Thank you very much. Good afternoon to all of you, and thank you very much for joining us today for our full-year result presentation and business update. As usual, we will start by giving you the key highlights of the past 12 months, and I will then hand over to our CFO, Lorenzo, for a deeper dive into our financials. In the second half of this presentation, our CEO, Max, will give you a full update on our business and the milestone we have achieved. This will include some flavor for our outlook in 2025, as well as insight on our product pipeline, strategy, and financial guidance for the coming months. If we start by looking at this picture of our quarterly top line, it is fair to say that we went through an unprecedented difficult year.
This comes on the back of over a decade where we delivered a continuous double-digit growth in revenues. It means that for the first time, we ended up with sales down 13% at EUR 183.5 million. This is obviously disappointing, but we want to look at the glass half full and focus your attention on three elements. First, the headwinds that we had to navigate were the same, if not worse, for every global player in our sector. This top line decrease is actually marginally better than most of our competitors, which ended up their fiscal year down between 15% and 20%. This should be read as a demonstration that our positioning and business model is more resilient through the cycle, and that the long-term relationship we have built with our core customers is a significant asset in more difficult times.
The second point we want to highlight is obviously our margin profile. This is a very important KPI for us, and it has actually improved in what was a complex environment, staying consistently at or above our 50% target. This is a proof that focusing our offering on custom-made hardware solutions and increasingly cross-selling it with our software suite allows us to set the best-in-class standard in terms of gross profit margin. Finally, we want to emphasize that both of these numbers came ahead of the guidance we had shared last summer. We view this as a significant milestone on the road to gradually re-engaging in a constructive dialogue with both our shareholders and the broader buy-side community. Looking at our numbers, there are four items to take away.
I have already addressed the trajectory of our top line and how resilient it was versus the rest of the sector, but we wanted to highlight the contribution of our Clea business. It is now consistently providing us with a visible and recurring stream of revenues driven by the increasing adoption from both historical and new clients. Max will come back in the second half of the presentation highlighting some of the new projects we have won, as well as our pipeline of solutions and services for the next 12 months. The second point I wanted to stress was the gross profitability. I have already addressed it, and I can therefore focus my comment on the bottom half of our P&L. The high operating leverage under which our company is structured means that the decrease in revenue was always going to be amplified at EBITDA level.
That being said, we still managed to report an adjusted EBITDA of EUR 28.2 million, a figure which came ahead of consensus expectations. You can also expect to see this operating leverage playing back in our favor as soon as this year, supported by the quick rebound in our business. Finally, and on a much more positive note, we focused our attention in 2024 on significantly improving our operations and networking capital. This had an immediate impact on our cash generation and allowed us to keep full control of our balance sheet, reducing our net financial position to EUR 41.3 million, equivalent to a 1.5 net leverage. Before I leave the floor to our CFO, I wanted to reiterate my comment on the importance of putting these results in perspective with the rest of the sector.
Impacted by a longer-than-anticipated destocking from OEMs and combined with an adverse macro environment, our top line suffered from subdued demand. Our business model enabled us to keep a best-in-class level of profitability, both at gross margin level as from an adjusted EBITDA perspective. This is extremely important for us and will continue to be a key performance indicator under which we want to operate. We hope that this will gradually be appreciated again by the financial community. I now hand over to our CFO, Lorenzo, who will go through our financial results in more detail.
Thank you. Thank you, Clarence, and good afternoon to everybody. Let's go together to see 2024 financial highlights. For what regard net sales, I do not comment further. Clarence fully explained it really in details. Instead, I would like to spend and to focus my attention on gross margin. As you can see, for the first time, we talk here of adjusted gross margin. The reason is due to the fact that the year was impacted by an extraordinary breakdown of components relating to BioRespira. BioRespira was a ventilator, a pulmonary ventilator that was developed by us during the COVID period. Due to the fact that the rotation in the last 12-18 months reduced, we decided in the year to write this out. The amount that we incurred was EUR 4.1 million. For this reason, for the first time, you see here an adjustment to the gross margin.
