Tecnotree Oyj ($TEM1V)

Good morning, and welcome to Tecnotree Q1 2026 Earnings Call. My name is Thomas Koponen, Director of Investor Relations. And with me today is CFO, Indiresh Vivekananda. Before we start, I'd like to read out a statement. The online presentation will be led by Indiresh Vivekananda, CFO, following the commencement of the voluntary recommended public cash tender offer by Resilience Investment Holdings Ltd. on February 5, 2026. Investor and analyst communications during the offer period, including all IR calls, are being led by Mr. Vivekananda. As previously disclosed, CEO, Padma Ravichander, is a member of the bidding consortium, and this arrangement has been made to ensure appropriate governance during the offer period. Ms. Ravichander continues in her role as CEO, responsible for the company's day-to-day operations. We'll add questions to the end of the presentation. Without further to add, please, Mr. Vivekananda, go ahead.

Thank you, Thomas. Good morning to all the investors who have joined the call. Let's start recollecting our Q1 performances, which we published yesterday. I'd like to start with some of the basic key metrics in this quarter. Let's start with the free cash flow. Free cash flow in this current quarter was comparatively lower, EUR 200,000 against EUR 1 million what we achieved last year. Revenue in constant currency was at EUR 17.1 million against EUR 16.9 million what we had achieved last year, a slight 1% increase compared to last year. Revenue in real terms was against -- very slightly lower at EUR 16.8 million compared to EUR 16.9 million of last year. EBIT current quarter was at -- higher slightly again at EUR 4.6 million against EUR 4.5 million of last year. The net income in Q1 '26 was EUR 2.1 million, slightly above compared to EUR 1.5 million, which we achieved in the last year same quarter. Can we move to the next slide? I'm continuing with some of the key metrics here. The CapEx to sales as a percentage of the capitalization what we do against the sales, last year, it was at 15%. This quarter, we have brought it down to 9.5%. ARR current quarter is at EUR 6.4 million, and last year, EUR 7.6 million. The DSO days current year is at 196 days against 155 last year. We'll go through some of these numbers in detail in my presentation later. The order backlog is at EUR 105 million against EUR 70 million last year, a substantial increase. Now, the same -- the income statement, let's compare it with not just last year, but 2 years prior to that, from '23 onwards, and see where we stand. The revenue is at EUR 16.8 million in the current quarter, EUR 16.9 million last year and EUR 16.3 million in '24 and EUR 15.5 million in 2023. The EBIT has been the highest in the last 4 years at EUR 4.6 million. Financial items is at EUR 1.9 million. Tax was EUR 700,000 in the current quarter. And the net income, again, has been the highest in the Q1 among the last 4 years at EUR 2.1 million. I want to call out certain things here. The revenue in real terms decreased slightly from the previous year. However, in constant currency, we are slightly above the last year. The EBIT margin, there is an increase of 50 basis points from 26.9%, we moved up to 27.4%. Profitability was supported by favorable ForEx movements in this quarter. Now, coming to the actual cash collections. This quarter, we collected EUR 12.4 million against EUR 14.3 million we collected last year and EUR 9.5 million in '24 and EUR 15 million in '23. Free cash flow, which is a result of the collections, in this quarter was impacted by lower collections in the Middle East, leading to a buildup of consequentially the increase in the receivables and consequent, again, to increase in the DSO days. The order received, we had a good quarter at EUR 15.5 million, which is the highest among the last 4 years. Order backlog, which is a combination of the new orders and the revenue we accrued is at EUR 105 million, probably one of the highest compared to the last 4 years. And the earnings per share is constant at EUR 0.1. At this point, I want to draw attention to the 2 facts. Order backlog is 50% higher compared to the last year. And our EPS numbers for this quarter is on the increased capital post the CCD conversions, which happened in this quarter. Let's move to the next slide. We'll again look into a little bit more granular detail. I want to recollect the 2026 guidance on the revenue. We had given a low-to-mid single-digit percentage growth in constant currency. In Q1 '26, we achieved