Okay, it's 10:00 A.M. Should we get started? Here in Copenhagen we have Mille Tram Lux, which is the CFO of RTX, and then the chairman, and Jesper Mailind, Henrik Mørck Mogensen. Are you with us?
No, I'm a member of the board.
Just a member of the board, but been there for many years. So, we will start by Mille running through the presentation, and then, we will do a Q&A afterwards, and there you can raise the hand, but we will run that from here. So, Mille?
Yeah.
Keep going.
All right. As usual, we will start with this disclaimer. As we're talking about forward-looking statements, there's an uncertainty. You've all seen this many times before, so I'll skip through that. We've structured this presentation with just a short introduction to the key elements of RTX. Many of you know these already, so I'll go through them relatively quickly. Then I'll dive into some highlights on the three segments for this quarter, supplemented by the financial highlights for the quarter, rounding off with outlook for the financial year, and then we'll go to question and answers. So, every company has a purpose, and RTX's purpose is helping people perform at their best. And the reason that we have included this here is that we are a technology company who provides wireless solutions for our customers.
And these wireless solutions are either a means to the customers in their daily operation or an integrated part of their product. But what is important for us as a technology company is to understand how these products are used and how they support our customers' processes and businesses. So that's why we've got this purpose in our overall purpose when we do development of new products together with our customers. The trends that RTX are tapping into is anywhere, anytime, as we call it, that there's an increased demand for wireless communication throughout different segments. I think everybody knows that the quality and products with good wireless solutions have increased quite a lot over the last 10 years, just over the last five years.
And the reason that this increases is both that the battery lifetime becomes much better, the reliability is much better, and it enables you to do something else while being connected. The four pictures that we've chosen to highlight are examples of where wireless communication is increasing and is an important part of that business operation. The first is concert. I think everybody would agree that good quality in audio solutions is quite important, so the bass and the guitar are not out of sync. The other top picture is first responders, where it is very important that you can easily communicate with each other on a safe channel, even under circumstances where normal coverage is not available. The picture to the bottom left is from a warehouse, where the need to communicate across, sometimes large areas is quite important.
Also, it enables employees to talk to each other, both, of course, work-wise, but also to have an interface with colleagues that you can talk about, yeah, have a relation with your colleagues. The bottom left corner, right corner is on in hospitals, where more and more patient monitoring devices are becoming wireless. That enables both personnel to use their resources in a more effective way, but it also enables you to be more flexible and more mobile within the hospitals and even outside of the hospital. These are the trends that we are tapping into, delivering wireless communication. Our customers are big global customers. Many of you know most of those here on the left side. We are designing products together with these branded customers.
Not, RTX is not delivering customers in RTX name on the market, but we are designing solutions into their solution portfolio, the branded company's solution portfolio. What we are also doing is that we are enabling manufacturing. So we are together with large production manufacturing. We are producing the products, but we don't have production facilities ourselves. These production partners are global partners with footprint all over the world. This one is also known to many of you, where we've got a typical design-in solution, together with our customer, with a long lifetime cycle. And when we have the main phase, which is where both our customers and RTX earn money, that is between three to 10-year plus. 10-year plus being typically healthcare, where the lifetime is longer. Three years is the lowest end, which is modules where the lifetime could be shorter.
So what we do, we've got these three segments that all of you probably know, Enterprise, ProAudio, and Healthcare. Enterprise is wireless handsets, headsets, and base stations, which enables many businesses to have a good and solid communication system, which is also quite cost-effective due to the fact that they don't have subscription attached to it. Pro Audio, our main focus is the modules, where we have high-quality audio modules, which can be integrated in different products in professional audio, like microphones, stage equipment, and big sports events and things like that. Healthcare, we deliver the infrastructure to collect data from different patient monitoring devices and display them on a centralized station, also enabling both alarms and more efficient monitoring of patients. All right, then we go to the highlights for the quarter for the three business units.
If we look to Enterprise, what we can see is that, for if we start in the bottom, the revenue for the quarter is DKK 79 million compared to a very low last year of DKK 45 million. So of course, a solid increase, but also compared to a very low last year. What we can see is that we see new orders coming in from some of our long-term customers. And what we both see is that we get new orders, but we also, from a few of them, get 12-month forecasts, which gives us insight into their expectations for the coming year.
