Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to follow Detection Technology's Half-Yearly and Second-Quarter Results Announcing. I'm pleased to present it to you. My name is Hannu Martola. I'm the President and CEO of Detection Technology. Let's go see what we got. Second quarter, we reached the sales of EUR 24.4 million, which is a decline of 7%. A disappointment from that point of view for us. We reached EBITDA of EUR 1.7 million, which is 7% of sales, and also a decline compared to last year. Looking at these numbers, I think it's important to remember that out of the - 7% decline, actually the currency exchange differences represent about 4%. The remaining 3% is sort of the net decline. If we look on the application point of view, yes, the sales declined, but on the other hand, we remain in the market position strongly. We did not lose business.
It's just that there was not business. Industrial sales, actually, we did quite well, especially in the flat panels. In China, we had very nice growth. On flat panels, we even grew about 40%. Medical sales, the biggest part here is China. That starts to be now normal. We had a nice 14% growth in medical sales when the markets now are recovering from the healthcare reform. The true disappointment was the security sales, and security sales in Europe. We had a decline of 28%. This dip was much bigger than expected and led to a sharp decline, even 40% in Europe, Middle East, and Africa sales.
The reason is that there was a halt in the security CT system installations in Europe because of the so-called 100 mm rule that is now actually being lifted, but it still had a big effect on the second quarter and will have effects on the third and fourth quarters. Again, the market position remained intact. I think what's good in here is that if we look in the big picture, it seems to be that actually now the big sort of, let's say, fundamental changes in the business or negative changes since COVID are starting to be normalizing. We just have to be patient that it takes a couple of quarters to get back on track. Sales by quarter, we clearly fell then below last year, as you can see, a 7% decline as well as in profitability, 7% compared to 12.7% in the previous year.
If we look at the regions, Americas - 5%, APAC was up 9% driven by nice performance in both medical and industrial. Europe, as I said, negative 40%, which is really, I would call this as a halt, temporary halt, leading so that actually 75% of the total sales was APAC. Looking on the applications, industrial up 4%. By the way, industrial percentage-wise was nice, 23% of total sales, medical 14% positive, and a bit over 40% of the total sales, and security down to 34%. First half, I think we have very similar behavior, $47 million sales, - 4.5% net sales change, EBITDA of $3.1 million, which is 6.7%. Important to remember that actually first quarter, we did not have so strong currency exchange rate effect. The exchange rates, of course, they go up and down and change and so on.
What was quite extraordinary was the speed this year in what happened in March. That is something we will be seeing unless anything changes also in the coming third and fourth quarters. By business units, similar than second quarter, Americas - 4%, APAC + 6%, and Europe, Middle East, Africa - 28%. By applications, industrial up 4% thanks to very nice behavior of especially flat panels, medical 14%, and security is - 24% down for the six-month period. Looking a little bit closer into the financials, something to point out here, we had slightly higher R&D costs. We are developing these kind of very large panels that we are first in the market. We call them jumbo, the one-meter panel, and there are some costs related to that, yielding so that with these lower sales, we had even 13% R&D cost.
Cash flow, $460,000, that's clearly down from the previous year. Actually, two big explaining factors. One is, of course, the profits, less profits, and the other one is that we did not, in 2024, we did not have incentive payment, and we paid for last year for our employees' incentive, and that's now recognized in the cash flow affecting that. Investments are up to $1.1 million, and the biggest driver here is that we did some long-term R&D investment that we have recognized as CapEx that is affecting here and should help long-term growth possibilities for the company. Return on investment still nice, 14.7%. This in a nutshell. On first half strategy highlights, flat panel, I brought it up, that's nice behavior there, and we are very, very pleased on how it has been going. We've been winning a lot of new customers in China and also starting outside.
Several notable new products, the X-Panel 43108, the X-Cargo for actually, and that's very much into the cargo inspection in Europe. We will see some sales already in the second half of that, and then a smaller panel, 20. We also progressed in India. We have now tested the first production in our new factory. Production facility in India, in the New Delhi area, is finished, and we did first testing late June as well as the first invoicing of our products to our India subsidiary. As I mentioned, we made an investment into new technology. We have also been working on updating our strategy. I think the core thing here is that we, as a focus, remain focused on X-ray digital detectors. We believe that this is a nice market of $3 billion.