EUR 16.8 million in real terms, which is 0.2% lower than the last year. However, in real constant currency, we achieved EUR 17.1 million on which we have been giving the guidance, which was at 1% higher compared to the last year same quarter. Revenue growth was slightly impacted by the geopolitical conflicts in Middle East, which we are already aware of. A delivery-led quarter, driven by ongoing large transformations, ensure that we are able to achieve the revenue in this current year at EUR 17.1 million in constant currency. Stable demand for product portfolio. In the previous slide, I shared the orders what we've got, which is at EUR 15 million, which is highest in the last 4 years in the Q1. That was a result of the stable demand for our products. Now, if I look at the Q1 and -- Q1 of last year and this year by revenue type, our license revenues have come down from EUR 4.2 million to EUR 2.1 million in the current year. The delivery revenue, however, has gone up from EUR 5.1 million to EUR 8.3 million, and the ARR has slightly come down from EUR 7.6 million to EUR 6.4 million. I want to draw the attention of the investors on one fact of revenue at Tecnotree. Most of our revenues are cyclical in nature, which means that we sell a license, then we implement it, which is the delivery, and then that moves into an ARR model. This quarter, we had higher deliveries for the orders what we already had, and that drove our higher revenue in the delivery in this quarter. Again, if you look at where I'm earning the revenue from last year to this year, the EUs and Americas was at EUR 2.7 million last year, substantially increased to EUR 4.2 million in this quarter. And MEA and APAC came down slightly from EUR 14.2 million to EUR 12.7 million. Again, if I look at the order backlog, what orders I'm carrying from which region, Europe and America has almost doubled from EUR 12.1 million last year to EUR 25.6 million in this year. And MEA, APAC has also grown from EUR 58.2 million to EUR 79.9 million. Moving to the next slide, please. Again, on the EBIT, if you look at, in my current quarter, year-on-year, I have grown my EBIT by 1.8% to EUR 4.6 million compared to EUR 4.5 million, and EBIT margin has gone up by 50 basis points from 26.9% to 27.4%. Now, let's look what are the top EBIT drivers. The CapEx to sales, in spite of reducing my CapEx from 15% to 9.5% of my revenue, my EBIT has grown. The operating expenses remained fairly stable year-on-year with reduced product capitalization, offset by increase in travel expenses to support large-scale transformation, especially during the war situation what we face in the Middle East. The EBIT margins evolution, if you look at it last year, as we said, was EUR 4.5 million in absolute terms and current year EUR 4.6 million. The margin has expanded from 26.9% to 27.4%. And also, I want to draw this one attention to -- of our investors. The CapEx to sales trend, we have given an earlier guidance on that, which had reached 18% of my revenue in 2024, is steadily coming down. Last year, we were at 13%. And current quarter, we are at less than 10%. Can we move to the next slide? I explained that we had lower collections in this quarter, especially due to the geopolitical situation in the Middle East. Look at my receivables, the actual receivable is EUR 38.2 million against last year, EUR 32.2 million. If I break this down into the aging bucket, you can see that last year, 34% of my receivables was not due. However, current year, it is 27%. Where the movement has happened mainly is between 90 to 270 days, which was 3% last year to 28% in the current year. However, more than 1 year has fallen from 31% to 24%. This is mainly due to the collections which were not happened, what should have happened in the third month of the last quarter due to the situation in Middle East, where I have a large number of customers. [indiscernible] I'm providing in the last 3 years, how my DSO days have moved? Again, as we know, in Tecnotree, collections is also cyclical, while we are trying to stabilize it. It was at 210. It came down up to 145 in Q3 of '24, again, started going up in last year. Last quarter, it fell down to 148. And again, this quarter, because collections were lower, my DSO days are high at 196. Now, let's look at some of the currencies where we are facing the risks. In current quarter, Q1 2026, we had a fairly favorable ForEx movements, supporting the profitability. Exchange rate differences in financial items for the first quarter was EUR 1 