Excluding this item, the adjusted gross margin was at 23% in line with 2023. This is a really good result if we consider all the dynamic of the year. In particular, the driver to get this gross margin was for sure the performance we achieved in the last quarter of 2024, in which we recorded a gross margin of 54.5%. The driver of this really good gross margin in Q4 was for sure the sales mix in the edge computing business, in which we had a really profitable customer that came out again. Moreover, we continue to get really good performance in the components buying, and we are getting reduction in the cost of our components. Passing to our performance at adjusted EBITDA level, we closed 2024 with an adjusted gross margin of 15.4%. Really good results on our standpoint.
This show, on my point of view, the resiliency of the company considering the difficult performance at the sales level. We have been able to get this performance in terms of adjusted gross margin thanks to a really robust.
EBITDA.
Sorry, EBITDA. Thanks to a really robust performance in Q4 in terms of adjusted EBITDA. Actually, with adjusted EBITDA, we reached in Q4 18%. This was driven by two things. For sure, the performance of gross margin level that, as I told you before, we achieved more than 54%. Moreover, a really good control over our OpEx. Consider that respect to Q3, we saved EUR 700,000 of transformation and manufacturing cost in terms of outsourcing and direct labor respect to Q3. This trend we are also expecting to be continued in the next quarter. Passing to our performance in terms of adjusted net income, we closed the year with a positive net income. This is for sure for us a good result in a difficult year in terms of sales.
We have been able to be positive in terms of adjusted net income thanks to a really careful management of net financial expenses. Actually, as you can see, we were able to reduce by EUR 3.2 million net financial expenses in 2024 respect to 2023. This, despite the fact that you know what happened during the year on the reverse side, that up to the summer reached level pretty, pretty high. Just a comment regarding adjusted net income that this year was adjusted for an extraordinary item that is a goodwill impairment regarding the cash generating unit that is a second line user. The reason of this goodwill impairment is due to the fact that this cash generating unit stopped to exist because the software development team reached this goal in terms of developing all the Clea add-on that was integrated in the platform.
The CGU will be integrated into another CGU, but according to IFRS 16, goodwill cannot be transferred. We decided and we were obliged to the accounting principle to import this item. Let's go and let's spend a couple of words regarding our net sales breakdown by geography and by verticals. I would like to say that the decrease that we had in sales is equally spread out geographic area in verticals. Actually, the reduction in sales was driven by macroeconomic context, so de stocking and interest rate and not related to our sector. There are some exceptions of verticals that performed a little well respect to others, like for example, vending on fitness, but these are related to the situation of specific customers. Passing to commenting a little bit in more detail, our performance in terms of adjusted EBITDA.
In this bridge chart, we can see what are the key drivers and reasons that we passed from EUR50.6 million to EUR28.2 million. You can see here that the big portion is for sure explained by the reduction of sales and by obviously the impact of the negative operating leverage. However, things that I really would like to stress out is the fact that during the year we were able to really control pretty well the OpEx and consider that in 2024 we had OpEx that was more or less equal to 2023, despite the fact that in the first half we were impacted by high transformation and manufacturing cost in terms of outsourcing and direct labor due to an unfavorable mix in terms of product that was more complex to be produced.
However, we recovered a lot on this factor in the second half of the year also thanks to the fact that we were able both in Italy and also in Germany to increase our level of manufacturing efficiency. We expect to bring in the future also this performance in terms of productivity. Passing to comment the EBITDA adjustment and to see them with you, you can see that a big part as usual is explained by the stock option actuarial value for EUR 5 million. Other than this, almost EUR 3 million is explained by the tax verification that we had in the first half of the year. EUR 2.3 million is reassessment while EUR 700,000 that is included in the other extraordinary OPEX is related to accruals that we did during the year.
In addition to this, as explained already to you before, there is this breakdown of the components that we had in the inventory relating to the pulmonary ventilator. A comment regarding our performance on which we closed the year on the adjusted net financial position. We were able to reduce the net financial position by EUR 11 million in just one year. This is a really, really good number for us. It means that we were able to improve our net financial position by 20% in just one year. EUR 11 million of cash generation. A big part of this result was generated in the last quarter of the year thanks to a really good management of the trade working capital.
