Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Solar A/S Q1 Report 2025 Webcast and Conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. Alternatively, you may submit your questions via the webcast. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Jens Andersen, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. A very warm welcome to this first quarter webcast for the Solar Group. I'm here together with CFO, Michael Jeppesen, and our Investor Relations Director, Dennis Callesen. The agenda for today is a general business update with some highlights for Q1 presented by me. I will elaborate over the topic preparing for future growth. Michael will take over and present our first-year results, including a high-level cash flow status. Of course, finally, we will have a Q&A session. Next slide, please. If we look into the highlights, revenue increased to DKK 3.2 billion. Adjusted organic growth amounted then to 6.5%. If we adjust for a big growth in Solar Polaris, which has made a major solar park growth, organic growth amounted to 4.3%. As expected, we saw positive adjusted organic growth in all main markets and across all main segments in Q1.
Installation delivered adjusted organic growth of 4.7%, industry of 3.3%, and then finally astonishing 30% in trade. One of our strategic focus areas that is climate energy also showed positive adjusted organic growth amounting to 37%. However, if we adjust for Solar Polaris deliveries to a major solar park project again, the real, I would say, or clean organic growth amounted to 14%. Next slide, please. Sweden, our new or upcoming new central warehouse in Kumla is ahead of schedule. This allows us to optimize the completion of the relocation of the warehouse in Örebro and Halmstad by moving our inventory from Halmstad to Örebro and thus vacating the Halmstad warehouse earlier than expected. In Q1, this resulted in approximately DKK 12 million in transition costs, which were initially expected in 2026.
In Q1, we also initiated several mitigating measures to adjust our operating model to the market conditions, including cost containment, process improvements, but also staff reductions. Consequently, cost in Q1 included restructuring costs of approximately DKK 40 million. The full-year cost savings resulting from the 2025 restructuring are estimated at approximately DKK 60 million. This structural change alone will support our financial target into 2026, where we have a goal with an EBITDA above 5%, with an improvement at approximately 0.5%. When adjusted for restructuring and transition costs, our external operating cost and staff cost decreased to 16.4%, coming down from 16.8% last year. EBITDA at DKK 74 million was on par with our expectation, and we confirmed our 2025 EBITDA guidance in the range of DKK 530-600 million. Next slide, please. Preparing for future growth.
By 2026, the Outer Store system will be operational in our four main markets, managing 280 robots, picking products from more than 270,000 bins. Additionally, we have increased our warehouse capacity across Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands by 25%. The initiative focused on automation, but also digitalization and standardization. That represents a total investment of more than DKK 1 billion over the last seven years period. Our investments in warehouses, upgrades, and expenses have increased capacity and enable us to take advantage of market opportunities. By moving up to 70% of all picks to Outer Store, we have improved the work environment, but also minimized noise and reduced lifting. The high degree of automation reduces cost and allows us to accommodate minimum 10% volume growth without adding one extra labor cost.
Thus, our investment in automation, digitalization, and standardization has set the stage for future growth and improved operational performance into new high-standards. I will now give the word to Michael. Please, Michael.
Thank you, Jens. Please turn to page seven. Now, revenue in terms of DKK increased to 6%, resulting in DKK 3.2 billion versus the DKK 3.0 billion last year, or equal to an adjusted organic growth of more than 6%. This means that the trend we saw in Q4, where we for the first time in several quarters returned to growth, not only continues, but also, as expected, accelerates. One of our strategic focus areas, climate and energy, delivered very strong results and came up from DKK 285 million to almost DKK 400 million. Of course, this was supported by Solar Polaris deliveries to a huge solar park in Denmark. Even if we adjust for this, we still see organic growth within climate and energy. The sequential improvement that we saw starting last year continued into this year.
As expected, particularly installation is now gradually moving out and up, and we are particularly happy to see that Denmark almost reached 10% organic growth. It should be noticed that Denmark was actually the first country where we saw the headwind within installation, and now they are also ahead of in moving up. If we take a closer look at industry, particularly marine offshore and utility delivered very strong growth rates, whereas MRO and OEM remained stagnant. Regarding the latter, this is, however, actually an improvement compared to what we have seen during the last couple of years. MAC45 was actually slightly below last year. This was as expected. We know that a few key accounts have postponed their investments, so we were aware of this. This is expected to continue throughout the main part of 2025 with a potential pickup late Q4. No surprises here.