We have, for one of them, also gained insight into their stock level and their desired stock level, and trying for them to find a balance with, as low as possible, inventory, combined with being in flow so that they're able to deliver in time. And then we've got a very good dialogue with particularly one, one to two of these Enterprise customers. What we also see is that our order horizon remained short. So we've got a, a good insight on the next three months, a little bit less on four to six and very limited orders, which are placed more than six months in advance. We have, as one of our focus points, looked at these SME customers, which can take a relatively standardized product.
So a group of smaller customers where very little development is required from RTX, but where they can take and white label RTX handsets and make them their own. And there we've got a good development in number of customers and prognosis also for the volume development in this segment. All of these renders us relatively content under the circumstances with the Enterprise result for the quarter. When we look to ProAudio, we have had the past year we have communicated that we focus on modules as opposed to product business, because product business we've got with these customers that we have they've got relatively high stock, and the prognosis of reducing this stock to a level where we can see a continuous flow for RTX is limited, particularly for one of the customers.
That is one of the reasons that we have focused on module. The other reason is that modules are very standardized products where we can use the same module for many customers with limited effort, design effort for RTX. Our customers, across a wide range of products, can integrate this module, gaining shorter development time for them and very high-quality audio. This transition from product to module is taking a little bit longer than we anticipated. What we can see is that we've got a number of customers who are in the design-in phase. That means that they have paid the kind of technology access fee to gain modules and the technology insight to integrate it into their module. Their phase of designing and bringing it to market is taking a little bit longer than we anticipated.
What we can see for the year is that our order pipeline is building up, and in a way so that we think that the outlook that we communicate for RTX as a whole for the year is supportive. Then when we look to healthcare, the revenue for this quarter is a mere DKK 5 million compared to DKK 14 million last year. And some of this is due to this transformation that we have from taking over the ownership of the product systems from this agreement that we communicated in November 2023. This taking over ownership is, of course, a software takeover where our partner had developed a part of the software. We have another part. And this taking over integration into new product has just taken longer than what we anticipated, and that has impacted our revenue for this quarter.
I think last time we communicated that we had a field trial, a successful field trial in the U.S. We gained some important learnings from that, and we have integrated these learnings in our adjustments to the development, and we've planned a new trial in late March, early, early April, together with a big hospital chain. Another hospital chain is showing interest in doing the same thing. So that shows that there is an interest within these hospital chains for bigger insight on this product that we are launching in order to create this mobility and leverage on the infrastructure already installed in the hospitals. We also here see an order pipeline building up for the year, also supporting the outlook. Then when we look to the financial highlights, we see a revenue of just above DKK 100 million, compared to DKK 82 million last year.
And as stated, the Enterprise business is the business which has experienced the biggest growth compared to last year. Of course, the US dollar to Danish kroner has also increased, but compared to last quarter, the first quarter of last year, it's approximately 1.8% impact of the US dollar. When we look to the gross margin, we see a gross margin at the level that we reached also in Q4 last year and much higher than Q1 last year. Also comparing to Q1 last year, we had a very low gross margin, which was impacted both by these semi-variable costs playing a much larger part on the gross margin, but also product mix where we had some low margin products in the mix, and a little bit of invoicing of components. So you can say net revenue.
So how have we reached this 51% even with a revenue which is significantly lower than Q4? It is both an effort, a result of the effort to improve unit costs on key products. It's an effort of reducing these semi-variable costs, planning better. So we've got fewer startup, shutdown costs of production runs. And then it's a result of some of the price increases that we announced last year taking into effect. This, of course, reflects to the EBITDA where we reached a level of minus 9.4 compared to minus 31 last year. And that is basically a result of the improved revenue, gross margin, and that we have kept our capacity costs in line with our target. Then we've selected another four financial highlights that we think are interesting when looking at RTX currently.
The first one is inventory that we also looked on previous month where we are at more or less the same level as we were at the end of Q4. This inventory comprised both goods in transit and our component inventory. All in all, we see the inventory, component inventory is being used for in production. Less so in this quarter as the mix of product has not taken so much of the inventory as previous, but the goods in transit are higher than previous quarter. Our net liquidity position is 97 compared to 107, 116 last year. We have decreased during the quarter, and that's of course because of this reduction in result, negative result. It is still within our capital policy between 80 and 100, so in that respect, it's still within the frame, yeah.
