Troax Group AB (publ) (TROAX) Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Troax quarter 4 report. My name is Martin Nystrom; and as always, I have Anders, our CFO, with me here today, and we'll go through the quarter 4 results and key events. After the presentation, we'll open up for a Q&A session. And by that, let's dive into the quarter. The fourth quarter was for Troax a mixed bag of outcomes. In total, we report a minus 3% order intake growth organically and in the minus 3%, we have excluded the FX effect. We reported 10.8% EBITA margin, excluding the one-off effects, which I will come back to and net debt of EUR 1.7 million. If I start with the market and the market conditions, I think we can conclude that in the fourth quarter, the markets continued to trend softly, largely as we've seen throughout 2025. In Europe, we continued largely as in the third quarter. We had some signs of recovery in the warehousing segment as well as in the general industry segment. But at the same time, we also continue to see the automotive demand being soft. In the Americas, we saw a continued decline. And here, it's a 2-sided story. We do have a lot of activity and a lot of quoting activity with our American customers. But at the same time, there is still hesitation to make decisions, which makes us not come back to growth. APAC, our APAC region has had a fantastic 2025 overall with significant growth. Towards the end of the year, we saw the order intake softening a little bit in the quarter, although I would like to say that the pipeline and the activity remains strong and high in APAC. Also, I think when we look at the order intake and at the market, we still had a negative impact in this quarter roughly by EUR 2 million due to the move -- the factory move that we've had during the autumn between Poland and Sweden. So we -- if we compare to the third quarter, we had less of a negative impact from this. Now we're completed with the factory move and we will start taking on orders again beginning of 2026. The other key topic here is our lower EBITA in the quarter. We are now starting to feel really low volumes in our highly automated manufacturing. So that is one thing that pulls our profitability down for the quarter. And we've also to that had some 2 specific issues in the quarter. The first one is our North American operations. Due to the low order intake we saw in Q3, we now in Q4, have low volumes in our manufacturing facility, which drive our profitability down. We saw -- we had delayed pricing implementation in Q3. This is something we have adjusted. So in the order intake numbers, we do have some pricing impact, but this has not yet hit the P&L yet. To that, we have operational challenges in our old facility with old equipment, unstable equipment, a different make-by mix. And all in all, this in total diluted our EBITA margin by roughly 3 percentage points or 300 bps in the fourth quarter. The other specific challenge that we had in the quarter was our commercial partitioning business, which suffers from low margin, low volumes and also a profitability problem. And that in the quarter contributed with 1.3 percentage points or roughly 130 bps. If I move over to our supply chain optimization initiatives, we are making very good progress. We do have one-off impacts from this. So in the fourth quarter, it's very pleasing to see that our factory transfer from Poland to Sweden has been completed. We have completed this on time and within the budget during the fourth quarter. So we're going into 2026 in a much better shape. We're also having the factory transfer from Chicago to Nashville in the U.S., which is moving according to the plan, and we plan to finalize that moving close down Chicago towards the end of the second quarter this year. Combined with these projects then combined, we have related one-off costs. And in the quarter, we took EUR 4.2 million, covering the additional cost for this. It's double rent, double set of people as we ramp down, ramp up as well as we've looked over our assets, which means that we have written off some inventory, et cetera. And then going forward to guide a little bit for the remaining part of the move in the U.S., we estimate that we will have in addition EUR 2.2 million in the first and second quarter of 2026 up until we have finalized our American move, and we will report that as these costs occur. Finally, in the fourth quarter, I think we have concluded 3 very important strategic acquisitions. It's the platform acquisition of Vichnet, which provides market leadership in China as well as in Asia. And then we have our D-Flexx and Stommpy acquisitions, making us a platform for flexible barriers and a very needed product portfolio widening. And I'll come back to these in the next coming slides. If I start with Vichnet, we -- in the beginning of January, we closed this deal, which we announced during the fourth quarter. In practice, this means that we are now the leading player for machine guarding, and we also have a more attractive portfolio and exposure towards the data centers globally through the wire trays for cable management systems. And in 2024, we -- Vichnet had EUR 26 million roughly at the profitability that is the same as Troax Group for 2025. And starting from January and quarter 1 this year, Vichnet is part of the Troax Group. The second area where we made acquisitions, and this -- we've made 2 acquisitions here. We now have a complete and very strong offering for flexible barriers. So for logistics purposes, we have D-Flexx, which has been part of Danish German Dancop before. So we have a strong product offering in the flexible barriers for intralogistics, which go very well hand-in-hand with the core machine guarding offering that we have in the group. And secondly, we also acquired Stommpy, which has a unique technology for this, mainly targeting the food and bev as well as pharmaceutical segments. So we're very pleased to have all these 3 acquisitions and companies on board into the Troax Group. Then if I come back also to our North American expansion, we are aiming and we will improve our efficiency and expand our capacity in North America. We have done good progress, as I said. We will see -- when we're through this move, we will see higher competitiveness in the U.S. We will bring this to the 21st century when it comes to automation, best practices and also a better, more cost-effective location in the southern part of U.S. During the fourth quarter, we started to move our inventory, and we're also be seeing commissioning and installing machines, which will then be completed during the first and the second quarter. Then I'd like to say, and I think this is something that we -- the team should feel very proud of. We have now also optimized our European footprint, which means that our racking portfolio has now been streamlined. We have moved our operations from Poland to Sweden as planned during the fourth quarter. And we will now, going forward, enjoy both the order intake and the orders and sales coming back, and we will also enjoy the cost efficiency and the savings that were attached to this program. I'll then flip to the market development in the quarter, and it's largely a, you could say, a continuation of what we saw during 2025. If we look organically, excluding FX, we came in at minus 3%. So that is sequentially an improvement to the third quarter where we had minus 7%. If we then look at this from a geographical point of view with Northern and Southern Europe, we came in at minus 4% and minus 1%, respectively. We see automotive driving being -- driving this downwards, while we do, in fact, now also see some coming back in the warehousing segment. It's still early days for this, but surely a positive development, which bodes well for 2026 and onwards. In Americas, we came in at minus 4%. Automotive also here is driving this downwards, but -- and we do see some positive signs in the other industries segments. And APAC came in flat in the quarter. So very much a continuation of what we saw in Q3, but with the difference here that automotive is now trending slightly downwards, while we have warehousing and general industry moving slightly upwards. And with that, I'd like to hand over to you, Anders, to walk us through the financials of the quarter.