Trade, if we take Polaris out of it, actually came out with 6% organic growth. This is quite an achievement because the development within DIY, which is the main subsegment, was more or less stagnant. It is the other subsegments which actually drive the growth, meaning we are getting more and more customers on board. To summarize, the quarter was as expected. Please turn to page eight. The EBITDA of DKK 74 million Q1 was on par with our expectation. If we look at the underlying EBITDA, meaning we disregard the restructuring and the transition costs totaling DKK 52 million, we end up with DKK 126 million, which is an increase compared to last year. Looking at the gross margin, we saw a decrease of over 2% compared to last year. This can, in all material aspects, be explained by the diluting impact from Solar Polaris.
Bear in mind that when we look into Solar Polaris, this is a slightly different creature. Although they may have a very low gross margin, there is hardly any cost below gross margin on these projects. If we compare the underlying margin, it is more or less in line with what we saw in the preceding quarters last year. Regardless, it is still our assessment that there remains a fierce competition in the market. We do not see this having eased yet. As expected, we are benefiting from the initiatives we carried out last year, where we also focused on cost containment and process optimization and staff reductions, successfully ensuring that the cost did not dilute the margin further. Actually, it strengthened the margin.
Now, as Jens also mentioned, in order to secure this development, we did in Q1 carry out further initiatives, which on a full year will bring in savings of DKK 60 million, but be cost neutral in the year. Of course, we'll have to carry the weight of DKK 12 million from the transition from Halmstad central warehouse. Regardless of the initiatives we've done, we'll continue to have a very strong focus on this to ensure that we keep the development that we've seen so far, moving us towards the 5% next year. Please turn to page nine. Now, operating came out negative. Operating activities came out with a negative effect of DKK 88 million. If you take a closer look at it, you can see that the main reason for this is a substantial increase in accounts receivable. This is, of course, the normal seasonality that we always see.
We continue to reduce the inventory, and even though we reduced it with DKK 45 million, it still remains above what we would see as the optimal point, but we will continue the work. Looking at the investing activities, came out with net DKK 78 million. We did in total invest DKK 126 million in PPE, of which the DKK 115 million relates to Kumla. We also, as expected, received the proceeds from the sale of Driver, that is the old central warehouse in the Netherlands, DKK 76 million. In addition, we invested DKK 26 million in intangible assets. As you may remember, last year, we upgraded our sub-ERP platform to S/4HANA, thereby ensuring us many years of runway. We have continued this process and are now upgrading our EVM system also to S/4HANA. In addition, we are, of course, investing heavily in our more customer-oriented system, for instance, our web shop integrations and the likes.
Please turn to the next page. If you look at the working capital and see it as an average for the last four quarters, compared to last year, there we were at 16.7%. Now we're down to 14.7%, meaning we continue to reduce working capital as a percentage of the revenue. Of course, despite this, the gain is slightly up. Last year, we were at 2.1 here at the end of March. Currently, we are at 2.4. This is well within our range, albeit it's slightly higher than what we normally see. The main reason is, of course, the investments we're doing in Kumla and, of course, also because we paid out DKK 110 million in dividend in the quarter. Please turn to page 11. Now, as also stated by Jens, we confirm our guidance for 2025.
This means we still expect our revenue in the range of DKK 12.3 billion-DKK 12.8 billion and an EBITDA in the range of DKK 530 million-DKK 600 million. Now, regarding tariffs, we are not directly affected by any tariffs imposed by the U.S., but of course, we're not immune to any potential knock-on effects. We'll, of course, continue to monitor the market development very closely and act accordingly, but it is rather unpredictable. Despite this increased uncertainty, we stick to our initial assumption of a continued recovery, albeit you could argue that both the timing and the strength could become more unpredictable. We still expect all markets to be either stagnant or to grow in 2025, resulting in overall growth in all main segments. Thank you.
