Good morning. Welcome to Scanfil Q1 2025 interim report presentation. My name is Pasi Hiedanpää. I am the Director of Investor Relations and Communications at Scanfil. Together here with me is our CEO, Mr. Christophe Sut, and CFO, Kai Valo. A couple of practicalities. There is a chat box. You can actually ask questions via chat. We will be taking questions only via chat, and those will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Now handing over to Christophe. Christophe, please.
Thank you, Pasi, and welcome to this Q1 2025. Exciting to share how the year has started. Starting with a few key events to give you a little bit of a glimpse of how the quarter happened. We have had a lot of happenings in the quarter. I mean, the first one we are really proud about is this first agreement we had with Lerner Medical that will start gradually manufacturing in our Malaysian facility that we acquired last year. That is a very exciting development to see how quickly the new strategic direction we took acquiring these companies is already creating interest. Definitely something that is something we are looking forward to and that was closed during the quarter. The second element is on the overall company.
We made a few structural changes that we had announced during the end of last year that took place during the quarter. We have now four regions that are fully operational in place and where management is now focusing on developing the business in these four areas. Very pleased with the speed we have been able to implement it and to get it up and running. We have also started to give you a little bit more granularity of our business. Obviously, you now have and we will comment today on the number of those regions, but we also have added a key indicator with EBITDA. That was not the data that was available in the past, which we believe gives the real operational efficiency of the company. From now on, you will get access to more data and more information.
All of it drove, as I said, to a higher level of activity for the group during the quarter and also translated in a significant growth both in our APAC region and Americas region, as you will see later. Continuing on the journey we have initiated with our investment and SRX acquisition in the fourth quarter, we have moved full speed with the plan we were planning to implement. It has, as I said before, translated with the first deal brought into our Malaysian operation. We have also moved forward with the investment of a full new line in this Malaysian operation. As we speak under implementation, you can see on the picture two happy members of our team. I mean, Paul, that is CEO, previous CEO of SRX, still with us, and Christina, running business development after the new ESD floor was made.
As we speak, we are installing new machinery that will be there to serve our customers and increase our capacity in Malaysia. Moving forward as planned and as expected. As we have been moving with that, I think it has been a very interesting journey for us because it helped us to fine-tune our capabilities in doing acquisition, but also in doing integration. I think that this quarter has been good, confirming our way of working towards our new companies, but also an opportunity for us to continue to build pipeline. I mean, we have now built resource. We have now built a situation where we keep looking for potential acquisition. A few key events in the quarter that in a way shows that things happened the way we were expecting them to happen.
We'd like to continue with giving you some view on our financials. The first quarter closed at EUR 192.6 million, which was a negative growth of 3.2%. When we neutralize from the SRX acquisition, we have an organic growth year on year that is negative 7%. EBITDA was at a level of 6.5% with EUR 12.6 million compared to 6.6% last year, which impacted EBIT was at EUR 11.9 million, 6.2% versus 6.4% last year. As we had expressed before, this first quarter was very key for Scanfil because it was a quarter where we were working with quite a significant amount of NPI implementation. I am very happy to see that it went at least as good as we were expecting, if not better. I mean, we had a trajectory in the quarter that was positive. We implemented the new product that gained speed as we went into the quarter.
I would say a positive development from that perspective and an operational journey that was in line with what we were expecting. That is building momentum for the remaining part of the year. What was also nice to see in the quarter is the, and I will get back to it a bit later, is the performance of our APAC and Americas region where we had significant growth. Also, we could see, as we had seen previous quarter, and you will see that later as well, the Medtech customer group gaining momentum when Energy & C lean tech, but also Industrial, has bottomed out now and is at least starting to build up from that position. Many things during that quarter happened the way we were expecting them to happen.
Looking at the revenue and the profit level that I commented a bit before, I mean, EUR 192.6 million during the quarter was, as we said, slightly below last year's performance. And EUR 12.6 million for our EBITDA was in the range of 6.5%, which was in line with our expectation, taking into consideration the number of transformations we were driving in our factory, both with the investment and also the NPI implementation. Now looking at our regions, we'll start with Americas. Americas is our smallest region. It weighs about 5% of our overall revenue. As you remember, we decided to have an investment two years ago and to start to manufacture electronics in the Americas region. As you can see, we have had a gradual development over the last four quarters that have been very positive in terms of revenue.
