Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Q2 2025 presentation. Before we begin, I want to thank our customers and investors for the trust they place in us. Of course, all the dedicated teams in NORBIT for once again allowing me to present a new record quarter. By delivering tailored technology to carefully selected applications across segments, markets, and geographies, we continue to strengthen the foundation for further profitable growth. This momentum gives us confidence to raise financial targets for this year. We'll return to that in the outlook section. First, let's have a look at the Q2 numbers. As said, Q2 is a new record quarter, both when it comes to revenues and profits. Having a goal of remaining a growth company, we need to continue to deliver record quarters. The revenues came in at NOK 684 million, which is a 63% increase from the corresponding quarter in 2024.
The EBIT ended at NOK 174 million, representing an EBIT margin of 25%. For the first half year, we have delivered a total north of NOK 1.2 billion, which is 46% from the first half of 2024. Up 46%, of course. The EBIT came in at NOK 302 million, also representing a margin for the half year of 25%. A little bit from the segments. In the Oceans segment, driven by strong sonar sales from the new WBMS X sonar that we talked a little bit about in the previous quarter, we have delivered revenues of NOK 239 million, which is an increase of 22% from the NOK 195 million we delivered in Q2 2024. The EBIT margin in the quarter ended at 36%.
For the half year, revenues came in at NOK 472 million, which is an increase of 49%, with an EBIT of 36% compared to 28% for the first half. As mentioned, we're very satisfied seeing this new sonar, this WBMS X, being well taken by the customers and being an important part of this growth. When you look into the revenue split in the categories that we've been using for a while, the WINGHEAD sonar has increased for the first half year this year to NOK 104 million compared to NOK 70 million. All the other sonars, excluding WINGHEAD and excluding the GuardPoint for the underwater security, have been lifted from NOK 205 million to NOK 277 million. Sub-bottom profilers, being the Innomar Technologie, yielded NOK 50 million in revenues. In the security, we report NOK 10 million.
As talked about earlier, we still see a lot of interest, a strong demand for new solutions for underwater surveillance. We see that our product offering is regarded relevant, but getting to orders takes much more time than we like. The good thing is that it's not that we're losing any contracts, it's just that the projects are not concluded. Connectivity, this is the second best quarter ever for connectivity. Revenues up to NOK 170 million compared to NOK 101 million in Q2. The main increase is on On-Board Units and on enforcement modules for tachographs. With the top- line getting up, the margin follows. The EBIT margin is at 32% compared to 20% in Q2 2024. When you look on the margins in Connectivity and Oceans, they're very much in the same scale.
These are the two segments where NORBIT delivered own proprietary technology out in the market under our own branding. We're expecting to be able to get margins on this level based on that. For the first half of 2025, total revenues of NOK 316 million and a total EBIT margin of 31%, up from 25% in 2024. Looking on the revenue split, as you see, compared to the first half of 2024, it's growth on On-Board Units. That's the tolling units used for passenger cars. Enforcement modules for tachographs is doubled, following a change from the European Union in the demand for this kind of technology in trucks in Europe. Also, enforcement modules related to satellite-based tolling has a good growth. The subscription and e-toll is at par with what it was the first half of 2024.
Final segment, as we've talked about before, Oceans and Connectivity, it's a NORBIT proprietary technology. We use a big portion of our manufacturing capacity to create our own products. Spare capacity has been offered on contract manufacturing terms to some key selected clients. As the demand for technology made in Europe has been growing, and especially in the defense and security sector, we've seen that we've been able to position ourselves as a partner for scaling for some of these customers also. It's by far a record quarter for the PIR segment, NOK 293 million in revenues. That's more than 100% up from the same quarter in 2024. That being said, we are not fully satisfied with this because we are a bit short on what we were planning due to some delay in some incoming components. EBIT margin up to 20%.
