Today, we will discuss the Q4, give some highlights, the progress, what we have been achieving with the team, look at the implementation of the strategy very concretely, and before taking the questions, we'll obviously take questions or summarize. Over the Q4, we treated a number of patients, and we were particularly pleased with how our PPT business developed in the different indications and then different customers, most in the United States, but some of the trials also expanded to new geographies. Just a quick reminder of what Modulight is about: we are about fighting cancer with science and technology, and our products are also used for other high-value applications such as flow cytometry, quantum computing, and other things.
Q4 in a shell, which you may have seen from the release already, the pay-per-treatment business developed in Q4, and we reached a total number of 47 sites which are using our PPT platform device. Almost exclusively, those are located in the United States, but that said, there are also some others in other geographies as the phase three trials are expanding towards other geographies. We are extremely pleased about the order collection, which we saw picking up every single quarter last year, and during the last quarter, we collected EUR 3.5 million worth of orders, and the trend for order collection has continued this year. Cash flow from operations improved significantly, being EUR 800,000 on the positive side. I'm going to talk more about the numbers in a moment. Our R&D pipeline stayed at 30% projects versus 28% a year earlier.
We focused on the more mature projects, but as I will tell you in a moment, we also gathered a significant number of new customers as well as started new projects with existing customers. I would say that there are now quite a few candidates to be considered for adding to the pipeline later this year. Revenue: EUR 1.4 million, up 40% or so a year earlier, and EBITDA also improved nicely. I guess the bottom line for me, from the kind of numbers perspective, is really the order collection rate, which keeps on accelerating, as well as the improvement in cash flow. I would like to emphasize this: we have achieved this by two things, namely improved productivity and reduced costs due to these one-time expenses that we mentioned earlier. Overall, we have actually accelerated product development and sales and marketing efforts. Anca, please take the numbers.
Thank you. As I already said, Q4 highlights are strong order intake and improved cash flow through cost reduction. In 2024, we have seen every quarter increase in order collection with almost EUR 3 million bookings in Q4 alone. The completion of the investment program, as well as operational efficiency, are reflected in the cash flow. Seppo already mentioned that, and this improved significantly both operating cash flow with plus 145% compared to previous year and net cash flow plus 65%. Both product development activities and geographical expansion continued, and the cost savings we are talking about all the time have not been achieved through the reduction of these activities, but actually by improving the efficiency and the focus of our operations. The project pipeline, sorry, remained at 30 projects, and once again, I want to emphasize that the goal of all our projects is to commercialize our own products.
It was already mentioned by Seppo that the number of the hospitals using our product increased to 47 by the end of the year, and this clearly proves the confidence of experts in our products. Due to the PPT model, this is not yet reflected in the revenue development, which improved from the previous year by 2% in 2024. EBITDA was 43% higher than in 2023 due to the decrease of this non-recurring cost related to the investment program. The operating cash flow for the whole year was EUR -825,000 versus EUR -7.3 million in 2023. As Seppo said, our operations efficiency improved, and we achieved expenditure reduction of 28% in 2024. EBITDA, as well as operating result, improved throughout the whole year, as it was seen every single quarter. We show a strong cash position at the end of 2024.
We had a headcount of 66 FTE at the end of the year, and the average headcount in 2024 was 71 versus 70 in 2023.
Yeah, thanks, Anca. A little bit about the pipeline. The pipeline remained at 30 projects as in the previous quarter, and we focused on more mature projects, but naturally, there came also new ones. As I emphasized, due to strong order collection and both new customers and existing customers, we are kind of anticipating that there will be new candidates to be added to the pipeline later this year as those activities mature. We are particularly pleased with the progress in some of the more mature existing projects. Growing pre-production orders, particularly in some of the more mature projects, are kind of key, but not the only reason for the growing order book, and this is going into the good direction.
We're also extremely happy about the new things such as upper urinary tract phase three inclusion from a customer where we are potentially replacing someone else. There is also some early stage glioblastoma work with the customer with whom we have not touched upon that activity earlier, and this obviously joins the two other customers we already have on glioblastoma at the more mature stage, but giving clearly a vote of confidence for our product as multiple different pharma companies are interested in adopting our technology for the same indication. Now, today, we stand more than 50 hospitals using our PPT systems, which is obviously good, and we see the trend this year going even faster.