million, driven by slight strengthening of USD and weakening of INR, where majority of my cost comes against the euros. In the Q1 '26, we reduced our frontier currency exposure to 3%, while it looks 12 percentage points reduction from the previous year where we were at 15%. Strategic focus on Tier 1 accounts and growth in mature and dollar-denominated markets continue as a part of our company strategy. I also had given how the USD-euro trend moved, and it is still a little bit uncertain, and we should wait for a longer term to see where it stabilizes. Just to call out, last year, the dollar to euro, the dollar depreciated by about 15%, which also affected us last year. If I look at the Q1 '26 numbers, it's -- again, 15% last year was denominated by volatile currency, mainly the Argentinian currency and the Nigerian currency, and that has come down substantially down to 3% in the current quarter. Can we move on to the next slide? Now, let's look at the balance sheet at a high level. The intangible assets, which is at EUR 49.5 million, continues to be stable at the same level as at the end of previous quarter. This is mainly due to I'm reducing the CapEx to the sales as a percentage. And as I shared earlier, because of lower collections, my trade receivable has gone up in this quarter. However, the other receivable has slightly come down. The shareholders' equity, as a result of the conversion of convertible debentures into equity, has increased. And as consequently, compulsorily convertible debentures have also come down. Again, I want to draw out, the other numbers on the liabilities are fairly consistent with our previous numbers, except the trade payables have slightly gone up, again, due to cash management due to the lower collections. Can we move to the next slide? Now, at this point, I want to bring the attention on the guidance what we have given. The guidance for 2026 is a continuation of our strategy to drive higher returns and more free cash flow for our shareholders. Revenue in constant currency, low-to-mid single-digit percentage growth. And free cash flow, above EUR 5 million. The assumption for the free cash flow is based on the company's current market outlook and exchange rate assumption, especially what we faced in the last year due to the devaluation of U.S. dollar against the euro. Can we move to the next slide, please? Before I end my presentation, I want to draw attention of the shareholders on the public tender offer. On January 27, the company announced that Resilience Investment Holdings, acting on behalf of a consortium comprising of Helios Investment Partners, Fitzroy Investments Limited and Padma Ravichander, together called as consortium, has made a voluntary recommended public all-cash tender offer for all the issued and outstanding shares and certain other equity securities of the company. On 25th of March '26, we announced that the process for obtaining the necessary regulatory approvals from some of our global operations are still ongoing. This is what we understood from the tenders, and that will not be completed within the initial offer period. So the offerer has decided to extend the offer period for the tender offer to expire on 3rd June 2026 at 4:00 p.m. Finnish time. One more sharing of the information. The Annual General Meeting has changed its date to Friday, 29th May 2026, and further details will be shared soon. Now, as a CFO, if I were to ask what are my key takeaways in this quarter, we have a strong order backlog and stable revenue growth during the uncertainties. We have a continued demand for the product portfolio, EUR 15 million in real terms and 35% year-on-year growth. Delivery-led quarter, driven by ongoing large transformations. Lower free cash flow due to weaker collections, impacted by elevated geopolitical risk in the Middle East. Weaker collection in Middle East led to buildup of receivables and increase in the DSO days. I also want to draw attention that we have approximately 30% of our revenue exposure to the Middle East region, where the current geopolitical situation has introduced a near-term uncertainty in project delivery timelines, collections and operating cost. The company's financial guidance for '26 issued on 27th January '26 and confirmed on 25th February '26 remains unchanged at this point. However, we acknowledge that there's an evolving situation, and this warrants continued close monitoring. With this, I hand it back to Thomas. And if there are questions from our shareholders, we can take it now.