Thank you, Michael. Now it's time for questions and answers, of course. Please, if there are any.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. We will now go to our first question. One moment, please. Our first question comes from the line of Christian Tornow from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. A couple of questions from my side. You say the quarter was as expected, yet you are announcing this efficiency initiative where I understand the material part is staff cost reduction. Maybe just elaborate a bit on the motivation for doing that.
Yes. Hello, Christian. It's more or less we have decentralized some of the centralized function within the commercial market and also done something else, I would say, with the shared services. We have put that under Solar or IT, so we call it for the future Solar Digital. That means we want, as we have done with Outer Store in our operations, we want to digitalize even more, and that's why we have put that under our CIO, Anders Øygård. There we did some changes, but the major part of our changes was within commercial market where we have now a much smaller group entity, and then we have decentralized product management, category management, and partly also sourcing into the countries. That was the majority of the staff reductions.
Also, some middle managers were, I would say, it was too complex and we were too many compared to the market conditions as we see it right now. That is the majority of our structural changes.
You should bear in mind, Christian, we also already, when we came out with the Q4, announced that we would do restructuring again this year, and we have a target of reaching the 5%. A part of that is we need to become more efficient. We have been working on this for a while, I would say. It is not a sudden idea, even though it may look like that.
No, it wasn't.
Is it okay?
That's completely true. Yeah. Yeah. That's definitely fine. Sort of along the same line, I understand your sort of description of demand being somewhat unpredictable in the current macroeconomic environment. Should your industry segment be sort of negatively impacted by this, what can you do? Obviously, you also highlight that you reduced cost last year, and then you have another round this year. Is there more to do should demand not come as expected?
There's always something to do. I'm sure of this. I would say that what we see right now, of course, we're a little bit concerned about the machine builders exporting to the U.S. We haven't seen any major effect yet. I'm sure that it might be that the reality will come within a couple of months. I don't think we want to reduce further on that behalf because there will also come a day after the tariffs, hopefully, and we have very skilled and good people. Of course, there are other opportunities. As we have seen, climate energy is now growing again. There will be a lot of opportunities within defense in the different markets. We haven't seen that yet, but we are sure that there will come something positively out of that.
From the window side, we only have, I think, one or two windows directly selling out of the U.S. into Solar. We are not affected on that part as well.
You could add that within the industry, the two subsegments, I assume it's OEM and MRO you are aiming at. Of course, there's again saying the defense industry, but having that being said, there's still quite a market and there's still a lot of small and mid-size customers that we can address. We expect with the organizational change that we've done to get some more traction on this. I would say it's also a matter of trying to onboard new customers, although we do know that within industry, it takes more time compared to installations. You should bear that in mind. There are also opportunities in this. That's basically what we're saying.
You're sure the uncertainty has increased. That's for sure. That's also what we are riding.
That makes good sense. Thank you. Just my last question on your installation segment. In terms of your project business, can you elaborate on sort of your order intake and what you're seeing in this part of installation as typically a good leading indicator for the rest of the year?
We are still growing on our order and take on projects. It is still positive. Also more positive than we expected from the very beginning of the year. Of course, it is also very cyclic. So far, we had a good start in 2025. Yeah.
Great to hear. Thank you. That was all from me.
Thank you, Christian.
Thank you. I will now hand over to Dennis for web questions.
First question. One of your competitors was out in Danish media a few weeks ago flagging the risk of price pressure from Chinese products flooding the market. What is your assessment of the dynamic and what is your general thought around the risk upside downside from the current trade tensions?
Yeah. For sure, it's a good question, but it's also quite difficult to answer because we haven't seen anything yet, but potentially there will be some effect. In my mind, it could be on PV panels because that is also last year we had a very hard hit on PV panels. It's really down from where it was the normal. Last year, they were down 50%. There's also a limitation how low they can go. On the rest of the products, we cannot use US material in the Nordics. At least that part will not be imported into the EU. I would say some of our vendors could, of course, potentially get better prices, and that will, of course, we will turn to our advantage. I think that may be the most positive part for Solar and our competitors, I would say.
Within metal and steel, we are not that highly affected because, of course, we have trunks and things like that. Again, there we are not hit as hard as some of our steel wholesalers because we are only indirectly depending on steel.
