Hello, and welcome to Vaisala's Q4 and Full Year 2025 Audiocast and Results Call. I am Niina Ala-Luopa from Vaisala's Investor Relations, and today in this call with me are President and CEO, Kai Öistämö, CFO, Heli Lindfors, and Chair of the Board, Ville Voipio. We have today published our financial statement release, and Kai will first go through the results, and then we have time for questions.
Thank you, Niina, and welcome for everybody from my side as well. So as the headline says, strong performance in 2025, and on a highlight in the Q4 , really being the orders received improving. And if we look at the actual what happened in the year, in the quarter... Maybe I'll start with kind of just if we were to teleport ourselves into beginning of 2025, just to remind you what kind of a year we were kind of thinking that we would face and what was the reality.
So we had a plan as a company to grow on the renewable energy on the back of kind of many years of good success, building on that, and the outlook, albeit a little bit more muted growth on renewable energy investments, but nevertheless continuing the growth. Then U.S. elections have happened, but the speculations on trade wars, import duties, things of that nature, were on the scenarios, but not the most likely ones, still in early January. And then there was really, I think, not really much of a speculation, which is hard to have the speculation on how volatile the currency exchange rates then became during the year. So what a rollercoaster ride in 2025.
First thing is, what happened was the, the renewable energy market for us really plummeted quite a bit, creating a big hole from the get-go in the, in the year, remembering that the, this has been, had been, one of the growth drivers for the company and profitable, very profitable one as well. So that kind of went away from, from the beginning of the year. We've quantified about EUR 20 million, or even a little bit over EUR 20 million, as a, as a whole, that it created from a, from the get-go. Then, in, during the year, the, with, with twist and turn, twists and turns, getting to 15% import duties between U.S. and Europe.
And then, in the second half of the year, U.S., well, actually, the euro appreciating vis-à-vis, vis-à-vis not only U.S. dollar, but many other currencies, Chinese yuan, Australian dollar, Canadian dollar, and so on and so on. So it, it's a clearly a broader event than, than just the import duties between kind of two continents or two countries. And in this environment, I think we can be, as a company, very proud of how we performed. We were able to continue our growth journey.
If I look at in a kind of our long term, first reminding that our strategic goal was growing the net sales by average 7% over long term, and we were clearly above that, as we should be measuring that in constant currencies, 7.4% year-on-year growth rate on during 2025. We were able to mitigate the import duties on industrial measurement side. That meant increasing prices the day after, where the import duties were clear, with no visible impact on the demand.
And on the weather side, actually pre-shipping into US, avoiding the tariffs, and giving us time to negotiate, as the business on that side is based on longer term contracts, and especially public side, so it takes time to negotiate. But happy to report that we've been able to actually, during, like, during that time that we bought for the second half, we've been able to actually come to terms and agree with the customers that we are now able to pass also in weather side the import duties to our customers.
Then, thirdly, the fluctuation on the currencies, the strong appreciation of the euro during the second half of the year, obviously then created headwind, which is a lead-in into when we look at the Q4 . In this environment, where we were kind of during the quarter in 1.18-1.16 range in terms of euro-dollar ratio, comparing to the year before, where we were 1.02, that gives you kind of a flavor of what kind of a headwind one would face, and despite that, essentially a flat net sales year-on-year...
in, that obviously kind of creating challenges on some parts of the businesses even more than other ones. Xweather being very highly a dollar-based, we are talking about clearly over 60% of the sales in USD, obviously creating even more headwinds than in some other parts of the business. That being said, also then when we look at the order intake in Q4 , that's really a positive highlight, I think.
In the Q4 , the order book increased 10% in terms of constant currencies, really driven by industrial measurements, but also in weather and environment, clearly improving to the level the year before, marking a kind of a significant change when we go look at sequentially, Q1 , Q2 , and Q3 , really kind of like changing, significant change in that trend. When looking forward, the market uncertainties continue. I think that's one thing that is kind of a for sure as an expectation for this year. What are exactly the uncertainties? What are exactly the things that we are going to face?
Nobody knows, but I am actually convinced when we're gonna have this call a year from now, and we do also the exercise of teleporting ourselves back to this date, we will find ourselves how many changes and what kind of a rapid changes in the marketplace have happened. In all this, based on the good, strong performance in 2025, the board of directors also yesterday or today decided to propose EUR 0.86 as the dividend for the AGM to decide.