Thank you very much, Martin. Let's start with the order intake table. Troax Group reached EUR 64.4 million in order intake in Q4 of this year compared to EUR 68 million in last year. It's a decline by 5%, of which 3% is related to organic decline and the remaining part is related to structure and/or FX. If we look at the full year 2025, we reached EUR 261 million in order intake compared to EUR 277 million in 2024. That's a decline by 6% or 5% organically. As Martin mentioned here earlier, we do see a sequential growth in order intake compared to Q3, and we also have a favorable book-to-bill ratio of 5% in the fourth quarter. Moving over to sales. We reached EUR 61.2 million in sales compared to EUR 66.7 million in last year Q4. That's the 8% decline in sales. Looking to the full year, we reached EUR 262 million in sales compared to EUR 278 million in prior year, which is a 6% decline in sales year-over-year. Going then to the EBITA development. We reached EUR 6.6 million in EBITA for the fourth quarter, which is a 10.8% EBITA ratio to be compared with EUR 11.5 million in Q4 of last year or a 17.2% EBITA ratio. Looking into the full year, we reached EUR 36 million in EBITA or slightly below 14% in EBITA ratio compared to EUR 48 million in full year 2024 or a little bit more than 17% in EBITA ratio. So looking at the operating cash flow, we had cash flow from operations of EUR 4.8 million in Q4 of this year, compared to EUR 14.4 million in Q4 of last year. The ratio for this year was 73% of EBITA versus 126% in Q4 of last year. Again, looking at full year, we reached EUR 29.9 million in free cash flow from operations or 82% of EBITA compared to EUR 42.4 million in last year or 88% ratio. The net debt development, we have now increased a little bit due to the acquisitions that we have made in the fourth quarter. We are still way below the target of EUR 2.5 million. So we reached EUR 1.7 million in the fourth quarter, which means, of course, then we have continued firepower for future acquisitions. And last but not least, a summary of everything I mentioned earlier. The only thing I would like to comment here is the EPS for the fourth quarter was EUR 0.07 compared to EUR 0.15 in Q4 of last year. If we look then at full year, we reached EUR 0.40 of EPS compared to EUR 0.56 in 2024 full year. And also, we -- the Board is suggesting a EUR 0.24 dividend to the AGM further here in April compared to EUR 0.34 in last year. And with that, I hand over again to Martin.

