Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Kitron's Q2 2026 results presentation. I'm Peter Nilsson, and as always, I'm joined by our CFO, Cathrin Nylander. Thank you for taking the time to be with us today. The theme for today's call is on the slide in front of you, resilience by design. Across our markets, customers are reorganizing their supply chains around resilience and origin rather than lowest cost. That shift is structural, and it plays directly to the platform we spent the past decade building, distributed, disciplined, and close to the programs that matter. Q2 is what it looks like in numbers. I'll cover the quarter highlights, our operational position, the sector and order backlog picture, and the strategic outlook. Cathrin will take you through the financials, including a cash flow story we're particularly pleased with this quarter.
I'll close with the case for our medium-term ambition before we open the floor for your questions. Let's get started. Next slide, please. Q2 extended the longest run in Kitron's history. Revenue of EUR 296 million, operating profit over EUR 28 million with an EBIT margin of 9.6%. The order backlog EUR 794 million, up 56% year-on-year, and an operating cash flow of EUR 47 million in the quarter. I'll let Cathrin tell the story, but I'll say this much now, the cash engine is turned on. The real story isn't in any single number. The real story is breadth. All five of our market sectors grew year-on-year, and all three of our regions did too. Defence & Aerospace more than tripled and now represents around half of group revenue. Connectivity grew 18%, Medical 16%, Industry 13%, and Electrification 7%.
The diversification we've been talking about for several years keeps showing up in the numbers. One thing to flag up front, our Nordic and North America region delivered margins slightly below target. I'll explain exactly why when we get to the regional picture. It's a supply timing story, not a demand story. With that, let me walk you through where we stand operationally. Next slide, please. Four points on operations and growth. First, execution, and it starts with our teams delivering customer ramp-ups across every site. In Central Europe, that discipline showed up as 14.7% EBIT margin as capacity expansion converts the Defence ramp into profit. In Asia, Malaysia reached break even in June for the first time, and what matters more is what comes next, a significant volume ramp through the rest of the year. The outlook is stronger here than the rearview mirror.
This is a volume story. In Norway, we're building for what's ahead. The Longum site came into service early in the quarter, and now we've largely completed the production transfers from Kilsund. The two sites will specialize, Kilsund on electronics and PCBA, Longum on high-level assembly and systems integration, so we can scale Defence work without losing focus. Second, the supply chain, because that is the defining condition of 2026. The electronic supply chain tightened further in the first half, and we expect allocations conditions to persist into the second half. This cycle is different from the last one. AI compute is structurally reallocating memory, substrates, and board capacity, and industrial manufacturers now compete directly with data center demand for the same certified high reliability capacity. Our response is discipline. Long horizon purchase orders, inventory commitments backed, in many cases, funded by our customers, dual sourcing, and early escalation.
Late supplier decommitments and pushouts remain part of daily life. We plan for them, and we're managing this, not absorbing it. Third, new business, this is a point about the quality of demand, not just the quantity. During the quarter, we booked a broad set of new programs across all five market sectors, split evenly between new and existing customers while extending business in competition. We welcome new customers in autonomous defence, 5G Connectivity, and solid-state power units, alongside new programs in ruggedized edge computing and quantum security. Individually, these wins fall below our threshold for public announcement. Collectively, they're exactly the diversification we've been building for. Fourth, our 2026 outlook. We're now trending towards the top end of the ranges previously communicated, the EUR 900 million-EUR 1,050 million in revenue and the EUR 84 million and EUR 108 million in EBIT.
Our task in the second half is converting demand through a tight supply chain. The capacity keeps expanding where the demand is. Further expansion is in early planning, in some cases, together with our customers. Let's look at the sector picture. Next slide, please. The chart tells the story at a glance. Defence & Aerospace is the headline, EUR 154 million in the quarter, up 234% year-over-year. Now around half of group revenue. European rearmament, unmanned systems, missile programs, combat vehicles and naval hardware. Structural demand that shows no sign of cooling. The point I want you to take away is that every single sector grew again. Connectivity was up 18%, driven by industrial IoT and Smart Sensor Solutions. Medical was up 16%, led by critical care.
