Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to SECO's H1 2025 Results and Business Update. Before I hand over to your host today, please be advised there will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the presentation. In order to do so, please use the raise hand function on your screen, or for those signing in, it's star nine on your keypad. I now have the pleasure of handing over to Clarence Nahan, SECO's Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Clarence, the floor to you .
Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us today for what should be a very exciting earnings call. As usual, our CEO, Max Mauri, will share with you a detailed update on our business. Before that, Lorenzo Mazzini, our CFO, will cover the key items of our financial results. First, let me briefly take you through the key takeaways from the past six months. Our operating performance reflects yet another period of solid execution and progress for our company. In the first six months of the year, net sales reached EUR 98.4 million, an increase of 3% year on year. Notably, the second quarter alone delivered EUR 51.2 million of revenues, above our guidance, and a sequential 9% increase over Q1. Clea revenues stood at EUR 12 million, contributing 12% to our overall top line.
Our gross profit margin improved year on year to 53.4%, remaining well above our guidance, and our adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 20.1 million, steadily maintaining a margin above 20%. As we maintained a strong focus on working capital efficiency and cash generation, we closed June with a stable net debt position just north of EUR 50 million. On the innovation and launch pipeline, we have also made important strides. Clea 2.0 represents a major upgrade to our embedded operating system, becoming a key part of our software framework. We have also launched our Application Hub, a new digital marketplace designed to accelerate the deployment of AI edge applications, and our Developer Center, a centralized portal to simplify access to product and service documentation. Looking ahead, we remain on track to deliver on our full-year guidance.
We expect to exceed EUR 200 million in revenues at constant effects, while maintaining a profitable growth with gross margins above 50%. Let me now hand over to Lorenzo to review these numbers in detail.
Thank you, Clarence, and good afternoon to all. On this page, you can see the key highlights on the first half of 2025 financial KPIs. Starting with net sales, we closed the semester up 3% compared to the first half of 2024. Consider that, excluding the German region, featured by a slower recovery on the 2024 overstocking market context, the growth registered was 40%. The positive note is that, starting from this quarter, we are seeing the first sign of recovery of that region, so Germany too. Software revenues contributed 12% of the total revenues, with an increase by 6% for the recurring portion versus the first half of 2024. For what concerns the gross profit margin, a strong performance, far above 20%, was registered thanks to the contribution of software sales and a positive sales mix in profitability terms.
Real important for us is the EBITDA margin performance recorded in the second quarter of 2025, with 21% results, which bring the EBITDA margin in the semester at 20.5%. Plus, 4% points and 27% year on year in growth compared to the first half of 2020 EBITDA results. The key driver for this performance was the reduction by EUR 2.5 million of OpEx respect to the first half of 2024, and this despite either sales. This reduction was mainly possible due to a lower use of outsources, and so an increase of in-house production. For what concerns adjusted net income, we feature by an important increase compared to the first half of 2024, primarily as a result of the EBITDA performance. However, I want to point out the reduction of interest expenses in the period by EUR 0.2 million.
Financial income decreased in the period compared to the first half of 2024 by EUR 1 million due to the dividend distribution of our control company Fannal executed in the same period of 2024. An extraordinary item. Passing to comment the sales breakdown, it's important to point out the significant recovery and expansion after the stocking context of all geographical areas, recording year on year growth by more than 20% in all markets, with the exception of Germany. As I highlighted before, the first sign of a rebound is now also coming in the German market. On the software part of the business, the important item is the increase of recurring revenue from 32% up to 37% of total software revenues in the first half of 2025 respect to the first half of 2024.
Passing to EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA performance in the first half of 2025, we recorded a 20.5% in profitability terms, with a strong 21% in Q2 2025. Other than sales and GM and gross margin, the main driver of this result is for sure the fact that we were able to reduce outsourcing expenses for external manufacturing by EUR 1.6 million, with stable direct production personnel costs. This brings the group to an important exploitation of operating leverage and getting back on a strong profitability result. On adjustment, these alphas are almost all represented by stock option actuarial value. For what concerns net financial position, this increase in the alpha respect to 2024 year-end by EUR 9 million, primarily explained by the increase in trade receivables. This growth is driven by the rise of sales and by a sales mix effect over premier terms across the different geographies.