Now, before going into, like, specifically specific numbers and more details in the performance itself, maybe good to look at kind of more of a, kind of a strategy perspective, highlights on the 2025. It really is about technology leadership. It's about climate action. I think we can be very proud of Xweather and subscription sales growing 50% year-on-year. We can be very proud of actually meeting and exceeding our long-term growth target as a company. But on top of that, kind of maybe a couple of other things that you might not be as familiar with.
The work that we have been doing very systematically in the company to improve the health and safety to the level that I am super proud on where we are today, the TRIR being 1.15, some of you might not know what exactly that means. It means that we are kind of the top-of-the-range industrial company in terms of health and safety. We've we really have been able to create this to be a safe working place where everybody gets home safe, comes safe, safe to, safe to work, and gets home safe, as it should be, and this is something that we, we as a company, we as employees of the company, we, we are very, very happy, and we continue on this journey.
Then, another recognition on our sustainable growth journey, this time by TIME. And then, you know, we continued on as our strategy execution, continuous improvement, and a flow of new products and services in all parts of the business. We continue to invest also into our operations, which is a key part of our success formula. And clear milestone on this was the completion of the automated logistics center here in Finland and taking into full use, now giving us benefits going forward on multiple different levels. Then into the financials, and starting with overall as a company.
As said, orders received improved in Q4 , driven by very good performance in industrial measurements and a clear improvement on weather side. Orders received increased by 5% year on year in reported currencies and 10% in constant currencies, bringing the order book to EUR 185.8 million. You know, that puts us below what the level was at the beginning of last year or end of December 31, 2024. But at the same time, it puts us clearly above what the order book was at the same time in year 2023, and the year 2024, as you know, was not the bad one for Vaisala.
I think this order book level gives us a good comfort on at least the starting of the year on both sides of the business. Net sales in Q4 slightly decreased, and if you look at constant currencies being flat, then this you have to remember again, the 2024 being exceptionally strong Q4 . So the comparable was quite strong on what we compare ourselves to. Gross margin slight decline, and here I would kind of pick up two things.
When we say that we compensated fully the import duties, the way the math works on that, that means in terms of a relative profitability, in terms of gross margin, there's about 1 percentage point, a little bit over 1 percentage point headwind caused by that. And then, also, as I said, we had an extremely difficult year in the, excuse me, on the renewable energy side, and when we compared to previous year, that was a kind of a clear, accretive business in terms of, in terms of our profitability for the company, turning into a more of a, much more of a drag to the profitability.
No news is good news in cash conversion, so as we have been showing as a track record for many years now, cash conversion continued to be strong. Looking at the industrial measurement side, I've said multiple times, the record high orders received and net sales in 2025, I think is something that we can be super proud of. We look at the year as such, orders received increasing by 13% year-on-year, and especially in the constant currencies, 21%. That, you know, we really need, we really can be proud about it, and it feels very good. And this growth was driven by Americas.
Despite all the, all the talk about the trade wars and everything else, continued our success in the, in the U.S., especially. And net sales increasing by, by 1%, in terms of reported currencies, but 7% in constant currencies, which I think really reflects our, our real underlying performance. And there, obviously, there are headwinds caused by the depreciation of not only U.S. dollar, but also Chinese yuan and other several other currencies impact, obviously, the reported orders received and net sales, and as, as discussed already earlier.
Gross margin stayed on the same level despite the headwind, as I said, from mitigating the import duties, and then on the EBITDA side, slight decline, but that was really driven by on the OpEx side, one-offs and some investments into sales and marketing, and commercial excellence, and a couple of maybe words on that. So when I say investments in sales and sales, that means in the digital channel and building the digital channel capabilities, which we are going to be benefiting in the coming years.
And then, also kind of a clear investment into commercial excellence, which we are running as a program in this industrial measurement, which we also expect to be improving the performance even further in the coming years. Then on the weather environment side, highlight of the year, I think, is really how the year developed, and especially in the Q4 , the orders received on the previous year level, and really the increased demand coming from meteorology and aviation segments. And, maybe some of you have been somewhat worried about the volatility and the changes of the demand in meteorology and aviation segments.
I think this is a good reminder how cyclical and, you know, it changes between the quarters and between the years. But, the market itself, when looking at it, as we will talk about it in grand scheme, I think is a strong continues to be a good market. Order book somewhat below the level, clearly below the level of end of the previous year, but at the same time, as I said, for the entire company, similar story as actually also for weather environment. If we compare the order book that we start this year with, actually is on a good level compared to what we ended in 2023, or be kind of what we started 2024 with.