There's still a lot of room to grow in this market, and our emphasis, our aim is to deliver smart X-ray detector solutions that drive customer success through exceptional usability to outgrow the market. This means more value added, and that means more software in one word. Adding a stronger software layer on top of our hardware. We will be through this fall, we will be communicating more about our strategy and execution of it. Other events, we successfully worked in the area of sustainability, increasing the use of green energy, promoted environmental work safety awareness on internal employee survey. Results were quite okay. We're working with the results from that and possibilities to develop things further. Working with the Lean Six Sigma, we have been doing that more than 10 years.
That's essential for our quality performance and continue to help the children and children's rights with UNICEF and Awesome Collective Impact. Important sales expectations for third quarter and second half. We expect the industrial to grow in third quarter. We expect medical to decline in third quarter and security to decline in third quarter. From regions, we expect APAC and Europe, Middle East, and Africa to remain stable and in America actually have a fairly large decline by double digits in third quarter. Total net sales, as the official guidance, we expect to decline by single digits in third quarter and second half. A little bit of things behind here, I think, is that, like I mentioned, that one headwind that we have for the third quarter, most probably also fourth quarter, is the forex exchange rates.
We have about 5% impact to our sales because of much, much stronger dollar and renminbi. On medical, actually, the medical market is moving nicely. Also in China, we have some supply chain limitations. We could sell more, but short term, we have some supply chain limitations. We are working with some changing suppliers and so on. Things are in control, but those will still have an effect before we get the improvements out. One of the things that also has changed in the world is that there's a huge boom for data centers, and then suddenly there's very unique shortages that were totally impossible to be predicted affecting, and this is something that we also face in our supply chain, especially in this medical. As total, single digit year-on-year net sales decline for third quarter and second half because of these kind of internal things and external things.
I think very good news is that finally Europe has lifted the 100 mm rule. Very late last week of June, they came with a new specification. There's already the first company, city company, has been approved, and we are back on where passengers in aviation can have their liquids with the handbags and so on, meaning that the installations for CT start to roll again. What we have heard from the companies in the industry and so on is that they start to have record sort of order books and so on. This is something that we also will see then starting possibly a little bit late fourth quarter, but starting the next year. As I mentioned, also finally the China healthcare reform is now sort of sorted out, and we see also growth there. As financial midterm targets, we are not giving up.
The midterm targets, annual growth is 10%, EBITDA 15%, and then dividend and return capital between 30%- 60% of the net proceedings. This has been in short of an update on after second quarter. Thank you. I would be happy to answer to any questions that they might arise.
Thank you, Hannu, for the presentation. I must start this. I'm Jukka- Pekka Pesonen from Nordea. To your best knowledge, you guide for sales decline in H2, but do you see it more in Q3, or do you also see maybe decline already in Q4, or maybe more stable in Q4?
That's a bit mixed. I think as total, I think both quarters we see decline. One driver is really this forex exchange rate, which affects both, of course, from today's point of view on forecasting. Possibly third quarter is a bit more affected by the dip coming out of the dip on security. Fourth quarter may be a little bit more on supply chain, still on medical that we have recovered faster. It's, of course, from today's point of view, it's a bit hard to predict. We better play safe than here.
On that topic also, what would be the main lever that could maybe change the end of the year to growth, maybe in Q4? What would need to happen?
I think two things. This is orders for security for the CT installations, and second is the medical that performs strongly in China.
You said that you're looking into cost measures or doing some cost measures to actually bring your profitability back to appropriate levels. Which cost items especially are you looking at or the cost levels?
Yes, we are. I mean, short term, we are looking on the fixed cost. I mean, what are really the core things we need to be moving forward? What are the things we can save? Basically, it's fixed cost savings, meaning that all fixed costs, including then also personnel.
Okay, maybe last from my side, you stated that there's intensifying competition in China and this new block purchase model. Could you open this up and maybe how DT has to adapt to these changes?
Yeah, I think this block purchase, it's an interesting concept. This is an outcome of the healthcare reform. Before, it was so that all the hospitals were buying what they wanted, what they needed, and they made the deals and so on. That actually created also an environment for possible corruption through these middle consultants in between, so between the OEMs and the hospitals. Now how the system has developed is that, what's smartly actually, each of the hospitals can still maintain whatever their strategy is. They can be expert on something and also buy relevant equipment to be able to do the things they want to do. All these needs are then area-based, pooled into blocks. These blocks are being tendered, so they have requests for quotations for the blocks, and they typically select two or three providers on how they split.
