Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Solar A/S Full Year Report 2025 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 this session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please use the Q&A box available on the webcast link anytime during the conference. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Jens Andersen, CEO of the company. Please go ahead.
Thanks a lot. Welcome to this fourth quarter webcast for the Solar Group. Together with me here in Vejen, I have my colleague, CFO Michael Jeppesen. Our agenda for today is, I will present some high-level statements on our recent acquisition in Norway and the consequences in year 2026 and beyond. Then I will give you some insights into our approach to create long-term value by transforming our business platform to new heights. And then I will hand over the work to Michael, who will present our Q4 results, of course, also the results for year 2025 and our guidance 2026. And at the end, as always, there will be a question-and-answer session. Despite headwinds in 2025, we reach key milestones that will shape the future of solar.
The acquisition of Sonepar Norge is, for us, a major step forward in strengthening our position in Norway and be a Tier 1 company in the Norwegian market. It will expand our reach, create economies of scale, and enhance our distribution network. When the merger is finished, we will offer a broader portfolio of products and deliver even greater value to the common customer of both Sonepar Norge and Solar. The integration is already taking shape and will be completed mid-2026. Following the acquisition of Sonepar Norge, 2026 will be a transition year for Solar in Norway and therefore also for the Solar Group. This, in combination with the expected restructuring costs, dilutes the EBITDA margin for Solar Group by approximately 0.7% in year 2026.
From 2027 and onwards, we expect the acquisition to strengthen the margin as we can utilize the gain of DKK 700 million extra revenue with a very low cost to serve as we have installed AutoStore in Norway. Next slide, please. We continue to invest in digital transformation, upgrading platforms to deliver a seamless, future-ready customer experience. Our enhanced digital solutions will provide greater transparency, efficiency, and convenience, ensuring that we remain competitive in an increasingly digital marketplace. These investments go beyond technology. They are about delivering a better customer experience but also enabling data-driven decision-making across the business and segments in Solar. Logistics modernization is another cornerstone in our current strategy. The construction of our state-of-the-art logistics center in Kumla, Sweden, is progressing better than expected and will be fully operational mid-2026.
This facility consolidates our operations into one automated setup in Sweden, improving service levels and supporting sustainable goals. It represents a significant leap forward in optimization and efficiency, reduces complexity, lowers cost to serve, and enables faster, more reliable deliveries. But most importantly, it also marks our final major investment under the current strategy. And from 2027 and onwards, we expect to return to a normal investment level of below 1% of our revenue. So to summarize year 2026, that marks the ending of a long transformative journey in the Solar Group with huge investment in all our CVs and upgrading to SAP S/4HANA on all our platforms and finally a brand new digital universe towards our customers and other stakeholders.
And I dare to say that creating long-term value requires a mindset that extends beyond quarterly cycles and supports the strategic direction of our business. We consider the above as just that. Now I will give the word to you, Michael. Please, Michael.
Thank you, Jens. Please turn to page number 6, Q4. If we start by looking a little back, we gradually, in 2024, returned to a growth path. This continued in Q1 2025, where we reached 6.5% in organic growth. However, the trend changed, and we saw increasing headwind during 2024, resulting in -6.1% at year Q4. This resulted in a revenue of DKK 3.1 billion versus DKK 3.2 billion the year before. The acquisition of Sonepar Norge added additional DKK 46 million revenue in December. If you look at the segments, in general, Installation saw positive organic growth in Denmark or just above. Sweden and Poland, we saw organic growth within Installation, whereas the other markets faced headwind. Only in Sweden and Poland did we manage to see growth in Industry. The others were below zero. Can take a closer look at this at a segment basis.
Particularly Infrastructure in Denmark faced strong headwinds with two-digit negative growth. We see a shift in the customer's focus, moving more towards investments in high voltage, which means we short-term will not benefit from this as we're not active in that part of the market. It goes directly. We do, however, over time to benefit from these major investments that is being done in the grid, but you should not expect any change to this before late 2026, or we might even have to move into 2027 before we start to see a reverse trend where we can go back to growth. So it's not that we're losing customers and not move to anyone else, but their focus has moved. Their investment is in other areas. Marine & Offshore was stagnant in general. It was growing in Denmark, but we were losing in customer. We were losing revenue in Denmark.