This is largely driven by a higher revenue base and operational leverage. Also, getting those, if you look on the revenue split, automotive, as we've talked about earlier also, we have chosen to reduce our exposure towards automotive and focus more on some key selected industrial, defense and security, and others. It helps also on the margin when you stop doing some business where there is a very bad margin and replacing that with more margin in the right scale. Of course, this shows the scalability. I think we've talked about investments in capacity. We presented that NORBIT has installed Europe's fastest SMT line, for assembling electronic components on circuit boards. Without those investments, this would have been quite difficult. In total, first half in the Product Innovation & Realization segment, NOK 454 million in revenues. EBIT margin for the first half year on 18% up from 8%.
We've also announced in the quarter an order from a European client in the defense and security sector at the value of NOK 125 million for delivery in Q4 2025. I've already commented on the split. With that, I think I leave the floor to Per Kristian to go into some of the more details in the finance.
Thank you, Per Jørgen. I will spend some minutes.
To sum it up, we are delivering record high revenues and results in the second quarter and the first half of the year, reporting strong growth across the three segments and improved margins. In only six months of this year, we have delivered 90% of what we achieved in net profit for the full year 2024, showing both scalability and operational leverage as we grow. Cash flow generation was strong, and cash conversion was equally strong, and we have continued to improve our working capital efficiency. Our balance sheet remains rock solid, enabling us to act on our capital allocation framework. As Per Jørgen will elaborate on, we are increasing the financial targets for the full year. For the second quarter, revenues came in at NOK 684.4 million, an increase of 63% from the corresponding quarter of 2024, with all three segments contributing to that growth.
EBITDA for the quarter came in at NOK 210.7 million, representing a margin of 31%. This compares to NOK 131.9 million in the second quarter 2024, with the same margin level. Operating profit was NOK 174.2 million, translating into a margin of 25%. This compares to NOK 101.8 million and a 24% margin reported in the corresponding period of last year. So far this year, we have delivered an EBIT margin of 25%, up from 17% in the first half of 2024. Net finance expenses were -NOK 1.4 million, explained by net interest expenses of NOK 8.6 million and NOK 7.6 million in foreign exchange gains, following appreciation of the euro and a depreciation of the U.S. dollar against the Norwegian kroner. Tax expenses were NOK 41.4 million, while net income for the period was NOK 131.4 million, translating into an earnings per share of NOK 2.06.
In the second quarter, Oceans delivered 22% revenue growth and 11% adjusted for Innomar, which we acquired in July last year. Sonar sales were strong, particularly in Asia. Europe and the Americas had a low single-digit decline compared to the same quarter last year. Slightly slower sales in the U.S. were mostly offset by growth in other countries in the Americas. After the introduction of tariffs by the U.S. administration, we have not seen any significant slowdown on our sonar sales to the U.S. quarterly fluctuations must be expected, as is quite normal in this industry. We continue to maintain our focus on maturing opportunities in the U.S., including protecting our margins. Oceans' gross margin was largely stable year- over- year and in line with prior quarters.
Payroll expenses increased NOK 14.7 million, of which Innomar explained roughly half of that increase, with the remaining difference largely explained by new hires and wage inflation. Operating expenses were up NOK 6.2 million, primarily due to Innomar, increased use of external consultants, and activity-related costs. The EBIT for the quarter was NOK 86.7 million, up from NOK 79.7 million in the same period of 2024. Connectivity reported a revenue increase of 67%. This was largely driven by more sale of On-Board Units and enforcement modules for tachographs. Gross margin fell 2 percentage points due to revenue mix, while payroll expenses rose NOK 4 million. The EBIT for the quarter was NOK 55.2 million, up from NOK 20.8 million in the second quarter of 2024. PIR posted a significant improvement of revenues of 118% from the second quarter of last year, primarily driven by increasing demand from the defense and security sector.
Gross margin was down 4 percentage points on high share of high-volume manufacturing, while payroll costs increased NOK 6.7 million on activity level in manufacturing. The EBIT was NOK 59.6 million in the quarter. That's up from NOK 17.8 million in the same period of last year. Next, our balance sheet and financial position. Property, plant, and equipment, including our rights of use assets, increased NOK 14.9 million, following investments in machinery equipment and lease additions of new production equipment, net of depreciation. Intangible assets rose NOK 17.4 million, explained by our R&D investments with high activity ongoing on the GNSS OBU in the quarter. Trade receivables were up NOK 12.8 million, explained by a sequential revenue growth, while inventories increased NOK 26 million in the quarter on sourcing of components for the GNSS OBU, which is expected to be delivered in the fourth quarter of this year.