Electrification was up 7% with data center demand intact and a large grid customer program moving into serial production. Industry grew 13%. The Industry sector deserves a more nuanced read than the headline number. This sector spans a wide berth of customers, from large Tier- 1 operators down to Tier- 3 and 4 specialists. They're not all living in the same cycle. Mining and construction is very stable in outlook. Our robotics and automation customers are in a genuine growth cycle. Many of the smaller customers that are indirectly exposed to semiconductor manufacturing and data center construction, energy solutions, and maintenance are benefiting strongly from new rising demand. Sensitivity to rising component costs varies between these end user segments. The sector average hides more than it reveals. What aggregates the truth is the order intake, 1.4x book-to-bill ratio to date, the strongest ratio in the group.
We now have two quarters in a row with every sector growing. At some point, the pattern stops being a quarter and starts being a portfolio. That's the point of this slide. Defence carries the headline, the other four compound beneath it. Breadth is one of the reasons we have so much confidence in the year ahead. Now to the order backlog and forward visibility. Next slide, please. As I said, order backlog stands at EUR 794 million, up 56% year-over-year, about 1.5% below the record we set in Q1. I want to spend a moment on the sequential move because it's exactly what a healthy backlog should do. The declines sit at two sites where our largest Defence and industrial programs are shipping. That's backlog converting into record revenue you just saw. Year- to- date, book- to- bill is 1.15x. It keeps refilling the book.
EUR 653 million of order intake in the first half, EUR 1.25 billion on a rolling 12-month basis. Defence & Aerospace now represents 60% of total backlog, up 45% from a year ago. Our R6, which is the forward-looking six-month demand, communicated to our customers and our system, stands at approximately EUR 609 million. As always, two things are to keep in mind when you read it. First, R6 is intentionally front-loaded. We deliberately build in roughly 10% of flexibility so that supply variability can be absorbed without disrupting customer commitments. That doesn't mean that we're looking at two quarters around EUR 300 million. Second, Q3 is seasonally our softer for us, and that's a normal feature of our calendar, not a sign of demand weakness.
What matters the most is the structural shape, a record level book, broad sector distribution, intake ahead of billings, and customer relationships that are deepening. We've never entered a second half with this kind of forward visibility. With that, I would like to hand over to Cathrin for some financial details. Next slide, please.
Thank you, Peter. Let me walk you through the financial picture in more detail. Starting with the headline numbers. Revenue of close to EUR 296 million, up almost 72% year-on-year. EBIT of over EUR 28 million, up almost 89%. EBIT margin of 9.6%, 90 basis points higher than Q2 last year. EBITDA of EUR 35 million, up 79%. Net income of EUR 21.4 million, more than doubled. EPS of EUR 0.10, double from EUR 0.05. Operating cash flow was EUR 47 million in the quarter against EUR 19 million in Q2 last year. That's the number I'm most pleased with, and I'll talk more on the cash flow slide in a moment. On the balance sheet ratios. ROOC on a rolling three-month basis at 39%, up 16 percentage points from a year ago. Net working capital at 15.4% of sales, down from 26.8%. Cash conversion cycle at 60 days.
Down from 104 days. Net interest bearing debt over the EBITDA at 0.3x , down from 1.4x. Net equity ratio over 39%. Let's take a look at what this means for the first half of the year. Next slide, please. The half-year view puts the quarter in context. Revenue of EUR 568 million, up close to 69% on the first half of last year. EBIT of almost EUR 54 million, up 96%, essentially doubled. EBIT margin of 9.5%, 130 basis points higher year-on-year. Net income of EUR 41.4 million, up 135%. EPS of EUR 0.19, up 111%. The line I would like to draw your attention to, operating cash flow of over EUR 52 million for the half year, close to our strategic target of 80% of EBITDA. At the half year mark, profit is converting fully into cash, even while we found close to 69% revenue growth.
