Hello everyone and welcome to Vaisala's second quarter and half year results call. I am Niina Ala-Luopa from Vaisala's Investor Relations, and today here in this call with me are President and CEO Kai Öistämö, CFO Heli Lindfors, and Chair of the Board Ville Voipio. First, Kai will present the results and after that we have time for questions.
Let's start with the presentation.
Thank you Niina and welcome.
Also from my side, looking at the.
Second quarter, as the headline says, mixed second quarter. While there was a strong growth in many parts of the business and good performance, at the same time there was a decline, especially in the renewable energy business. Let's dig a little bit deeper into that quarter. Net sales wise, we were roughly on a previous year's level. The slight decline is largely explained by.
changes in the exchange rates.
When we look at the net sales, strong growth continued in industrial measurements across the board. I'll go a little bit deeper into it.
That a little bit later in the presentation.
While weather environment side suffered from slowdown, especially in the renewable energy markets, the subscription sales continued on a very strong growth, as it was also in the first quarter, both from inorganic side.
It's the acquisitions that we did late last year as well as the organic side, underlying organic business.
In terms of order intake decline, this came from two places. It's order decline obviously in renewable energy that was visible there, but also in meteorology and aviation here.
I'll talk about this a little bit.
More in detail later. This, I would say, is more in.
kind of explained by the cyclicality of the underlying business. I'll give you a little bit of color later in the presentation.
From an.
EBITDA perspective.
Lower compared to a very.
Strong quarter last year.
It's good to remember when we compared to the second quarter last year and remember the anomaly in terms of the different quarters in last year where first quarter was much weaker than in a normal year.
The second quarter was kind of a compensating part of that. The first quarter last year had the ERP change and the strikes at the same time, impacting both net sales and order intake. That was partly compensated in the second quarter. That's good to keep in mind. I'll show you also the.
Year.
To date, numbers and comparison to the last years, it's very visible there as well.
I'll conclude the presentation with the remarks on the market and the.
Business outlook.
Before going into the numbers, it's good to remember that we have.
A very, very clear strategy. While.
The market, public side, and myself in this call will talk much more about the short-term impacts on the marketplace, whether it is the import.
Duties, whether it's the trade war, whether it's the real war in Europe, whether it's the kind of turbulence in the marketplace, it's good to remember that climate change has not gone anywhere. It's progressing. We see just looking outside of the window how the impacts are more and more prevalent. It's important to remember that we are basing our decisions on a very, very solid strategy looking at business in the long term and the real importance of fighting climate change and its importance on many business trends as well, where we really strongly feel that we are on the right side of the history. It's good to have this kind of a solid basis for making business decisions guiding us in the long term.
Now going into the financials, first looking at it on a Vaisala level.
As said, order intake decreased despite the strong demand in the industrial measurement side this year.
On year.
Comparison, it's a 16% decline, and consequently, also the ending order book declined compared to the same time, or the starting order book for this year that is at the level of end of last year, 7% decline.
And net.
Sales decline is slightly here, essentially flat if we look at constant currencies. More than half of this decrease is explained by changes in the current currency exchange rates.
Strong.
Growth, but more interestingly, what's happening underlying on the top-level numbers is the strong growth in industrial measurements and in subscription sales, and at the same time weak demand in renewable energy, which then impacted the net sales significantly on that side of the business as well.
The gross margin on a good level.
Albeit a slight decline compared to the second quarter last year, the gas conversion continued strong. I'll show you a slide on that as well.
Industrial measurements, a very good quarter, growth continued in all geographic areas and all market segments.
It's great to see has not been the case for quite some time in industrial measurements that I can.
I say that the growth really comes.
From all geographic areas and all market segments, in terms of orders received, increased compared to a very strong comparable year on year by 10%, and net sales correspondingly increased by the same 10%. The growth in Americas continued strong.
It's the clear growth also in.
Europe and in Asia as well as in all market segments that we serve.
Slight decline in gross margin compared to.