Net interest-bearing debt stood at NOK 274 million at the end of June, increased from NOK 91.8 million at the end of March, following our dividend payment of NOK 190.9 million. Our equity ratio stood at 50%, down from 52% at the end of March. After a structurally challenging period in the value chains in 2021 and 2022, requiring us to build significant safety stock, we have been dedicated and structured in our approach to increase our working capital efficiency. Our progress is quite clear and demonstrated by our nominal working capital level, which per the end of the second quarter was at the same level as what we reported on at the end of 2023. This is even considering the substantial revenue growth we have observed in that period.
As per the end of the quarter, our net working capital ratio stood at 20% last 12 months' revenues and 15% second quarter revenues analyzed. Strong focus on inventory optimization, improved credit terms, and sale of receivables have all contributed to this development. More work is yet to be done, and working capital will fluctuate given the anticipated growth and the delivery schedule. In the second quarter, we had several financing initiatives ongoing, which are partly also still ongoing. We extended the maturity on our revolving credit facility to 2028 in the second quarter. We were also able to considerably reduce the margin on all our loan facilities from the previous level, which was a blended average of 160 basis points, which lowered our cost of capital further. We are currently also in advanced discussions to increase the limits on some of our facilities, with focus on strengthening our flexibility.
Our balance sheet continues to remain rock solid. In the second quarter, our net interest-bearing debt to EBITDA ratio increased to 0.6x, post-dividend payment, and our liquidity positions stood at NOK 725 million at the end of June. Lastly, cash flow for the quarter. Cash flow from operations was NOK 186.1 million, explained by an EBITDA of NOK 210.7 million, a net decrease of NOK 13 million in working capital, taxes paid of NOK 36.6 million, and NOK 1.4 million in net finance expenses. We invested NOK 45.1 million in the quarter, explained by NOK 33.1 million in R&D investments and NOK 12.1 million in investments in machinery and equipment.
The R&D investment level for this year is expected to be maintained in the third quarter, and the new guidance for the year is NOK 130 million-NOK 140 million, from previously around NOK 100 million, while investments in machinery and equipment are raised to NOK 120 million for the full year, up from NOK 110 million previously. This is due to build capacity to meet this year's increased revenue target. Cash outflow from financing activities was NOK 207 million in the quarter, primarily explained by NOK 190.9 million in dividends paid to the shareholders in May. With that, I conclude the financial part of the presentation, and I will give the floor back to Per Jørgen, who will give you the outlook statement.
Thank you, Per Kristian. I think with the momentum we have now, and I mean, we were also challenged by a lot of investors after presenting Q1 that we should comment on the outlook, that the outlook we had for the full year, NOK 2.2 billion-NOK 2.3 billion, seemed conservative. We agreed it seemed conservative. We wanted to have some more work to be done to really have something underneath when presenting the numbers. We like to have certain control. I'm very happy that based on the positive outlook, supported by high activity in all three business segments, we now can communicate that our revised financial targets for this year are to deliver revenues in the range of NOK 2.5 billion-NOK 2.6 billion, with an EBIT margin in the range of 25%, which is the level we currently are running.
We also should add that we continue to explore value-accretive acquisitions to add on to the organic growth, as communicated when we presented the 2027 targets. Looking into more short-term, Q3, as you might recall, Oceans has a certain seasonality. Q1 and Q3 are typically slow quarters, and Q4 is often the strongest. There's a certain budget flushing effect in Q4. In Q3, there is some holiday season. In Q1, it's not the best for surveying on inland waterways and lakes, etc. In the northern part of the world, they're frozen. These are some of the elements in the seasonality. We expect revenues to exceed NOK 180 million in Oceans in the quarter. In that, it's not recognized any of this security project that we've announced, where we're waiting for some export license prior to collecting the money. There's a NOK 75 million . We'll tell you when that's sorted out.