Then, gross margin headwinds there, clearly lower, and this is back to what I now said multiple times, that the significant decline on the high-margin renewable energy business, clearly visible on the gross margin, obviously, the exchange rate impacts, and then the impact also from the U.S. tariffs, as discussed previously. Despite all that, EBITDA, the headwinds and the challenges that we faced in the year, the EBITDA levels stay, like, in a good level of close to 15% EBITDA. Looking at the cash flow, I said, the kind of strong cash flow continued, and we actually increased the cash flow from operating activities over EUR 10 million compared to the previous year.
And mainly really as a good work on improving the net working capital by, by the company, yielding the cash conversion to, to, 1.1. So I understand that there was a break in the internet connection, and I assume we are back. So just as a summary for 2025, not sure where you dropped off, so I'll start with the top of the slide. So reminder that net sales grew in line with our long-term targets. We grew over 7% in constant currencies.
If I kind of pick a couple of highlights on this slide, the subscription sales were up by 50%, boosted by the acquisitions that we did at the very end of the previous year, on WeatherDesk and Speedwell Climate now being fully integrated and bringing, when you exclude the WeatherDesk and Speedwell Climate, the organic growth on constant currency is well in double digit. On gross margin, slight decline due to several headwinds, exchange rate impacts, the proportional impacts of the U.S. tariffs, as well as I discussed earlier, and then the strong decline in the high-margin renewable energy business.
EBITA being roughly on the same level as the year before, and the earnings per share per share slightly below the year before. The financial position for the company remains strong. Again, no news is good news, and when we were preparing these slides, we should not for the next quarter, maybe count how many quarters we have had the same heading, and I am super proud to have the same heading on this slide. It gives us kind of very solid ground, obviously, and it's a testament on low leverage on the balance sheet and the asset-light business model that we have as a company, strong cash flow generation that we have as a company. And now with the automated logistics center completed, that obviously kind of takes a...
kind of gives us another leverage going forward as well. Moving on to the market and business outlook. The market outlook for 2026, as we see it, we see growth in industrial, in life science, in power, power markets, power and the markets for Xweather subscription sales, and then stable market outlook for meteorology and aviation, as well as for renewable energy. And on the renewable energy, obviously now stable on a clearly lower level where we started a year and a half ago. And what does it look like then in terms of business outlook?
For this year, we estimate that our full year net sales will be in the range between EUR 600-630 million, and our operating result in terms of an EBITDA will be in the range of between EUR 95-110 million. With that, I'll conclude the prepared remarks, and happy to answer any questions that you may have.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Nico Ruokangas from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hello, this is Nico Ruokangas from SEB. Thank you for the presentation. Sorry, there was some technical error in the line, so I lost or didn't hear anything for a couple of minutes, so I'm sorry if I am repeating something. But I have three questions, and I'll start with order intake for the industrial measurements. So you showed very strong 21% FX-adjusted order intake growth in industrial measurements, and you, for example, mentioned their data center orders and so on. So were there something extraordinarily strong in this quarter? Or does that kind of describe or reflect the current strong trends overall in industrial measurements?
So the only thing I think that is maybe little bit more pronounced this year than last year, and certainly the year before, has been the kind of longer-term orders from a Chinese companies, that you may recall, if you have followed us a little bit longer, that we have had for a long, long time, a year-end, early in the year orders, kind of full-year orders, blanket orders from our customers in especially in China. They became almost absent in 2022, 2023, when there was... well, 2023, 2024, when there was more of a uncertainty in the market, driven by uncertainty in economic development in China.
So I think it is very positive news that at least the confidence of our customers seems to be there in a higher level than in the previous years. But that's only a portion of this. And big part of it really is, as we said in the release as well, that it really is driven by the demand of our products and remembering that we are, as we have been saying, well-situated vis-a-vis the mega trends. There's lots of growth industries that we serve that are sizable for us, be it life sciences, be it data centers, as you said, Nico, be it semiconductor and the power are good examples, as I mentioned, just mentioning a few.
Okay, understand. Thanks. So that you would have had also significant FX adjusted growth, even without those times orders?
Correct.
Good. Then my second one is on the order or potential order from Indonesia. So you mentioned in the report that the Indonesian airport order will be included in orders if the client receives financing in H1. So, can you open that situation a bit more? So that does it mean that if they don't receive the financing, so you will lose this order totally? And then are you kind of including that order in your guidance assumptions?