Thank you, Anders. I think we now conclude the fourth quarter as well as the full year. And I think the 2025 has been a very busy and very hectic year for Troax. There has been a lot of transition work going on to this or going into this. And I'd like to say thanks to the whole team who has made this -- all of the work being put in better places. And I think if I look ahead, I think we have an organizational structure now in place, which definitely will help us to boost sales going forward. I think we have -- we are in a better place when it comes to generating cost synergies. Some of that hard work has been now done and complete during the second half of 2025, and we have our American operations well underway in the beginning of 2026. And I am also very pleased that we have added acquisitions that will help us drive both strategic relevance, but also profitable growth in the current segments where we're strong and also into new segments. So this makes me cautiously optimistic about '26 and also the development going forward. So with that, we end the presentation, and we will move over to Q&A.

So if you have a question please raise your hand and we will make sure to unlock your microphone. We will start with Jonny Jin from SEB.

Martin and Anders, can you hear me?

Absolutely.

A couple of questions from my side. I think I will start with the weak profitability in the quarter, starting with gross margin specifically. I would appreciate if you elaborate on the gross margin here. I know that you mentioned the lower volumes affecting the gross margin, but the sequential drop in sales is not extraordinary huge, but sequential drop in the gross margin stands out as very weak in a historical context. So could you maybe elaborate more there and how we should view the gross margin going forward?

Yes. No, absolutely. If we look at the gross margin, I think the gross margin is definitely on the low side in the quarter. If you look at what's driving that, I think we -- the main driver for this is the operational result and problems that we have in the U.S. So there is a pricing -- the pricing impact, there is, for sure, operational challenges to the low volumes. So I would say on the gross margin side, I think we've done a very good job in Asia, and we've done largely a good job in Europe when it comes to this. The gross profit issue very much sits with a combination of low volume, delayed price and then also having more operational supply problems in the U.S. in the old facility. So that explains the majority of that drop. And to that, we also struggled with low volumes, specifically in the commercial partitioning business. So those are the 2 main drivers, not only driving the EBITA margin down, but also the gross profit down.

Okay. But I think you mentioned the better pricing in the order book now. So how should we view the gross margin in Q1 and forward? Should we -- assuming that the market stays the same, can we expect a more normalized gross margin in Q1 or?

Yes. I think we should be expecting a profit -- gross profit improvement coming from pricing, which will then come to our P&L in the first quarter in the U.S. I don't think miraculously that all of the operational problems that we have in a facility that we're closing down, I don't think they will completely disappear. So it will be an improvement coming from the pricing part in -- yes, well, starting from the first quarter in 2026. We will continue to have quite some struggles on the operational side in the U.S. up until we are starting up our machinery gradually during the second quarter.

Yes. And could you remind me of the pressure of the -- from the price in this quarter on the U.S.?

Yes. If you look at the numbers from the U.S., you could say that probably half of this is price and half of this is operational challenges.

On the group level?

Yes, on the 300 bps that we have at the group level.