Also, the block is then taking care of the money. The hospitals get more cost-effectively what they need, and all the funding and so on is organized and managed on the block level.
Thank you.
Thank you, Hannu, for the presentation. Waltteri Rossi from Danske Bank. First, on the margin side, can you give us any guidance on where you see EBITDA margins going this year now after these cost savings and also lower top line?
It's pretty hard now after these two quarters and also what the outlook is for the second half to reach the target this year, which is 15%. I think as minimum we need to be fighting so that we can deliver more than like a 10%, which is at least be on the double digit side there.
All right. On the recovery in the security business, what does that look like in your mind? I think you already touched it a bit, but when do you see that starting in terms of actually seeing growth again? Did you say that you already have a record order book in the security side?
Yeah, thanks. If I take the last one, what you mentioned, I didn't say us. I mean, what we hear from markets, from our customers. I mean, we don't see it yet. It's pretty hard to be, except I mean, it's a fact that the CT machines will be installed there, so can't say even rumors there and so on, but it can be that it's very much next year. At increasing speed, I mean, this technology really is needed. Anybody can Google and so on. There's a lot of irritation, and the airports are very angry on the officials on not being able to support. For example, it's been a peak travel season in Europe. A lot of families and so on going for holidays, and it's not just the Helsinki airport, but also other airports have been a mess. This would not have happened.
There are a lot of drivers to smoothen this out and so on when we get into normal sort of waters. The most important is that the decisions are there. I mean, the rule has been lifted, the first company has been approved, and now that there's more companies, OEMs are on the line of getting acceptance.
All right. Two quick ones still. On the margins and China, can you give us any color on how much lower are Chinese margins compared to the other business?
It's actually a fairly complicated, would be a complicated answer. I can't go into details, but actually very, very business specific. It's a little bit on how niche is the product. I mean, of course, I mean, these kind of like the basic volume products that are being purchased through these block deals, they are fairly competitive, meaning that the margins are fairly tight, but also the volumes are nice. Still, if you have a nice volume and you have an even tighter margin, the effect can be on EBITDA fairly good. It's very business specific and very much driven by the competition. If you might have some area that there's some kind of challenger wanting and must to get into the business without, I mean, we must remember that now there's even, and this is according to Financial Times, I think 50% of the Chinese companies are on loss.
This is at the increasing rate. It's the huge deflation in China, which of course we see from the cost pressure and so on. This has an impact to the thing. There are companies that are fighting for their life. We are still making money in China. We are in a strong position, of course, thanks to our balance sheet and also our history and so on. We just need to maintain our quality. We need to be learning a little bit more faster. We need to also be developing lower cost products so that we don't leave too much room for the low cost producers so that they get strong and can attack us later on. These kind of things we have, and those are part of our strategy.
All right, thanks. Lastly, as you know, it's quite difficult to estimate your sales in different segments from quarter to quarter. Do you see that trend kind of normalizing or stabilizing somewhere in the future?
Yes, yes. Thanks for the question. I think we are on a journey of more normal waters now finally. 2026 then should be when we see more predictable business.
All right, great. That's it. Thanks.
Good afternoon. It's Matti Riikonen at DNB Carnegie. A couple of questions still. When we talk about the Chinese medical new regime, isn't it so that the medical business is always kind of lower margin than the other segments, but of course the volumes then compensate, and perhaps on the EBIT margin side you are fairly well off. Now if the situation is going to change in China for good, and it will be more negative than what it used to be in China, wouldn't that mean that in the big picture, longer term, everything that you do in the medical business in China would have structurally lower margin than earlier because the competition just keeps intensifying?
I think first, if I take your first part, this is, I think, yes. I mean, you have, like healthcare, you have big customers, big OEMs, you have high volumes, and fairly, I mean, from our point of view, also the products are lower value added. I mean, we don't have any software there and so on. That is sort of building the business scale so that there's more pressure on prices and more buying power from the customer point of view. That's one thing. Another thing I think is that this has already lasted for a while, this kind of very intense cost pressure and so on, and there is, let's say, there's a limit to that. I would expect at least the trend to be, let's say, slowing down, downwards trend, and then on the other hand, we are not out of ideas yet.