We reduced trade receivable and we reduced in particular inventory of just EUR 3.3 million in the last quarter of the year, but of about EUR 10 million all over the year. A last point that I would like to stress regarding the net financial position and related to this is our leverage ratio. We closed the year to 1.5 net financial position on EBITDA. I think this is a really solid and good number in particular considering the fact that this year due to sales we reduced EBITDA, but despite this we keep the company with a really solid and good situation in terms of leverage. Thank you very much for your attention and I pass the speech to Massimo Mauri. Thank you.
Many thanks, Lorenzo, for your presentation. Now I want to take some time to give you an update on our business. On this slide, our intention was to share some visibility on the KPI we monitor when we track the direction of our business. As you can see, there was a clear inflection in our order book at the end of the last year. On the left, you can see basically the trend of the order book and on the right, the book-to-bill ratio. As you can see, also the book-to-bill ratio confirmed that we are now from already a couple of months back over one. I can also say that the context of the discussion we are having with both new and historical clients has dramatically improved in the last few months.
All of this reinforces our view that the past year was just an exceptional negative context and the investment case behind our business remains intact. In the next slide, you can see more in detail the driver behind the rebound of our growth. I want to put them into buckets. First, all the R&D investments we have made over the past decade will now allow us to capture the demand for technology from our customers. This is true in both our hardware division and our software one, both of which come together and offer a unique end-to-end solution for OEM. In fact, I will shortly take you through the pipeline of new products we have in store for the next 12 months with a strong focus on the edge AI application. This will be very important for the evolution of our sector.
I think this is true also for our software business. The Clea is getting a lot of traction thanks to the request of more connectivity, more IoT, more capability to analyze data. We are receiving endorsement for a growing number of leading partners. All of this is backed by a market context which is improving by the day. The normalization of some macro indicators should help unlock the next CapEx cycle from the industrial player. We are seeing a growing adoption of IoT technology among OEM driven by the demand for HMI and the need of performing IoT platform to deploy AI at the edge. In the next slide, we can see basically how we will go back to deliver double-digit growth in 2025 as we have done historically.
This rebound will start as early as the first quarter of the year for which I can already confirm we will reach over EUR 47 million of revenue. I'm also expecting a positive trend during the year and for the quarter one to be the foundation for higher revenue in the incoming quarters. The guidance in terms of gross profit margin remains unchanged at above 50% in line with the historical one. I really think that this year is started with a robust demand in any region, excluding for now the German part of the DACH area which we are expecting to see a recovery on it in the second part of the year. The rest of the world is really going in the right direction, getting better and better as we go.
Let me now take you through a more operational update on our business, our news flow, product pipeline, and strategy. I'm sure that you will have noticed the intense news flow surrounding our company in the past few months. From key technological partnership growing our ecosystem and expanding our client reach with like of NXP, Raspberry Pi, and Nayax to significant new business wins such as one with Hitachi Energy or BTDA fueling our revenue for the years to come. On trios with recent announcement, I want to provide more details on the meaning they have for our Clea business. In the agreement, for example, we signed with Hitachi Energy for their new family of mast boxes. It will cover almost 200,000 pieces of hardware based on the latest generation of Qualcomm chip. It also includes the development of a dedicated IoT platform based on Clea.
This contract, valid for 10 years, will generate around EUR 1 million of recurring revenue on the software alone per year. This is significant validation of our technology from a global player such as Hitachi Energy. In a similar way, the 11-year agreement we signed with BTDA in Germany will lead the rollout of our Clea platform on over 200,000 devices. It will generate, thanks to different Clea vending telemetry solutions, recurring revenue of circa EUR 8 million per year. I think this one is a very good achievement. The last one, which is very promising looking in the future, is the payment system we did together with Nayax, where we are including the Nayax solution into Clea. It will open for us a very big potential market, multiply these use cases in the vending industries.
I think this one will strengthen our historical leadership in that segment and increase the portion of recurring revenue attached with each hardware device. I was in Nuremberg attending the Embedded World, which is the most important trade show in our sector. I want to provide you, which was basically the feedback that I received from the exhibition. I can tell you that basically this solution that we presented is getting a lot of traction. We were able to present a lineup of over a dozen new hardware products running on NXP, Ax elera, and more. We were able also to show live demos running Clea over 50 different kinds of verticals where Clea was able to deploy in real-time algorithms to show how powerful it could be, the edge AI running into the device thanks to Clea.
