it is on a lower level than we have seen historically. And of course, we expect for the future, whilst North America then remains soft. If you look at the sales and what the soft North America market and the stable Europe market does to our split of sales, the full year, we have a split -- an even split between North America and Europe with 42% of revenue each, whilst the Nordic is at the remaining 16%. And if you look at the quarter, the fourth quarter as such, the European side of the business, the share of the European side of the business significantly increased in relation to North America. So we see a bit of a shift from historical years where North America has been strong, and we see that now shifting towards Europe. Looking at the retail pace in our retail organization remains on a low but stable level. We saw through quarter 3, and we see when we dig into the details of our retail organization that we continue to operate with stability. And we see a good activity level out in the market. And I'll come back to that when I'll talk a bit about the market activities. Dealer stock levels, when we monitor those, as you've understood before and as we have presented coming out of COVID, dealers were sitting across the globe with a bit too high inventory. We see that, that inventory has been decreasing step by step, and we see in Europe a fairly low inventory level. Of course, that is related to sales. It's on a good level, but we see when the market starts activating, we expect that dealers need to refill their stock levels. So we see a market that is set to recover with those low dealer stock levels. But it's, of course, a question of time and timing to see when the market starts moving upwards. Looking at the commercial order book. And if we combine then the commercial order book and the retail order book into group order book, we're at SEK 441 million as compared to SEK 574 million for last year. What we see in the order book with the slower market is that it's typically shorter today than it was a year ago and the year before that. And the big delta -- the entire delta in the order book, if you look at it year-over-year, is related to North America, again, then underpinning the stability we see in Europe. Coming then to what are we addressing and how are we navigating the company. We are executing right now an extensive change agenda. I have now 5 months in the company. As you might remember, I joined 1st of September. And in the quarter 3 report, I pointed out a number of areas and observations where I said that we should change in order to improve our business. And this is then a summary of some of the activities we are executing to turn the trend and improve our performance. If you've written my CEO note, you also see that I start out -- or I finish off on the culture. We have a strong culture of being close to customer, accessible, have a warmth and a Nimbus family feeling around the brand. Those are really good strengths for the company, but we are now building into that the energy and the drive to results and the business focus. And that is a shift in the culture that we are driving now at high pace. If you look at some of the actual activities then connected to turn the trend in North America, it's both in the headline and one of our most important actions. We have new commercial leadership. Dave Patnaude has joined us since November and now with a new role since January. He's heading up our North American sales business. Dave has hands-on dealer experience. He's been running a number of dealerships. He's an expert in dealership turnaround. So he has this experience from the floor. He understands the business, understands the business structure, understands the performance criteria. And as part of his first journey, he's now touring all our dealer partners across North America, first of all, to evaluate their performance, but even more so sit down and discuss the business plans for the year. So that is an extensive activity we are conducting as we speak. We have also made a decision to operate EdgeWater as a separate unit within Nimbus Group. I mentioned that I believe that you need to -- when you run a group of businesses like we do, a number of brands, you need to be able to see the performance of each of the brands and the more accountability you can build and the more clarity in the operation around each brand you can build, the better effects you will have on your business plan. So the decision to operate EdgeWater as a separate unit is entirely related to that governance structure. As part of that, we are consolidating the Nimbus production to Europe. We have produced Nimbus boats in the EdgeWater factory, but both for the benefit of Nimbus, we are consolidating to one site and to the benefit of EdgeWater, which can then solely concentrate on the EdgeWater production, and build efficiency around that. We're also taking measures to consolidate functions for finance, administration and marketing, and we expect that this final bullet will give us savings in the area of SEK 5 million to SEK 6 million per year when fully implemented. We have built a new commercial structure. We've consolidated under one commercial officer, Christina Evans, who is also my Deputy CEO. We're bringing together commercial sales, retail sales, aftermarket and marketing under this responsibility to take the full grasp of the customer journey and have clarity on commercial strategy and execution across the entire organization. We are continuing then to implement the governance model. So we measure each brand on financial performance. We have exited Stream Propulsion as we noted in the Q3 that we were evaluating. No material effect on the results from that exit and which is an important milestone for us. We have concluded the sale of Bella and Flipper assets, and we have now closed and handed over both factories in Finland to other owners. Finally, efficiency improvements and cash management as a result of reorganization and changes, the executive management team is now reduced from 8 to 6. We have a strong focus on stock reduction, and you saw how that had some impact on our gross profit when I mentioned the numbers and of course, cash collection. The full year effect of the measures we have taken on the cost side so far, so full year between 2024 and 2025 is SEK 70 million. Then turning to the market. This is a consumer market. We need to be visible. We need to present fantastic products. And I believe and see that we have really pushed the pedal on this during the last period. We had a couple of weeks ago, the Dusseldorf Boat Show, the largest indoor boat show in the world, very important milestone. It kicks off the European sales season. We had record high visitor levels. We are registering every visitor to the Nimbus booth. And we also accelerated our efforts on social media. It's a really good platform where we have our products, we have our people, we have our dealers. Obviously, we have our customers as well to use that to leverage both the product launches, which I'll come to in a second, but of course, also the brand as such and the company. In Dusseldorf, we launched the Nimbus WTC series sequel to the very successful WTC 11 series, and we presented the Nimbus 495 Coupe. The 495 Coupe is not ready from production, but we have start of ordering in Dusseldorf and start of production is early 2027. So that's when the first customers will receive their 495 Coupe. The earlier on product then, the 495 Flybridge, which is already on the market, was presented for the first time at the Fort Lauderdale Show in North America, very well received with high attention, and we have now also delivered the first order to Japan and the first order to Middle East. So the success of the 495 is spreading across the world. As part of engaging our dealers for the season, we have executed dealer meetings in Europe and dealer meetings in America. We have had our fantastic Aquador 400HT, a fantastic family cruiser being named finalist and in both the 2026 Motorboat Awards in Dusseldorf and Best of Boat Awards in Berlin. We did not take a gold medal in either, but we were on the podium for both competitions. Falcon is moving on with launches of the new 6- and 7-meter version being introduced to dealers and now rolled out through the spring shows in the Nordic and EdgeWater presented its 250 center console at the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. And that was an important launch, the first launch -- product launch from EdgeWater in quite some years. So we are bringing fresh product to the market. This is a market which is driven by news and new product and we see that as a very important step now preparing for a market, which we expect to improve over the period for us. And I'm really proud of the team who can accomplish this during this period. Then we want to make a special mention on the opportunity side, and that is the work boats and governmental sector and sales opportunities. We are already active in the sector. We have our both the MSMB 200 as it's called. It's an Alukin 11.5 meters, where we have our order with the Defense Material Administration of Sweden. It's a SEK 400 million order value over 15 years, whereof SEK 23 million is in our order book right now. What we want to point out in this presentation is that this is not only a onetime opportunity for us, and we are treating it rather as a sector that we are addressing based on this first win. As another example, we have deliveries to Sjovarnskaren. We have delivered 10 Alukin CW850 up until today, and we have 5 more on order for delivery now early 2026. And we are now building capabilities to explore this sector further. We see that there are more and more tenders coming, and there is more and more activity in this sector, and we have some specific competitive advantages. First of all, we have an R&D function, which is used to building boats. But even more so, we have serial delivery capability. This sector is dominated by yards, building one-offs or serial production, and we believe that we have something to contribute in the sector. So this is under our intention, and we wanted to bring that as an opportunity going forward. Now Rasmus, we will look at the numbers in more detail.