Exceptionally high level, kind of same time last year, but in the range that I can say that I can be very happy about the gross margin as well as on the EBITDA level on industrial measurement side.
Mixed inside of weather environment, weak market demand in renewable energy.
Orders received decreased, as said, significantly when compared to a strong comparison point, albeit the strong comparison point last year, 32%, and the order book, consequently, 7% down compared to the end of last year. Net sales decreased by 10% compared to the same time last year, which again was strong not only in orders received, but also in net sales. As you can see from the graph on the right on the slide.
Where did it come from? It came from slowdown in the renewable energy market. Maybe kind of worthwhile a little bit opening up.
What this means is the investments into especially wind, as we've said before in previous calls, have slowed down around the world. There are kind of specific markets also.
That where we operate in, this has.
Now gone into the early.
Phases also in terms of a new.
Potential wind park explorations, which is really where we have the biggest exposure in.
Renewable energy market, energy business. Many of the markets, or some.
The markets where we are going to be specifically strong, like Central Europe or Japan, have kind of slowed down significantly. The impact on the market kind of comes through fully in.
Our numbers, but also the complete slowdown in the U.S. as the.
Administration changed, and the regulations are in flux in the U.S. This has caused a complete slowdown in the U.S., which obviously is seen also in our demand and in our numbers.
Subscription sales.
I said this earlier as well, a very strong growth, 53% growth in subscription sales. This is obviously coming from the acquired businesses and also very happy on the organic growth of 11% year on year on underlying business on subscription sales.
Continuing to progress very, very well.
On the subscription sales business driven by the ex-WeatherDesk business that we have.
In weather environment.
It's worthwhile also on the order intake side, maybe a few words on the traditional side of the business.
I referred back to the cyclicality.
Of nature of that business.
A couple of maybe opening.
Up a couple of pointers to that.
If we compare to.
Last year or second quarter last year or last year and some.
Partly the year before, the cycle was driven up in a couple things.
One thing being as an example the use of COVID-19 recovery funds for renewing meteorology infrastructure, especially in Southern Europe.
We benefited quite a bit from that.
During the past two years, a prime example of that was the investment in a completely new radar network in Spain, but also in Greece and many other smaller deals in other countries in Southern Europe. The use of that fund obviously now finally is over. At the same time, many of those investments now are on the way. Second thing, I'll ignore a much smaller impact, but an atypicality of this business is China.
Where we are now in the fifth.
Year of the five-year plan, and as we anticipated, the investments in meteorology are lower in the last year as.
It's typical in this five-year plan.
Executions that China has done, the investment got quite a bit of.
It boosted the investments in China last.
Year and the orders came in last year and this year clearly in a low level in China. Like I said, these are the nature of the traditional side of the business, the meteorology and aviation side of the business. That's seen especially in the order intake in that business inside a weather environment.
Gross margin kind of decline.
Two things impacting that: it's lower net sales with scalability working.
Other way, and then on the other.
Had unfavorable sales mix, meaning that there's a little bit more project revenue in the mix compared to some other quarters, leading also to lower profitability compared to the previous year at the same time.
I mentioned the cash flow continuing on a good level. Here you can see kind of changes in the cash flow. Nothing really kind of a major here.
Cash conversion continuing on a very good level at 1.0, and free cash flow consequently being EUR 22 million in the quarter. Excuse me.
I spoke about the seasonality.
Comparisons to last year. I promise to talk a bit about the year-on-year comparisons, also from a first.
Half perspective, which kind of gives you.
A slightly different picture compared to just looking at the second quarter, given the cyclical nature of our business, cyclical in terms of between the.
Quarters, and now when we look at.
