At the end, we'll summarize and take your questions. Just as a reminder, what is Modulight about? We fight cancer with science and technology. We're a biomedical company that designs and manufactures lasers here in Tampere for treatment of cancers and eye diseases. Besides that, our products are being used at other high-value-add applications such as flow cytometry, quantum computing, and digital press. Q1 in a nutshell: sales and EBITDA continue to improve both year- on- year and sequentially. Our addressable market grew, namely because the indications were expanded and the number of customers for the same indications increased.
Like before, the macroeconomic trend of population getting older and thus cancer becoming more prevalent. Order intake continued. The positive development started a year ago, and one of the notable orders we had was an EUR 800,000 order from one of the large quantum computing customers. R&D pipeline is now at 31 projects versus 28 a year ago. Focus has been on more mature projects, but also the progress in the long R&D has been achieved. I will talk a little bit more about that towards the end of the presentation. Anca will discuss now the numbers for the Q1.
Yeah, thank you. The growth of the order backlog combined with the diversified customer base which you have at the moment enables the revenue growth of 52% from Q1 2024, despite some delays we had in customer projects. The revenue development was still affected by the transition to the PPT business model and the delays with the engineering prototypes deliveries. Profitability improved with EBITDA 56% higher than in Q1 2024.
Spending on R&D and geographical expansion continued. As we announced before, our investment program has been completed, and related commissioning costs decreased, which led to a decrease of 15% of costs in Q1 2025 compared to the reference period. PPT is still limiting the revenue development speed. Our goal is to install a core number of devices during the spring and summertime. Improved profitability is reflected in EBITDA as well as in EBIT. The headcount as FTE at the end of March 2025 was 66 versus 70 in the same period last year.
We increasingly acquired interesting customers. We have a strong cash position as well as the ability to quickly respond to market opportunities. Hence, we believe that our business will return to strong and profitable growth during our strategy period, which is extended till the end of 2025.
Yeah, and like I mentioned in our update letter, we were not without difficulties. Some of the more notable ones included revenue development where due to regulatory or operational issues, certain customers did not meet our earlier expectations. I would like to, however, bring a little bit more depth to that with the two points that they had third parties they rely on doing certain things, and those got delayed, and those delays were kind of imposed on us, and thus affected our revenue development.
It should also be shared and noted that these regulatory hurdles were mainly related to kind of expanding the recruitment criteria, basically meaning that while on short term these delays are unfortunate, on the long term they actually mean that the same therapy and drugs are used for a wider group of patients for wider indications. Thus, a significant kind of expansion on the expected market for those therapies. This is quite important in our opinion because it clearly expands those respective opportunities.
As said, in the pipeline, we increased the number of projects where we are commercializing our product to 31. We had a growing number of pre-production orders as well as development in the PPT despite the difficulties which I mentioned. New indication related to the eye cancer was added to the pipeline. The focus has been on the phase three trials, and the install base of the PPT systems is now above 50 hospitals. Despite the before-mentioned delays, we expect to install a record number of sites during the spring and summer. Certain customers also made product launches that are based exclusively on our platform products in the category of high-value-add products.
Our role as a customer partner has been continuing to increase. Several customers even mentioned this geopolitical turmoil, namely tariffs and the favorable position in their view, why it's good to work with someone like Modulight having a factory in Finland and not necessarily in Asia, for example, like some of our competitors. I'll discuss a bit later more about the long-term R&D and intellectual property progress. Just the alternative view, what we always shared about the customer base, which are giving us these 31 projects, we continue to strengthen our position with the bigger companies and listed companies.
The projects are basically progressing, and no other, let's say, notable updates to give you at this time. I think the recent quarter was a good example of first steps in improving the predictability in revenue. I mean, having certain challenges, like I mentioned earlier, yet we were able to grow revenue. As we have said many times, we expect the predictability of the revenue stream to improve as the projects mature. Now, a little bit more on the long-term side of the R&D. As you know, Modulight holds multiple patent families, and here we are explaining how we are using patents to protect our technology.
The example here is about cancer therapy. We expect to receive a new patent soon related to Modulight Cloud. To explain what that means, I'd like to revisit a science study, a Modulight oncology platform we published about one and a half, two years ago in Science Advances. This study shows that adding photoimmunotherapy to the standard chemo reduced the tumor burden by 22% compared to chemo alone. The study also showed that when light delivery is controlled real-time by Modulight Cloud, the tumor burden reduced by an additional 8%.
This is the feature where we are expecting to receive a grant patent, and this will join the patent family covering our remote-controlled medical device. Obviously, most of this research is very long-term, but we are quite excited about the increased IPR coverage. This shows our cloud both improves the treatment efficacy and how we protect the key features in the cancer therapy with our IPR strategy. Just a recap on the strategy and targets.
We have four initiatives in the strategy: geographical expansion, extension of the offering to new indications and applications, new business models, commercial and operational excellence, and state-of-the-art laser technology expertise. I will briefly mention some of the progress in each of those areas. Investments in geographical expansion continue, and I believe that the best evidence of the progress there are the recent flows of purchase orders, which we have been reporting in Q4 and now.