We have seen a very strong traction of that investment, new projects being implemented in the quarter. Despite the hard work that it is to implement a new project, revenue keeps going up and keeps moving in the right direction. Profit level is still in a very positive level compared to the overall Scanfil with 7.3%. A positive development from our Americas region. There we continue to build momentum and work on NPI, but also work on new quotation. I think that we will continue to invest in those facilities. After the development, we have seen the previous four quarters and the outlook. We have a continuous need for investment and for increasing capacity in the Americas, which we will follow up on during the next couple of weeks and months. Positive developments there.
Looking now at our APAC region, APAC region is getting quite sizable for us nowadays with 27% of our overall revenue. We reached about EUR 52 million during the quarter with a profit level of 7%, which is in line with our long-term target. It was a very pleasing development in the APAC region driven by two elements. I mean, our Suzhou operation experienced a good demand. It was a very tough quarter on them because it was a lot of NPI to come live during the quarter. I mean, we clearly saw the trend from January with a lot of changes to March with those changes being fully implementing and delivering and bringing a significant amount of volume in the factory. A very pleasing development in Suzhou. At the same time, we have worked very hard with Malaysia, and I shared with you two very positive news.
One was this first order that is a transfer of manufacturing to Malaysia operation, both from some of our Chinese operations, but mainly won from competitors for the big part of that deal, which is very pleasing and that will bring added value to our Malaysian facilities. We also worked hard to modernize those facilities and to come with additional capabilities there. That will materialize during the second part of the year, starting already the coming quarter to improve the situation quite significantly. On the profit level, I will say it was a very decent quarter if we take into consideration the change with a significant amount of new products that were implemented in the quarter. When we look at the impact on the overall quarter, they defended the margin very nicely, taking into consideration the changes.
Looking now at Central Europe, Central Europe revenue, you could see was in the range of EUR 69 million. What we can see there is in a way the Central Europe revenue has stabilized and bottomed out. What is good to know is there is a strong portfolio of energy clean tech customers in our Central European operations, which means that in reality, the revenue of that region is highly impacted by that customer group. You will see later that customer group has also come to a situation where we believe it has now bottomed out. With that situation, we managed to keep a good level of profitability with 7.5%, which is reasonably good and strong.
We also had quite a few good news during the quarter where we saw, I will say, our outlook from those customers in energy clean tech and mainly the one having a project demand becoming more favorable. We can see that, I will say, our outlook and what we based it for has been materializing by both the orders and the call on for those projects. That was a positive development. We also have a very positive development with Sieradz where we have actually done significant improvement in improving the layout of the factory, streamlining our operation there. I think that's something that is positive for the next step of growth because it means that we are now in a situation to deliver both better quality and better efficiency in that operation.
Good news was it bottomed out, outlook became more solid for the future for that region, and then maintaining a good development of profitability. Finally, Northern Europe. Northern Europe is a sizable region for us, 30% of our overall revenue. It had a quarter at EUR 60 million with a profit level of 5%. Our Swedish operation had a double impact, positive and negative. On one end, had a negative effect of some project-driven demand that was not there in that quarter, but that we believe will come back already the coming quarter, the one we are starting to leave now. In the same times, we have a significant part of those operations that is impacted by the defense business, and that one was strong in the quarter and had a very strong outlook. That is something that is going to be positive for the Northern region.
What was also positive, if we compare this quarter to the first quarter of last year, usually first quarter is a bit weaker in profit in that region, but we managed to be at least one percentage point above last year, which was from that perspective strong. I will say a quarter that was probably the most challenging of our four region, but still with an outlook that gives confidence in the overall numbers that we foresee for the year. If we look at the development of our customers, our top 10 customers, we have a stable level with our biggest customers of 13%. We can see that the top 10 increased during the quarter, which is mainly driven by a stabilizing market situation for those customers. I mean, we saw last year a lot of variation as the year was going and the stocking movement.