First half compared to previous year's year orders received decline was somewhat milder. At the same time the company's net sales strong growth and the same drivers industrial measurements, subscription sales as well as then to some extent also the traditional meteorology business gross margin actually ahead of last year and EBITDA ahead of last year. EBIT being ahead of last year and the operating expenses well in control, kind of some increase. That really was driven by the acquisitions that we did in the second half of last year which we are very happy and actually contribute to the net sales and profitability as well already. Earnings per share being on the same level as last year. Financial position continued to be on a strong level comparing to kind of a first half last year. Obviously gearing bit higher since we did the acquisitions last year.
We stay very low levered and we continue to have the asset-light business model.
It's good to remind also.
That end report with the investment in the automated logistics center here in Banta continues as planned. We actually have completed the building.
Watching out of the window and seeing corner of it. We received the building and inspected it.
It's already completely done.
As we speak, we are installing.
The automation machinery into the building, and we expect that to be taken into full use during the second half of this year as we have planned.
Now maybe kind of changing the focus.
Future and few words on the market and business outlook.
The business outlook for this year, we.
Continue to see growth, expect growth in the market's underlying industrial measurements, i.e., industrial measurements, industrial life sciences, and power roads continue to be stable.
I talked about the meteorology and aviation.
In terms of the traditional business having bit of a cyclicality, and the cyclicality compared to last year in a kind of a lower cycle, the challenges in the renewable energy I spoke about as well. Thus, those markets we see declining this year.
If I were to look at long.
I would say kind of no changes in the outlooks on meteorology and aviation roads. The traditional markets continue to be stable long term, and long term we continue to believe obviously in the energy transitions and so on as I spoke about in the.
Strategy of the company. Now consequently, we are now in the middle of the.
Year and it's time to look at the business outlook as well. When we specified, the range is a little bit narrower than what we started the year with. We see the net sales being now between EUR 590 million - EUR 605 million. The operating result in terms of EBITDA is between EUR 90 million and EUR 100 million.
This concludes my prepared remarks. We would be very happy to answer any calls, any questions you may have.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Nico Ruakangas from SEB. Please go ahead.
This is Nick Rollans from SEB. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions and I'll go one by one, starting with Weather and Environment. You mentioned that the cuts in public spending affected demand in Weather and Environment. There have also been proposals for weather services budget cuts in the U.S., both from the presidential office and then from Senate and Congress. Could you discuss what you think about this? As you discussed the impact of public spending, do you think that the biggest risks of that relate to 2025 or 2026?
In my prepared remarks I actually spoke about really yes, it's a public spending, but it was more a stimulus fund post COVID-19 where that was I was mentioning. We can argue whether that's a cut or not. It's just like kind of on a.
Back of previous stimulus funds.
Similarly, in China, it really not a cut in public spending.
It's just a cyclicality of the public spending.
You're quite right. Back to the U.S. and National Weather Service NOAA, there have been cuts both in the personnel as well as in the budget.
In terms of the NOAA and underlying.
National Weather Service at least for this year. This has consequently postponed some of the projects that we anticipated would be coming to a closure during this year. So far we have not seen.
A.
Dismissal or stopping of any of the.
Projects that have been ongoing.
Everything has just moved forward in time.
Rather than being canceled entirely or even re-scoped.
It's really just been moving forward in time, and that's the visibility that we have today.
We have no reason to say that this would be like a permanent level. In longer term we'll see.
And still.
Relatively early days we are talking about right sitting here. It's about four months since the kind of a dialog started regarding National Weather Service and NOAA. We'll see ongoing negotiation I think within the administration on how to spend the money and where the cuts are too deep and where not, and how the future years look like. I would say too early to really speculate the longer term. On the other hand, I think it's a positive sign that no project has been cut so far.
All right, understand, thanks. The biggest impact from less public spending in Q2 you mentioned. It is not U.S., but other countries.
We anticipated this. We all knew that the COVID-19 recovery fund in Europe, when we are living in the year 2025, and that's like three years ago when in my books COVID ended. It's about time to stop using my tax money on recovery on COVID.
Yeah, I understand. You still kind of cut the outlook in traditional weather and environment side to decline from stable. Which part of this was kind of a surprise to you compared to expectation in Q1?
