Hello, and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you have joined us for our AI and Technology conference. The first presentation of the day 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. 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 on the Euronext Paris exchange under the symbol EXA. Welcome back, Hugo.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining. Exail Technologies, for those who don't know us, is a defense tech company specialized in two big activities, in maritime robotics and navigation systems. I'll just present you the key figures that we published recently on full year 2025 results so you have them in mind. The company generates a bit less than EUR 500 million revenue, growing 28% last year. EBITDA for the first time reached above EUR 100 million, growing faster than revenue due to improvement in margins that we indicated would continue. Order intake was very strong last year due to both the regular business and also a EUR 400 million program we won earlier in 2025 in maritime robotics, specifically on mine hunting. The backlog now is above EUR 1 billion, giving us a good visibility on the future.
Just one word on the financial results before, because I won't come back on them, on cash flow because these strong results in revenue and EBITDA have translated into strong cash flow increase. EUR 100 million cash flow from operations last year, both because of the improvement in EBITDA, also because we actually improved working capital in absolute value for the last three years, despite a strong increase in revenue since then thanks to good cash negotiation with our clients and execution. A brief overview of our two activities. On the left you have maritime robotics, and on the right navigation systems. If you understand these two activities on the group, you understand 90% of the group and its growth drivers. On the left, maritime drone system, we're talking about underwater drones, surface drone, carrying missions at sea, collaborating together, doing data collection, monitoring, surveillance.
The biggest application in the world today by far in maritime robotics is mine hunting, the clearance of underwater mines. Since I've been explaining that every navy needs mine hunting, I had a lot of questions on this, but I believe now since the conflict in Hormuz and the threat of mines that was actually used by Iran, I believe you understand now that every navy needs mine hunting capacity and that it's a crucial element in naval warfare. What's interesting in mine hunting is that today it's the essence of our revenue, but it's also a niche inside navies. Today, all of the other application in navies besides mine hunting are opening to drones. On the right you have navigation systems, so the other half of the activity.
We're talking here about equipment that goes inside vehicles, submarines, frigates, land defense vehicles, and that's enabled to give the position without external reference, especially without GPS. The way it works is that you know your departing point, and you measure in real-time all movements in space using the sensors inside the INS to know where you are. It's useful in every defense context since GPS can be jammed or spoofed. It's also useful in a lot of civil application where the information of position is critical. For example, when you install an offshore wind farm. Sorry, the slide is not moving. Now. Exail Technologies has quite a unique positioning in our field because we provide both the system. We have all the drones in our portfolio to build full systems for mine hunting and growingly for new applications beyond mine hunting.
We also have integrated vertically a lot of the critical components inside a drone, the navigation system that I talked to you about that are used in our drones, sonars, acoustic communication, also some quantum equipments or photonics equipments that are used in our navigation system and in R&D. Maybe to finish this introduction, a word on the financial structure of the group, which is an important topic because we are planning to do a big refinancing operation later in the year 2026. Initially, we set up this financial structure that is the current one in 2022 when we acquired a company our size called iXblue, which we merged with our existing companies to create Exail Technologies. To do this acquisition, we had raised bank debt and also private equity financing from a company called ICG.
This financing can be bought back starting September 26. If you want more details on this operation, I invite you to follow up on questions or read our annual report. You should have in mind that it's going to be an important milestone in the year 2026 on the balance sheet of Exail. Now, maybe a few words on the activity, and then I leave some time for Q&A. Order intake in 2025 has been really strong, as I said, and it follows a strong trend since five years of acceleration in the two activities of the group. What's interesting to look at in this order intake in 2025 is also the diversity of the growth. Of course, geographically, I mean. This year we had a big contract in the Middle East that shows on this breakdown.
You can also see that we've been growing quite fast on what we call foreign exports. The U.S. and Asia, where we find traction, both in naval defense for navigation, but also for maritime robotics with mine hunting system and surface drones. You will see also that Europe is a big part of our activity, but has been growing, let's say, slower, showing that the most of the efforts of rearmament in Europe is still ahead of us. France is a small part, in fact, of our business, since we export 90% of our products, and we had some big programs last year, but typically it's about 10%-15% of our revenue. There's a video here that you can see if you download our presentation.
I won't show it, but it's an important milestone we passed in 2025, where we delivered to Belgium the first complete autonomous system to do mine hunting to the Belgian Navy, which was our first client in mine hunting and the first in the world equipped with completely autonomous drone system to clear mines. It could be important in the operation to come, maybe to use in the demining of the Strait of Hormuz, which will have to be demined, as the mere threat of mines is enough to paralyze the traffic. A brief word on navigation as well and the current trends. We've had a great trend, which is continuing into 2026 on navigation, with two segments that we can highlight. First, subsea operation, where we have a very strong market share due to our capacity to provide compact and precise products, which grew 47% last year.
Here we're talking about all kind of operation, civil operation, and sometimes defense for offshore wind farms or a bit the oil and gas industry. The second vector has been the high-grade performance range, the Marins range at Exail, which we've been more and more selling for platforms that previously did not require such performance, but now are demanding more precise products, given the extensive jamming on GPS in wider areas. In terms of production capacity, which is also a key topic for us in 2026, we are ramping up capacity in our two activities. First in mine hunting, where our existing site is ramping up apace, and we already secured an adjacent space to be able to increase the capacity when we have more visibility on more orders.