Yes, that's clear. Okay. And then I have a question on cost. I mean, you mentioned some double rental costs, relocation costs, overlap in personnel and such. But can we expect those costs to go -- continue going forward as well ahead? Or is that included in the EUR 2.2 million you guide for?

Yes.

Okay. Yes, that's clear. And then a final one on demand. I know that you remain cautiously optimistic. I think you said that, but I think you had similar reasoning for several quarters now, and we haven't really seen an improvement so much yet. So can you just elaborate on your reasoning? And do you have sort of any visibility at all for the coming quarters when we can expect this to show in the numbers even more?

Yes. I think that's the million-dollar question, and I think I'm not alone in being cautiously optimistic here. I do think -- I think we can look at this from different points. I think what makes me a bit more optimistic is when I look at the pipeline and activities in the warehousing segment, it's clearly more active in the second half than in the first half of the year. That, I think, bodes well. I do think also that we have been struggling partly if we look at the year-on-year comparison with the automotive segment, which has gradually come down during the year. We have started a lot of activities also for other segments, which I'm hoping that we will harvest from. And I also think there are some light in the tunnel when it comes to general industry in some specific markets. So I think that makes me -- we have, for example, more activity now going into defense partly. We have more activity going into food and pharma, which has been not the strongest segment of ours. So I think there are certainly things we've done within the group that won't necessarily require a more broad-based recovery of the economy. So I think it's a bit of both there. But I think if there is something I'd like to single out there, I do think the activity level on the warehousing segment is -- has been better in the second half than in the first half.

Understood. We'll see. But it sounds that is it more likely mid and the second half of this year, 2026 rather than the first half or...

I think it will be at some point during the year, whether that point is Q1 or Q2 or Q3, we're ready for when it comes. Then we will bring in Anna Widstrom.

So I just want to go into the relocation status on both the Polish and Swedish one in the U.S. So firstly, starting in the U.S., you're increasing capacity in the new facility in comparison to the old one. So given what the current run rate is, at what capacity utilization, in other words, how much higher volumes would we start to see these margin improvements? Would it be on current run rates? Or do you need to have organic volumes increasing to get the improvements on the higher efficiency in the new site?

Yes. I think this is at current volumes, we -- so basically, of course, the benefits increase with higher volumes. I'm not sure if I'm ready to give you any firm statement on that. I do think though that even at these volumes, I do think there is a benefit with the move. But those benefits are -- might be a bit lower than what a more normalized level would be. I think when we look at -- if you look at the absolute numbers that we currently have in the U.S., I think they are very soft. And I don't think as a planning prerequisite, that should be the base for how to evaluate this. But we will, for sure, see benefits on the efficiency side before we get to how we utilize the capacity to win more market share.

Okay. And then going into Poland and Sweden. So how has the relocation been received from customers so far, given like the delivery times and cost levels, et cetera? And also if you made any changes in the product portfolio that you have, if you've excluded some products that you delivered from Poland, but won't be delivering from Sweden?

Yes. No, I think we have indeed pruned the portfolio, and we've looked for finding the right balance between customer service and efficiency. So we are not bringing all of the portfolio that we produced in Poland to Sweden. That's clear. That's part of the cost saving initiative. I would say that initially here, we -- I think customers like that they have now a fully-fledged provider who can provide the various types of shelves and dividers and as well as anti-collapse systems, and we would do that from a portfolio point of view rather than from a factory location point of view. So from that point of view, I think it's been very, very positive. When it comes to the competitiveness and the pricing, I think it's also very much of a customer-by-customer, deal-by-deal discussion. So I think it's a little bit early to say that we have received any firm feedback. But I'd say early days, we -- I think this has been generally very positive in the customer dialogues that we've had.

Okay. And then just a final one from my side. Looking on how you're describing the ordering with the arrows, it seems like the -- most of the market is relatively flat or slightly positive in warehousing, where automotive is weak, and you've talked about it being gradually weaker during 2025. How should we think on that per region for '26? Is this an ongoing trend? Or do you think that we've seen much of the downturn already in some of the regions?