The majority of our, let's say, not the majority, but the largest portion of the installations of the new devices happened in Q4. We expect a good, nice trend to continue during this year. Certain customers also made product launches based exclusively on our product platforms, which we further see as a vote of confidence on our company technology and product platform. There are also certain customers where our role continues to increase both in terms of scope as well as importance to their solution. This is just to give an alternative view on the pipeline portfolio by looking at the customer kind of type, and we continue to focus on investing in the more mature companies, and this is no change from the previous quarter.
We have discussed this chart since the beginning of the company becoming public, and basically, we have the same message that as the projects are maturing, we see more predictability in order collection and revenue generation. While we are still at the beginning of our journey, we already feel that especially the quality and quantity of orders coming in recently has been taking us forward. Just quickly recapping the strategic programs, our strategy period ends at the end of this year, and obviously, our key goals for the strategy period are return to strong profitability and strong growth, and that is something that we retain as our expectation. I will discuss briefly the five strategic programs and what we have achieved in those during the previous quarter.
First, in geographical expansion, a year ago, we increased our presence actually particularly on the sales side in the U.S. , and this has started to bear fruit, and I believe that these investments in the geographical expansion have been a key ingredient in improving our order collection. Our presence in the United States market, also for the clinical and site support, has been very well perceived. This is probably the best visible in the quality and quantity of customer orders, but obviously also as the customer feedback. Developing the business in Europe and Asia in parallel with the United States continues, and we have also obtained some new customers also from Asia. I'd like to here point out particularly Japan, where there has been positive development, particularly during the second half of 2024.
The vertical integration of our factory, i.e., our investment, continues to be increasingly appreciated by our customers. Fundamentally, this offers speed and ability for tailoring, but also supply chain security. Nothing new there, but in the current world climate, this seems to be increasingly appreciated. About the new business models, I discussed already the progress we have made with pay-per-treatment, aka PPT model, and now we have been adding more sites that use our PPT devices than ever before, and we expect to continue this year. Now, I think that the install base is starting to be reasonable. If you consider that at the beginning of last year, we started at about 10, and now we are at about 50.
It is not only anymore about increasing the install base, but also increasing the use per site, and this should obviously then converge to a more stable revenue stream as the sites start to use the product more. We are also quite happy that we have extended the use across customers during the third and the fourth quarter. Sorry for the typo. Key focus is on increasing the number of sites that continues, but especially the number of patients that we are treating. New indications and applications. I discussed that there are potential new entries to the pipeline. Here I would like to mention the upper urinary track, which has synergies with an existing customer, glioblastoma, but also new indication in ophthalmology. We are also happy that we have been able to utilize our laser factory and our substantial investment, gaining momentum, for example, in quantum computing and medical imaging.
In commercial and operational excellence, our focus, as Anca discussed, has been on improving the productivity and operating margins. Less work on taking into use new machinery has resulted in both capacity for more R&D, but also ability to invest more in that as well as marketing. We continue to kind of operationalize the long-standing work in ESG, for example, having better energy utilization. State-of-the-art laser technology expertise, as said, already complete investment program continues to benefit us more and more, and based on a recent trade show feedback, we are quite happy about both the qualitative feedback from existing and new customers, but also I'm quite glad to say that some of the new capabilities that we have built over the recent years are also clear kind of reasons for acquiring new customers and building the order book.
As our new processes become more mature, we free up time from existing R&D teams, but also we are simultaneously reducing OpEx. Our own production facility is definitely key to customers, as discussed earlier. We retain the same comment about the outlook. As such, Modulight is not issuing the outlook, but what we also like to note is that progress of individual projects is difficult to predict, and macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty continues to impact the market development. At the moment, we have not seen any serious impacts or cause for concern, but we continue to follow this carefully. In a nutshell, our PPT model is progressing. Install base, now 50 hospitals, and continuing, we start also putting more focus on the user site or number of patients treated, whichever you like to say.
Pipeline remains at 30 projects, and the focus of the company is more on the more mature projects. EUR 3 million worth of orders collected during the Q4. Every single quarter last year, we collected more orders than the previous one, and thus we felt that this is an interesting one-time parameter to raise because there seems to be a trend of at least four quarters. The amount of investments and quality of them are clearly one of the reasons besides our technology and existing product platform. New customers obtained potential for pipeline inclusion later, and pleased about the progress with cash flow as well as revenue curve going into the right direction. EBITDA improvement also on a kind of satisfactory level, but needs to obviously continue to achieve our strategy period goals. Thank you. Any questions you might have? Daniel, do you want to go first?