Our free cash flow, which is combined of the operating cash flow and cash flow from investment, is DKK -14 compared to DKK -23 last time. And of course, we highlight this key figure because we are very focused on getting a positive cash flow for our business. And we are working hard on reaching that again. And that's why we have decided to highlight that as well in these highlights. The last one is our equity ratio at 68%, which continues to be at a solid level, also showing our business balance sheet just the robustness. That leads to an outlook for the year where we maintain the outlook that we communicated in the financial report, revenue of DKK 49-DKK 520, EBITDA DKK 0-DKK 20, and EBIT DKK -35 to DKK -15. As I communicated before, we've got satisfactory first quarter.
We've got visibility into the current quarter, so Q2, Q3, a little bit visibility, and Q4, with firm orders, we've got not so much. So that's the background of us maintaining this outlook, even though, of course, our first quarter is significantly better than last year.
Okay, thank you, Mille. And then, if anybody has questions, Teams, then raise the hand and then we will hand over the work. Otherwise, I will start with a few questions, coming back to backlog, the order intake. Is it similar across all three segments, the insight you have into the pipeline? Or is that only into Enterprise that you are having this three months and then more or less not much beyond three months? I guess Healthcare, is that better or?
Healthcare is a little bit longer horizon, but it is, I think, Enterprise, we are gaining insight into the 12-month forecast on some of them. But three months orders is across both Audio and Enterprise. That this is where we've got. Of course, we've got a few customers who place longer orders. So that's what gives us visibility into the four to six months.
And then where you are getting this insight into a client inventory, is that on one of the clients where you have improved performance? Or is it on one of the clients where they are still not giving any orders because they have too much inventory? Do you have any insight into the clients with too much inventory? We've got it.
To your first question, it is on orders on clients where the order whether they've reduced the inventory to a level where they are now satisfied, even to a level where they probably reduced it a little bit too much, which of course enables us to enter a good dialogue of how can we have a flow which is beneficial for both them and us. We do have insight into higher inventory for some of the customers that have higher inventory. We've got limited insight into their pullout in the market, because of course it's also a negotiation criteria for them not to expose that they might be needing products in a short while.
I don't know how much we can put into the geographical distribution of all the revenues, but the Danish one is, or the Danish sales is doing very well. Is that the retail part?
I think that we cannot reach much into the geographic distribution. The Danish part is not only retail now, somewhat.
Proud of what you talk about, the transition to modules. Is that a decision to focus on modules for the long term, or is it just something you do in the short, medium term to secure more sales, as you're waiting for the long term or the product customers to come back, reordering? Or is it a strategic change that you also in the future want to focus more on the modules?
It is a strategic focus on modules. We see that the ProAudio customers are very fragmented, and therefore we don't see the option to gain high enough volume and high enough margins in a continuous flow from ProAudio business. What we do see from the product side, yeah. For the modules, we see that because this is the customer setup, we've got very many smaller solutions into different segments of the professional audio where they're very good at that specific point, but they need a very solid audio solution, and they are not always experts in that. That's where we see that with a limited in work effort, yeah, on from RTX, we can use the same module to many different clients.
Is that then expanding your market potential, or is it reducing? I'm just wondering how many are in the different segments, full product or just checking in a module.
I would think that it is expanding our market potential because many of our customers can use this module to relatively quickly bring a professional audio product to market. If we work with product customers, RTX design the full product, and therefore both the development time and success becomes very dependent on this particular segment. If you then look into future revenues and margins, when you assume your transition to mainly being modules and potentially no products, is that then gonna rebase your revenue down to a level and then you should start growing from that? And how is that gonna impact the gross margin of the ProAudio business? The module business is a better gross margin than the product business within ProAudio.
We have had, some of the previous years, we've had revenue from product business, which has created high inventory. So of course we are catching up on some of this revenue that we've had in the previous years, but that was, as we saw, not a sustainable year by year revenue. So, so yes, we will catch up on revenue, but we see that the module business is a better margin business than the product business within ProAudio.
Catch up on revenue, meaning that you will get to the revenue level you had prior to the changes totally, or do you have to see a drop or rebase before you get there?
What, what are you, what, which level are you talking about? Because we've had one really high year with 180.
But there you had a sell into a client.
Exactly, yeah.
We expect that we will. I think last year we had 120 or so. We expect that we will increase the revenue, not necessarily this year, but on the module business. So if we reach a sustainable level in line with what we've had previous year.