The first half of 2025 closed with a really good leverage ratio, which is tending to reach 1x EBITDA. Thank you very much for your kind attention. I pass the talk to Max to continue with our presentation.
Many thanks, Lorenzo, and for your presentation, and hi to all. Now, let me focus on our business and the key milestones we have achieved so far this year. I want to insist on three pillars to illustrate the strength of our performance. First, our financial. A lot has been already covered, but it's important to realize that our second quarter is the best quarter we had in over two years, and that this result has been achieved without compromising on our margin, which continues to improve both at the gross and at the EBITDA level, showing a very robust business model. Second is our pipeline. Client interaction is as strong as it has been ever, with both order intake and design win at all-time high.
Third, the record number of strategic products we delivered during the last six months is really impressive and is really driving our innovation together with our long-standing partner, paving the way for an exciting future. As such, SECO is consolidating its position as a top player in the digital transformation market. This has been years in making, but the pieces are now all coming together. The key driver is, of course, the Edge AI that we are able to deliver to the customers, thanks to our end-to-end solution and thanks to our unique value proposition, mixing together our long-term expertise on the hardware, all the Clea framework together with all the AI that we are capable to deliver, thanks to our a pplication apps and our Developer Center. In fact, integration of AI at the Edge will be a huge driver for the coming years.
This is where our end-to-end strategy will make, and is starting to make, a real difference versus competition. Clients work with us because they recognize our unique ability to reduce complexity and speed up AI adoption, shortening their time to market. They also know we have a modular offering able to integrate hardware, display, and software all together. I think, all in all, this is really a strategy where we will continue in the future to unlock a significant value for our shareholder. Now, let me illustrate how these three bricks come together from a successful go-to-market strategy, starting with the hardware. Here, you can see the modular vision. We already discussed it before the summer, but I want to reemphasize the fact that this is a modular solution that can cover from 7-inch to 21-inch all of the requests into the HMI market.
It gives to the customers really a strong flexibility that they need on both the dimension as well as the computing power with the latest chip technology available, dramatically cutting their time to market. For us, this is a scalable offering which builds on all our expertise and has the potential to further drive both revenue and margin. This is also a perfect platform for SECO to monetize its software framework Clea and push it into the new phase of growth. This revolutionary piece of hardware has been designed to leverage on the unique ecosystem of partners we have grown over the years. Today, they are all on board to support the rollout of the modular vision.
The truth is, we all have vested interest in a faster and broader adoption of the AI at the Edge, which is why from Intel to NXP, Qualcomm, Raspberry Pi, and the others, all of them are really coming together to find ourselves at the center of a real step change in the way our OEMs think about their AI strategy. I will show you in a minute, these partners are also the key to bring new customers and accelerate our growth path in the near future. This integrated offering really comes together with the launch of both the Application Hub and the Developer Center. These are two key milestones for our Clea framework, which have been announced in the recent week. The Application Hub is designed to work as our marketplace on which OEMs can buy and deploy ready-to-use software and AI algorithms specific to their needs.
The Developer Center is, on the other end, our centralized portal to streamline access to our product and with all the technical resources and service documentation available for all our ecosystem. Together, these two pillars aim at simplifying the development and the management of the entire our digital service offering. This will be a significant driver of our Clea revenue going forward. How does all that translate into value for our stakeholder? First of all, let me confirm once again that our business is back on track and joining significant momentum. Our order backlog has been at all-time high as well as the order intake in the past six months. This is very visible from the KPIs shown on this slide. Behind that, I can confirm it personally from a conversation that I'm having with our largest customer.
At this point in the year, we are able to confirm a full-year revenue guidance above EUR 200 million at the constant effects. This will be a significant achievement for our company, going back to deliver a strong, profitable growth and putting the slowdown due to OEM stocking well behind us. This result will also be one of the best in the company's long history and will mark the beginning of a new chapter of our growth. A growth that will be driven by a more diversified client base and from a broader mix of solutions, both at the hardware and at the software side. It will be important to fuel our margin improvements as well. To that end, I want to start giving you some insight into the pipeline we have built for 2026.