I think it was really good, the exhibition we did. Basically, the fact that we showed to all the market how powerful was our one-turnkey solution that we completed together with our hardware, our platform, the algorithms, all in all together. In fact, I can confirm that the feedback I have received from all the industrial leaders which I met was really good and was that our value proposition is exactly what differentiates SECO from the rest of the competition. Now we can go over a few slides where you can see some of this new product we presented from the Snapdragon X, which is the new basically generation of CPU made by Qualcomm. We are one of the few developers around the world that are really working on this technology.
The Ax elera, where we are exclusive for the European side, as well as Raspberry Pi, where we are expecting to further strengthen the partnership in the forthcoming months. Basically, going back to all of the products that we presented in the show, I think overall we are talking over 15 new hardware families which are planning to be released in the next 18 months. These are the results of years of R&D and of an intense collaboration with all our technology partners. It will drive our revenue for the future fueled by our client need for more computing power to run inference at the edge. I think this is very important, also the update that we are providing you about Clea.
The first point is of course regarding the Clea AI Studio, which is an unprecedented functionality under which people can run and deploy inference directly inside the platform, controlling the results of how the LLMs are used and which kind of solution I can design to really run the AI on a device. This is a very important functionality that we will add during the second half of the year. Also, another important innovation that we will present in the second part of this year will be the SECO Application Hub. This is fully dedicated to AI, is an app store basically. The goal here will be to build our positioning as a provider of software and value-added services. It will become a key reference point for developers in our space.
The key differentiation factor between our hub and the one that you maybe already see, the traditional one that many silicon vendors have made, is that SECO will bring together a global ecosystem focused around Clea and our edge AI strategy. It will offer both SECO and partner developed AI algorithms available for purchase. It will basically work as a pay-per-use business model. As well as we will have a dedicated section of open-source models which will be relevant to our industries. I'm really excited about this innovation and this evolution of our software strategies, which I can confirm that together with all our partners, we are really capable to publish a lot of AI algorithms on the SECO Application Hub, creating a super strong ecosystem that will allow us to run and improve our business model.
Finally, I think it's important to mention the Modular Vision, which is a product that fully integrated our hardware capability with our HMI capability, providing to the market a new generation of HMI where the hardware is already included. It will be the perfect evaluation kit also to run AI thanks to Clea directly on the screen. This screen will be the monitor for many industrial machines and applications. The customers can really use it to control all the data that the device is generating and to apply AI algorithms on it. The launch will, this product will be ready soon. We are expecting to enter into mass production already by the third quarter of 2025.
I think in the conclusion, our strategy, which is based on the edge system, the IoT suite, and all the functionality and the value-added services that we are adding into the platform, like for example, the cybersecurity one thanks to Enein and the payment telemetry system with Nayax, are really bringing SECO into a different year. Yes, 2024 was a difficult year, but all the signs are now pointing to a V-shape recovery. I believe that we have an optimal product line and technology to fully benefit from this rebound. I think we had a decade of success evolving our strategy from a pure hardware company to a hardware and software company. This evolution will continue as we go to create really a leader in the market.
This is validated by a number of strategic partners endorsing our technology and joining force with SECO to benefit from the IoT implementation trend and the AI development. This is important. I think we are really a market leader in integrated edge system, means electronic together with the HMI, as we saw with the Modular Vision. I really think it will provide a lot of value-added for our customers together with our ecosystem, Clea, and together with all the value-added service that we are including into the platform to really unlock the potential from a customer perspective to grow and to start a new business model. This strategy will lead to gain more market share and grow the stream of recurring revenue opportunity for SECO in the forecoming years. I think that this business model is really strong.
It's the key of our technology and is continuing to be consolidated by the relationship that we are building with our customers and is fueled by the design win and new client that we are signing globally. I think this is almost all from our side so far. We can really start with the Q&A section. Thank you very much for your attention.
Thank you to the management team. We now have an opportunity for questions. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand function on your screen. For those dialing in, hit star nine on your keypad. Once your name is announced, please unmute your line and say your company name before asking your question. Thank you. The first question today comes from Arianna Terazzi. Please, Arianna, go ahead.