Similar picture could we say for OEM. MAG45 was also faced by substantial headwind. This is mainly driven by a few major customers who have revised their expectation downwards throughout 2025. So it's not that we ever lost them. They've simply just reduced their manufacturing. And thereby, the plants where MAG is serving them, they purchase less from MAG45. MAG actually managed to onboard new customers. So they are broadening the customer base, but it's a long journey before we start to see the impact of it. If we now turn to page 7, then EBITDA of DKK 205 million for Q4 was above our expectations due to our operating income of DKK 74 million related to the gain of our sale of the warehouse in Halmstad. I'll comment on the guidance a little bit later and explain what went better than anticipated.
Looking at the underlying EBITDA of DKK 146 million, it was actually slightly below what we delivered last year. Cost of goods sold, we did see an increase of the underlying margin of approximately 0.2% compared to last year. But this can, in all material aspects, be explained by Solar Polaris, where the major project they had in 2025 came to an end. So we did not see the diluting effect that they have on the margin, whereas we had that in 2024. So and similar, as you may remember, in 2024, we managed to collect additional bonuses here in Q4. We actually managed to do the same here in 2025 at the same level. We do not disclose these as we do not disclose these as a part of the normal business, so they're not shown separately.
In addition, we managed to accelerate the integration of Sonepar Norge, meaning that we move forward costs of DKK 11 million. Approximately 50% of the 0.8% negative impact you see from staff can be explained by this. Regardless, we'll, of course, continue to have a strong focus on cost in order to ensure that it remains on a downward trend in order to support our guidance for 2026, which also includes cost initiatives. Loss on trade receivables remains fully under control. Please turn to page 8. If we take a short look at the full year of 2025, it came out when we reported EBITDA of DKK 501 versus last year's DKK 646. If we make it a comparable basis, we see DKK 503 in 2025 versus DKK 505 in 2024, meaning that the underlying performance is, yes, it's below, but less than what just meets the eye.
There's no doubt that the challenges we faced with our margin as the competition became more and more fierce, we were not able to reverse this trend in 2025. And that, of course, played a significant impact on the result. We more or less managed to offset the headwind on a cost basis, and we only saw a diluting effect of 0.1 and 0.4 on external operating cost and staff cost, which, given the organic growth we saw, the negative organic growth is, in our assumption, unacceptable performance. Please turn to page number nine. If we make a short follow-up on our guidance from 2025, it becomes a bit difficult because there are so many points of references here.
In order to try to bridge the difference between the DKK 460 million and the DKK 501 million, we made, you can say, there's the impact from the sale of Halmstad, which adds DKK 74 million, which were not a part of the guidance, although the building has been for sale as we announced back in 2023. So that leaves us at DKK 427 million, meaning -33 compared to our guidance. This difference can, in all material aspects, be explained by the accelerating of the integration of Sonepar Norge in Norway, which added DKK 11 million, additional bonuses of DKK 10 million, and then DKK 12 million is actually less performance compared to what we thought initially when we gave the guidance. So what went better in 2025 than we initially expected? We were faster at vacating and selling the central warehouse in Halmstad.
The fact that we could vacate it earlier was actually the key to the sale of it. Have we not been able to do that? We have not been able to sell it. Our new logistics center in Kumla is ahead of schedule. You can say the integration in Norway is also ahead of plan, with the first initiatives already being implemented here in December where, as we also announced when we closed the deal, did not expect that we would be able to reach that. We did not expect anything to happen before this year. Cost initiatives delivered as expected. What was less than expected was that the development in the market, and consequently, we had to revise our guidance downwards, which also had a negative impact on the underlying earnings of the company. Please turn to page number 10.
If you look at the cash flow in Q4, there are a few major things that sprang to your eye. First of all, we had a positive impact from operating income of DKK 430 million. And if you look at the right side of the slide, you can actually see where these originate from. The 353 is the seasonal effect from receivables, and they reverse here during Q1. Inventory was actually slightly up, but these were a tactical decision in order to optimize the bonus agreements that we have with our suppliers. So it did not happen by chance. It was a decision we made. So consequently, you can say that the current inventory level is slightly above what we would consider the optimal point given the current activity levels. We expect this to normalize during Q1.