Very few companies growing at this rate can say that. Capital efficiency ratios you see on these slides are the same rolling measures as the previous slide. They describe the business as it runs today. ROOC at 39%, working capital at 15.4% of sales, 60-day cash cycle, and leverage of 0.3 x EBITDA. Let's move to the regional breakdown. Next slide, please. Three regions and three tables. Starting with revenue, CE is now our largest region at EUR 140 million in the quarter, up 147% year-over-year. This is the capacity expansion delivering, supporting the major Defence customer ramps. Nordic and North America came in on EUR 131 million, up 36%. Asia at EUR 28 million, up 25%. On EBIT, CE delivered EUR 20.6 million, a margin of 14.7%, well above the group target. Asia delivered close to 10%.
Nordics and North America delivered EUR 10.6 million and 8.1% margin, slightly below target, and this is where the supply phasing showed up. Defence deliveries at specific Nordic sites moved to the right because boards and components arrived late, not because demand changed. June's exit rate points the right way, recovering this region's margin, a clear second-half execution priority. In Asia, I want to highlight the milestone. Malaysia reached break-even in June for the first time since we started the greenfield operations there. With a significant volume ramp-up projected for the rest of the year, the outlook is stronger than the rearview mirror. The site is maturing exactly as planned into a non-China alternative for Asia manufacturing. On headcount, we ended the quarter at 3,359 FTEs, up 36% year-over-year, but actually down slightly from Q1 as ramp proceeds to serial production, large in place.
The focus now is productivity and sales per employee is recovering. The organic versus inorganic split. Next slide, please. Kitron Eltech, formerly DeltaNordic, was consolidated as of 1st of January with no prior real comparables, so this slide splits the quarter into organic and inorganic for a clean underlying read. They hit the headline. Even excluding Eltech, revenue grew 62% year-over-year. Defence & Aerospace tripled organically, up 214%. Connectivity and Medical are essentially pure organic growth. Industry shows small organic dip against a strong comparator. The Eltech contribution takes reported growth to +13%. On the order book, organic backlog is up almost 45% year-over-year to EUR 737 million. Record level visibility even without the acquisition. Eltech adds EUR 57 million on top. One note on book-to-bill, because the quarterly figure will attract questions. Organic book-to-bill was 105 in the quarter. Organic backlog is still building.
Year-to-date, group book-to-bill stands at 115. Cash flow and working capital, the slide I've been looking forward to. Next slide, please. The short version, the cash engine has turned on. The quarter delivered EUR 47 million of operating cash and year-to-date, operating cash flow, EUR 52.1 million, and close to our strategic target of 80% of EBITDA. Where did it come from? Receivables were collected at the record deliveries of the spring converted to cash, thus keeping receivables stable. Payables were rebuilt in step with the growing purchasing volume. This is the customer-funded working capital model doing what it's assigned to do. Even after all that, working capital still absorbed EUR 11 million in the first half, which is remarkably little for a growing at close to 69%.
Net working capital ended at EUR 158 million, down almost 13% from a year ago in absolute terms, even though revenue is up 2/3. As a share of sales, that's 15.4% from 26.8% a year ago. I want to be straightforward about one thing. Q2 was exceptionally strong. The structural story is the trend. Our cash conversion cycle has come down from 117 days four quarters ago to 60 days today. The improvement is discipline, not timing, and it's what we intend to sustain through the second half. On the investing side, capital expenditure, it affects our capacity and footprint expansion. Deliberate investment against contracted demand. Let me close the financial section with the ratios. Next slide, please. The ratios on this slide are the cleanest summary of how the business is performing. Three things stand out.
First, return on operating capital is 39% on a rolling basis, up from 23% a year ago. This is operating leverage on a stable cost base, and it puts us at the top of the industry. Second, balance sheet strength. Net interest-bearing debt that is EUR 30 million, 0.3x EBITDA with net gearing of 0.08x and an equity ratio of 39%. We have ample room to fund the growth in front of us, including for M&A if the right opportunity appears. Third, earnings per share. EUR 0.10 for the quarter, doubled year-on-year, EUR 0.19 for the half. Revenue growth is translating directly into shareholder return. The headline I leave you with, ever-important capital efficiency and balance sheet ratio improved year-on-year and cash conversion now matches the profit growth. With that, back to Peter for the strategic outlook. Next slide, please.