Yes, I hope you can hear me.
Good afternoon, all. You are sharing a solid indication on the commercial front. I also thank you for the detailed presentation on your product pipeline. I have three questions. First, if it is possible to have a breakdown of your commercial pipeline or backlog in terms of new and existing customers. I was wondering if in the market there was or there is any sign of orders that were placed in advance to try and avoid the application of tariffs, even indirectly, but also considering the strong demand you are seeing in the U.S. It is just to have a fair comparison base for future growth. Lastly, I would ask you an update on your CapEx level for the next three years. Thank you.
Thank you to you, Arianna. Let's start in providing you answer.
About the level of CapEx, we are going to stay on a similar level, I guess, for the next three years. It means that we will be in the range of EUR 20 - 22 million CapEx per year. That said, and returning back to your questions, I think in terms of orders, no impact so far from the potential, I would say, trade block or increasing cost due to what is happening on the global side. Our sector so far is not impacted. The request that is coming from the U.S. is mainly driven by the full recovery out of the stocking situation of a couple of big customers that we historically have in the U.S. on the medical side. It is nothing related to what is happening about Trump and what he is making, which again is no impact so far in our business.
Regarding the impact of new customers in our bounce back of the grow in 2025 is not too much. In this related to the first quarter of the year, I would say it is below 5% now, but it will grow in the forthcoming quarter because we have four, five new customers that will start mass production between second quarter and the third quarter. Therefore, we will add some revenue stream driven by the new customers in the second part of the year just because we are completing right now the developing and the test phase, and we will enter into the mass production later this year.
Thank you, Max.
Thank you for this question. Our next question today comes from Marco Vitale. Please, Marco, go ahead.
Good afternoon. Hope you can hear me. Thank you for taking my question. Three one from my side.
The first one is on the top line trend and the outlook. You're anticipating that you're guiding for revenues flat to positive in the first quarter. I was wondering, should we still expect double-digit growth for this year and how we should think about the evolution of the, say, growth base over the next quarters? Second question is about the profitability. We have noted that you are guiding for a gross profit margin level still above 50%. This compared with around 53% recorded in the full year 2024. Do you think that this current level is sustainable also going forward? If you see any room for further improvement considering the, say, favorable product mix at your site before? Last question is about the free cash flow follow-up.
If you see current, say, working capital on sales level as sustainable, as we noted that you did a very good performance in the last quarter of the year, should we assume this as, say, sustainable also going forward? Thank you.
Thank you. First of all, about the revenue side, as I already mentioned during the presentation, yes, you should expect to see a double-digit year growth. We will be more specific during the course of the year. At a certain point in time, we will provide you a full year guidance. We do not have enough data point now to release it, but we will do it as soon as we will have a clear situation back.
The first quarter is very important to say after six quarters of a negative sign, we will have the first quarter providing us, let me say, a positive sign also quarter by quarter, but not only also year by year, comparing the same period. On the margin side, yes, I think we did a 54% gross profit margin quarter in the last quarter of the year. I would assume it will be a sustainable level also for the next future. We are expecting to have more or less the same kind of gross profit margin during the rest of the year, at least for the first quarter for sure. About the level of the working capital, I think, as you said, we did a very good job in the last quarter of the year.
I want to outline the fact that at that level will be not sustainable, but something slightly worse of that, yes. Meaning that we did in the last quarter a fully optimization of the working capital also thanks to basically the factoring that we are not using it every quarter due to financial cost reasons. A good portion of it was also achieved because the reduction of the inventories and this will continue. This process will continue and will be also better during the course of 2025.
Thank you. Our next question now comes from Bharath Nagaraj. Please, Bharath, go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. With regards to February and March, are you continuing to see positive book-to-bill evolution? I note that your graph ends in January. Similarly on the backlog trend as well. Has that improved further? That is my first question.
I'll go one by one, please.
Yes. I think it's improving as we go. At least we are maintaining the same kind of level you noted here. We have not collected actually the full data. This is the reason why we showed to you only the data that we added at the time basically to double-check them three times, as you can imagine. In general, yes, the trend is confirmed. Just to let you know that in the last 10 days, we got a significant amount of orders intake and the order intake now seems to be extremely high and very robust. I hope it can continue.