As of today, we have already identified and secured over EUR 20 million of additional revenue, won with both new customers and from new projects with existing clients. This is a significant number, and it is a business volume which represents a great achievement from all the team. Some of these projects will allow us to enter into new verticals, like energy, for example, or water pumps. On the other hand, it will also allow us to strengthen our leadership into other markets where we are already well present. We will continue to diversify our top line across a greater number of geographies. Looking at the sum of this design win in the days, you can appreciate what this means for SECO going forward. Let me give you a couple of examples.
On the top of this page, you see that one of the largest projects we have won is with a new client, a major player located in APAC. We will supply them with a display for a new digital cockpit in their new generation of motorcycle, basically an energy motorcycle. This will be really an innovative solution for us. Another important milestone is that we won a project with an existing customer in Europe on the oil and gas vertical. For them, we have designed a unique solution for a real-time methane leak detection system, which is based on Clea. This has put us at the forefront of the innovation in this sector, and we are expecting to see revenue coming from this one already in 2026, but it can potentially grow much more in 2027 and going forward.
I think as a conclusion of this presentation, I really think that we are fully satisfied about the momentum of our company, and we're looking forward to continue to execute in line and beating the guidance quarter by quarter and to continue to increase the visibility and the profitability of our business. Thank you very much for your attention. We are now happy to take some questions, if any.
Thank you to the speakers today. 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 or for those signing in, it's star nine on your keypad. Once your name is announced, please remember to unmute your line and state your company name before asking your question. Thank you. The first question today comes from Marco Vitale. Please, Marco, go ahead. The floor to you.
Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question and this is Marco for Mediabanca . Two questions from my side. The first one, if you can provide us an additional comment for the business pipeline for the rest of the year, also 2026, which we expect still a progressive acceleration in organic growth throughout the third and fourth quarter of the year or something more, say, later going forward. I would spend some work on the business pipeline that you were very interested in. The second question is on profitability. It's noted that the gross profit margin remains fairly above the 50% threshold. Should we expect a favorable business mix by Clea to support a faster gross profit margin expansion, or should we expect at this point the margin expansion to come from operating leverage considered at least a very strong level achieved? Final questions are more general capital allocation.
Now that it looks like the business recovery is well in line with your expectation, should we expect the focus to remain on organic growth, or do you see room for a start in some M&A talks for 2026? Thank you.
Hi, Marco. Thank you for your questions. First of all, your voice was not perfect, so I tried to reply to your questions. Starting from the last one, in terms of capital allocation, we are fully concentrated on our organic growth, even if we still have a good pipeline of potential M&A. I do not expect to see anything on this by the end of this year, but potentially next year could be a year where we could come back on the M&A side as well. On the margin side, I think profitability in terms of gross profit margin will be stable during the two remaining quarters. I think the price of the memory is going significantly up, and it could affect a bit our gross profit margin, even if we are expecting to balance it also in excess thanks to very good operational level as well as cost control.
In terms of growth, I confirm we will see an acceleration of the growth during the second part of the year, as we confirmed per our official guidance just released earlier this morning. Thank you very much again for your question.
Thank you. Our next question today comes from Arianna Terazzi. Please, Arianna, go ahead. Arianna, can you hear us? I see that you unmuted your line, but we can't hear you.
Can you hear me?
Yes, now we can. Thank you.
Okay. Sorry. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Max, during your speech, you mentioned lower external production. Maybe it was mentioned by Lorenzo. Can you elaborate a bit on this and on your production capacity and spare capacity level? Second and last question from my side is on Clea. Where do you expect the weighting on net sales to land in the current and next year, considering the software revenue cycle, the shift towards recurring revenues, and also the business pipeline you mentioned? Thank you.
First of all, on the software side, the software part is continuing to grow, and I'm expecting to see it continuing during the second half of the year. It's too early to speak about 2026, even if we already secured also on the software side. They didn't be present in our presentation, but we already secured a couple of very good and big design wins also on the software side, and more to come. It's too early to say where we will be in 2026. It's a growing path for sure. How fast it could be, we will see later.