We also have ways to decrease our costs. It's just that this is a fairly slow cycle of getting new products in also because of the regulatory authorities' approvals and so on.
Isn't it also so that in China, if you think that the competitive landscape is going to be like it is, and unless there are exits from the players in the market, the prices cannot kind of improve because everybody that still is in the game wants to keep the volumes, and they keep on discounting until some are going bankrupt, and the others basically reap the benefits. As long as that hasn't happened, the price fight continues.
Yeah, that's market economy. I think probably there can be some consolidation. Not everybody can survive, like you mentioned. I mean, maybe even some bankruptcy. I would think more see that in China. They sort of have the companies get together and, let's say, consolidate, and therefore things, the supply and demand, normalize.
If you're not taking part of the consolidation, then somebody will get stronger, and they basically have more ways to push against you and maybe other.
On consolidation, I think I was more talking on our customer level because, I mean, these are like CT systems, the most complex equipment probably after the space rocket and airplane. There are still some small players there, and it's pretty demanding and tough for them to continue in the race. I was talking more on that level. We must now remember that, yes, China is a large country. It's what, close to 20% of the population, but there are other countries and other markets too. The beauty is that when we survive and prosper in this very high, tough competitive environment, we are very strong in other markets. That is why it's so important to be part there, face the competition, fight, and get stronger. This is not, we are seeing future market now in China. The competition will get other places too.
All right.
On all businesses.
Thanks for that. What was this component shortage about? You mentioned something like AI-related demand mixing up with your sourcing plans, but what is kind of the source?
I think, yeah, it's data centers. I mean, massive amounts of money are being poured in data centers globally, everywhere. I think the biggest one in Sweden is at $9 billion. This has increased demand, even basic print circuit board assemblies and so on. It happens to be that when you have this kind of strong demand on certain areas that is unique from the mix that was in history, the supply chains are not ready for this kind of fast pull. That's sort of the answer. This is short term, a couple of quarters, and then things get resolved.
It basically means that somebody has to lift the capacity to do all the components that you and others are needing. Do you really think that that would be a couple of quarters game?
Right now, it's, I mean, like I said, we have some changes in suppliers and so on. We look on suppliers that are not so, let's say, wanted for that. It's a bit structural. The truth is that, of course, from the pool demand point of view, the demand will stay there. This data center boom is not over in a couple of quarters. We are now starting to work with certain other suppliers, like I mentioned, that are in better capacity situations. We must remember that even the healthcare demand on components and so on is fairly small compared to the huge consumer electronics, which the data center is part of. Big companies and capacities are supporting the big booms and the big needs in priority first.
Do you also see that the component prices would have increased because if there's a greater need, it makes your kind of economical model.
That's a good question. At least I have not, there's pressure, yes, but then there's also a huge price downwards trend. That's not, at least it has not yet hit, and we don't see that as impacting our numbers.
All right, fair enough. Coming back to the U.S. security segment, which you now expect to come down by double digit in Q3, what is the root cause of that and what is happening in the U.S.? Because I understand that there's delays in the European market because.
Yeah, that's pretty, that's interesting. Out of the customer mix and so on in the U.S., there's a couple of sort of larger ones from our point of view. There are things like, for example, a factory closing outside the U.S. and production moving into the U.S. Typically, these things don't go like in movies. The U.S. has quite a big shortage of talented, competent engineers as an example and so on. From the point of view of business, we see it's probably the Trump's agenda and so on is pretty challenging on trying to move more manufacturing in the U.S. due to the huge shortage of talent. It's more of a short-term item instead of, I mean, the market is there's need and there's just the investments they plan to do for the Mexican border and so on. These kind of things are not changing.
They are sort of big drivers. Tariff, of course, the tariff thing is causing also some, you know, let's say uncertainties and so on. We have not seen yet what the impact of these tariffs is. Latest is, I think it's the U.S. announced that there can be some, was it 100% extra tariff on semiconductors for the companies that are not planning to move their production to the U.S. or are not in the U.S. Our products are not classified as semiconductors, but it's just, I mean, broader. There's a lot of, let's say, uncertainty still left.
Right. If I understood correctly, some of your customers outside of the U.S. are moving into the U.S., and it takes a while before they get their production running there. That's the cause of the delay and softness in the U.S. security.
