Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to TomTom's fourth quarter and full year 2025 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question and answer session towards the end of today's prepared remarks, at which time if you wish to ask a question you may do so by pressing star one one on your telephone keypad, where you will hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. If you are calling in via Microsoft Teams, please ensure you press star one one from the keypad where the call is made and not from your Teams screen in order to enter the queue. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn over to your host for today's conference, Claudia Janssen from Investor Relations. You may begin.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our conference call. In today's call, we will discuss the fourth quarter and full year 2025 operational highlights and financial results with CEO Harold Goddijn and CFO Taco Titulaer. Harold will begin with an update on strategic developments. Taco will then provide further insight into our financial results, our automotive backlog, and our outlook. After their prepared remarks, we will open the line for your questions. As always, please note that Safe Harbor applies. And with that, Harold, let me hand it over to you.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Claudia. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. 2025 was an important year for TomTom as our product strategy clearly matured and we gained commercial traction. We introduced several new products, with our lane model maps standing out as a major milestone. Orbis's lane model maps provide lane-level intelligence, including geometry and lane markings, but at a true urban scale. And by leveraging our AI-powered Map Factory , we can now produce lane-accurate maps with exceptional efficiency and freshness, and this has been proven to be a differentiating capability.
A strong validation is that we secured a record amount of new business, and that includes a collaboration with CARIAD, where TomTom Orbis's lane model maps were selected as a core component of the automated driving system supporting the Volkswagen Group brands. In enterprise, Orbis's maps broadened and diversified our customer base.
In the beginning of 2025, we announced a new cooperation with Esri, through which we provide maps and traffic data to support businesses and governments with location intelligence, addressing various use cases from maintaining critical infrastructure to analyzing traffic flows. More recently, we deepened our global partnership with Uber, expanding our collaboration to enhance on-demand travel experiences worldwide. Looking ahead to 2026, I'm confident that continued advancements in our product portfolio will further strengthen our commercial traction across both our automotive and enterprise business, supporting top-line growth over time.
We will continue to expand and enhance our product offering, and we will make it easier for developers and for businesses to access our data, which will support future growth. We see meaningful commercial opportunities emerging in automated driving and infotainment, as well as in high-potential verticals such as insurtech, state, and local government. Thank you very much. This is my part of the presentation. I'm handing over to Taco.
Thank you, Harold. I will cover our financial performance, the key trends we're seeing, an update on our automotive backlog, and our outlook, after which we'll take your questions. Automotive IFRS revenue for the fourth quarter amounted to EUR 77 million, down 3% year-on-year. Automotive operational revenue was 12% lower compared to Q4 last year. The enterprise business delivered EUR 39 million, a 10% decline versus the same quarter last year.
Approximately half of this decline is explained by the weaker US dollar versus the euro year-on-year, as around three-quarters of our enterprise revenue are US dollar denominated. The remainder of the decline reflects a continued phased-out of a large customer, partly offset by a broadening of our customer base over the course of the year.
Gross margin was 89% in the fourth quarter, a 2 percentage point improvement compared with Q4 2024, mainly driven by a lower proportion of hardware in our revenue mix. Operating expenses were EUR 110 million, a reduction of EUR 21 million compared with the same period last year, reflecting the combined effect of capitalizing development costs associated with our lane model maps and disciplined cost management.
For the full year 2025, we recorded group revenue of EUR 555 million, 3% lower than in 2024. Automotive IFRS revenue was EUR 323 million, down 2% from last year due to lower car volumes at some customers and the phase-out of certain car lines, partly balanced by new model starting productions. Operational revenue in automotive dropped 1%, staying largely stable versus 2024. Our enterprise revenue for the year was EUR 159 million, 2% lower year on year.
For the full year, the picture is similar, as in the quarter, normalized for the currency fluctuations. Enterprise revenue showed a marginal increase compared with last year. For the full year, gross margin was 88%, an improvement compared with 2024. This continued shift away from consumer hardware starkly strengthens our gross margin, from 85% in 2024 to 88% in 2025, and we expect it to move north of 90% in 2026.