You continue to pursue cost-containment, process improvements, and staff reductions. At the same time, in my understanding, is that the sole strategy is about raising competencies across the organization to secure growth. What is your main focus at this point?
The main focus by continuously making improvement on cost, as we have done with Outer Store, is, of course, to invest in digitalization and Outer Store. It is not because we want to get rid of competencies. No, that's opposite. We want to invest in competencies, and we want to, I would say, lower our normal labor costs to the highest possible degree by using IT to the maximum, Outer Store to the maximum, ADVs, maybe collaborative robots, etc. We invest in technology and competencies and not in buildings like some others do.
Just to be absolutely clear on this, it's not like we're running a lawnmower to the costs. What we're doing is interesting. We're doing changes to ensure structural change to ensure that we become more efficient using new technologies that also enable us to invest in new competencies.
That's also why when Kumla is done, and that is the mid of 2026, I would say over the last seven years, we have prepared for future growth, and we have, I would say, the highest standard within our industry to pick and pack. From that day on, at least mid-2026, I would say we have a very strong operational setup in our warehouses.
The next is three questions from Stark IO, who'll take one by one. First is, with the growth package from Germany and more expected stimulus in the EU, how do you expect this to impact your business going forward to 2027?
We hope that there will be an impact, but so far, it's very difficult to predict. They will invest heavily, as stated, in defense. Of course, there will be a lot of small SMEs in Denmark that will support that also out of Poland and Holland. They have a huge package on infrastructure because they are, you notice yourself, if you drive through Germany, sometimes the telephone simply switches off because there's no net. That part is a strong leg in our strong vertical in Solar. Of course, potentially, we could deliver from Wijnegem, our central warehouse in Wijnegem, to the northern part of Germany. We haven't seen it yet. We are open for business to the northern part of Germany when it comes to that.
Second question from Stark IO. Do you expect to keep the dividend at around DKK 15 per share in 2025?
For the time being, we really don't know. The dividend is always decided at the board of directors meeting, which is regarding the dividend for 2025. It will be decided when you know the 2025 and have a very good opinion on the cash flow for 2026 because there are several factors that need to weigh against each other before they decide. In a nutshell, for the time being, we really don't know.
Third question from Stark IO. Wouldn't it make more sense to shift to share buyback program instead of a different program with the stock being historically at a quite low point? If you expect to see increased operational performance in the future?
It's a bit along the same lines. At every meeting with the board of directors, we assess the capital structure of the company. As you may know, the board of directors did, at the annual general meeting, ask for permission to acquire own shares. It's a tool that's available. Again, it's a board of directors meeting decision. For the time being, and you will, of course, know if we've decided otherwise because we would have to announce it, no such decision has been made. It's being discussed at every meeting. What's the most best? What's the best for the company and the shareholders?
Can you expand on the quarterly EBITDA margins performance in Sweden and Norway, both around 0%? What do you expect from these geographics going forward?
There's no doubt both Norway and Sweden are impacted also by the restructurings that we did. You should adjust for that, but they are still low. Sweden is probably the market that's been hit the hardest by the setback we have seen. Having that being said, historically, they have also been able to bounce back the fastest when the trend turns. There's no doubt currently they're running on a much lower level than what we expect going forward. It's also an underlying assumption for our 5% that they will increase. However, we do not disclose how much. I think you should be careful about just assessing everything out of this one quarter because the figures are slightly different than what you see due to the restructurings.
Final written question. Why do you like Outer Store, which is not the fastest warehouse automatization? Is it because it's cheaper than, for example, shuttles since old buildings can be used? Or is it because it's of the lower electricity demand or both?
I would say the electricity part is, of course, a good part. It's not why we invest in Outer Store. In the way we work, where you can order until 6:00 P.M., it's the perfect solution. If you have a lot of branches, like some of our competitors, the shuttle solution is even better. Bear in mind that in Solar, electrical products are often very small, and that fits very well to Outer Store because you can store your products easily on fewer square meters than you can do with shuttles. Before, we had mini load that also served us well for 15 to 20 years. At least our choice was Outer Store, and I think others have done the same because they are doing tremendously well, and others choose shuttles.
No more questions from our side.
Okay. Yep. But thank you for listening in. Have a nice and sunny day. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.