In Connectivity, we expect to deliver in the range between NOK 120 million and NOK 130 million . In the fourth quarter, we expect a pickup, where we will deliver most of the volumes on this new GNSS On-Board Unit contract, having a value of NOK 160 million. For the PIR segment, it's high activity, good leverage on the new investments. We expect to deliver in the range between NOK 220 million and NOK 230 million. The outlook is that Q4 should be a new record for the segment. We need people to not have the alarm in the morning at 6:00 A.M. It needs to be a 5:45 A.M. to conclude the rest of the year. I think that concludes the official part of the presentation, but we're open to take some questions. If there are some questions posted on the web?
Thank you. First, let's see if there are any questions here in the room. No? Let's move on to the questions online. What actions have driven the successful development of Ping DSP post-acquisition?
I think the company is built on something that fits very well with the NORBIT DNA. This is a passion for creating technology that makes life easier for someone that needs to explore something. The Ping DSP sonars are typically a good piece of tailored technology for surveying in shallow waters. A very competent, small team created this. I'm very happy to see that the synergies that we wanted in this acquisition, you saw that it was a good technology. It's a good product. That's an extension to help us broaden our product offering. We wanted the NORBIT go-to-market platform to help grow. That's really been a success.
Thank you. Looking at product mix development, is there any reason gross margins should decline in 2026? If not, are there other factors that would prevent EBIT margins from remaining flat or even increasing from 2026 onwards?
I think we haven't said much about 2026 yet. I think we'll come back to the 2026, but we have no intention of taking measures to reduce our margins.
Are you able to provide any color on which segment you see the most scope for inorganic opportunities?
I think what we've said on that in the past is still valid, that for inorganic growth on strategic acquisitions, we prioritize to acquire companies that bring either technology synergies or market synergies or both. We prioritize to do acquisitions where it fits with these carefully selected applications, demanding technology in some kind of niche market with good scalability in our scale. We need to believe that we can have a good cultural fit. I think that's the priority. We don't acquire to get some more of the manufacturing capacity, etc. That's better growing organically.
Thank you. Is the reduction in the revenues in the PIR segment related to the delayed component, is the revenues delayed to the third quarter?
With this particular, the reference to the 15% is delayed to the third quarter, yes.
The revenues are kept. It's a timing effect.
Good. Thank you. Could you give some guidance on M&A? How is the M&A funnel looking? Indication of size M&A, preference for any BU specific for M&A?
I don't think we have anything to share specifically on that. As we've said before, we have built up in-house capacity to work systematically on M&A. We see that having industrial economists living the NORBIT life, helping to explore and build up an interesting list of leads that we turn around and work with, is quite helpful.
What is the current pipeline for ocean security looking like?
Maybe you'd like to comment on that, Per Kristian.
I don't think we need to go into details in specific when it comes to numbers, but what we can say is that the pipeline is surprisingly large. As Per Jørgen said, these are rather large projects that take time to mature. It's a combination of governmental projects and private projects. Some of these projects are also linked to a sort of a bigger project. They're not necessarily only buying the surveillance sonar system, but they're also buying other types of security systems as well. We are maybe just a part of that, which means that a lot of decisions have to be made. Given that these projects are quite big in total, it means that these generally take a lot of time to mature. I mean, we remain patient. We really believe that this market will grow.
I can also remind you that we didn't really have a good start to last year either when it came to winning new security projects, but we announced quite big orders at the end of the year. I'm hopeful that we will also see growth in the security market in the second half of this year, and then hopefully it can grow that even further over the next years.
Maybe we could also say that we see especially strong interest in the Middle East and Europe. It's not difficult to understand that either.
Thank you. I noted your comments about investments, CapEx in Q2 and the full year 2025 in the report. What do you consider to be a normal CapEx over sales in percent?
Yeah, we have sort of made some communication regarding our R&D investment level. What we said, over the longer term, it will likely fluctuate between 3% and 5% of our revenues. When it comes to investments in machinery and capacity at the factories, that certainly depends on how much we are growing. I think this year we have taken a lot of investments to build up our machinery capacity. We will see next year what we will prioritize. What I can say is that we have a fantastic return on those investments. Not being capital constrained and then putting that capital to work in terms of what we see are the best opportunities, and that gives us good returns, is something that we will continue to prioritize.
