Hello, and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you have joined us for our quarterly Small Cap, quarterly AI and Tech Conference. Our next presentation is from Exail Technologies. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also view a company's availability for a one-on-one meeting by clicking "Book a Meeting" in the top toolbar. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome Hugo Soussan, Chief of Staff of Exail Technologies, which trades on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol EXALF and under the EPA under the symbol EXA. Welcome, Hugo.
Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. To start the presentation, and I'll leave some time for Q&A at the end, Exail Technologies is a company specialized in two main fields: maritime autonomous robotics, drones, meaning drone systems that carry out missions at sea, and navigation systems with a deep vertical integration of our activities. We are present essentially in the defense sector with around 60% of our order intake last year coming from defense clients, and even more than that, around 80% in our backlog. First, a few slides to give you an overview of the company, and then I'll go more into details into the two activities. Revenues last year were EUR 373 million, up 16%.
EBITDA margin stood at around 20% with a strong improvement in the second semester, two points, and backlog at the end of March reached above EUR 1 billion after we took a big contract in February. It's the first figure of the company we published in billion, and we are very proud of it. The key strengths of Exail Technologies to have in mind is that first, we are present on very supportive markets today, both in civil and defense. It is true that since a few years, defense has been growing faster because first of the increase of defense spending in Europe and all over the world, also because inside this defense spending, autonomous drones are taking a bigger share of investments.
We also are, at the heart of tech companies, we are competing against large groups, especially in Europe, such as Thales, Safran, and the only way to beat these large players in large tenders is to be better, to have better performance, to be better on price. We develop in-house all the capacities and the products to be the best performing on the market. We are the world leader in maritime robotics, especially for the biggest application today in maritime robotics, which is mine hunting. We are the technological leader in Europe for navigation systems with a technology called fiber optic gyroscopes. Finally, we've had a strong dynamic in terms of KPIs, both operational and financial. You see them on this slide. First of all, the order intake.
Order intake has been accelerating since 2021, and when we realized a big acquisition of a company called iXBlue, which was closed in 2022. Last year, order intake increased by 40% to reach above EUR 450 million without especially big orders. This year, it will be even bigger, easy to say, since we took several hundred million contracts in February for maritime robotic systems. Here you see the two main activities of the group. On the left, UMIS system, modular drone systems. Several drones, surface and underwater, collaborating together to perform a mission, especially today in our revenue, mine hunting, but tomorrow more applications are opening in the field of naval robotics. The second big activity is inertial navigation system.
An INS is an equipment that you put on board a vehicle, on board our drones, but also on any frigates, submarines, land defense vehicle, civil maritime shipping that gives the position of a vehicle without external reference, and especially without GPS. It is useful in every defense application and every civil application when information of position is critical. An INS works on the principle that knowing your position of departure, you measure with the internal sensors every movement in every direction in real time and calculate from this point of departure your current position. If you have understood these two activities of the group, you have understood today roughly 90% of the backlog. To go a bit deeper into our activities and industrial setup, we have the particularity of being highly vertically integrated.
If I start from the right, the finality of this setup is to develop and sell integrated drone systems composed of autonomous drones, critical sensors such as the sonars, navigation systems, the control and command software. This can be sold in large tenders directly to navies worldwide. We have the best systems because we have also the best drones in our portfolio. You see here part of our drone range going for surface vehicle to underwater drones, the one on the bottom right being a deep sea UV able to go down to 6,000 m deep. We can sell this drone unit by unit or be integrated into our systems. We have the best drones because we integrated to them the best critical sensors, the inertial navigation systems, the sonars, the gaps which are acoustic positioning. For the INS, we use fiber optic gyroscopes.
Fiber optic gyroscopes are done with our own fiber optics, which we do in-house in the advanced technology segment. We do also our own optical modulators. This is by having the best components into the best equipment, into the best drone and the best systems that we are able to provide our clients with innovative solutions and that we are able to beat the large groups in the field of defense. It's important to understand that at each step of this value chain, we generate external revenue. Fiber optics are sold to third parties in the laser industry for LiDAR to a very diversified base of clients. INS navigation systems are essentially sold outside of the group to navies, civil maritime operators, space launchers, land defense vehicles, and in a small part integrated into our drones. This setup has several strengths.
First, the performance of our products, I mentioned it. Second, the production capacity. We do not depend on external suppliers, on external technologies. We can choose to ramp up capacity and work on each bottleneck in the production chain. Finally, as the last slide for the overview, a word on defense spending increase, especially in Europe. We have been talking a lot about the increase of defense spending since January in Europe in the geopolitical context, but in fact, it is a trend that has been here for at least three years. Last year, investment, so the part allocated to equipment, to acquisition of new material, increased strongly in Europe, and it is potentially doubling by 2030 with the current willingness of every country to rearm. Today, in our figures and the good trajectory we have, it is the result of this past year, the efforts in R&D we did in the past.