That is something that has ended and that is now building a base for development and growth. When we look at the development of our customer group, the revenue for our Industrial segment was negative 3.2%. We see here that, as I said before, things have been flattening out, which is a positive way. We won EUR 15.4 million of new contracts. It was a reasonable level of activity in the quarter for that customer group. Looking at Energy & C lean tech, also a stabilizing level. I mean, we were negative 11% against first quarter last year. If you look at the last four quarters, we are in the range of EUR 60 million-EUR 70 million, which was also the case for this quarter, which means that we have now also seen a stabilization of the underlying demand and the stocking movement has faded away.
Now all the customers are starting to have a regular amount of order, which is positive. The second element that is positive is some of the wins that we had in the quarter in terms of business in that list, and the biggest one, EUR 13 million, are deals that are quite short-term so that we can expect to see delivered this year, which gives us confidence in the outlook we have presented. That is something that we were very pleased to see unfolding in the quarter.
What we also can see is that the number of won deals was at a record high for Energy & C lean tech in the quarter, which is positive for the future and shows that the work we have done during the time that were difficult, both in delivering quality to existing customers, but also going after a new project, is something that is paying off. Finally, Medtech & Life Science for the third quarter in a row has been showing growth. It was 13% above last year this quarter, quite strong development. We have already seen the development of that market coming back to a growth level, and it was confirmed during the quarter. That we believe will continue as the year continues. We also had a reasonable amount of wins with EUR 6.4 million of new wins of new projects, which built positive outlook on the future.
As of today, this is the segment that has the biggest pipeline of projects we are looking for. It is an extremely dynamic segment for Scanfil, and we have built significant capabilities both in Europe but also in Asia for this type of business. Positive development that translated into the numbers, but also in the number of activities during the quarter. With that, I will hand over to Kai for the financials.
Okay, thank you and good morning. Let's start from the EBITDA comparison on the left side. You can see the EBITDA Q1 last year and on the right side the same in the first quarter of this year. What happened in between, like already said, the turnover declined by EUR 6.3 million, 3.2%. In the same time, we were able to improve, reduce the cost by 3.1%, almost even out the revenue impact.
Basically, only depreciation were increasing, resulting in the investments and acquisitions made in the last year. Going to the balance sheet, comparison to the previous year, same time, inventory is EUR 170 million. There is a EUR 30 million decrease in the inventories in one year. In the same time, then cash improved even more, more than EUR 30 million-EUR 35 million more cash. Interest-bearing debt is practically the same as it was last year. Some change in the leasing liabilities, otherwise no big change. Equity, EUR 300 million, which then practically means the asset minus the liabilities, and it's EUR 4.62 per each share. Cash flow continued strong. Q1 typically is a bit lower, same in the last year, EUR 11 million in the quarter, and then slightly better than a year ago. When looking at the rolling 12 months, we have generated EUR 93 million of cash.
Even also the previous 12 months is EUR 80 million of positive cash. That's a bit more than EUR 170 million in two years, out of which we have spent for the investments and acquisition about EUR 70 million, which means then EUR 100 million of free cash flow in two years, then paying the dividends out of that EUR 30 million roughly. Net debt, EUR 16 million in Q1, starts to be nearly the same level than it was before SRX acquisition in Q3. It was slightly higher in Q4, but now getting back to the same level. Liquidity, we have made a debt facility agreement in the quarter, EUR 50 million, and strengthened our liquidity position a bit more. Now we are on the level of EUR 200 million available liquidity, out of which then EUR 60 million is in cash. Net debt per EBITDA is 0.35, a bit improvement from last year.
Key figures, practically equity ratio is nearly the same as it was in the last year, same time. Gearing is approaching to zero. This is the net debt in comparison to the total equity. Earnings per share declined EUR 0.13 against EUR 0.15, and return on equity is a bit lower, 11% at the moment with the higher equity level and then a bit declining net profit. The Board of Directors is proposing the dividend of EUR 0.24, which will be decided tomorrow perhaps. That is 41% of the net profit of the EPS of last year. This is already 12 years increasing dividend since 2012, and it has become six times higher in this period and doubled in the last six years. Okay, I will hand over back to Christophe to talk about the outlook.