Really a new thing is this compared to Q1 is what you actually were.
Asking in terms of U.S.
It comes on top of the.
Other cyclicality that I was talking about, whether it's Europe or whether it's China, or just the normal cyclicality between the quarters in that market being.
Relatively small market all in all.
Single kind of decisions kind of move.
It is one way or the other kind.
Between the kind of like quarters and a half a year.
The only real kind of material.
Change is the impact in U.S. for rest of this year.
All right, thanks. Cross margin development, if we continue with Weather and Environment. Gross margin there declined year on year quite much. Was this kind of a Q2 specific, or were there specific explanations for this, and was this affected by tariffs there? Were you able to transfer the tariffs to prices also in Weather and Environment?
Good question. There was nothing really specific to any meaningful extent in the second quarter numbers. Really, the biggest weakness is in renewable energy and a significant decline in the marketplace itself. Remember the renewable energy business.
Has been a higher gross margin business and a higher profitability business than the kind of the average weather environment as a reported segment. That has an impact directly into the reported segment number. That really is where it is coming from in the first half. Regarding the tariffs and everything else, in all practical purposes we were able to mitigate that a little bit from price increases.
Mainly actually pre-shipments in the.
U.S., we like again, it's a longer cycle business. We will actually be able to ship much of what we shipped as kind of enclosed sales in the U.S. This moved into our warehouse and the factory in the U.S. and then turned into sales during the second quarter. That was part of the mitigation in weather environment on the traditional business side regarding the tariffs.
Okay. If you think about H2, will you then also be benefiting from pre-shipments?
Yeah, when we did this, we not.
We looked at the quarter, we looked at obviously kind of whatever we could anticipate for the year.
Yeah.
Remember pricing changes in public.
When we talk about the public business and longer-term commitments, it happens much slower than in a fast-moving business like industrial measurements.
Yes.
I understand I have still many questions, but I think that I'll ask one and let others ask about fixed cost development. You also mentioned that you are doing actions to kind of improve cost efficiency in renewable energy. Basically, your fixed costs did not increase much even though you had made acquisitions in weather and environment side. On the other hand, you showed increase in fixed costs in industrial measurement side. Can you kind of explain a bit background for that development, and was it already impacted by the cost actions you are taking?
This is like we've been saying that many other people agreeing with me that the visibility into the year has been very challenging. You know, the trade war, like what kind of tariffs, when will the tariffs sit, what categories will the tariff hit, what is the quality exchange, how will it impact the market demand and so on, which has kind of led that we have been prudent in deploying our.
Investments since the start of the year.
That's mainly what you see in the numbers and the specific cost actions into renewable energy.
Some of it is visible now.
The second quarter, most of it, as you can imagine, this takes some.
When you kind of change the focus of the investments and so on and reduce investments and reduce costs, it takes some time before they become visible in the numbers.
That's not yet really in the.
Second quarter numbers at all.
Yeah.
How much do you think that there is kind of a room to tighten the belt?
It's a bit too early to say.
I would not like to comment yet on the number. I'm happy to report in a third quarter, but it's a bit early since much of this still is under planning.
Yeah, understand.
Thank you.
I'll let others ask now and go back to the queue.
The next question comes from Pauli Lohi from Inderes. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, it's Paul from Indarest. First, I would like to ask, have you seen any changes in the competitive landscape or your market share in the renewable energy business?
No, no. The decline is entirely coming from the changes in the marketplace. Actually, many of our competition is.
Privately held, so kind of getting quarterly numbers is impossible.
But having.
One of the biggest competition that we have, their annual numbers from last year, they actually saw a significant decline already last year.
Them having an even bigger kind of impact.
Exposure to U.S., maybe even exaggerated like compared to.
Or exaggerated, but made it even stronger.
What kind of a faster, why we did not see it last year yet the same way in our net sale.
I have understood that China, the competitive landscape in China is a bit different from Western markets. Is that a significant share of your...