We see today none of the new willingness to invest in our figures. This is yet to come as a positive impact in the future performance. Now I'll go to maritime robotics activity to give you a few highlights. First, let me show you a small video of our drone systems to show you what we're talking about actually, performing a mission of mine hunting. Mine hunting being the largest market today and the most mature in autonomous drones for maritime application in the world. We developed this system between 2010 and 2017 on equity, thinking the market would go this way, and we were proven right with the first tender we took in 2019. Here, the video should launch, and you will see our UMIS system at sea.
What you see here is a drone system deployed in a dangerous area to be cleared of mines. The gray drone, the gray boat, is a drone, a surface autonomous vehicle that we do in-house that goes into the dangerous area and is going to deploy other drones to do the mission. First, an A18 drone, a survey drone underwater, will scan the area to detect points of interest, potential threats. It is equipped with sonars and will detect potential mines. It goes back to the surface and relays the information to the mothership manned outside of the dangerous area that you see in the background. On board, an operator using our software with intelligence will determine which points are most likely threats. These points will need to be investigated. We launch the Seascan, another underwater drone that will go very close to the object equipped with cameras.
The Seascan has a very low acoustic and magnetic signature to come close to the mine and examine it. Is it a threat, a mine, what kind of mine? Here we see a seabed mine laid on the floor. The Seascan will come back on the surface drone to be retrieved, and the operator, when they launch the last part of the mission, the destruction of the mine, used with another drone, the K-Ster, which is a consumable drone, an ammunition equipped with an explosive charge that will come to the contact of the mine and sacrifice itself to destroy it. The mine is destroyed, the drone is destroyed, and the mission can then continue to other points of interest. You see here the K-Ster exploding, and the mission will continue until all the area is determined clear of mines.
To complete this video where you see most of the drone in our mine hunting systems, you have to understand that mine hunting most of the time consists of not finding mines, making sure there are none. A bit like when you have a sport event, you have to sweep the stadium for explosives. 99% of the time, luckily, you do not find explosives, but 100% of the time, the mission is necessary. All navies, large navies who have frigates, submarines need mine hunting capacities. The next slide should appear. Yes. What has happened in the mine hunting field is that 50 years ago, we were the world leaders in maritime robotics for mine hunting. At this time, the way to do mine hunting was with a heavy ship going into the dangerous area, a mine hunter.
For the last part of the mission, you would send a small drone, the PAP, which you see in yellow here, who would do the destruction. At this time, we sold it first to the Belgian and Dutch navies. We created a market standard selling 500 systems in the world and to 80% of the world navies. We became the leader in this sector by far. Today, we are trying to recreate the same thing, but with the next generation of systems completely autonomous that you saw in the video. Here, you might have a mothership, but that is not going into the dangerous area whose main function is to carry the drone systems.
The drone system can also be deployed from the shore, so no need for a ship, which explains why the value of the drone in a program went from around 5% to 25% where there are still ships to 100% where there are no ships, just the system operated from the shore. This was the case, for example, in the last program we took in February 2025. It was a several hundred million program, fully drone, 100%. Since 2019, we developed the system on equity, and in 2019, we won a first big program for Belgium and Netherlands, which is the reference navy for NATO. At this time, we knew that we were right to develop this and that we were going the right direction. What was at stake? What would we get? 30% or 80% of the world market like we did in the past.
Now we think we are more leaning towards 80% because since 2019, we won 95% of the tenders that have been notified worldwide. The more we win, the more it is difficult to compete with us because we still have the best performing system. We are the only company in the world able to have the full drones in our portfolio for the mission you saw in the video. Other competitors such as Thales or Saab either have no drones or some of those drones and have to buy from other companies. We are the only ones to have taken a big program and have a production capacity in Belgium to assemble and deliver fast to clients. We are the only one with combat-proven systems, which is key for clients for future tenders.
The flagship contract we won in February was very important, both in terms of absolute amount because it enabled us to reach more than EUR 1 billion backlog. It's the same systems, 95% identical to the one we sold previously to Belgium. We will produce this drone in series and benefit from industrial scale effect. This will enable us to reach, by the time this contract ramps up, probably 18-24 months from now, 25% EBITDA margin compared to 20% today. Today, mine hunting in the world is a big market. We estimate that there remain EUR 2 billion of EUR 3 billion of tenders remaining by 2030. With navies, we have active discussions currently. As I said, we're still the best. We're still the only one with combat-proven systems.