On the cost side, I think we are increasing our internal production capacity, as we announced also one year ago, and it will be progressively increased also between the end of this year and the very beginning of the next year, adding potentially another EUR 100 million, EUR 120 million at the gross revenue to be made all internally. It will squeeze also going forward our OpEx with a very positive contribution as per operating leverage at the EBITDA level.
Thank you, Arianna, for your question. Our next question now comes from BharatH Nagaraj. Please, Bharath, go ahead. The floor to you. I can see that you're on mute at the moment, so please remember to unmute your line. Thank you.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Super. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions. I just have three of them. How do you see the trajectory for revenues and maybe even EBITDA in the next two quarters of this year? Is it more Q4 weighted or Q3? Any early indications on what we should expect for growth for 2026? Given the design wins from a lot of new customers, how should we think about margins? Is it going to be lower? Given the first few years, it tends to be lower for a new customer. That's the first question. Secondly, would you say that most of your existing customers are back at pre-destocking levels of orders, or is there further to go? Lastly, any color on FX sensitivity? What was the FX impact in H1 would be helpful. Thank you.
Okay. Let's start from the FX. We are expecting over the course of the entire year an impact around EUR 3 million, more or less. That's based on the fact that around 30% of our revenue are made between China and the U.S., and therefore are strictly correlated to the U.S. dollars. Returning back to your other question on the 2026, we will deliver a projection of the 2026 later. What I can say to you today is we will add this EUR 25 million to the revenue that we will post at the end of the 2025, for sure. This will imply an increase, actually, in profitability because even if the gross profit margin in the beginning of the cycle is lower than you can get after maybe two, three years, that is completely correct.
It will impact significantly on our operating leverage, and therefore, it will have a very positive impact at the EBITDA level. That's for sure. Your first question was about the split revenue between Q3 and Q4. We see the Q4 as the strongest quarter into the year. We are expecting to see both quarters good, but the last quarter stronger. Thank you very much, Bharath, for your question. I don't know if you want to follow up something else.
Sorry. I just had the question in the middle, which might have been missed. That is to do with, would you say that most of your existing customers are kind of back at pre-destocking level of orders, or is there further to go? Thank you.
There is further to go, and we will see something already in the second half of the year. As Lorenzo Mazzini mentioned, we are observing right now the first sign of recovery, also in Germany. Germany is really important in our company because it's the biggest country in terms of incidence on the total revenue. We are finally observing the sign of recovery on many, many verticals and many customers, which is definitely encouraging for the second quarter and also even more for the next year.
Thank you.
Thank you to you, Bharath.
Thank you, Bharath, for your question. We now have a question from Filippo Mazzoleni. Please, Filippo, go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation. My questions, the first question regarding the customs tariff exemptions. Could you confirm whether the tariff exemptions granted to your products in the U.S. are due to their classification under electronic machinery and semiconductor categories, or if you applied under a different exemption category? The second question regards the gross profit margin. There are some verticals that performed very well in the first semester, medical, for instance, that typically bring higher gross margins. With this in mind, should we expect the gross profit margin to remain around the first in the second semester, or is the guidance more of a cautious stance, or could there be any reversal trends tied to end market dynamics? The last one regards the Clea monetization.
With the Clea 2.0, the Application Hub and the Developer Center now live, could you share whether these initiatives are already contributing to revenues or we need 2026 summers. Thank you very much.
Yeah. This new initiative has already started now. I think we needed to wait a bit to see a real contribution. I would expect to see something in six months from now. Returning back to your questions on the tariff, yes, I can confirm the exemption that we received was due to the fact that our classification of our goods is electronic as well as semiconductors. That is why we got an exemption. In terms of incidents of the medical, we see it constant during the second half of the year. The medical market is performing well. I do not see any impact coming from a decrease of the medical market because the medical market, we see it very, very solid and robust also in the second half of the year. Thank you very much for your questions.
Thank you.
Thank you, Filippo, for your questions. At the moment, we do not have any questions queued, so we'll wait just a few moments to give everyone the opportunity to ask a question. Thank you. 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 very much for your attention. We are, as always, at your disposal if you need any further clarification. We will be in touch very soon. Thank you so much to all. Bye-bye.
This presentation will now come to a close. Thank you.