Thank you, Johan. Then we start with the key financial items from the fourth quarter. As Johan mentioned, the EBITDA dropped to minus SEK 52 million in the quarter, and the adjusted EBITDA pre-closing costs amounted to minus SEK 35 million. The closing cost in Finland was SEK 18 million, whereof SEK 13 million was allocated to gross profit and SEK 5 million was allocated to operating costs. The restructuring costs in combination with different campaigns to reduce inventory, including costs from under absorption of low sales and production has pushed down the gross margin to 2.6% in the quarter. In relation to last year, the sales volume dropped by SEK 40 million, which is -- which affected the gross profit by minus SEK 4 million, as can be seen in the bridge, while the price and under absorption effects amounted to minus SEK 6 million. The FX came out net positive with SEK 1 million, driven by both a negative effect related to U.S. dollars of SEK 1 million in terms of sales, but this was also been able to be compensated for by lower supply costs from euro and P&L. So all in all, plus 1. Altogether, this pushed down the consolidated contribution significantly down from SEK 28 million to SEK 6 million. On the cost side and admin -- both sales and admin decreased due to cost savings from SEK 54 million to SEK 52 million, which is down 4% year-over-year. The finance net amounted to minus SEK 11 million versus plus SEK 6 million last year. The finance net was affected by FX effect from intercompany balances with a net effect of minus SEK 8 million, driven by U.S. dollars. The corresponding FX effect last year was plus SEK 25 million. And then we move on with the commercial sales. The commercial sales dropped 21% in the quarter to SEK 156 million. The drop is fully driven by North America, which decreased SEK 60 million to SEK 53 million. As can be seen to the left in the upper right chart, the North American sales has dropped plus SEK 100 million since 2023. Also, the order intake seen down in the left chart in North America was super soft and amounted to SEK 35 million versus SEK 123 million last year. The European market improved by both higher order intake from SEK 68 million to SEK 130 million and increased sales from SEK 53 million to SEK 84 million. This means that the positive trend that we saw from -- already in the second quarter and the third quarter has continued. The Nordic sales dropped from SEK 31 million to SEK 70 million, but the levels are low because of the seasonality. The order intake in the Nordics was rather flat with SEK 39 million versus SEK 44 million. In the Nordics, order intake in the fourth quarter is primarily driven by deliveries in front of the next season. So it will be this summer. Order intake on other markets went up from 0 to SEK 29 million, primarily driven by 495 reaching new markets, as Johan talked about earlier. The order book down in the right chart, amounted to SEK 357 million, which is up SEK 60 million since the third quarter. Then we have the retail sales, which increased 3% year-over-year to SEK 78 million versus SEK 76 million. Sale of own brands was up SEK 10 million to SEK 34 million, which is positive and the preferred balance from a consolidated perspective. The order intake was down 10%, amounted to SEK 101 million versus SEK 112 million, driven by own brands. Order intake on traded and used boats, together with service and accessories was in all rather flat together. The order book amounted to SEK 84 million, which is lower than last year's SEK 90 million, but also higher than 2023, SEK 56 million at that point. Then we move to the cash flow and net working capital. We saw that the net working capital continued down to SEK 607 million, which is down SEK 54 million since the third quarter and SEK 63 million year-over-year. And this confirms that the actions that we have taken has a positive effect and the tended effect, of course. The improvement is driven by lower levels of inventory. Year-over-year, the inventory dropped SEK 39 million. Operating cash flow in the quarter improved to minus SEK 11 million versus minus SEK 26 million last year and available cash, including used -- unused [indiscernible] amounted to SEK 233 million versus plus SEK 80 million last year. From both seasonality and market perspectives, we are expecting to reach the peak in net working capital by end of Q1, and we see that we are tracking on our projected cash forecast in a good way in relation to this. And with that, I leave the word back to you, Johan.