Thank you, Cathrin. Encouraging numbers and something to be really proud of. What does our medium-term outlook look like? Why is EUR 1.5 billion that we're talking about of annual revenue credible in the medium term? Let's start with some arithmetic. From this year's level, EUR 1.5 billion is not a moonshot. It's just a few more years of compounding what you've already watched us deliver on demand that is largely booked or in structured evaluation rather than imagined. EUR 794 million of backlog and above EUR 1.25 billion of order intake over the last 12 months, a pipeline that has changed character. It's no longer a list of opportunities. It's a schedule of decisions. Named evaluations where we're shortlisted in. Requests for quotation with dates on them. Programs with production slots attached. The structure underneath.
European Defence rearmament, where E.U. instruments are now dispersing real money into multi-year program cycles, and where eight of our sites build Defence & Aerospace today. grid and data center Electrification, a demand cycle with years to run as Europe rebuilds its energy and compute infrastructure. Industrial digitalization, where Industry's 1.4x book-to-bill tells you the recovery is being ordered now, not forecasted. The honest framing, the constraint on that path is not demand, it's conversion. Which is why you'll hear one word from us all second half, convert. Backlog into orders. Pipeline into orders. Backlog into deliveries, pipeline into orders, right? Profit into cash, Capacity that follows the order book, The order book keeps growing. Let me summarize with a few takeaways. Next slide, please. Five things to take away from Q2 2026. One, strength.
Record revenue, broad-based growth, EUR 296 million, up almost 72%, 62% organic. All five sectors and all three regions grew. Defence & Aerospace tripled and is now around half of group revenue. Two, profitability above target and converting to cash. EBIT of EUR 28 million at 9.6% margin and EUR 47 million of operating cash in the quarter. Year- to- date cash flow close to our strategic target of 80% of EBITDA. Three, record level order book and visibility. Backlog of EUR 794 million, up 56%. Year- to- date book-to-bill 1.15x. R6 demand outlook approximately EUR 609 million, intentionally front-loaded for flexibility. Four, Kitron Eltech delivering. Footprint is expanding. EUR 16.5 million contributed in the quarter. Five, on the road to EUR 1.5 billion.
We are currently trending towards the top end of our 2026 outlook of EUR 900 million- EUR 1,050 million in revenue and EUR 84 million- EUR 108 million in EBIT. The task for the second half is converting demand through a tight supply market. The demand is on the books and the platform is funded and standing, what defines the rest of 2026 is conversion. Backlog into deliveries, pipeline into orders and wins, and profit into cash. That is the work we have in front of us, and that is the work this company was built for. With that, Cathrin and I, next slide, are ready to take your questions. We have quite a few questions. Let us start with [Martine].
Supply chain, which specific component categories are most constrained, and how much revenue do you believe is delayed and deferred due to supply demand? How much customer-funded inventory is on the balance sheet, and on what terms? Those are some very specific confidential questions. Let us start with component categories. Right now, I think the memories, for example, and high-level processors are constrained on allocation. We are seeing a lot of constraints on the PCB market. We are talking about high reliability PCBs, advanced PCBs for the type of products we build, and of course. The Defence part of the PCB market, where you are very much restricted to certain suppliers. That is in general. I am not going to go into detail. We have specific webcasts that we review the component market about every six weeks or so.
Do we want to talk about the customer-funded inventory and the balance sheet, Cathrin?
What we are mentioning in the quarterly report is as well, we have deposits from customers of about EUR 125 million, which is in the same level as last quarter. In addition, of course, we have a customer-consigned inventory, which is not in the balance sheet, for instance, as well. Therefore, we do not need to mention the sums.
Martine follows up with, last quarter, you mentioned results would probably end up between 9.5% and 10% EBIT margin, not above 10%. Is that still accurate? I'll let you take that one again, Cathrin.
Yeah, I would say that's a reasonable, accurate statement still. It requires a lot to grow this much. Also, we need to prepare for growth coming into next year, meaning that some costs will increase slightly. I think 10% is the high end of it.