We think we're well positioned with all these navies, which for the large part were previous clients for the previous generation of drones. This should continue to drive the commercial order and intake of the company in the next years. I'll go very briefly on this slide in the interest of time. Our drone systems are used in defense application mostly today, but also in civil application, especially the DriX, a red drone dedicated to survey that we launched in 2017, and we sold about 30 in the world, which are in operation right now. Actually, right now, there's an operation and exercise with NATO for a mission of reconnaissance in the Baltic Sea. The idea here is to complete the capacity of hydrography ship or replace boats to do data collection, monitoring, cartography, for example, for offshore wind farms.
One of our first clients was NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the U.S., who is the pioneer institute in the world for drones in hydrography and shows us a non-U.S. player for their drones. Finally, to open up a new application beyond mine hunting and hydrography, we see today very important developments in the field of maritime robotics with the potential deployments of fleets of drones. The DriX or other surface vehicles we can have can be used to replace ships to do monitoring, data collection, reconnaissance mission, a bit like what happened in the flying drone sector and is yet to happen or is starting to happen in the naval robotics field.
We are doing exercises with many navies in a few years, the French Navy, of course, the U.S. Navy in the Gulf with the Task Force 59 dedicated to drones, with NATO, as I said, right now in the Baltic Sea and in September in Portugal. Navies are thinking here to develop new operational concepts to replace costly frigates, anti-submarine warfare ships with drones to do the monitoring mission. This could be huge markets coming in the future. The timing is unsure, which will be the first is unsure, but we know that this will happen. If I switch now to navigation systems, so navigation system, as I was saying, is an equipment, in our case with fiber optics, so knowing the position of a vehicle with knowing the point of departure and deducing by measuring in real time the position of a vehicle.
Today, we address every application you see on this slide, which represents a market globally of around EUR 3 billion-EUR 4 billion for navigation system worldwide. We come from the bottom of the slide, from the sectors of high performance, very demanding in naval defense, in underwater robotics, where we are the world leaders. Most submarines in the world are equipped with our navigation systems. What is happening since a few years and accelerating last year and this year is that we are bringing the fiber optics technology, which was previously unavailable for other sectors because too expensive or not adapted to new applications, maritime shipping, maritime operation. If I have to talk only about one in the time I have, land defense. In land defense vehicles today, most of the vehicles were previously not equipped with INS or with low-end other technologies such as mechanical INS.
We developed with the years new products, very compact with fiber optics that are enabled to address this market. Last year, it started with a big order to Rheinmetall for 1,000 units and an option for 1,000 more to equip light armored vehicles. We won this because we were the best performer at the competitive price with the fiber optics technology. Following this, we built a commercial momentum and tripled the orders in land defense last year to around EUR 30 million. This trend is continuing this year with different orders for light armored vehicles, mobile surveillance system, radars, etc. Also, with a new product, which is the most compact INS with fiber optics in the world, we're starting to equip tactical aerial drones. Not kamikaze, small drones, but long-range drones for reconnaissance.
We recently announced two orders, one for tactical drones for Spain with Airbus, one for a European force for a great amount in hundreds of units to equip flying drones. This is a new volume market for us that could be big in the next years. Just in Europe, you have around 20,000 vehicles that can be equipped, and our market is worldwide. I have done the overview of all activities. I think it is time to leave the floor for some Q&A. If you have any questions. The question is, what is the geographical split of our customer base and if it is changing in the next five years? The first, we sell not much to France. France represents around 15%, 15 of our order intake last year.
The second, so we export 85% of our products first to Europe, then to Asia Pacific, Middle East, and a small part in the U.S. In the next five years, probably that Europe could be stronger given the dynamic in defense spending. Another question is, have you adjusted your 2030 revenue projection with the recent commitment by NATO members to increase defense spending? No. We did not give any indication at this horizon in the past, and it is unclear yet how it will impact the business and at what speed. We see it as a very serious commitment from European forces, to see in Germany, in France, in many countries following the NATO summit. We are sure it will have an impact on our positive impact on our revenues in the future, but unsure on the magnitude.
Today, what's happening also is that in Europe, there is a willingness to buy more from European players versus U.S. players to be less dependent, and this is also a trend that could support us. Do you have a strategy to enter the U.S. military market? We are already selling to the U.S. Navy. We sell to the Coast Guard. We sell to other parts of the Navy, to my knowledge, not to land defense forces, but this could be a market. We have the contact. It's accessible to us. I think there are no more questions. I thank you all for participating and wish you a great day for the next presentations. Thank you.