As an example, it's a U.S. customer having a factory outside the U.S., moving the factory now inside the U.S., as an example. You were asking on clear examples on why is this short term, this U.S. is negative. On the other hand, we've got some new orders, but those are for first quarter 2026. It's still a live market and a very important one.
All right. Finally, you discussed the medical flat panel demand driving your top line. Do you see that you are now able to basically capitalize on the Haobo acquisition so that the flat panel devices that they were first making for the security market, so industrial market, and now are you getting the door open to the medical market segment? Finally getting to the big business or behind what was behind Haobo acquisition.
I think we are very pleased with this Haobo. We call DTS. I mean, it's a fantastic team and really nice performance. We are still growing in the industrial area, like this 40% growth that's in industrial. I mean, we are not yet in the medical ones. Hopefully, we are working on, hopefully we are getting those. Even so far, I think it's a good success. It's still, I mean, flat panel business is $1.5 billion. There's a lot of nice pockets out there that we can work and capture, and it's very fragmented and so on. It provides good possibilities for small companies like us to find growth.
All right, thank you. That's all from me.
[I see one from Evely]. You're seeing these Chinese medical supply chain limitations over H2 while the CT systems market is only starting to normalize. You basically imply that you will see strong security top line recovery next year. When it comes to medical, is it still more uncertain when it comes to medical like 2026 growth?
I think from the point of view, we believe that this is now more like normalized. The permanent situation is that the healthcare globally is, let's say, starting, despite all the tariff stuff and so on, is starting to enter into more of a growth phase. We expect also nice sort of growth in medical next year.
Okay. Any comments on India at this point? I mean, it's still quite small for you, but what kinds of volumes might it contribute in H2 and next year?
India is quite small. I think the biggest business we've had, we started with industrial, but that has not yet grown that much. There's still quite little manufacturing in India. We had the biggest growth items in the security area, also the airports that India was building and so on. India had actually a big tender and they halted it. Still, there's no news that it would start again. Short term, we don't see very much sales in India, some, but as a market, it's coming, depending on the government decisions on these big airport sort of tenders.
Thank you. Was there anything, any comments on industrial? It doesn't seem to have that much issues in H2, like security and medical.
No, I mean, as the total industrial, I think the flat panel looks quite nice, and the legacy industrial is sort of more like, let's say, flat door or so on.
Okay, thanks. That's all for me.
We have [Nikko Roogangas from Zepp Online], so we could be taking a few of his questions as well. He's saying that you indicated in the report that you are taking cost measures. How big are they, and when will they be visible?
I think the cost measures we are looking at, what can we do with our fixed cost, realizing now the fact that the top line is not where it should be. Size-wise, we don't have still a very precise number. Time-wise, we are looking now what we can do during third quarter so that we would have then a clean fourth quarter.
Okay, do you see any cuts in the U.S. healthcare regarding spending impacting you in the future?
That's a very, very challenging question. We have no idea where it goes. It's very much depending on what the policies of the U.S. government are.
Okay, thank you. Handing over to Matti from DNB Carnegie.
Hi, it's Matti Riikonen again. Just a clarification of the cost savings. It's kind of difficult to imagine the situation that you plan to grow your top line eventually. If you make fixed cost cuts now in Q3, very short term, don't you think that you would be needing that kind of resources going forward if the demand comes back in security, if medical normalizes as it basically has been, and if the industrial demand continues to be fairly good? Why and how can you make the cuts so that you are not cutting also the capacity for the future? Do you just plan to hire more people then when it's actual and let them go short term?
That's really, that's the core. I think the logic is that we have to see what is now from today's perspective, what is less important, where we need to be focusing. The thing is that we need to see where we should save in a way to be able to invest into things that are growing.
All right. That's just a technical question. You talked about some R&D recognized as CapEx. Do you mean that you have been capitalizing R&D costs?
It's what I said is that we have this kind of long-term investment in the area of R&D, and that is CapEx. In general, we are not capitalizing internal R&D development.
Okay. What does it mean in practice, a longer-term investment in CapEx?
It means on creating long-term technological enablers for growth.
I still don't get it. Could you clarify?
It's on a high level. We are investing on long-term technological development.
Is it a kind of product or facility?
It's a generic technology that can be used through the line of our businesses later on.
Thank you.
Are we? Excellent. Thank you for very good questions and thank you for your interest and time. I will be closing now this half-yearly sort of reporting. Thank you, Hannu.