On the surface drone, which is the one, the red drones on the bottom right, on the top right that you see, we are also planning to increase the capacity this year to be able to shorten our delivery time, which are key to clients in facing urgent operational needs. In navigation, we shared also a plan to about double the capacity in the next two years, spending EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million of CapEx spread over the next two years. I'll conclude opening on some perspective before I let you the floor for questions. What's interesting today, as I said in introduction, is that all the other activities in naval warfare are opening to drones because there are some profound changes in the way that navies operate.
It has been shown in Ukraine, it has been shown also in the recent conflict in the Middle East, that navies face hybrid threats, and they need to equip in consequence. There are many interests to adopting naval drones instead of frigates or traditional vessels. The costs, the capacity to multiply the vectors. I would say one of the triggers recently that have made this market accelerate is the urgency and the capacity to deliver fast to ensure real operational needs, which has changed in the past year. Compared to a traditional frigate program, which cost about EUR 1 billion, and take about between 7-10 years from the time you order a new vessel until the time it's operational at sea. Drones, naval drones take very long to develop to have robust products. It took us about 10-15 years for the DriX surface drone, for example.
Once you have a strong design, it's quite easy to replicate, and the delivery time is not in years, but in months. This is driving navies to adopt this solution today to face the hybrid threats and the asymmetric threats against them. In mine hunting it's very clear because navies have already switched to going to fully autonomous systems. Ahead of us, we see a potential of contracts to be signed of on one side with existing clients, EUR 500 million-EUR 1 billion additional. With new clients that are launching, that have active mine hunting programs, about EUR 3 billion of contracts to be notified in the world by around 2030.
I'll skip on this one in the interest of time, but it was just to emphasize that we see an inflection in navies, in the pace of adoption, to drones here in the past 6-9 months. To answer these needs, we at Exail have on just talking about surface drone here, a range that is widening. We started with the DriX 8-meter, in 2015, which has now 16,000 nautical miles accumulated of sailing 100,000 hours at sea. We can now say that it's a robust product fit for defense and with high sea capacities. The time to develop such objects is in years. You may see a lot of R&D projects ongoing, including on the U.S. side, but I believe it will not be immediate, from the time of development to operations.
We extended the range of DriX by the 9-meter version, which has 20-day autonomy, yes, and the 60-meter version, which has an autonomy of 30 days. Below the Inspector range, which is both used in mine hunting, but also in other application for surface because it can carry bigger payload and have high speed for interception needs, for example. On the navigation side, just one word to open the perspective. You see here an interesting map that I shared recently. It's a screenshot I took on March 15, but you could take the same today. It shows in Europe, so the red areas you see in the map are all the areas where GPS has been perturbed in one way or another, so jammed or spoofed in the past 24 hours when I took the screenshot.
You can actually take the same, you can go on the website, it's open to look for yourself. It should be the same today. What's interesting to see is that GPS is not jammed only in hot conflict areas. It's also permanently jammed or perturbated in the Baltic Sea, in the Mediterranean, near the Canal of Suez, in the Gulf, around the Black Sea. This is showing that means to disrupt the GPS have become more systematic and cover wide areas. In facing this, the answer of navies and even civil operators in the operating area in these areas is to seek equipment with high performance to stop relying on GPS for a given period of time when it's not available. This is clearly what we address with our products in, for example, land defense, where INS are becoming more and more demanded.
Also, in space application with the development of the new space industry that is consuming INS for high-performance satellites. I took a bit more than 15 minutes, but I need the floor for some Q&A. Actually, I have some written question. I don't know if they are in order, but. The first is from Andrew. Is it fair to say that surface drone like DriX are now moving from pilot project to true fleet scale deployment? There are not any more pilot project, it's true, and navies are thinking of changing their doctrines to move to fleet scale deployments, but they are not in operation today on a vast scale. I believe anyway, it's coming faster than we thought one year ago. The big question that remains on this new application is also the pace of adoption by navies of these new capacities.
Another question, by Jonathan. With recent large MCM wins, do you see Exail becoming the reference supplier for mine hunting system worldwide? This is our goal. Clearly, this is what we achieved 50 years ago with the previous generation of drones for mine hunting. We think we are on a good way with our track record to again establish our system as the standard. What makes us, let's say, on the right path is that today we are the only company in the world with an operational system working at sea with the Belgian Navy, with complete autonomous drone. Next question from Tony: Does the U.S. Navy use your products? Yes. So not on the mine hunting because they always had a separate approach, and today they use LCS ships in a mine hunting capacity, which it's not me saying it, but they are underperforming.