On automotive, I think we have seen most of the decline. I think the arrows are also year-on-year. We still -- since we're late in the cycle, we had pretty good orders towards the end of last year -- well, not last year as in '25, but end of '24. So on a year-on-year comparison, we're clearly down on automotive. I think when it comes to the levels as such, I think we have come down to a much lower level on that. So I'm not expecting that level necessarily to increase that much further going forward. If we look at this from a geographical point of view, I think my view is that we will likely get to growth in green arrows quicker in the U.S. or in North America than we do in Europe. APAC has been overall a pretty good year, even though the fourth quarter wasn't a growth quarter in automotive. Next one would be Gustav Berneblad.

It's Gustav here from Nordea. Just thought that maybe just start off here with the order intake and basically given what we have seen here in the last quarters. I mean, is there any reason to think that you go into '26 here now with an extraordinary high backlog to any sense? Or what's your view there?

No. I'm not sure what you'd say, Anders. I would tend to say no. I don't think so. I don't think it's something out of the ordinary. It might be a bit in the U.S. But otherwise, I think it's nothing out of the ordinary, Gustav.

Yes. Okay. Perfect. And then in terms of the consolidation here in Poland, Sweden, I mean, should we expect sort of a ramp-up phase here in starting Q1? Or is it -- are you firing on all cylinders right away or...

No, I do think in theory, we would like this to be just like a button which we push on and off. And that button works well when we turn it off. When it comes to ramping this up, I think it's very much dependent on some of the larger deals and customer discussions we have, whether this will go fast or whether that ramp-up will come a little slower. So there is a bit of timing effect on the large racking projects in the speed of ramping this back up again. But we will, for sure, see a coming back on the order and sales side of that part of the racking portfolio.

That's perfect. And then also sort of connected to this, I mean, warehouse arrows, as Anna was into, looks more positive. Are there also larger projects coming into order intake now and we should expect sort of that lead time for the dynamic in the order intake here changes a bit. So it's longer lead times in the order book or...

I think -- I guess your question comes a bit from what we experienced during '21 and '22. I think we are -- you can, of course, say that the larger projects come with a little bit longer lead time just due to the share size of it and the logistics of it. I think though that we need to remember that the market was kind of firing on all cylinders back then. I think we come from in the warehousing sector, very low levels. So I think it's not necessarily the supply chain that will -- last time we had supply chain bottlenecks, I would say those are not present for the time being at these levels. So I wouldn't expect the usual order intake to sales pattern to change dramatically at these levels yet.

That's very clear. And sorry, just one last one, just a bit of a clarification here. On the operational struggles you are having in North America, can you just elaborate a bit more on those and also what you expect sort of how this develop in Q1 or starting 2023?

I think what this practically translates to is old equipment breaking down where some of this equipment might -- it might be hard to find repairs and spares and find someone who could fix them for us. So I think it's one week, it might be a welder, the other week, it might be a laser. The third week, it might be the paint shop. So it's very difficult to say exactly how this will pan out as we now ramp down. And of course, we're also not interested in over repairing old equipment, which we will not bring with us to the new site. And so it drives the repair work, it drives downtime, and it also drives additional outsourcing when the machinery is not up and running. And I think that will continue -- the challenging situation will continue through Q1, then somewhere starting in Q2, we will start to get some production output from our new place when we get going. So that problem will -- with time, will decline a bit as well.

Yes. Okay. Fair. So it sounds like it's -- you're giving up on the equipment sort of now here and with pressure...

I think the equipment is giving up on us. Next one would be Daniel Lindkvist.

It's Daniel Lindkvist from Danske Bank. So just continuing on Gustav's question, I mean, we have had a number of quarters in a row now with not full conversion of the previous quarter's order book. Have you seen some losses in the order books? Or is it just normal pent-up and fluctuations?

I would say the latter. I would say it's normal. So we -- it's not that we're suffering from order cancellations or anything like that. I'd say that's more part of normal business more than anything else.