Strengthened presence in the US with both local sales and clinical support is now bearing fruit. This is best visible in the quality and quantity of customer orders. Developing business in Europe and Asia in parallel with the US market clearly catalyzed by our US customers' international operations is moving forward. New customers have been received from US, Europe, and Asia while we continue to work with our old customers. Perhaps the vertical integration is now appreciated more than ever by our customers, but we would always like to remind people that vertical integration for Modulight is essentially about speed or time to market for the customers as well as supply chain security.
I guess the recent global turmoil in tariffs supports the latter one. About new business models, we have now more than 50 sites using pay-per-treatment devices and expect to install many more this year. Several leading hospitals from both the East Coast and West Coast regularly use Modulight's technology with the pay-per-treatment model. Install base now includes also other continents all the way down under. I believe we have started to see a little bit of stability and improvement in the revenue stream.
As said, we also had problems, and they were namely related to hindered progress in regulatory side and expansion of certain indications which prevented treatment of the patients during the filing period. This has hindered somewhat the sales growth. Key focus is still on increasing the number of sites and number of patients obviously treated per each site. I should also like to add that currently we see most pickup in actually some of the most profitable indications that we have in our portfolio, which is obviously nice.
More customer leads keep coming both in upper urinary tract all the way to the brain and glioblastoma and ophthalmology. One example on the area of high value-add the laser technology, we are extremely pleased to have a second follow-on order from one of the big quantum computing customers that we have, basically the second step prototype, which we announced in February. We continue to focus on operational efficiency, and as Anca reported, the costs are down 15% year- on- year.
This means less work on kind of taking in use new machinery, running up new processes, and that leaves more resources, both human capital as well as monetary resources for R&D and sales and marketing despite the cost going down. We continue to build on the newly formed strategic distribution partnerships and continue with the good track in ESG with the same focus we have had for 25 years on high social responsibility and environmental responsibility at the core of the operations. Last but not least, about the state-of-the-art laser technology, this is really what Modulight is known for in the domain of high-value-add applications.
Our own production facility is clearly playing a big role here for the before-mentioned reasons, time to market, supply chain, but also for creating high-value-add components that other people can't make. For several customers, they clearly see the factory now more than ever as a kind of reason to work with us, but also our platform product seems to be more and more appealing, and I think it's only natural as the number of customers and references continues to grow. As said earlier, most of the customers are still at the relatively early stage, and thus it's not easy to predict the future, and thus we are not issuing the outlook.
In summary, sales and EBITDA continue to improve, addressable market growth, namely because of expansion of indications, but also same product being sold to other customers, and the macro trend that increases the number of cancer patients remains the same as before. R&D pipeline at 31 projects and focus on more mature projects and revenue at EUR 1.6 million up from EUR 1.1 million a year ago and sequentially 12% from Q4.
EBITDA minus EUR 600,000 versus minus EUR 1.3 million a year ago. Cash flow keeps on improving as we predicted long time as the operational costs go down as this one-time setup fees for the new equipment have been completed. All, I'll be very happy to answer any questions with my colleague that you might have. If we start with the analysts, Antti, do you want to go first?
Thank you. Can you hear me all right?
Yes.
Great. Good afternoon. I wanted to ask about the system installments and you're expecting those to pick up in spring and summer. Is that mainly because of the phase three trials gaining traction, or are there other factors involved?
Yes. I think the short answer is yes. The phase three trials, as you probably know, are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry to expand the footprint for the expected commercial launch of the product. Obviously, phase three is formally about acceptance of the product, but I would say that those following the industry more know that it's quite typical to expand significantly the footprint for the preparation or the marketing of the, let's say, commercial phase.
Okay, that's clear. I think you've mentioned in the couple of previous reports that you have some delayed prototypes. Does this refer to the kind of the same specific prototypes, and are you kind of expecting some tangible one-off larger income when those prototypes are delivered?
To start with, are they referring to same prototypes? No. There are now actually a plethora of customers to whom we are delivering prototypes, either same products or different products.
Most of those, namely in the high-value-add laser technology, for example, the quantum computing of flow cytometry, we are preparing certain types of prototypes. The customers are testing them, and typically they proceed to pilot production and then to full production. There are many technological steps both by us and our customers, and they are typically complex products, sometimes things that nobody has ever done before. That is the essence of the delays. I think we can only say that is the typical flow, that you have the prototype, then you have all prototypes, then you have pilot production, and then you have production.
Got it. Thanks very much. That is all from me.
All of those schemes are aiming at recurring production. That may be the relevant data point.
Yes, thank you.
Okay, Daniel, are you online? Do you want to go next?
Yes. Hi, Seppo, hi, Anca. Daniel Lepistö from Danske Bank. Thanks for the presentation. I mean, I have a couple of questions, maybe starting with these regulatory hurdles that you discussed earlier. How major are these delays? If we look into this year, are we talking quarter or so or longer term? And how much material are the revenues that we are talking about here that you missed in the first quarter?