Yes. Hi, Seppo or Anca, can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes. Daniel Lepistö from Danske Bank. Thanks for the presentation. I mean, I have a couple of questions maybe starting from this pay-per-treatment device install phase, and it's quite rapid development, which seems quite impressive to be honest. You have this one note on this significant U.S. organization, which is sort of willing to replace all their devices with your PPT sort of product. I assume this is something that is not yet visible in this base of close to 50 sites or so, or how should we understand this comment?
Yeah, there are some devices installed for this customer, and this is based on the pilot usage that they have made this kind of, I would say, internal conclusion. This is what they have highlighted in their internal meeting where they invited also our experts to present. There are some devices in the existing install base already, and they have been testing it for several months, but we expect that if things progress as they stated, there will be more during this year.
Okay, thanks for the clarification. I mean, then of course, the obvious question from my side, how is this PPT revenue base developing? If we look back in the Q2, I think you commented on low six digits of revenue from this, and I guess now we are approaching close to 50 hospitals or 50 sites using this product compared to 10 in the beginning of the year. Should we assume you are approaching on $500,000 of these PPT revenues already?
Yeah, I guess we didn't give a number, but I guess it's obvious that the amount of revenue on the Q4 was somewhat larger than it was in the Q2 to which you referred to. That is a correct assumption.
No exact figures to be shared from your side.
I think it's better that we don't highlight a figure here because we didn't include it into the note. Sorry, I think that this, yeah, we'll have to pay more attention to that in the upcoming reporting. Yeah, it's somewhat larger, but I'm not able to give any number at this time.
Okay, fair enough. Then on the order intake or the increase in the order book, you know that to be close to EUR 3 million just in Q4. Are you willing to sort of give a disclosure how big is this order book at this point? It should be above that figure, I guess, if it has increased consistently over the past few quarters.
At the time when we were making this, the release, the order intake was about at the similar level as during the Q4 from the beginning of this year until today.
Okay, you know the trend has continued quite strong from your point of view.
We are very pleased with the development of the amount of purchase orders coming in. While obviously the amounts are important, what we are perhaps also equally happy is the kind of distribution and quality, if you may comment that, meaning that any order is an order, but on the other hand, if they are more distributed and if they are coming from more mature customers, this is perceived by some to be better quality. This is also something which, while we cannot quantify, is something for which we are equally happy about.
Okay, can you comment on how should we think about the lead times, timing of deliveries, and revenue recognition? Because obviously these figures are quite big.
Significant portion, I would say super majority of all these orders mentioned here are expected to be delivered during this year.
You are quite confident that this will be a year of accelerating revenue growth if we look at this current backlog, I guess?
At this time, I mean, we're still not issuing any outlook, but clearly the order collection has picked up. As we said in the release, we expect most of these to be delivered during this calendar year.
I guess you do comment that you're still committed on returning to this strong profitable growth during the strategic period, which ends this year. By your definition here, I guess, should we sort of foresee that you could hit maybe this profitable growth target very late this year on some quarter, I guess?
That I would say be a logical conclusion, and I believe what you said is roughly so stated in our release, and we have nothing to add to that.
All right, thanks. I guess the final question from my side still on this, maybe these commercial project announcements, which I guess you have made, I guess one during this strategy period. Is this something that you expect to get more developments on during this year, or is this something that has maybe slipped further?
We are making progress with the vast majority of our projects, and I'm not aware of any project at this time that we announced that would not be part of those which are making progress. Since I don't specifically know which one you referred to, I give you a little bit of a vague answer, but yes, we are kind of making progress with multiple customers, and this is obviously not nearly enough. It's not where we need to be, but I would say that we have taken an interim step forward, which I believe somehow shows in the numbers we released today.
All right, thank you very much. That's all from my side.
Thanks, Daniel. Kimmo, do you want to go next?