Thank you very much, Rasmus. And just to finish up with our financial targets. The targets over time are to have growth of above 10% and EBITA margin of 10% with a capital structure with no financial debt and then a dividend policy of 30%. I've now spent 5 months into the company. I believe that these are valid objectives. We are not there today, and it will take us some time to get there, but we are executing the right measures now in the company. So that is our financial targets. And with that, we will, in a second, open up for our Q&A. I'll just remind you of the financial calendar. Our Q1 report is on April 27, 2026. And before we open for questions, I have one additional note, and that is to thank Rasmus Alvemyr. You are heading for other adventures in the future, and we are delivering most likely the last quarter report together. So thank you very much, Rasmus.

Thank you.

With that, let's open for questions. We will now move over to see the written questions and get the facilitation.

[Operator Instructions] There are no more phone questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers for any written questions or closing comments.

So thank you very much. We have several written questions. So I will start reading a question from George at Gratitude Capital. And he asks that we can now see from your reported figures for losses in conjunction with the Finland shutdown and EdgeWater's losses that you actually produced a positive EBITA adjusted for this. Are there still more initiatives to reduce costs outside Finland and EdgeWater and also the mentioned 5 to 6 savings in the U.S. Or are you only reliant on a market upturn to take you to an okay profitability level?

Thank you for that question. It's a highly relevant one. And the answer is no, so to say, we are not only relying on the market. Of course, the market has an important contribution, but we are continuing our efficiency program and our OpEx savings program. We mentioned the year-over-year savings between 2024 and 2025. But we also mentioned that we have not met the full pace of that reduction. We expect to hit that during Q1. We are continuing to work both across administration, both across our structure, reporting procedures where we have consolidated with the finance function. So the answer in short is no. We are continuing to look at cost opportunities, and that's a regular part of our business, which we have embedded in the executive, so to say, procedures or the management team procedures.