If you look back again on the right side, you can see that we invested a lot. Net investments were DKK 52 million when adjusted for the acquisition. We invested in total DKK 131 million in PPE, of which the DKK 117 million relates to Kumla. We managed to sell the last of the central warehouses, Halmstad, which brought in DKK 124 million. Looking slightly ahead, you can see that approximately DKK 125 million remains, and then we're done with the investment in Kumla, which means, as Jens also emphasized, we'll return to a lower and a normal investment level at the 1% or below.
Please turn to page 11. If you look at the net working capital as an average for the last four quarters, we see a continual reduction, albeit the curve has become slightly more flat here towards the end of the quarter. So we ended at 14.9%. But bear in mind that it's more difficult to reduce the percentage when your revenue is reducing compared to when your revenue is growing. If you look at the gearing, we see a minor drop from Q3 despite the investment in Sonepar Norge.
But again, bear in mind that this is the seasonal effect from receivables. So we end at 3.2, even though we have the full balance sheet impact from Sonepar Norge and no P&L effect from Sonepar Norge except the DKK -11 we used on the acquisition and the integration. Looking forward, you should expect this gearing to increase further. And this is well within our expectations that it'll happen, and it stays well within the thresholds with the agreements we have with our financing sources.
We're fairly comfortable with it, even though you particularly should expect the gain to become very high at the end of Q1 and Q2. Please turn to page 12, guidance. Now, in general, we think the uncertainty has increased throughout 2025, meaning we see greater uncertainty here at the start of 2026 compared to what we normally see and what we saw when we came with the guidance from 2025. I would say the start did not offer any relief. Our guidance, of course, reflects this uncertainty. We have a weak start, and that was, of course, to some extent, expected. I think also the weather is slightly against us.
In the most likely scenario, the mid-range scenario, we expect all our markets to have a stagnant growth with Installation being slightly positive and Industry slightly negative, partly, of course, particularly in Q1 because we have a very strong point of reference in Q1, so we expect it to wear off. Solar Polaris has succeeded in winning yet another major solar park project, which will add additional DKK 275 million to the revenue. If you look at it in terms of organic growth, and bear in mind they added quite some revenue in 2025 as well, it will add closely to 1% organic growth to the total growth. As also mentioned by Jens, we have made significant investments during the last years, meaning we can handle quite an increase in volume with only incremental cost.
And I would say that the acquisition of Sonepar Norge in Norway exemplifies this, where we can add DKK 700 million in revenue, which we'll handle at a very low cost once fully integrated. Following the acquisition in 2026, this will also be a transition year, mainly for Solar in Norway and also partly in Sweden, where we'll be moving out of Örebro and into our new logistics center in Kumla. And as shown in the figure here on the slide, you can see that we expect to spend approximately DKK 35 million in restructuring cost, of which the DKK 20 million is related to the move to Örebro, and then DKK 50 million on integrating the business we acquired in Norway. Bear in mind, we initially announced DKK 60 million, but we managed to accelerate the process, so it's basically unchanged. We have not changed our opinion on this.
Looking at 2026, our guidance also reflects a minor decline in the gross margin, mainly driven by these ongoing pressures on sale prices and also less cycling inventory gains than what you would see in a more normal macroeconomic environment. Revenue, we expect to end between DKK 12.9-DKK 13.4, with DKK 13.15 as the mid-range. This means that the mid-range corresponds to an organic growth of approximately 1%. You can say the top and the lower is approximately -1.5% versus +3.5%. So you can say the range is fairly wide. There is quite some uncertainty on what will happen. If we look at the EBITDA, we expect a range between DKK 400-DKK 408, including these DKK 85 million in restructuring costs. Again, if we make it comparable with 2025, you take the mid-range, that's DKK 440, you add DKK 85 million.
That means that we basically expect an underlying performance of 525 versus 503. So actually, we are expecting a small improvement. Bear in mind that the positive impact from the acquisition will not start to materialize before H2. And that's part of it. We are absolutely convinced that when we move forward, this will contribute to increase the margin in Solar, whereas in 2026, it will dilute the margin. I think that was the last comment I had to our expectations.
Thank you, Michael. Now it's time for questions, please.
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It doesn't seem to be the case. Okay. Then I will allow myself to conclude that the webcast is over, and you may have a very nice day. Thank you for listening in.
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