Yes, so it's Kimmo here, hi from OP. Daniel was asking lots about the revenue, so I won't touch on that anymore, but maybe a few words about the CapEx. So investments were quite high in Q4, EUR 1.5 million. So what was the main topics behind that? Because that was clearly a different quarter than the previous in 2024.
900 out of that 1.5 was related to R&D activations. Basically, the rest were the leftover, so to say, of our orders for equipment or investment program, which we started long ago, but they have been delivered with a lot of delay. Nothing special there. We announced many times that this is ended, but indeed, I mean, from our point of view, we did place the orders, but unfortunately some of the suppliers delivered quite late.
Okay, what is your view on the CapEx level for this year? Is EUR 3 million, EUR 4 million, what is the ballpark?
Sorry, I mean, we cannot disclose an exact number of that. What we kept saying and what we are targeting is always to keep decreasing the cost of operations.
I guess maybe Seppo from the more kind of practical side of things, we see minimal investments. There are obviously, as an industrial company, from time to time need some tooling, etc. I would say that very recently, also a month ago, many American customers were extremely impressed about the capabilities we have built, etc. Now it's definitely time to utilize the investments made, not to buy many, many new machines.
Okay, I guess it will be lower than the numbers that I just mentioned.
Yeah, I would say that that would probably make sense. I mean, depends obviously on your perspective, but those numbers in my mind were still fair investment numbers. And if you just simply look at our situation, I guess there is no need for much investment at this time.
Okay, good. Thank you.
Okay,
that's all from me.
Thanks, Kimmo. Antti, you already wrote some questions online. There is a question about the PPT and the order backlog. The amount of orders from the PPT model are typically very small. There is only a very short time, typically, that the pay-per-treatment orders come to our order book. Most of these orders received are for various activities developing or doing work with existing customers so that they could use more of our products. For example, one customer has placed an order for using more of our preclinical devices meant for pharmacological testing, and some have placed orders for prototypes and so forth.
Yes, there is a little bit of PPT backlog, but going forward, and if the PPT model continues to expand, that will not be as visible in the order book as some of the kind of other activities, which are definitely supporting that sales, but typically once the treatment is done, that is entered into the order book and then recognized after a certain delay, which is not that long. Any other questions, Anti?
Yeah, actually, Anti was asking about Q4 depreciation and amortization. Q4 2023 and Q4 2024, why are they higher than the other quarters? I will start with 2023. In Q4, we had a one-time acceleration of some old fixed assets, which we announced at that time that will not be like a normal situation. This quarter of 2024, Q4, we had increased depreciation because of the increase in the number of old equipment, I mean, bought during this investment program, for which we finally finished the validation of the processes. Basically, we could then take them into use and then start the depreciation. Basically, the message is that Q4 level, Q4 2024 level of depreciation is a normal amount, which you can see basically in the future. Another question was related to the high financial income in Q4, which is coming from funds.
Antti, is this clear? Are you happy with the answers, or would you need more clarifications?
Yes, that's clear. Thank you.
Okay, you are welcome.
Okay, so let's go to other questions. How big do you assess the U.S. market for the PPT model? How many hospitals would be optimal to cover the country? We have earlier released studies about the number of patients for different indications. I think that if we are offering a better therapy with better efficacy, better quality of life, obviously, we together with our pharmaceutical companies are targeting to provide better therapy, which means better care, more people winning the fight against cancer. The current addressable market should be about the same as the existing market for that particular indication. Unfortunately, the amount of cancer patients is increasing as the population ages.
There will probably be a significantly larger market in the future than there is today, although the market is already very large if you look at the U.S. pharmaceutical cancer market, which is in kind of $100 billion-plus per annum in the U.S. alone, if you refer back to the studies we released earlier. Obviously, it's a fact that also other therapies get improving and keep improving. We will definitely only be able to address some portion of the market. As said many times, we believe in the strength of our therapy, and it seems to be gathering more and more positive feedback in the clinical trials, as well as more qualitatively with doctors and customers as feedback. As we make progress, we will expect to gain market share.
Overall, the cancer market may be good for the business, but obviously bad for humanity, unfortunately, is very large and keeps increasing based on the best scientific knowledge available to us today. Apologies for not giving any exact numbers, but I recommend to refer to our earlier released studies, and we can definitely include those in the future webinars for people's reference. At the moment, we do not see additional open questions on the line. We thank everybody for participation and wish you a good weekend. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.