Operating expenses decreased to EUR 489 million, a EUR 19 million reduction, same as for the Q4 trend. This reduction was due to capitalization of our map investment, lower amortization charges, and reduced personnel costs from the second half of 2025, partly offset by the reorganization charge booked in Q2 2025. Looking ahead, the quarterly OpEx run rate entering in 2026 will likely be a few million euros higher than what we saw in Q4.
But for the year as a whole, we expect the total operating expenses to remain below 2025, in 2026. Free cash flow, excluding the costs for the reorganization we announced halfway in the year, EUR 90 million. This was an inflow of EUR 32 million compared with EUR 4 million outflow last year. Having covered our results, let's move on to the automotive backlog. Our automotive backlog at the end of the year reached EUR 2.4 billion, a net increase of EUR 300 million compared with the end of 2024.
Our automotive backlog represents the expected IFRS revenue from all awarded deals. Accordingly, the backlog decreases as revenue is recognized and increases when new deals are won. Its value can also fluctuate when customers revise their vehicle production forecasts and with forex revaluations. The increase in backlog this year was driven by a record level of new deals.
Our book-to-bill ratio was well above two last year, partly offset by negative impact from forex revaluations, which has a more pronounced than usual effect on the backlog valuation. A large portion of the automotive revenue we expect to report in 2026, 2027, is already covered by the backlog generated from prior years' order intake. The majority of the value from 2025 order intake is expected to start being recognized from 2028 onwards.
From a product perspective, we see automotive RFQs increasingly gravitating towards lane model maps. The maps that enable autonomous driving functionality and support a growing range of advanced safety features. The products accounted for approximately half of last year's order intake, and we expect this share to continue to grow. OEMs are clearly increasing their product and engineering focus in this area as lane model maps enable both improved vehicle performance and meaningful differentiation.
Our strong positioning in this area reflects a decade of sustained investment in these capabilities, and we're now seeing those investments translate into tangible commercial results. An additional benefit is that securing lane model maps deals opens the door to road model map awards for the navigation use cases, supporting further market share gains. Now, let's move to the 2026 outlook.
Looking ahead to 2026, our revenue will reflect the transition of some customers. However, this impact is temporary. 2026 group revenue is projected to be between EUR 495 million and EUR 555 million, with location technology contributing EUR 435 million-EUR 485 million. We expect our operating result to improve year-on-year, while free cash flow is expected to turn temporarily negative due to the sustained investment in our lane model maps. Operating margin is expected to be around 3% of group revenue.
A return to top-line growth is foreseen in 2027. Higher revenues combined with disciplined cost control are set to drive a further step up in operating margin as well. To conclude, let me summarize our prepared remarks. We closed 2025 with a strong strategic momentum marked by a record automotive order intake and an expansion into automated driving.
Despite modest top-line declines driven by market conditions and customer transitions, EBIT and cash generation improved meaningfully. With an exceptional EUR 2.4 billion automotive backlog, new product launches, and strengthening commercial partnerships, TomTom enters 2026 well-positioned for a return to growth in 2027. With that, we're ready to take your questions. Please, operator, please start the Q&A session.
Thank you. Well, we'll now begin the question and answer session. If you have a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Once again, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Thank you. We are now going to proceed with our first question. Our question comes from the line from Marc Hesselink from ING. Please ask your question. Your line is open.
Yes. Thanks. I have a couple of questions on the lane model. I think this is the new product versus the HD Maps that you previously had, but I think under the hood, a lot changed, as in, the way you built your process, you built your map, how you can integrate it with the client. Just if you can explain how this product currently looks like, and also, yeah, how are your clients going to integrate it. And if you can also talk about, yeah, what is your competitive position there? Is this now something that is really unique, for TomTom, that none of the competition has something like this? And if you then compare it, there's always sometimes the debate between, for this kind of functionality, do you need a map? Yes or no? What's the status there also with things like the redundancy of the safety features?