Healthcare, you are prepared. I'm just thinking, has there been a major delay in, as you say, prolonged transition of ownership? Has there been a delay in the ramp up? And is that because that the products are not finished? Is that because that sell in by your customer to their customers because it's B2B, takes longer than everybody has expected? And I guess when it's into hospitals, there must be a lot of extra checking than if you're just selling into an office environment like ours. Yeah. So what's the reasons here?
It is a delay in the transition of the software from our partner to us. I think in any software or any project, but definitely software projects, not everything is defined in every details at the start, and the transfer of ownership from one partner to another facilitates more discussions into the details of what should it be able to do now, what has changed since we made the agreement, what is actually necessary, so this transition has taken longer than anticipated. Your second question on whether it's the drive for the market we experience from our partner, that they are also very impatient in getting this to market because having this system working makes their compatibility on the rest of their products, patient monitoring, much better. So the pull from the market is definitely there.
We during the second field trial on a hospital here at the end of our financial Q2, and we hear from another large hospital team that they're also very interested in testing this. So pull from the market, we don't experience that it's less than anticipated, but the solution needs to be for all parties and the handover needs to be clear. So yes, there has been a delay compared to what we expected in the development handover.
And what do you mean by that you have to implement the lessons learned from the first test? Is it all the functionality or is it to improve stability or?
It is. I think I don't have all the details, but what I can say is that the integration process, so how do you integrate it?
How do you map how many of these devices you need to do the coverage across segments? How do you do that in the best way to be able to both sell into the critical sections of the hospital, but then also have a possibility to expand relatively easily,
and was it the Q4 report said that you've done tests in late summer in the U.S.? When you talk about the tests now, is that at the same hospital or group? Yes. Is it new tests at new clients or?
This is at the same hospital chain, to take the lessons learned and to kind of do a second trial. Does it work as it should with the same group of parties? So both our infrastructure and healthcare provider and the hospital. So the same group together, yeah.
And I think you also in the Q4 report said something about a potentially partner or distribution or selling the solutions in the U.S. Yes. Any progress there, or?
Yes, we're also progressing there where we are in dialogue on how to set this up, the timeline for it. I cannot say as of yet, but that's progressing as well, yeah.
And then when you identify the six products, you are saying that in Q1 that the amortization of R&D comes down, then you're right that it will increase going forward because the products you have been developing is coming to the market. I assume this is the healthcare program. Yes. So is that from Q2 we should see higher amortizations on the product in general because of the loss of this product?
I think it is going to be. You're going to see an increase in Q2, probably, but very much in Q3 because it is, of course, it's aligned with when the product comes into the market and is. What we also see is a sale of these products. So somewhat this quarter, but mostly next quarter, yeah.
That means that if you start amortization in Q2, we should also see sales of the products in Q2. Yes. And is that sales for your partner's inventory or is it because they can start selling out to their clients? Is it inventory buildup or is it sell out you're talking about here?
I would assume that it's sell out because it's part of the plan to for them to acquire this so they can sell their system. So it's not building up inventory for a launch later this year. It is,
and for the year, you see solid growth in the healthcare on the back of the launch. Yeah. Solid is that 10%, 50%, 20%?
It's a good word, solid. Yeah. I mean, solid is. I think if, if it had been double, I probably would have been, been more, used a different word, but solid is not 10%. That's. I wouldn't say that's solid. So, so it's somewhere between, between a, a good growth. That's the last year. Sorry to interrupt. I just want to confirm what time you guys want to have lunch? Because 11:10 A.M. Okay, good.
Sorry on the, so it's less than 10% this year and then actually running next year.
No, I say, I think what I say is the solid. I wouldn't call 10% increase a solid. It's more than 10%.
It's more than 10. Okay. It's less than double of last year.
Okay, so somewhere between 10 and 100.
Yeah, something, something like that. I think we're very cautious here because we've, we have, we need to get the product.
It feels more important to get it right and to get it fast, at least in the short term, because we see a buildup over the coming years. That's really key for us. That's where we are.
Yeah, focus should be where you want two years, but, people also look on neutral more if there's traction or if there's no traction or, and so do we, but it's really important to get it right. Okay. Moving to, have to read here, the gross margin.
So when you reach 51% gross margin in this quarter, on lower sales, and we can compare that to last year versus where you did better revenue, but lower margins. Is this an exceptional quarter or are you by these 51% indicating that actually you have set a new level of your profitability on the sales? And I assume that your change in the product what you're supporting that going forward as well.