Revenue,
No, really nothing at all in renewable energy.
My second question is regarding currencies. Do you think that the current weakening of the U.S. dollar to Euro would affect your EBITDA margin? I mean the relative profitability materially, if you consider that most of your expenses are paid in Euro and many of your suppliers are European.
That's correct.
That remains to be seen. It's all speculative what their currency exchange rates will be going forward. I think the part of this, obviously, we can mitigate depending on what the exchange rates are. I think the impact on top line would be probably more challenging. I'll give you just an example. If I talk about our VIM business.
In the U.S. and not only in the U.S. but also.
In China, it's a good example. If you look at renminbi, it's.
Actually followed exactly the rate, maintain its rate to USD, and thus weakening the same way vis-à-vis euro, now being 10% lower level compared to, say, beginning of this year or even February this year.
That means just mathematically that if we compare to last year and it would stay, say, in this 10% depreciation, that would mean that we would effectively need to sell 10% more in terms of a USD and renminbi just to stay in the same place.
In industrial measurements, in say in the U.S. or in China.
I'm not saying that that's the case, but I'm just visualizing you what is really the kind of impact on.
The currency exchange rates on the top line.
You don't see squeeze if you produce in Europe and you have costs in euro and then sell to other currencies. You don't see the squeeze in profitability.
Of course, like any squeeze on top line, kind of has an impact on profitability, but that's all reflected in our guidance already.
Okay.
You already gave some.
Explanation.
About impact from tariffs, and you have mostly mitigated them through pre-delivered products. How about looking forward? If we assume that there will be some 10% or 15% tariffs permanently, can you offset them in both? I mean, can you give some color for both divisions.
Industrial measurements? We have been able to offset them completely by pricing actions, and I feel confident that we have now enough evidence that we can do that. Obviously, depends on what now we speculate if it stays on a current level.
We have no evidence that we can offset them without really impacting the demand.
Demand picking picture or the competitive picture. As I said earlier, it's obviously much easier to pass on the.
Prices to customers when it's more of a transactional nature, and book to bill.
Turnaround is three weeks.
You don't have the same way long term commitments and long term deals as you have in the weather environment.
Where it does have some shorter term business also, it takes a longer, longer time to pass the.
Costs to our customers. We certainly are going to be doing pricing actions on it, but we need to do other actions on it to mitigate.
We will see what.
What will be the levels of tariffs and what will be the levels of the currency exchange rates? Kind of a longer term.
I think we have.
On one hand, different levers in the different units.
We have levers in both units.
Okay, thank you very much. That was order from me.
The next question comes from Jortikka from Evli. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. This is Atte from Enveli Research. Thank you for taking my questions. Firstly, more of a general comment question. Looking at the specified outlook range, at least for my eyes it looks rather narrow in terms of top line, especially given that we're only halfway through the rather uncertain year. What are your thoughts on this overall, this kind of narrowness on the guidance and how you take into account for example currency movements here? I think you already commented that
We don't.
I don't think it's for us to speculate what the USD versus Euro rate is going to be at the end of the year.
It's impossible for businesses like us to take a view and a stance.
On that and similarly taking a view.
On what will be the kind of the tariff regimes towards the end of the year, it's anybody's guess. We are not taking really a case stance on either one of those.
Okay, thank you.
A couple on the renewable energy, if I remember correctly, I think you started seeing some kind of weakening there during the second half of last year. If we compare it to that market situation, how is it, is it substantially weaker now than late last year?
Yes, it is. Yes, it is.
It continued, like you said, early signs were in the second half last year and clearly kind of much more prevalent during.
The first quarter and now going into the second quarter, I'm not expecting any.
Kind of material improvement on that market, not this year.
We'll see a little bit then how it behaves longer term.
Okay.
Lastly, from my side, you commented that you expect the renewable energy business sales to be down EUR 15 million this year. You already gave us some color, but could you comment on how this spreads across the operating regions for that business?