Maybe a quick add-on to that also, if you allow me.
I think, exactly as Per Kristian says, it's not capital that is the limiting factor, but we really need also to see that we're able to manage all these projects. I mean, what we're creating is not very easy. It's very demanding technology we're creating. You need to set up a group of engineers really being very clever engineers, and you need to be able to manage that in a way inspiring them to set new world records in creating stuff up to the limit of what the law of nature and physics allows us. With this high return on capital, why don't we double that? We have the capital, but we don't have the human resources suddenly to do a double. We want to grow that steadily to safeguard the culture in this as well.
First off, this year our R&D investments are around 6% of our revenues. I think it's also worth mentioning that a lot of those investments are currently put into the GNSS OBU project, and that's not generating revenues for the first half. When we invest, do you expect that these investments will have a long-term growth? Over time, it's a target of 3%- 5%, which we have set in the ambition plan towards 2027. When we come up with a new plan, we will also set new targets for that.
It's a good question.
Can you give some color on defense and security use cases for your multi-beam sonars?
This is a bit tricky because a lot in this domain you're not allowed to talk about. I think we've mentioned before, in the Danish news, it was a lot about a U.S. company being one of our clients, a company, Saildrone, delivering special drones to do autonomous surveying. They are delivering some kind of services to the Danish Navy. It's not disclosed what they do, but I could try to guess. What I guess is that they, with these drones, they go in a certain area and map, and then they go again to do change detection to see if something in this area is changing, if there's a new object or something, which is a relevant use case. Maybe that's the best example today.
Thank you. You have a great year within PIR and guide for a very strong end to 2025. Would you say that we are in a ramp-up phase within defense and that you expect growth in the coming years?
We've been talking about this trend of made in Europe, made in Norway for many years. First, when we spoke about that, I think the trend was driven by that in the western part of the world, we see that it's risky to buy Chinese technology. We stopped buying Chinese base stations in the cellular network. If you don't want to do that, the devices using the cellular network maybe should be from the western part as well. The next level of this is, suddenly it happens that Europe sees that maybe we should, it's not only China, which is a challenge, there is another challenge. We need to be self-contained on technology. You have, on top of that, increase for defense and security. It's sort of two trends building up on top of each other. I'm glad we started to do investment to scale up.
Last Friday, I was touring the new factory coming up in the expansion of our cellular factory, doubling the floor space, more than that. I think that will be a very good investment also, especially since it's the local community paying for it.
Good. Any guidance on the effect of tariffs on the business?
I think I made some comments on that in the presentation. To reiterate that, we're not seeing a sort of marked slowdown, at least not in the second quarter of the year. As I said in the presentation, the sonar business can be quite lumpy. Just singling out one quarter and trying to isolate the effects on that is pretty hard. We need to have more data points in order to accurately understand how the tariffs are affecting the sonar sales. On the positive side, again, we see that a country such as Canada is certainly offsetting much of that, of the decline we saw in Q2. Americas in general remained largely flat or to a decline, low single digit, which shows that there is a lot of diversification, both in terms of products, markets, and geographies when it comes to the sonar side. The U.S. is still an important market for us. We will continue to have a big presence in the U.S. when it comes to focus on growing that business. Nothing has changed in that. As I also mentioned in the presentation, we will continue to protect the margins.
It's not like suddenly a lot of U.S. suppliers of the same technology as we supply. That's also the beauty of working with high tech in some kind of niche-related applications.
Maybe a nuance to what I earlier mentioned also, the U.S. exposure we have is primarily in the oceans domain. In terms of PIR and connectivity, we don't have that exposure. I think also that on the tariff side, if you look on the sonar business, most of our competitors are also found in the European Union and in Europe.
They are facing the same tariffs as we are at the moment, which means that the competition has the same level still. Again, I don't think a lot has changed, but we need more data points to accurately have some good statements on that development over time.
Good points. Will the proportion of defense PIR demands continue to grow to be a larger proportion of the business over time?