Yes. I think that it is showing both that we have fewer of these very low margin products that we had in the year 2022, 2023, particularly in the Enterprise business. It is also reflecting that we have had high focus on the semi-variable costs, getting those in as small as possible through good planning and focus.
And then it is a reflection that we have taken the high volume products and tried to reduce the unit costs of those. Given that, we expect this to be a change where we will actually have a new baseline for our gross margin. So it's not an exceptional quarter. There are no one-time effects that has led us to this level.
And how much leverage will there be on that gross margin if, again, it's not short term? If you look into the next year, if you get more healthcare, if you get more modules in Pro Audio, I would then assume that you would be able to raise your gross margins from current levels.
Yes, we would do, yeah.
The inventories, just a clarification, the component part of it has come down. And then you said that the inventories are mainly inventories in transit.
Yeah.
So it's inventories which you have been selling also to clients and this job on just on the way. So when it's increasing, is it unfair assume it's because that it's an indication of growth going up, revenue growing and going forward?
I think that it is, since it's at the, it's between quarters where it indicates whether this shipment to a particular customer is in transit or not. It cannot isolated be seen as a indicator of growth. But yes, we expect that the coming quarters will be higher in revenue compared to this quarter. So it's more of a picture of what is the case at the 31st of December, rather than an indication of,
and you're right in the report when it comes to talk about the second quarter.
You're not commenting on second quarter, but you're commenting on first half. So the revenue will be higher than last year in first half. Yeah. But then the question is, will second quarter, you have a good insight into second quarter now. Will that be higher than second quarter last year?
I think that we've chosen not to comment on that, but I think it's fair to say that it will probably not be more than here.
Yeah. No questions from Lazar. I'm coming towards the end here, but then it's more for chairman. Now you've got a new board set up elected last Friday and you've got two new members on the board. Yeah. Can you put some words on what they are going to add to the business, and to the board set up? Do you see the board overall stronger based on competencies now than if you look back on the former boards?
Yeah. So this is of course also a way of aligning the board with what we need in the business. Yeah. So to answer that as well at the end, the expectation is just that that would be in terms of profiles. So we had two new people join, so Gitte and Karsten. The first, Gitte, comes from UL, so has very global roles for quite some time in a large organization and been exposed to many different initiatives of sort of industries and customer base globally. But many actually where there's some say resonance or commonalities to the kind of customers that we have.
So they have some experience in really on the commercial side of the house and how to deal with large key accounts. B2B sales. B2B sales as an example. But also that she has a background in strategic initiatives and development within UL. They were successful in that for quite many years. So that's sort of two main elements of what she brings to the table, then of course we also know specifically that, you know, dealing with regulations and changes and that is important also for RTX, and then of course she comes with a very solid background in that. So that was on her. Karsten has a background as well on the technology side and very much historically in the sort of the Nokia and cell phone telecom space.
But then in many years now, now been in sort of technology heavy companies and startups, small, smaller companies working to, to scale those. So that's part of what he brings to the table. Also has experience from Gom Space in being sort of, presenting a company to the, to the investors and, and, and stock market, which we, we see as relevant. So two very different profiles, but together they add, I think, strength and experience to the board.
And you also have a new CEO on board as well.
Yes.
Should we expect that when we get to August on the Q3 numbers or full year that there will be a strategic statement refreshing, what you've been doing or status so far? Or will it be business as usual or?
So of course a new CEO on board, there will be, you know, potential opportunities for looking at strategy and challenge improve. But as we see right now, also with the conversations we have with like Mørck, we're very much aligned on where we are aiming right now strategically. So we expect that those pillars will continue. The balance between them and how we detail them might change and get refined over time. And we expect some of that because Henrik has an interesting and solid background in also strategic work. But we don't expect sort of a revolution in terms of where we are aiming, but rather an evolution of what we're doing.
And the decision to bring him on board with his background from Systematic, is that an indication of your increasing focus on the healthcare going forward?
That's for sure one component. He has a broader background also from Kamstrup in the past and then Systematic, so he has a lot of insights into both hardware and not least the software sides of software businesses, which is again a good match for RTX, and yes, then specifically, of course, she has led the healthcare business within Systematic, so it emphasizes at least what we're doing and should strengthen our capabilities in that area. Okay. Mm-hmm.
That was all from my side. Is there a final question from the web? It doesn't seem so. I will finish here, and thank you for all participating, and thank you for coming. Thank you. Thank you very much.