[Torbjörn] has then three questions. The first one is regarding our guidance for the year, and that we're at the top end, and R6 is above that, obviously. Even adjusting for front-loading, this appears to imply revenue above the current top end, and what is preventing the formal guidance today? Well, it's the tight supply chain. There's risk to increase in outlook. At this point, we're looking all the time at what is our clear to build for the rolling six-month horizon, what's our clear to build for 12-month horizon,. What's our clear to build for what we have on order for the next month or so. Those are numbers we're following, and we see what's possible to execute and what we thought was possible to execute and what was actually executed. All those parameters weigh in when we talk about our guidance forward.
When we have more clarity in that, we will be likely to reassess, but not until then.
More clarity, when we report Q3, we're into October, we should have a really strong picture of what it looks like.
It's not about the demand, it's just about what we are able to source, basically.
Within D&A, what extent are PCBs required to be sourced from European suppliers and European PCB capacity? Is European PCB capacity currently limited your ability to convert orders into revenue? First question, for all of the defence primes in Europe, they are sourced from European suppliers. For some of the new defence tech, they can be sourced either from Taiwan or South Korea, probably. I'm not sure exactly where we buy everything, but the scope is a bit wider there. Depends on the classification of the product and the end customer. Often the end customer here has validated and chosen the PCB supplier also. The manufacturer. The supplier can be a distributor. We use two of the large European distributors for a lot of our PCBs. On the back end there, they would have one, two, three, or four that are qualified for each of the programs.
Is European PCB capacity currently limited to your ability to convert orders into revenue? The answer is yes. That's what we said in the Q1 report, that we were front-end loading. We had some possibilities to play around. Yes, there was more demand loaded. Do you have an estimate for the portion of 2026 revenue you expect to be related to data centers? Yeah, that's been very stable for us. It's about EUR 120 million, with a couple of pure plays that are about 90% or so of that revenue. We see a lot more going on that. I spoke a little bit about this on the lower tier companies and customers we have, specifically within, really across all of the other market sectors except Medical.
Within Connectivity, there's customers that are being driven to have a lot of short term, not short term, but on very short lead time horizon, constantly increasing demand. The same thing within the Industry sector. Customers that I never thought was part of data center or AI demand now specifically stating, "Okay, we have an order for this," or, "We're building this or that," and, "What can you do to help us pretty much immediately?" The answer was EUR 120 million. Martine comes back, a major grid program into serial production. Is that already in your R6? Yes, it is. An overall outlook? Yeah, it is. [Olav] comes in here with, can you give some color on the gross margin development being slightly down year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter? Is this a reflection of current supply chain situation or is this a mix effect?
How should we think about this going into 2026, 2027? Cathrin.
Well, I say it's a percentage point down, in Q2 from last year, that is true. What we're following in general is not material share as a percentage of sales. We follow contribution margin, and that is stable.
It is a mix effect, most likely.
We are shifting between more labor and less material or more material. I don't think you need to worry about the mix change in that sense.
We had a large degree here in the second quarter of new Defence tech and specifically on PCBAs. Right? The material content can be very high there. Shifting the gross margin down. On contribution margin, on profitability, those could even be even stronger. Martine again, R6 with even 10% flexibility points to above 1.1. How should we view? Our outlook is we stand behind our outlook. Right. It could be 10%, it could be 12%, right? Who can say today? [Erik] says, "Hi, great work and fantastic results." Thank you so much, Erik. Finally, somebody appreciates us. [Øystein], you're trending well above guidance, guided the revenue but not raising guidance. Do you expect material supply constraints to subsist in second half or are you just being overly cautious?
We expect the supply constraints to continue and possibly worsen, right? We've been saying this on our supply chain webcasts over the past six months and guiding our customers towards that also. A couple of the things we do here is we place long-term orders and push our customers to actually secure the next 12 months of inventory on strategic parts. At this point, we consider PCBs to be a strategic component. Buy what you need and put it in stock now, right? We will store it under conditions where it's good for use for the next three years if needed. In some cases, customers are responding, in other cases, customers are declining to respond or willing to take the risk. There is risk, right?