Thank you, Johan. And the second question from George at Gratitude. We have recently seen additional public tenders for both similar to the one you will produce for the Swedish Armed Forces. In Norway, the Home Guard has announced a fairly large tender that seems like a perfect match for Alukin, while in Sweden, another large tender is out for both a bit bigger and specialized than the one you already are producing. Are you seeing or expecting more such tenders elsewhere? And are both of the mentioned tenders relevant for Alukin?

Well, if I come back to what I presented on the government and work boat segment, it's highly relevant for us, and we are following this market, including then opportunities closely. We are building capabilities in the company to address opportunities in the structured way, but I will not comment on any of the specific potential tenders that are out there.

Okay. And his third question is, in Europe, you seem to have quite a positive momentum. And in 2025, they're almost on the same revenue level as in '22 and '23. Do I understand you correctly with reference to your comments on inventory levels with dealers in Europe that you have not had any tailwind from inventory buildup with your dealers even in the second half of 2025?

But as we commented, we see that dealer stock levels are at a low level across Europe. So I wouldn't see that we've had any tailwind from that side. Rather, what we see now is that the market activation is increasing. I mentioned Dusseldorf, where we see -- where we saw higher visitor numbers. And we see also that the activity level at the dealers are increasing. Now we also call the market stable in Europe, as you mentioned the numbers. And we now want to see activation of the customer. That's what we are now looking for to break the trend from stability to something more positive.

I can fill in there. This tailwind, we saw quite much of that just after the pandemic, of course. But since then, and now we are talking about some years, it has been quite stabilized. So today, we don't see that kind of effect.

Okay. So the next question comes from Tony at TT. Please, can you tell me have you given share incentives to your new people that is the new -- Patnaude in the U.S. and our new COO. And in general, whether you are linking individual performance to improving share price?

If you look at the incentive structures, it's a simple 3-level models. And of course, it's distributed differently in the organization. We have the salary level. We have the short-term incentive STI program, which is a yearly bonus program. And we have the long-term incentive program, which is then connected to the share.

Great. Another question from Tony is, please, can you talk about the military work boat that made the news recently? How material is it?

Well, first of all, and you're referring to the boat, which I had on the picture in the presentation and which I talked about as the MSMB 200 or the 11.5 meter Alukin. From a value perspective, the total order value is SEK 400 million over 15 years. Then we will see at what delivery pace the customer wants to receive this. We expect to start serial deliveries in late 2026. So that's the materiality from a financial perspective. But then as I also highlighted in the presentation, I believe it's a material step for us as a company to enter into this business segment. So there are 2 levels of materiality in that sense, the financial scope of the delivery, but also the fact that we are now entering the segment and have broader opportunities, I would say, than only this tender.

And to fill in there also, this enable us, of course, then to reduce some of the seasonality aspects that we have in the business. So that is a good and positive thing from stabilizing the business from a seasonal perspective and also from a cash flow perspective, of course. So it has many advantages.

Thank you. And Tony's next question or last question was, has your debt level changed over the past year? What's your current debt to equity or net debt position, please? Any major repayments or refinancing coming up?

If I imply there, we have seen an increased use of cash in the last years. We have increased the net working capital, which we talked about during the last years, but we also now see that we changed this curve and decrease the usage of capital, which is good. We have a plan which we follow and feel comfortable with. We know that the first quarter is the tightest quarter that we know from history and from experience, of course. So -- but we follow our plan closely and feel that we are very comfortable in our situation. And regarding the net debt as such, we have more or less just our cash -- sorry, credit facility, sorry -- I forgot the word, the credit facility. And we have also floor plan financing on our own -- for our own demo boats in the retail business. This is the debt that we actually have on our balance sheet. In our official balance sheet, there's also, of course, an external floor plan, which is more related to accounting measures, but this is not our debt. This amount -- this debt has decreased quite much since last year. It went down from SEK 357 million to SEK 263 million this year, and that is related to the lower activities in U.S., but that is not our debt. So our debt has decreased since last year and in the planned way, so to say.

Great. Thank you. George at Gratitude has another question regarding also net working capital. He understands that we are expecting to reduce it further. What would you consider to be a more normal working capital level for the company, I guess, in percentage of sales?

We have been talking about the area -- a long time ago, we have been talking about are between 25% to 30%. I think that is still quite realistic, maybe a bit higher, depending on the market situation and how things develop. But slightly above 30%, I would say, is quite realistic.

Great. I think that was the final question. So thank you very much, Johan and Rasmus, and thank you all for listening in.

Thank you very much for calling in.

Thank you.