Okay. Cool. And then just -- I mean, now you have a EUR 64.4 million with you into Q1. What should we expect conversion-wise like the previous quarters? Or should we expect that you still aim to convert the order book in the upcoming quarter?

I think we should -- I don't think you should change the pattern that you usually have. There is nothing in the mix currently that changes that in any significant way.

Okay. Perfect. And then, I mean, now you have quite some -- we saw very little of it in the order intake for Q4, but you have quite some M&A hitting you starting in Q1. And just doing the easy math, it's some 40 per year, something like that on the levels that you bought them at. So that should be maybe some 10 then in Q1. So my question is basically, are there any seasonal variations we should be aware of in those acquired units that could potentially mean that there's significantly less than so in Q1?

Yes. I think on this one, I think when it comes to the barrier business, it's from core or from the machine guarding product portfolio. And I don't think it has to do with the product. It has to do with the geographical exposure. When it comes to the Vichnet in China, obviously, we have Chinese New Year not in December, but now coming usually somewhere between January and February. So the first quarter usually in APAC or in China specifically is usually a little slower than the rest. And of course, the Chinese or the APAC exposure to for Troax is now with this acquisition a little larger.

But nothing with the normal barrier businesses. Those are just evenly spread normally.

That goes for the APAC and the Chinese business.

Okay. And then just for the newly acquired ones on the lead time from order to delivery, anything to think about? Are those shorter lead times from order to delivery or vice versa?

You'd have a mix in that. You'd have a lot of quite fast-paced orders. So if we usually run between order and delivery, we have, you could say, the machine guarding pattern, you'd have that for portions of that business. Then you'd have the other part of this would then follow more the larger projects where there is a little on average, longer lead time between order and delivery.

Okay. Perfect. And then if you just could update us on the situation with the cost savings. We take the admin side first, and then I guess we should wait for the effects of the net on move to see any effect until Q2 then perhaps or maybe some late Q1? And what have you seen this far with cost savings on admin?

Yes. I think the cost savings on the sales and admin that we launched in Q2, I think, has been as intended. What we saw the personnel cost has come down. That's one side of the story. The other side of the story is also that we're now trying to force some of the digitalization projects and to cross the finish line, which we also had some costs remaining in the fourth quarter though, also from the beginning of Q1. So we perhaps we've been a little bit delayed on this when I thought we'd be completely finalized in the fourth quarter. We'll most likely have a little bit of that in the first quarter, but we'll make sure that we wrap this project up in the first quarter on the digitalization side. So the cost saving program has yielded what it should have done, but there has been also some other elements into this. When it comes to the factory move, what we said in the savings program is that we will start to have full effect of this from beginning of '26, which means that the factory building, in the factory in Poland is now empty. The personnel has been -- has found new jobs with other companies, which means that the cost base is now lower. Then when it comes to the run rate savings, then you also have the impact of volume, but we have certainly gotten the effect of the fixed cost base out from -- by end of 2025. So that is as per plan.

And you will start to deliver the [ net on ] products from March. Is that the...

Yes, we will do some deliveries prior to that as well. Now I'm not sure if you want to make one more come back, Jonny. I see your hand being up or is that your old one?

Yes, I want to make one follow-up question, if I may. The acquisitions, the margin, how should we think about the margin there? Because I know that you said, if I interpret it correctly, that they should be in line with the group, but the group EBITA margin has been fluctuating a bit here coming from. I mean, now you do 13.8% EBITA margin in 2025. You did 18% the year before that and over 19% before the year before that. So what level should we expect when you say in line there for acquisitions?

Yes. I think you should expect the combination of this to be above the 2025 full year margin and -- but not as fully as high as prior years. So somewhere in between there to begin with.

So maybe 15%, is that a fair assumption on average?

Yes. Okay. I see no further questions. Great. Then I'll thank you for attending our call, and we'll -- I'll see you in latest quarter's time. Thank you, and bye-bye.

Bye.