Yeah, so a couple things on that. Good question. Thank you, Nico. So, it is not included in our order book or the guidance. So, it's the... As we don't do anything which are these kind of orders, bigger orders, especially from emerging markets, where timings of such orders are extremely difficult to predict even in a year. So that's one. Then why the wording was as it was, the background is that, as you know, it's been for a while announced publicly, where it actually was started, like, done by our customer who wanted to publish it even before we had the final commercial agreement done. And this is the Indonesian order is one of these mixed credit projects, where it's based on public financing.
The public financing rules are when these kind of projects are done, the public financing vehicles are guaranteed for a period of time, and there needs to be, for good governance, a backstop on when they kind of expire. And if they expire, then obviously you would have to kind of restart the kind of building the financing package if that kind of a case were to happen. So that's what the wording is reflecting. The custom from a kind of the customer feedback is that they absolutely want this to happen. Now, sometimes these kind of things have quite a bit of red tape in both timing. It reflects back to my comment on the timing itself. So again, the predictability is hard.
Yeah, totally understand. Thank you for a good color. My last question on USA and the public client side: so have you now seen kind of a stabilization there in demands, and did you have any impacts from the U.S. government shutdown in Q4?
Good question. Thank you. So I'm very happy to actually give you color on this. We now have a verbal insight on, for example, the budget for National Weather Service, and it seems to be on a good level. The cuts really, in the end, did not materially occur in National Weather Service, in some other agencies, much more so. And the budget is, like I said, on a good level. Regarding the Q4 government shutdown, in the end, it actually did not affect our sales. We were able to cope with it.
All right. Good. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Valter Rossi from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Valter Rossi from Danske Bank. Thank you for the presentation. A few questions. Maybe first I'll ask about the semiconductor segment that you say is also driving the growth currently in the industrial measurements. So could you open a bit how Vaisala products are used in the semiconductor segment?
So first of all, let's define what semiconductor, when I say semiconductor, what it means for us. It actually is, we are present from different types of memory processes to commodity silicon to really the leading-edge compute nodes in terms of fabs, in terms of manufacturing equipment, and so on. So we sell to the semiconductor environment via multiple different ways. So our equipment may be sold, sometimes directly into the fab itself, sometimes in through an OEM that is creating the environment in the fab, sometimes to the equipment that are actually used in the production of the different types of silicon products.
We are present in all around the world, so it's much broader kind of a coverage when we typically talked about semiconductor.
All right. Thank you. Then about the metrology and aviation segments, which you expect to be stable going into 2026, does that mean zero growth, or could it be a small positive number still?
When we have said stable, and we've said stable for the long term as well, the stable, if I take a little bit longer term view, averaging things out, it's inflationary inflation-corrected stable. It's not a market that is declining in real terms. It is actually stable in real terms. Now, then, how does that behave between a kind of a, as you saw last year, between different quarters and so on? The nature of that business is somewhat volatile.
Great. Thanks-
Just, okay, I'll
A few questions on
I'll give you a little bit more color on. For example, we just talked about with Nico on the Indonesian order is a great example. That it's a sizable order that would even impact the entire si- market size when it happens, but predicting which quarter it comes is super hard.
Yeah, the good addition. Thanks. Still a few questions about Xweather. So first, what is driving the growth in that business? You expect it to grow this year, but any indication here, could it mean double digits or more like 5%?
Our ambition is to continue to grow double-digit, the business itself. That being said, when I say double-digit, I can really talk about in constant currencies. Given the currency exchange rate, speed of the currency exchange rate changes and the fluctuation, that especially in this business, where the exposure to non-euro currencies is larger than anywhere else that we have, the impact also is the biggest on euro-reported numbers.
Yeah. Great. And can you say anything about what's driving the growth here?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Where are you potentially getting new customers and so on?
Yeah, yeah. So it's... So we are strong on several customer segments, so finance and insurance, renewable energy, and transport. And we see kind of both more usage from existing customers, and then clearly a potential in getting more customers. So we see that there's a kind of opportunity to grow both ways, that it's kind of a more usage, more and wider usage for existing customers, as well as then kind of getting new customers. And then obviously, we are looking at the adjacencies at the same time, that is a kind of a further growth initiative.
Great. And lastly, on the Xweather profitability, yeah, as we know, this profitability should improve once you lower the investments in the growth. So kind of two questions: What are you actually investing in right now at the business that is still keeping the profitability down? And what is your kind of ambition level on the profitability during this strategy period for Xweather?
So first comment is that the profitability improved significantly last year. And so the direction is. We're super happy with the direction on the profitability. And then where are we investing today? It really is about growth, so it's sales and marketing. I mean, we all have like think about this as a recurring software subscription business. And there, you know, the investment into like it's relatively easy to kind of measure the impact of sales and marketing impacts both to new leads, qualified leads, into then conversion like conversions from qualified leads into sales.