There were programs that were pushed out of Q1 and most of it delivered now in Q2, but there are some remaining that are in Q3 out of that demand. Erik, could you give some flavor on customer concentration risk in the reporting numbers rolling 12 months year- to- date 2026? How do you balance building long-term customer relationships with strategic customers and not becoming reliant on a few customers? That would be helpful to understand the balance and how we deal with it. I think we've seen now in the second quarter and through the first half of the year here that the customer concentration is coming down. We had some large part of our Q1 from one large customer that's coming down as the other customer bases and the other market sectors grow. I'm comfortable with that.
Johnny says, "Good morning. How would you assess the PCB prices are up on average?" I don't have a number on that. We're looking at on top of the price, right, there could be an expedite fee that you'd have to pay to get ahead of the line, right? To get your product quicker. That's a part of the PCB pricing. On average, I expect component pricing and component market, as I've been saying in other meetings this year, 5%-7% price increase probably. If you're below 5%-7% on growth, then you have no growth as an EMS. It varies on how the PCBs are designed, what substrates are part of them, what layers inside the PCBs.
We've seen now that some manufacturers of raw material components that go into the PCBs, we had one large supplier of a particular substrate that stopped export from the U.S., so they're restricting any export from the U.S. That's one part of it. I'm not going to comment specifically on prices since I'm not comfortable doing that. Excluding the impact of supply chain constraints from [Jeppe] and focusing purely on underlying demand, what would your guidance have looked like? Well, we're not going into that. It's not a demand question at this point. Which bodes well for whatever we don't deliver this year, that's going to end up in Q1 and Q2 next year?
You have enough information that we've given you to calculate that, Jeppe.
Ben comes in here, "Could you talk through the order intake and what has impacted this period?
When it comes to order intake, I think it's important to look at organic versus total order intake. The book-to-bill for the organic is 105. In the quarter, we have a 0.96 in total. That means when we add on Eltech. And Eltech has had a minor adjustment in their order backlog in the quarter, meaning bringing the order intake down for the whole group. I think you should focus on the organic, which is then EUR 292 million and 105. Okay.
Torbjörn, "To what extent are price increases in component pass-through contributing to growth?" So far not much. We did a deep dive into this in the beginning of June and looked at pricing last year on the same type of products, or cost last year versus cost this year. On the whole, there's not a lot of notable difference. On the other hand, there could be variances in the products. There could have been more labor in them last year, now there's more material in them. From a sales price, it's not been significant. At least not year- to- date, for the first six months. Again, before anybody took vacation here in Europe, the deadline was June 30th to make sure that Q3 pricing is all adjusted for whatever we see in Q3.
We'll have a better number as we exit Q3, and we can look at those numbers, what has happened on the pricing. Again, my expectation is probably 5%-7% when we look at the year. That's more of a gut feeling right now than based on exactly what we see when we run our internal reports. "How much of your organic growth would you assess stem from pre-buying in the quarter?" Pre-buying components or customers pre-buying? Pre-buying components and selling them in consignment is not part of our revenue. We never book component transactions into revenue.
Customer pre-buying. I don't think it's.
If it's customer pre-buying, it could be some of the quick drop-in orders we've seen where customers on very short lead time want, but it's insignificant on the total. It could be significant for some sites. Specifically, we saw a lot of drop-in orders in our Asian facilities. Again, they grew 25% versus last year, and it's all non-defence. It is the underlying other market sectors, Medical, Connectivity, and Industry, basically. A little bit of Electrification also into those numbers. They grew 25%, maybe 5% of that growth was quick drop-in orders.
Yeah.
That could have been pre-buying. Who's to say. I don't know.
From a total point of view, the number won't affect anything.
No. That is it, my friends. We don't have any more questions, and I wish everybody a really nice summer. I know I'm going to enjoy it for a few weeks here before we pick up the pieces and tackle the rest of Q3. Thanks.
Thank you. Happy summer.