The difference between the PIR segment and Connectivity and Oceans is that in Oceans and Connectivity, we have our own product, our own intellectual property, with higher returns and better margins. Strategically, we are allocating capital towards those two segments. As Per Jørgen said, we're using that spare capacity to grow the PIR segment. Within the PIR segment, we are working towards some key selected customers, which means that they are very well prioritized in our business. If they are scaling, we are also scaling with them. We're not out there chasing new clients all of the time. I think that's maybe a big difference to our business compared to some of the peers. We're focusing on sort of the core clients we have, and then we will see how much they will grow. I hope they really succeed, because if they do, then we will succeed. That's also what you see in the numbers for this year, with the substantial growth that we had in the PIR segment.
I think also in this, strategically, we've not focused that much on growing this, but getting better control on the working capital, making this part of the business more capital-light. The context has changed. That's why now also, instead of just saying we will use spare capacity, it's really worth investing to build some capacity to work and allocate capital to that as well.
Good. How is activity progressing in tailoring sonar solutions for AUVs, such as those used by Bedrock Exploration?
Yeah, Bedrock is a company we know very well, and we continue to tailor increased capacity on existing sonars, and we also tailor new technology for new solutions not being disclosed yet. I'm not sure I have much more to add to that.
That's okay.
I think if you look on the web page, there are certain videos with some of these mentioned clients showing some demo on how this is used.
Could you indicate what the negotiated increase in the financing facility would look like, and what the current utilization of the facility is?
In terms of utilization, that's pretty easy to tell. We have three facilities. The term loan is fully drawn, which is what we see in the balance sheet today. The other two facilities have not been drawn on, and they are NOK 200 million on the RCF and NOK 350 million on the overdraft. We still have quite a pretty good capacity on those. When it comes to the margin, unfortunately, I can't really comment more than what we stated in the presentation, that it's been considerably reduced. That's what I can tell.
Is it possible to say something more about the reception of the WBMS X product?
I think what more to say? Maybe I could remind you what's new with this product. Maybe that could be relevant. With the WBMS X sonar, we have created a platform where it's possible for the client to buy a base kit, and then after starting using it, you could buy on extra features by upgrading software. This is new in this industry. It's quite common in the daily life on some consumer stuff, but this is new in the industry, and it looks like the market has received that very well. In the growth numbers we've shown, a good part of that comes from this. Yeah.
Are you actively avoiding Chinese components in the development of your security products?
We have a clear strategy on supplier selection and component selection, but as the industry is set up today, a lot of Chinese elements are in a lot of different components. It's not that you have a lot of ship manufacturers in Europe. We will probably see changes to that also going forward, both in Europe and in the U.S. We really pay attention to that and carefully select.
Thank you. Do you see opportunities to build on your experience in defense-relevant technologies to create new products?
Yes, I think especially we see that in the long perspective, it would be relevant in the Connectivity domain, where I think we've spoken about that before also, where we see that our core skills within wireless secure communication, and some references we have in the past where we've delivered to some military applications, that there could be more opportunities. Maybe we would have done more on that if the organic growth on the existing base would not have been as good as it is now.
Good. Final question for now. Is it difficult to find employees with the winner mentality that NORBIT has?
I think getting the right people is the most important thing the management could focus on. Creating an environment where they could really build and blossom as professionals is key. This is not just a matter of finding, convincing, and recruiting. I think it's the one thing, I mean, a lot of our investors know that for me, the Bible is some of the books of Jim Collins, and he speaks about this, the right people. It's not only having the right people, but having the right people in the right seat. We continuously also consider if someone should be allowed to do something slightly different than they've been doing up till now. Sometimes in this also, you see that brilliant colleagues are not the right in your company anymore. It's more right for them to work somewhere else where they could grow again. It's not easy.
I think if we said this were easy, we probably would do a lot of mistakes.
There are no further questions online. Unless there are any more questions in the room, that concludes today's Q&A session.
Okay, thank you. I'd like to thank you all for taking the time and listening to our presentation. We'll go back and explore more and see if we could deliver in the future also.