Thanks, Kai.
As we had mentioned earlier in the year, I mean, we reiterate our guidance to reach revenue between EUR 780 million and EUR 920 million. I actually believe that both the operational performance of the quarter, but also the sign we got both from win orders and from outlook from our customers is allowing us to be strong on those guidance. On EBITDA, we have a guidance of EUR 58 million-EUR 68 million, which is also in line with what we communicated earlier in terms of value. As we said, I think the first quarter was a ramp-up quarter. It was nice to see that it gained speed as we had expected, maybe even a little bit faster than we had expected.
At the same time, we have been continuing to build pipeline for our Energy & C lean tech, which you saw pay off with a significant amount of new deal and also with our medical and life science business, which has a very strong momentum right now. We have continued to focus on cost and inventory, even if it's in a way challenging when you need to pull in resources to create the future revenue. I think that in that perspective, all our operation did a great job to manage to keep the right balance here.
We have continued also to work on our growth project, pipeline and filling it and looking at potential future acquisition, but also building accountability across the organization and making sure that with this original organization now we get decisions taken closer to the business and faster, which will allow us to continue to scale the company. In a way, focus area were unchanged, but we're having consistent delivery during the quarter. Shall we move to Q&A?
Yes, please. Thank you. Now heading to the Q&A session. Thank you, Christophe. Thank you, Kai. First question comes from Pasi Väisänen from Nordea. Have you seen order cancellations due to trade war and global downturn?
As I mentioned, I think the quarter has been moving in a very positive way from an order perspective. We have seen no order cancellation because of trade war.
I mean, as you know, Pasi, I mean, most of our business are actually built locally for local business, and that trend is accelerating. It is actually driving the growth you have seen on our Americas region. I will say first, no impact from trade war on order cancellation. On the opposite, we have seen momentum building up in terms of order during the quarter.
Okay, thank you, Christophe. Question from Jakob from Carnegie. Is all of Americas sale to the U.S. market?
Yeah, I will say obviously some can move a little bit outside of the US border, but the vast majority of what we produce in the US are to be delivered on the US market. That is also something that is driving the growth of our US operation, the need to get more American manufacturing.
Okay, thank you. Jakob continues here.
How much focus will be on ramp-ups in Q2? Is it possible to give an indication as a comparator to Q1?
I will say that on Q2, and it's a bit also in my comment on how Q1 unfolded. I think Q1 had a trend of increasing revenue, increasing profitability. That trend will continue during Q2. What we can see is that Q2 we will have less impact from, I will say, from the ramp-up of project. We will continue to work on the ramp-up of project, but the one we have worked on on Q1 will start to pay off, and they started actually to pay off towards the last end of Q1. Q2 will have much less impact of the project implementation, and will show the trend to build up during the year.
Okay, thank you.
Next question is regarding how did the demand develop over the months in Q1. It's from Jakob as well. I think two things I would say.
The first thing is, as I mentioned, as we were doing NPI, that gained volume as we were moving forward into the quarter. Clearly the demand increased as we were going in Q1. There is a second element that was very positive to us and pleasing. As I mentioned, we had the energy clean tech project-based business that came and got confirmed during Q1, which will have a positive impact on the long term of the year. Both in our deliveries, but also in the message of our customers, it was a positive development during Q1.
Okay, thank you. A question from Jyrki. Scanfil's outlook is positive for defense customers.
In the last results conference call, you mentioned the possibility to do acquisitions in defense business. Can you elaborate how sizable business defense could be for Scanfil in the future?
I think it's a twofold question. I mean, one side is obviously, as I mentioned, we have seen a positive development of our customer on their defense deliveries, and we have a couple of customers today that are in that sector. That we believe will continue for the remaining part of the year. We believe it will gain speed. When we look at M&A, I mean, our focus on M&A has not changed. We look at complementing region and complementing customer portfolio, but that is a bit difficult to speculate on. I mean, it's many things we work on, which one will go to the end.
You will have to wait a little bit, and we will have as well to know where it lands.
Thank you, Christophe. Next question comes from Sindre at Arctic. It's also about M&A and the development of SRX. It looks like revenues from SRX declined year on year. When is it expected to turn to growth? What will be the realistic revenue capacity for SRX following investments?