We missed some revenue. Like we said in our release, we still expect to be back on track with the installations during the spring and summer. They have a certain impact, but I guess since not included in the release would be not right to give a number here. They are worth mentioning. That's maybe all I can say at this time.
Okay, clear. Maybe the second question on this, you continue to be quite upbeat on the order intake. There was still positive development, but obviously, can you share any numbers on this one apart from the EUR 800,000 quantum order you published a release on? Because as if I recall correctly, you saw a EUR 3 million increase just in Q4. Are we on a sort of similar ballpark still, or how should we think about this order intake?
We are on a similar ballpark.
Okay, that's very clear. Maybe on the sort of visibility and sort of seasonality in your business, because it appears that, okay, the visibility seems to be improving now, obviously, with this kind of order intake, but also with the PPT model you have been sort of rolling out successfully.
Thinking about maybe sort of a more precise question is that if we look, for example, at the third quarter, upcoming third quarter, it has been quite a small quarter for you guys over the past few years, but it was not the case back in 2021, 2022. Can you remind us, is there any sort of a clear seasonality with your business, maybe especially with the Q3, and how is the visibility currently in the big picture? Is the recurring revenues, how big of an improvement they are at this point?
Yeah, thanks, Daniel. A great question or questions. I mean, obviously, the fact that you have a more solid stream of orders, and I would emphasize not only the kind of amount of orders, but also the distribution and the width of the order book, meaning that the streams are now coming from, let's say, a wider group of customers and indications that hopefully continues to build us more stability. Regarding your question about the seasonality, pre-COVID era, Modulight had many, many times a very significant part of the revenue generated during the end of the year, even as I think some years more than half during December.
I would, however, say that those were related more to the delivery of prototypes and certain clinical trials and steps as such, rather than some kind of annual seasonality. The fact that we have had several times now in the recent history, weak quarter three, as you pointed out, I would say should not be interpreted as some kind of seasonality in the business, although this might be something that other people know better. Certainly, we have not identified kind of clear reasons why certain quarters should be lower than the other.
If we're looking at the progress, you may have noticed that over the last year, we started reporting the sequential development more because this is what we believe is that the company is at the stage where we should rather look at the progress from the previous quarter to the next one rather than compare to the year-on-year development. That is obviously due to the requirement by the stock market. We are doing that. In my mind, I measure progress if we are improving from the previous quarter.
Yes, there is no guarantee that this will always happen, but I think by nature and conceptually, the projects are such that in certain phases, you will have little work and little revenue, but the number starts to be reasonably large so that hopefully some of those will cancel more quiet periods of the other ones. Overall, we are kind of looking at sequential growth rather than year-on-year comparison. At the moment, we do not identify any key reason why there should be annual seasonality.
All right, that is very clear. Thank you for the answers. That is all from my side.
Thanks. Kimmo, do you want to ask something?
Yes, it is Kimmo here from OP Markets. I dialed in a little bit late, so maybe this topic has been already discussed, but overall, I'm curious about the tariffs and your exposure to that. I guess you are shipping also equipment to the United States. Are those already in the country that you are planning to install in Q2 and Q3, or how should we think about this situation?
Anca, do you want to take that?
Yeah, sure. Our exports to the U.S. are mainly services, and as you probably know, services are not under the tariffs, at least at the moment. Not today, in the morning. We cannot know what will come, but they were not announced as being taxed for imports. Our customers have sites also outside the U.S. Basically, systems can be shipped there. If we think of other products than medical, they are actually, they make exception from tariffs at the moment, obviously. They are semiconductor products which are not taxed now.
I mean, we always have to remember that we cannot know now what will happen tomorrow or next week. As we don't, regardless, this we do not expect to affect us, but we shall see, of course.
Yeah, I mean, Listen.
I would say that, I mean, from if you think of supply chain, in a way, this kind of benefits us from outside EU and US companies moving their business or trying to get more customers from Europe and hence decreasing the prices. At the moment, we haven't seen any effect on our business.
Yeah, I mean, of course, this can have direct or indirect consequences later, and the tariffs seem to be changing by the day. I doubt that the U.S. will introduce very heavy tariffs on services. To my understanding, that's actually their key export product. Like I said, there is unpredictability, no doubt about that. Also, somehow, I think the best indication to me is that none of the customers have so far raised this as a major talking point, or I would say even a concern.
Even this week, we have people in four different places in the U.S., and I constantly get feedback from all of those teams, and the tariffs are not even rising to the minutes. As Anca pointed out, our customers, and in the U.S. customers, they have manufacturing, I could almost say typically overseas, ranging from places like Singapore to Scotland. Those will then play also in this equation. I think the best and the most important thing for us is that so far, PPT is classified as a service and thus not kind of considered to be under tariffs.
Okay, thank you. I have no more questions.
Okay. Okay, we do not seem to have any questions open online. Thank you for all the other people also for joining from wherever you are. We wish everyone a great weekend and upcoming summer, and we keep working here. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Bye.