Can you repeat the question? I'm not sure if I really got it.
Yeah.
Do you expect the energy business to be down this year, and how do you expect that to spread across your operating regions?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's across like all geographies. I don't think there's really a material difference in terms of what the market.
Is down, whether we talk about North America, Europe, or Asia, and those other geographies like where we are selling.
Okay, thank you.
That was all for me.
The next question comes from Matti Riikonen from DNB Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, it's Matti at DNB Carnegie. Couple of questions. Firstly, you mentioned the Chinese public sector investments being softer. I was just thinking that when you explained that the five-year plan in China is now having the last year, does that mean that or could you discuss that? What is your experience from those five-year plans? When we go to the next one, do you think that it will kind of start strongly if you say that the last year of the five-year plan is slower than normal years, or what kind of pattern do you see there?
The pattern has been such that the last year, for some reason I don't have details on kind of what's the logic behind, but it has been kind of a form for previous five year plans.
As well, the last year seems to be a kind of a softer.
Public spending, especially on kind of industries that are related to us, starts again. The cycle starts again when.
The next five-year plan starts. There seems to be a pattern.
All right. In your view, does it seem like China would be buying more from local manufacturers? Do you see that kind of trend?
This is kind of a general question. Obviously, if I take kind of put it in pieces, bit on the weather environment side, that change already have.
Happened and we've changed the business model in terms of we are partnering with local partners.
It's not, you know, remember that serves.
Maybe sectors that have national interest and that change already happened many, many years ago. We've adapted into that. I don't really see kind of a change happening. We have not seen anything that would mark that change in that. It already is where it is.
Whether in industrial measurement.
There is local competition. I'm not seeing any changes. The competitive environment really hasn't materially changed at all compared to last year or the year before.
Okay, then the U.S. situation with the public spending. Do you think that you now have slightly better visibility, that you already kind of took your market estimates down for the U.S.? In Q1, I think you discussed that you had not seen yet any major changes in the so-called inventory orders, that they had come a bit softer, but you expected that they would kind of return to normal towards the end of the year. You had seen slowness in the new business. Is this still the picture that you are looking at?
That is still the picture. We are looking at the running business and honoring the old contracts that has continued. The softening on the market is less visible in net sales.
Much less visible in net sales. It really is on new orders and new orders moving kind of a.
Moving right, kind of into the future.
Right. Roughly what kind of net sales exposure are we talking about with the U.S. public sector? Is it more than EUR 10 million of your sales annually, or what kind of numbers are we talking about?
Yes, it's more than that. I would say this way, that this is no scientific number. This is my own back of the envelope calculation and estimation and all disclaimers to it that the impact on the.
By dodging into the related markets to us, the market probably order magnitude would be down in terms of new orders this year, maybe EUR 20 million. The entire market.
Like I said, it is based on those scientific.
This is just my expectation on the market.
Where you're talking about kind of the total buying of.
Yeah, total buying related to the, would be whatever our market share would be.
Okay, fair enough, thank you. Moving to kind of nitty gritty things in financials.
The.
Industrial measurement Q2 was very good. Was there any particularly good trends or some relief rally, maybe kind of companies returning to normal after? I mean the situation is not very clear yet on U.S. tariff policies, but at least most people have to, or most businesses have to go forward. Was there some kind of relief after the April events?
It's widespread, so nothing that I could.
Kind of point out to.
As I said in my remarks, all geographies performed well.
All underlying market segments performed well. It was widespread, like nothing I could point out to.
All right, then one technicality: with that kind of top line growth, one would have expected slightly better gross margin, but that didn't scale much higher. Does it mean that you have increased your resources in the delivery organization, or was there just weaker sales mix?
It's about the sales mix. In terms of, if you look at the profitability, so EBITDA, even the tariffs have had no impact. If you think about how the tariffs, when you compensate it by increasing prices, then actually the tariffs go into the bill of material.
That actually technically lowers the percentage a little bit.