Okay. Very good to hear. Thank you. My second question is around the edge product mix that you mentioned that led to higher gross margins, especially in Q4 last year. Could you give us some color on what those products are exactly?
I think when we sell a system instead of a board, we are making a better gross profit margin. Since we are moving progressively, it's a step-by-step process. It is progressing as we go from the board to the system. Also, the incidence of the software in general is growing, the recurring revenue portion of it, at least. I think the combination of the two factors, the fact that we are selling more HMI and the fact that we are proportionally selling more recurring revenue software is providing us a better gross profit margin. As I already said, it will continue to drive us a superior gross profit margin also for the first quarter of 2025 and beyond. Sure.
Thank you. I just have two more questions very quickly.
The first of them would be, could you elaborate on the exposure to the defense sector? I do note that it's like 1%, I think, of your revenue currently. What kind of projects are you working on in defense and maybe also in industrial sectors? How do you expect to take advantage of the German fiscal stimulus? Maybe I can finish off with the other one as well so that you can answer in one go. Could you remind us on how Clea is differentiated business model? What is the differentiation versus peers that is allowing you to win with clients such as Hitachi Energy, etc. as well? Thanks.
Right.
On the defense sector, beside the fact that the contribution nowadays is low, we have a very good exposure to players like Leonardo, for example, in Italy, or players in the U.S. like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, L3Harris, Raytheon Technologies, this kind of players. The sector is super hot now, and there are a lot of new projects that are starting right now. We will see a big contribution will come from such industries. You should know that the industry life cycle is quite slow and very long. Therefore, we will see results starting from 2026, 2027, but it will be solid and like a rock for the next 10 years.
We will have a big impact from the defense market, but not this year because we are getting the project right now, meaning that we will deploy it into revenue later in 2026, 2027, but it will have a duration of a decade in terms of business. About Clea, which really makes the difference for a customer, it is basically two factors. One, Clea is natively installed on all SECO hardware and can run basically all kinds of third-party hardware. On the agreement that we did with NXP, Clea is fully integrated also with the real-time software, which is Zephyr platform, which is another big ecosystem of software that can run on NPU. Basically, we can cover from the CPU to the microprocessor, providing a very, very large, covering a very large scale of different kinds of hardware. This is the first point.
The second point is the platform is super flexible. The reason why Hitachi selected it is because it's super flexible, meaning that a customer can really customize it, tailor-making all the pieces of the platform to perfectly cover their needs. It's designed to run AI at the edge. It means that it will be connected with our app store. We'll integrate the Studio AI that I just presented to you that will allow customers to basically make simulation of a model before a deployment, giving you as a user the possibility to create containers and to run applications into different kinds of containers, different kinds of applications. For example, you can have containers running all your cybersecurity applications and another containers running all the payment or monetization applications that you are using to make money on your device.
All these sorts of applications, you can really secure them into a single container, providing you a very robust and secure infrastructure to run and build your strategy in terms of recurring revenue and value-added services. All in all, what we can offer in terms of hardware and software contribution, considering also that we already have done and trained successfully over 140 AI models that are running perfectly into Clea, and we will present them as soon as we will publish our SECO Application Hub. Basically, we have a unique end-to-end solution to run AI on the edge. What will happen, I'm pretty much sure about it, progressively, it will be in any device. Each device will run sooner or later.
If you look from now in the next five years, AI on this device, because AI, it's a new user experience infrastructure, is a new way to monetize your data, is a unique way to build a new monetization strategy. It is providing you really money and really extra value on your strategy for each company. It will happen as we go. As it will happen, we'll unlock our strategy, providing us better margin, better cash flow, and better revenue growth trajectory.
Thank you for the detailed answer, Max. Thanks.
Thank you to you.
Thank you for these questions. Our next question now comes from Pietro Nargi. Please, Pietro, go ahead.
Hello everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three questions. The first one is on the order backlog. You have shown the evolution of both order backlog and book-to-bill ratio.