Thank you for the presentation, Mr. Vivekananda, and yes, we do have questions. And I'd like to remind everybody that we cannot answer questions with regards to the current tender offer, only pertaining to the Q1 results. So we have already questions in the text box. So if you mind, let's go ahead and let's keep them short, so we give all investors a chance to ask questions. So do you have any comments on your EUR 2.5 million receivables charges that you made in Q1?

Yes, we did take a charge on our receivables. This is part of an ongoing prudent evaluation of our receivable. We do have a standard policy for making these sort of provisions and a charge against our receivable. And due to the increased risk over the geopolitical issues, so we have made it [ a prudence ] that we should take a charge of this EUR 2.5 million, and this also strengthens our balance sheet. That is the reason we had to make this.

And why have your DSO days increased to 196 days?

Good question. Basically, DSO is a combination of my invoicing and the collections what I do. Whenever my collection drops, that automatically increases my receivable and thereby increases my DSO days. As I just explained in my presentation, nearly 30% of our revenue comes from this war zone, which severely affected our cash collection in this quarter. And that is the reason my receivable has increased and my DSO days have increased.

Your personnel costs fell EUR 0.9 million year-on-year, while you actually added 5 people versus the year-end 2025 figures. How is this possible?

Not sure about the addition. I know that while the quarter-end numbers would have increased slightly, but the average headcount for the quarter was lower in the current quarter compared to the last year. And also, if I recollect, our average expenses per headcount has also come down from something like EUR 5.1 million to EUR 4.2 million. And as you know that we are looking at different skill mix and more AI for -- usage for our efficiency. And also, there's a -- cost also coming down because of localization and nearshoring to meet the customer expectations. So all these have contributed to a lower personnel cost. And we had guided the market earlier that we continuously evaluate and monitor our cost closely.

Your equity ratio has jumped from 67% to 82% in a single quarter. How is that possible?

Okay. That's basically because as you know that in this quarter, the compulsorily convertible debentures, which we had issued earlier, they all -- except for a small portion, they were all converted based on the lenders' intention to exercise it. They were converted into equity at a particular rate. I think it was -- 5.7 million new shares were added due to this conversion. That is what has triggered the increase in the equity.

Frontier currencies, in your presentation, like Nigerian naira and Argentinian peso dropped from -- dropped 15% of revenue in Q1 2025 to just 3% in Q1 2026. How did you achieve that?

Okay. I can answer it in 2 parts. The first one is, it's a conscious effort. We have -- this is reflective of our active portfolio management. We prioritize the contracts which are denominated in USD or euro, focusing all our new business development on Tier 1 operators in stable currency markets. The main benefit of that is, it should improve my free cash flow quality and also reduce the translation losses that historically have hurt our financial items in the last couple of years, as all of us know. But I want to give one caveat here. It is not necessary that quarter number should say that going forward, my exposure will be so low. It also depends on the work what we do in a particular quarter and when we accrue the revenue. But as of this quarter, 3%, I hope, is a good number to hold it for this quarter.

What is the dividend this year?

Thanks for asking that question. Our Board of Directors in the annual report did mention a paragraph on that. They have reported that no dividend should be distributed, and the loss of the parent company shall be transferred to the retained earnings account of the shareholders' equity. As all of us know, we are currently [ under and are ] subject to a public tender offer. And as per the terms of that offer, any dividend distribution will affect the consideration that are being offered to the shareholders and the other holders of equity securities. So this is as per the offer. And hence, if any dividend paid will require an adjustment mechanism set out in the terms of tender offer. And based on that, the Board had recommended that no dividend to be paid at this point of time.

Okay. So, that can be found in the annual report. So AI is disrupting the technology companies. How does this affect Tecnotree? Or does it affect Tecnotree?

Obviously, any new technologies will have both positive and negative impact. AI brings in new revenue opportunities also, and it also sometimes destroys and challenges the existing business model. Well, we have benefited so far even in the last year by using AI in our productivity gains, cost optimization and new revenue streams. We need to constantly invest in the AI strategically. The technology is moving so fast. We need to consistently and continuously monitor and evolve our strategy, and we do have a definitive plan on that.

And what proportion of your order backlog is ARR? Is there a percentage that you can give?

I don't have the precise number in my mind right away, but I can confirm it's about 2/3. About 66% are -- my order backlog is in the ARR.