It's starting to be quite well documented in the specialized media. They buy navigation system for civil and defense, and also some surface drone like the DriX for application beyond mine hunting, both civil and a bit defense. Another question from Tom: Given your order book, how confident are you that revenue growth can stay in double digits for several years? We did not give guidance, or trajectory above 2026. I won't comment on, I won't give one today. I would say that first with the backlog, only with the backlog, we have a strong growth trajectory, which is baked in. On navigation system, all our markets are well-oriented structurally. Be it naval defense, land defense, civil maritime operation or space. We believe, and you've seen the Q1 figures, that we have a strong commercial traction on these markets.
After this, it's also a question of our capacity to execute. I believe that in 2025 and at year-end and also in Q1 2026, we showed that we are able to translate our strong commercial capacity, our strong commercial intake into good execution. Next question from Roger: Can the Astrix new space become a major profit engine from the group on its own? It depends also on how the rest will grow, I want to say. But it could be significant anyhow, through the constellation of low Earth orbit satellites. We could equip high performance satellites. Not all satellites require INS, but if you're talking precise Earth observation or telecommunication with laser and precise orientation, you need this kind of equipment. It could start to be significant on the revenue in the navigation.
Given that it's also a market with a lot of constraints, the unit price are higher than on some other application. A question from Kevin: 2025 sales grew 28%, and you beat your own revenue target. Does this suggest your current guidance for 2026 is still conservative? I will not answer this one because it seems that we gave a guidance and saying it's conservative would give another information. No further information on this. Exail moved from a net loss in 2024 to profit in 2026 with EBITDA margin reaching 25% in H2. How much further margin expansion do you think is achievable as volume keep ramping? We actually gave publicly a target. We want to reach 25% EBITDA margin at group level, once the second big order in mine hunting, the program ramps up in production. Probably somewhere in 2027.
Another question from Jerry: With a EUR 1 billion-plus backlog and strong cash flow, are you now at the point where you could both self-fund growth and consider more aggressive shareholder returns? If you mean dividends, we don't plan on issuing dividends in the next year as we still have a balancing structure with some leverage. We think there are a lot of developments and new markets ahead of us with the needs, so we invest in organic growth. Question from Joseph: Exail just sold a transoceanic DriX to a big civil digital infrastructure player. Could commercial customers like this become a second growth engine alongside defense? I believe civil applications are also big for drones because they are also adopting drones to replace or complement ships. But so far they've been buying unit by unit or two by two.
I don't see any big tenders for tens of drones in the civil side so far. It will grow from what we see in our commercial pipeline, but probably less than defense application today. A question from Mark: Analysts now model roughly 16% annual revenue growth and close to 39% on it. Do you see internal lever that could let you beat those expectations? I won't comment on the figures. I send you back to the guidance we gave. Now on the level that could help us go beyond that, for example, the 25% margin we gave. First of all, we need already to reach this, and it's not going to be a formality that we are still partly an industrial company producing hardware.
There are elements that could help with the maintenance, for example, on maritime systems, which today represents a non-significant contribution revenues, but that will start to increase as we deliver more systems. Sorry, question switch. Question from Eric. "Recent geopolitical tension are actually highlighting demand for underwater robotics and sovereign navigation. Yet you say they should not materially impact 2026 revenue. Does that mean there is still upside optionality to current outlook?" Undeniably, what happened in the Middle East in naval warfare and in mine hunting will have impact on our business. It could lead to new clients to want to equip with mine hunting system to increase the needs and maybe the pace of the current tenders with clients. Now, given our production capacity, even if there are urgent needs today, that could happen, but on a fairly smaller scale.
We cannot deliver another big system this year. You should not expect in 2026 a material impact on revenue from the conflict in the Middle East. However, it could lead to a material impact through the need from the customers in this application specifically. A question from Victor: "With underwater, surface, and navigation systems all gaining traction and the backlog still above EUR 1 billion, is it fair to think Exail is entering a multi-year scale-up phase rather than a single good year?" I would say that structurally, our applications are well-oriented, and what happened in 2025 was not luck or a one-off on execution. It was the work of the past five years on answering to tenders, winning orders. They're starting to execute and structuring the teams around this. Yes, we are scaling up production.
We will continue to increase production capacity, and we will do more in the next years. "You recently signed a major U.S. contract to deliver 100 Phins Compact for naval UUVs. How big could U.S. defense business become over the next few years?" That's a hard one. The U.S., we always thought that we would first, on the market for maritime drones, we have a very strong market share worldwide, and it's hard to compete with us on the price capacity of our products. For maritime drones, we think we can still get a fair share of the U.S. market. Now for the global defense, U.S. defense market, we can say that we won't have access to the strategic U.S. defense market. We are still able to sell some products in navigation, some surface drone, so we are not counting too much on it.
Nevertheless, last year we grew 47% on this. It could be also a nice arrow to have on our bow. Maybe one last before it's time. "With cash improving so strongly, do you see room for both continued investment and better return for shareholders?" Again, by better returns, you mean dividend? It's not planned today. In terms of cash flow, yes, we could continue to see an improvement in cash flow given that our increasing EBITDA, we are managing well working cap, and the CapEx below are reasonable. They will increase a bit, but they're still reasonable. I believe we are out of time for the Q&A. I thank you all for your participation. If you have follow-up questions, feel free to join me by mail. There is my contact in every press release of the company. Have a good day.