So really, the focus is driving growth, and then, therefore, the focus on investment side is increasing the reach of sales and marketing.
And about the kind of your target level on profitability during this-
We have
Any, any kind of?
We have not said any concrete target level on Xweather during the strategy period. But I just repeat what I said earlier that super happy on the development that we had last year.
Understood. Thank you for the answers.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Joonas Ilvonen from Evli. Please go ahead.
It's Jonas from Evli. Your industrial measurements product sales grew only 1% year-on-year, so I think that seemed, like, relatively low. So was that only, like, a timing issue?
Less of a timing issue. So you are talking about the Q4 , I assume?
Yeah, yeah.
Uh, that's-
Yes
T hink about it as the kind of significant headwind in terms of the currency exchange rates. So that's kind of the biggest impact on it.
Okay. So, if on constant currency terms, how much would have these product sales then grown?
Let me get back. Net sales growth, Q4 on 7%, on year. That's the year, annual number, and then quarterly number, it's a bit in timing, as you said.
And, uh-
Okay, but nothing really special happening there? I guess we can just-
No, no, no, no, no.
A ssume that basically the volumes are growing at around 5%-7% or so.
We report the constant currencies, the net sales growth, only the total net sales in industrial measurements, but not on a products or service sales level.
Right.
But they are fairly the same.
Okay.
Yes.
You can apply the same percentage gap to the below items, roughly.
Correct.
All right. That's clear. And then weather and environment, on the cost side, so you've implemented these cost adjustments, and I think they were already quite well visible in the Q4 figures. So, so do the Q4 figures already, like, fully reflect all these cost adjustments that you have recently made? Or can we expect even more to be visible in 2026?
Already announced cost savings that, to a very large extent, they are visible in the Q4 r already. So they were done in the Q3 , during the Q3 , and they really... They are a very large extent already visible there.
Yes, yes, mostly it's been done. As we recorded also the one-off cost already in Q3, so.
Okay, that's clear. And, then could you remind us of the gross margin outlook for industrial measurements and to weather and environment for 2026?
I can't remind you because we don't give it.
Okay. But okay, but can you, like, describe some of the drivers that might, I mean, im-
Sure
I mpact it this year?
Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure.
What might change in that respect?
Yeah. So, obviously, if you look at from a gross margin side, similar, similar impacts obviously on, or as, as in a typical year, that if I take weather side first, the project sales... Like, if you look at the individual quarters, how was the extent of the project sales versus product sales? That has a big impact on gross margin on an individual quarter, and sometimes even in a year, to some extent, at least. And then, last year, we had a significant headwind from the renewable energy into the gross margin as well in weather environment. And, as we are fixing that business, obviously we can't, kind of, completely fix it, since it's now inherently in a lower level than it was, kind of, in 2024.
We kind of are working on that side. And then, of course, the creative thing in gross margin in weather environment is Xweather, where the bigger that gets to be, and it clearly has a kind of accretive , like, very creative gross margin in the weather environment numbers. And then on VIM side, there it's like, if again, if I look at the quarterly side, some fluctuations between quarters based on, you know, product mixes that happen to be sold in a quarter, that's less so when you look at an annual level.
And then, it continues to scale, like, like, we has been in the past, that as the business growth continues to grow, that should be bringing leverage, so not only on the profitability, but also on the gross margin side.
Okay. Yeah, and finally, could you remind us of the geographic sales drivers? I mean, the big picture, so IM should grow this year quite a lot, and it's mostly driven by the U.S. and Europe, but, like, the big picture, are there any, like, anything to highlight from a geographic?
the US-
Yeah
... like, if I look at overall, actually last year, US grew more than any other, or Americas, as we say, but it really is US, grew much more than other regions. And kind of reflected also the industrial activity and the growth of industrial activity in the US. I think that it, the overall, when you look at the geographic mix, it reflects the often the industrial activity and investments into industrial activity in different geographies. And I would expect that the US continues to be probably ahead of Europe. I think that's a safe bet. And then, you know, positive dynamic in China, in short term at least, but we will see. We will see.
Important events, for example, like the Trump-Xi meeting now in April, we'll see how that impacts on in the U.S.-China relationships and kind of may be positive, may be negative.
Okay, that's clear. That's all from me. Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you everyone for joining the call. Thank you, Kai, for the presentation. Next in our financial calendar, we have the Annual General Meeting on March 24th, and then the Q1 result sharing on April 24. But now, thank you very much, and have a pleasant week.