Yeah, I think that the Q1 was a transformational quarter for SRX. It was a slight decline, but at the same time, it was a lot of work to rearrange the factory and prepare for the investment. That will in a way continue because the line will be probably fully operational just after the summer. We are already getting in a shape where volume is ramping up.
I think that the volume will build up as we go through the year, and that should bring us to a different level of revenue. I think that the long-term revenue of the facility we have in Malaysia and of SRX with also Australia is sizable and can definitely come to something that is, I would say, in line with what we have, for example, in Atlanta. I think that that facility will have the capacity to grow significantly.
Okay, thank you. Quite many questions from Antti at Inderes. First one. Do you expect Scanfil to reach approximately normal operational efficiency at its factories in Q2?
I mean, we strongly believe in our long-term guidance. We believe that we will be in the range that we have indicated as forecast for 2025 and that it will build up as the years come.
You should see the year as continuous improvement from that perspective.
Thank you. Continuing on these questions, how have your global key customers responded to the tariffs at this stage?
Yeah, I think that our global customers are in a way quite calm, and I think it's probably related to the fact that we have had for many years within Scanfil and worked with them on localizing manufacturing, which means that for many of our customers, we produce quite close to the place where the products are consumed. We have constant discussion with them on what to do and how to move forward. The overall answer has been quite calm and quite good discussion, but no major revolution in the thinking. I mean, the one that had started to move some manufacturing to the US, it was done many years ago.
It's just happening, and they are happy with that. I think that's quite solid. We gained a couple of deals because of that from customers we did not have, but that are less sizable. From our big customers, I think that's good collaboration. We monitor the situation, and we believe that we have today a good footprint to help them to work on it, and it has been worked on for many years. Quite good.
Okay, thank you. From the geopolitical point of view, a question regarding the M&A. Do you see the tightening geopolitical trade situation affecting the demand or supply of targets in the M&A market?
I mean, I think it's a bit early to say at this point. Obviously, some targets might have more exposure to cross-regional trade, and that we would like a little bit less.
We will prefer to acquire companies that in a way complement our puzzle and have a bit of the same philosophy. I will say we will try to stay away from companies that will have a totally different profile and being exposed to that. Also because the way we have worked is mainly trying to offer localization of manufacturing for quite many years already, and that is the best way for us to complement it.
Okay, thank you. Please use the chatbox window if you'd like to ask questions. I will wait for a couple of seconds still before handing back to Christophe for the closing remarks. No further questions, handing over to Christophe.
Thank you, Pasi. Let me try to close that session. Going back on a few takeaways of Q1, a few major changes.
We have started with this regional segment reporting, but also it's a way we operate the company. At the same time, started to give you more visibility on how our business is built and developed, giving you also new key indicators with EBITDA. We also can see that this quarter was in a way a transition quarter, and we were very pleased with the way it unfolded, both by things happening the way we had planned they will happen, but also by gaining momentum as the quarter was going. We managed also to have a comparable EBITDA margin that remained very stable despite all those activities. All in all, I think it was a very positive quarter in a turbulent environment, delivering stability when being transformational and preparing for future growth. It has translated in a couple of actions.
We have announced a significant investment in a new line in Malaysia that has already in a way had a positive effect since we won the first deal, and I can say that probably it was also something that helped to convince this customer to move his manufacturing to Malaysia. We had a significant also amount of new deals. You saw that both energy clean tech was very, very positive in the number of deals that we managed to close, but also med tech and life science was positive, not only in the number of deals, but also in the revenue side. It shows the strong development on that segment. Finally, I mean, as Kai presented, after our first acquisition, we remain in a very strong situation.
We have done a lot of work during the last 12 to 18 months to build a very strong balance sheet. We have the capability to continue to roll out our strategy, both organically with the investment that will be needed to move forward our growth, both in APAC and in the US, where we have strong momentum, but also inorganically, where we have the capability to acquire the right target and the company that will complement us. A quarter that is maybe a non-event, but that is positive because a lot of activity is just unfolding the way we were wishing them to happen. With that, I will thank you for listening in and wish you all a good day.