I can go behind that. That's just a kind of a small.
Piece of the decline. It really was a mix.
All right, now it seems that you have pretty much taken into account U.S. Administration's decision regarding these DOJA cuts on your customers. Is the biggest risk now going forward still that the tariff policies in general would be changed and there would be some additional tariffs and maybe some additional disturbances towards the rest of the year affecting your business, not only in the U.S. but also then having repercussions outside the U.S., meaning global?
Thank you for the question. I think it's a great question.
I should have emphasized this, that's absolutely the biggest risk, that the tariff changes compared to whatever it is today.
Obviously, they have a direct impact to us. I would be even more worried about the impact to our customers and therefore the entire market.
The demand across.
Longer the uncertainty.
continues, it's not good for our customers. Similarly, the currency exchange rates, that's another kind of a big uncertainty, not only directly to us, but also to our customers. Again, the compounding impact of all of these uncertainties. How do you plan investments, how do you plan your spending in this kind of environment? I'm talking about our customers. That, I think, is by far the biggest risk.
All right, thank you for this clarity. That's all from me.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please direct dial on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hello, this is Nikko from SEB again. I have one additional question, going back to the U.S. public spending topic from a different angle. Do you think that possible additional spending cuts in the U.S. could affect your subscription business in North America? How dependent are you on the public data there?
No, I don't see any of that.
All right, that's clear. I'm sure that's all for me, thanks.
Thank you for the question.
The next question comes from Waltteri Rossi from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, Waltteri Rossi from Danske Bank. Firstly, on the renewable energy, have you disclosed the geographical footprint in there? How much is the U.S. sales from renewable energies?
It's small compared to Europe and Asia. We have not really disclosed it.
That will be the answer.
All right, fair enough. About the public sector exposure in ex-WeatherDesk, have you said anything on that?
There's a bit, but remember all public sector spending that Vaisala WeatherDesk has, for example, would be the lightning data. That would be an ongoing spending. That's not an investment. That requires no new gear, that requires no new projects. That's an ongoing spending. We don't see any, like I said also in the traditional business, we don't see any kind of really an.
Impact on the ongoing business itself.
Okay, clear then about the weather and environment profitability. You said that you will lower costs because of the lower sales volumes. How efficiently do you think you can mitigate the negative profitability impact through these actions this year?
I think we have, first of all, we have multiple levers to pull from, and we are definitely doing that, quantifying exactly all of this. As I said earlier, I answered to somebody else earlier that I would rather talk about it in a third quarter call.
It's still under planning, and it would be premature to really comment too much about it yet.
All right. Two small questions still about the budget reductions in China. Could you open up what is actually driving those there,
Like clarifying comment.
It's not a budget. Don't think about it as a budget cut. It's a cyclicality of the kind.
A public sector spending cycle.
It's a cyclicality of how the public.
Spending is done in China.
There's no cut per se. It's kind of where they allocate the.
Public spending in a given year, and it's just a cyclicality thing, nothing else.
Okay, fair enough. Lastly, about the competition in the public sector in the U.S., would you say that the U.S. government has any meaningful local options?
I don't think that's the question here.
At all.
With multiple vendors and everything else, this is not about us or not us. We are very close to the kind of the governmental actors and the customers and everything else.
We are not seeing this being at all a question on what's ongoing.
Collect us or not us.
Okay, so.
You were asking about the tariff impact.
I mean because tariff don't impact local players, then they would have a.
It depends on their supply chain, the local people, maybe the manufacturing. It doesn't impact because the manufacturing itself is a small piece depending on where the supply chain is. If you use Chinese components, if you have Mexican subassemblies, the direct impacts may be higher than what it is for us.
All right, fair enough. Yeah, that's a good answer.
That's it.
That's all for me.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers.
Okay, thank you very much for joining the call today. We will publish our interim report January–September on October 23rd, and we will have our next quarterly audiocast and conference call then. Thank you very much and have a nice weekend.