My question is, what is the duration of the backlog, or say it in a different way, how many months or quarters should we expect to see in order to translate such figures into revenues? The second question is on the adjusted EBITDA. You experienced a sound improvement in Q4. The EBITDA is almost due to the write-down of components for BioRespira. On this item, I was wondering if there is also a component due to higher recurrence to factoring since you had a significant reduction in trade receivables. The last question is on your outlook for Q1 2025. You expect revenue at the floor of the guidance to remain almost flattish year on year. This would imply, at least based on the current market consensus, a strong acceleration of revenue over the remaining nine months.
If you can add some comments about this and what is the level of visibility you have on full year 2025. Thank you.
Thank you. Let's start from your first question. As I already explained it many times, but I'll repeat it once again. I think due to the time of the components, the lead time, basically, it was decreasing by a lot. Nowadays, in the range of 10-11 weeks. Therefore, also the order backlog is covering a very limited period of time, I would say around three-four months. Apart from it, we have a lot of forecasts, rolling forecasts covering at least other additional six months. We have definitely a good visibility about the 2025. As you can see from maybe we can show the slide where there is the evolution by quarter of the growth.
We had basically a decrease into the result we did basically from above EUR 50 million, basically back to EUR 47 million, and afterwards back down to EUR 44 million. Now, if you should imagine the 2025, you will see basically a quarter, a first quarter above EUR 47 million, and it could be maybe EUR 48 million, above EUR 47 million, let's see. As we did with the guidance at the end of the year, we always intended to beat it. Anyways, you will see the forecoming quarters back to EUR 50 million or above EUR 50 million, where we were basically in a normal trend during the 2022 and 2023. That is how you should see the evolution of the business. Again, as soon as we will have full visibility on the year, we will also provide you a full guidance in terms of revenue as well as gross profit margin.
Can you help me on the last question, the question about the net financial position? First of all, you did a bit of confusion in my point of view because the write-off we did on the inventories is not related in any case with the evolution of our net financial position. This is, as you can imagine, a simple write-off we did on our inventories level, no impact at all on our net financial position. The net financial position improvements were driven basically by two factors. One was the decrease of basically the level of the inventories on sales. The second one was because we optimized the payment. We had, for example, in some region, an overdue payment, which was pretty much high during the course of 2023 and 2024. We finally were able with a strong action to substantially reduce it.
It will be basically fully sustainable also in the future. Another portion of it was due to, as I said, factoring that every year, anyway, we are doing more or less at the same level for each year. That was the contribution that you can see in the EUR 15 million that we generated as per cash generation. Of course, we had also a very good conversion of the EBITDA. As Lorenzo mentioned, the EBITDA came in the region of 18% of the revenue, and we converted it into cash by at least 50% of it.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you to you.
Thank you for this question. Our next question of the day comes from Filippo Pazzini. His question is in the chat, so I will read it out. Filippo says, "Good morning. Could you give me more color on the trend in Germany? I wanted to understand if the sequential improvement that you anticipated in the second part of the year could have more speed in the short term, also given the increased confidence in Germany.
Yes. The trend in Germany now is pretty much negative. As I said, we are still facing a weakness into the demand. Let me make a comment on it. If we will see a rebound in the economic situation in Germany, of course, we will maybe recalculate in a positive way also our expectation for the year because we are strongly impacted from the Dutch region. It is counting around 30% of our total revenue, just to give you more or less the sense.
In our projection, we are not calculating any kind of positive news that can arrive maybe by the end of the war in Ukraine or a positive evolution of the political situation in Germany as well as the financial stimulus. Because so far, we did not have evidence. When I mean evidence, I mean the days about how it will work. Therefore, we cannot in any way calculate eventually which could be the impact. Of course, if the situation in Germany will become positive, SECO will fly as a consequence. Basically, we are a European company split by Italy and Germany. That is basically SECO. Easy to say. Thank you for your question.
Thank you. Currently, we do not have any questions queued, so we will wait just a few moments to give everyone the opportunity to ask a question. As there are no further questions, I will now give the word back to the speakers for any final comments before bringing this presentation to a close. Thank you.
With this, I want to thank you very much for your attention and your trust. I think we will have the chance to meet most of you during the roadshow that we are starting from next week around Europe. See you soon. Bye-bye.