Yeah, Marc, thank you. Yeah, so the lane model is fundamentally different from a road model map because it is a representation of the actual road, and all the lines on that road and the dividers and whatnot. So you get a replica, encoded, of what the road surface looks like. And the problem with building that map is that it's always been very expensive and it didn't scale very well. But with new advances in technology, and new data that are becoming available, we can now produce those maps to a high degree of automation. Not completely automated, but there's a high degree of automation that's possible now. And that means that it's becoming economically viable to do this on all roads, not just the motorways.
And it also means that you have a process for upgrading and change detection, so you can build maps that are fresher. All those capabilities are critical for self-driving and automated driving. We see that those maps are used in those systems as not only as backup but also as a sensor. The challenge for self-driving technologies is to reduce the number of interventions of the driver of the vehicle. And maps and maps data play a very critical role in reaching that objective.
Yes. And the competition, at this stage?
Well, so we don't have full visibility, but we believe that the method that we are deploying is novel, differentiating, leads to better results, scales better than what our competitors are capable of producing.
Okay. And if we look at the client side, yeah, you obviously have a big success with the CARIAD. But what about the discussions with other OEMs? Is this something that you took?
Yeah.
I'm sorry. Please.
Yeah, go on, Marc.
Yeah. I said and I wanted to add to, do you speak to many other clients, including, also the Chinese OEMs?
Yeah. So the interest is coming from a broad range of car brands. The people of car makers want this. They can see the value of having that dataset available for the self-driving function. And that is broadly shared amongst all our customers and also potentially new customers. So we see a profound deep interest in understanding what's going on and how this technology can help them to make those cars and bring the level of automation to the next level.
And next to that, we also see interest from software developers who are developing the self-driving software stack. There are a number of independent software developers who are doing this, some based mostly in China. And they also show strong interest in understanding what this technology can bring and how it can help them to mature their own technology stack.
Okay. Clear. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. It's star one one to ask a question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
If there's no further questions, let me give the opportunity to some of the analysts if they want to take the questions. If not, no? If there's no additional questions, I want to thank you all for joining us today. Operator, you may now close the call.
There is a.
Oh, sorry. Andrew, sorry.
Just a moment.
I have a question that's come through now.
Yes, please.
One moment, please. So we are now going to take the next question from Andrew Hayman from Independent Minds. Please ask your question.
Yes. Could you maybe give some guidance to how negative you think the EUR free cash flow will be in 2026?
Yeah. Now, yeah, thank you, Andrew. So, yeah, two things I want to say about it. One is, the second thing is to answer your question, but the first thing is that we introduced new guidance metrics in 2020. So we get guidance on the top line and the bottom line. The top line was the group revenue and the location technology revenue. And the bottom line, we chose free cash flow because free cash flow at that time was the best tracker of our profitability. That had to do with the disparity, the difference between operating and reported revenue in automotive and the big delta between amortization and CapEx that we saw on the in the OpEx line, resulting from the acquisition of Tele Atlas.
Now both effects are kind of gone, so you also saw last year that reported revenue and operational revenue in automotive is a parity. They're kind of almost the same. And also we don't have any amortization left that's related to the Tele Atlas acquisition. So we want to normalize our guidance towards an a revenue and an EBIT forecast. And that said, as we also have and then coming into your second or your primarily question, the fact that automotive is declining next year temporarily, and we sustain our investment at the same level as we had last year, we will see free cash flow being negative in this year. How large it will be, it's I don't know exactly, but I expect it will be above EUR 10 million, but not much more than that.
And then, if our revenue or top line is recovering in 2027, I expect that free cash flow will be positive again as of 2027 onwards. But an official guidance will follow in 12 months from now about that. So we'll continue to provide direction about free cash flow, but the primary guide or primary KPI for profitability will be EBIT.
Okay. Thank you. And then, in terms of the bookings that came in, how much of that is new customers, and how much is just more business from existing customers? And then maybe just tied in with that, how does the funnel of business look for 2026? Is there going to be? Is it a bit quieter after so much activity in 2025?