Okay. And given the Q1 financial performance on free cash flow, what will be the impact on guidance, given the geopolitical risk? You did answer this already in the presentation, but I'd like to ask it anyway.

Sure. Absolutely. Just to recollect last year performance on -- last year, we had a good strong financial performance. Even in the current quarter, our revenues are on track with the guidance, and free cash flow was impacted due to challenges in collections in the last month of the quarter, owing to the political situation in Middle East. I accrued about EUR 200,000 as free cash flow. And if I had collected probably another EUR 800,000 to EUR 1 million, we would have been on track with our guidance. We have a strong OBL, and I said nearly 2/3 is in ARR, and we have continued orders we are receiving. With the Middle East situation stabilizing a little bit, I think the company is confident of meeting the guidance, and that is why we have held on to the guidance.

I know that you answered this in the presentation, but it's in the question. So why is the tender offer period extended? Is this linked to the regulatory delay with the takeover?

Good question. As you know that we are a global company. We have operations in multiple geo locations. And certain geographies do require a specific approval to the tender offer, which I understand the offerers are taking the approvals from them. And they intimated that they are facing certain delays in certain geographies, which resulted in -- they have extended the offer period. That's basically to get the approvals in certain geographies.

You cite in your report increased travel costs. Can you talk about the extra costs that you are facing, for example, travel, hardship, insurance, evacuation costs?

Thank you. That's a good question. As far as the insurance are concerned, we do have sufficient insurance coverage on our assets, including on our people. But the -- in this quarter, my travel cost did increase. One, basically because some of the employees who were in this danger zone had to be evacuated and we have to be -- brought back to a safer zone. That did incur our cost. And in certain places, the customers insisted on having our people in their location, which also increased our cost. So these are the 2 reasons, mainly the evacuation cost. And also, mind you, sometimes if I need to get them, say, from Middle East to any geography, the flights were not directly available. So I had to take them into different locations and get them into a safer place. So these are some of the reasons which increased our cost in this quarter.

Okay. And then, we have some translations going on. Just a few minutes. I will finish, or I can just do straightaway.

Okay.

If you can give a comment -- did the write-downs come from the Middle East? Or the -- you mentioned the provision -- the charge against receivables.

No. We are completely out of our -- the Iran business, and they do not specifically relate to Iran. There are different customers in different geographies.

[Foreign Language] So in English, it would be, loans were repaid by EUR 0.4 million. Is reducing the loan-to-value ratio a strategic goal of the company?

Sorry, can you repeat that?

Loans were repaid by EUR 0.4 million. Is reducing the loan-to-value ratio a strategic goal of the company?

Let me tell you. The intention of the -- the policy of the company is to raise funds that are required when they are required. And I think we had explained this also at some point of time that these are the -- some of -- we call it as some of the discounting of the temporary bills, which we do based on the certain credit facilities extended by banks in certain geographies. Yes, the intention is to minimize the borrowings. But if the situation requires and if they are required for my operations, we have the ability to get them and make best use of our assets.

Thank you. [Foreign Language] [ When ] finished, when will the webcast be available? The webcast will be available today after we have just [indiscernible], and then probably in 1 hour or 2 hours, whenever we get that uploaded to the website. And then, there are questions related to the tender offer. Unfortunately, we are unable to take questions related to the tender offer or things regarding the tender offer period activities, as we can only be limited to the Q1 Tecnotree results. And I think we have run out of time. So I think without further ado, I'll say that in 1 month's time, the AGM will be held. Hopefully, we'll be coming with information soon. And the next time we will have an earnings call report will be the H1 2026 earnings call on August 4. But in 1 month, the AGM is planned to be held. So please stay tuned for news on that on the stock market and on our investor websites. Is there anything that you'd like to say, Indiresh, before we end the call?

Just thanks to the investors for joining this call and asking the questions. And see you soon in the AGM.

All right. Thank you, guys, and have a good day.

Thank you.