Well, yeah. So if you look at order intake, you can make a two-by-two matrix. On the horizontal, you say existing customers and new customers. On the vertical, you say lane model or road model, where lane model is the automating automated driving and safety use cases, and where road model is more for the driver itself to navigate from A to B. What I already mentioned in my prepared remarks is that what we've seen is that if you break down the order intake of last year, that roughly half of that order intake is related to lane model. And that percentage will only grow further. So also for 2026, we think that the proportion of lane model RFQs and potential wins will be tilted towards lane model, and not so much road model. road models can be a tag-along deal.
We increasingly OEMs want to focus on securing the right quality and the right vendor of lane models. A lso, that gives us opportunities to also secure extra deals in road modeling. The majority, yeah, CARIAD is an existing customer, of course, because we already do software with them. So in that sense, the majority of the order intake was with existing customers. But well, I want to add it's the first time that we deliver map data at scale to the VW Group. Yeah, that's different. But before it was navigation software and traffic, etc., but now it is also including map data.
Okay. How does the funnel of potential sales look for this year?
Yeah.
'Cause it looks like it, it would does it? I mean, for yeah. Sorry.
Yes. Well, there's a broad and deep book of opportunities out there, not dissimilar from 2025. So the activity really is there, from what we can see now. But what we also have seen in 2025 is that timing is very difficult to predict, also because of ambiguity in product planning, in all sorts of market conditions, b ut I think the way we look at it now, there's substantial opportunity available again in 2026, for further building of the backlog. And there are also opportunities available to us for extending and growing our market share.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. We are now going to proceed with our next question. The questions come from the line of Marc Hesselink from ING. Please ask your question.
Yes. Thanks. Follow-up one on the enterprise segment. I think in previous calls, we've discussed a lot about the momentum for the small clients being quite good, but then for the bigger, longer sales cycles. Is that still ongoing? Are you still talking to these bigger potential clients, and would you expect something, yeah, beyond 2026 in the 2027 period? Is that likely?
I don't think we don't anticipate a big shift in market opportunities in 2026. No extraordinary. But we think that the momentum we have to an extent in the long tail of opportunities that will continue throughout 2026. The composition, yeah. So there is a lot to go after in, also in the enterprise sector.
Okay. But the big clients, they sort of stick to their own products or?
Well, we have a good market share with the big tech companies already. There are not that many of them, but our market share there and our representation with big tech is significant. So the growth and the expansion needs to come from companies below that tier. There are a lot of them in the EUR 10 million kind of category. There are a lot of them in the between EUR 1 million and EUR 10 million category that are available to us to win.
Okay. Okay. That's clear. And then the second follow-up was on, you mentioned also for and next year, so 2027, to, yeah, be cautious on the cost side. And I just want to understand that a bit, then, because I think that you say, you're moving towards the more automated process. It's, yeah, almost now already almost fully automated. Is that something that you can still take a bit of steps there to further automate it and at that stage, decrease the cost a bit?
Yeah. Well, so there's a number of things that we can achieve through in on the cost side. I think the most important one is that our product portfolio is maturing and coming together. We're more product-driven than in the past. And that means that we can do things more effectively, better, at higher quality, and we can leverage that software much better than we've ever been able to do in the past. We also see opportunities to further leverage the power of AI, especially in the engineering side. We're making some meaningful progress in that area.
So, the combination of a simpler product portfolio at a higher quality that is reaching completeness now, after a long period of transition, allows. Those are all indicators that we can do things more faster at higher quality, but also with, you know, allows also to keep a lid on the cost, and don't let that grow. There will be additional cost in maturing the lane-level product, as Taco already indicated. But all in all, I think we are in a good position not to let the cost and the OpEx run away from us, but rather contain it and manage it carefully without that giving, you know, strong limitation on our ability to get things done.
Okay. Great. Thanks.
Okay. With that, I want to thank you all for joining us today. Operator, now you can really close the call. Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's presentation. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.