Good afternoon. Welcome to Tekna's presentation of the Q1 results. Claude Jean and Espen Schie are with us today to present the highlights, followed by a Q&A session. You can pose your questions either below this webcast video or on the right side, or even by email to investors@tekna.com. Over to you, Claude.
Thank you, Arina. Thank you everybody for being with us this afternoon or this morning. Before jumping into the Q1 results, I'd like to spend some time on describing Tekna for those of you that are less familiar. At Tekna, everything we do is based on what we call ICP inductively coupled plasma technology that Tekna started developing more than 30 years ago. What it is basically, it's a very hot stream of gas, and we use it for different for different means. If you look at the system business area, we have two business area at Tekna. If you look at the system business area, that's where we develop the plasma system that are used in our material business area, but are also used by several customers, for example, R&D lab, universities that are looking at developing new material.
So we sell those system for those application. Also those system, those plasma, they are perfectly suited to reproduce the kind of environment that a space shuttle would experience, for example, when they come back to Earth. You probably have all seen Artemis coming back to Earth recently, and they were talking about the thermal protection system such that the space shuttle would not burn coming back to Earth. In order to develop those thermal protection system, labs, universities, or big corporation need to have to be able to reproduce the environment and our plasma are perfectly suited for that. That's one significant application. Also, of course, we develop our own plasma system for the other business area where we use our plasma system to manufacture powder for additive manufacturing.
Mostly titanium, a few other material that I will be talking about, but mostly titanium. Material business area is really the growth engine. We made NOK 27.8 million revenue in 2025 with 53% contribution margin. As on the system side, lower revenue in 2025. It's more lumpy business by nature, but with very healthy marginal contribution. Both plant are located in Sherbrooke, Quebec. We're about 152 employees and of course, we're protecting our core IP with 95 active patent. Next slide, please. If you look at the Q1 highlight, we posted strong revenue growth year-over-year, 19%, mostly driven by the material business area again. Third consecutive quarter with positive EBITDA at NOK 200,000. Cash flow was very strong. Espen will give more detail about that.
First time that we have positive cash flow on a trailing 12 months basis, and up CAD 8 million year-over-year. Both business unit delivered very good contribution margin compared to target. 53% in the material and 60% in system for 54% combined. Net working capital went down very significantly to 28% of sales. Again, Espen will talk about it. Next slide. Okay. Before going into the detail again, let's talk a bit more about additive manufacturing because this is really where we put our effort. This is our main focus. If you look at the graph on the bottom left, the way it works, we're basically using raw material, in our case mostly titanium, and we use our plasma equipment and our plasma equipment melt the raw material and it's basically transforming it into powders.
Very tightly controlled powders in terms of sphericity, size, purity, et cetera. We have a worldwide distribution network. We ship powders everywhere in the world in all market vertical. As I said, it's based on 35 years of experience with inductively coupled plasma technology. We focus on titanium. We focus on the toughest material to make, where the barrier to entry are very high. Titanium is difficult to make in a sense that it's a reactive material, so if you expose it to air, it would burn, it would explode, you know, when it in very fine particle. Our technology can produce the best control in terms of size, sphericity, and purity, especially purity. Very hard to make material. We announced in the fall NADCAP certification for defense. We renewed our ISO 13485 certification for medical.
Again, mostly titanium. We're number two global supplier of titanium for additive manufacturing. Also some other material like tantalum and tungsten. They are refractory metal. They have very high melting point. They are hard to make, we are also very good at that. Also, aluminum is another material we that we provide. Next slide. If you look at the additive manufacturing market, the left graph is there showing the latest forecast from AMPOWER that they just recently published. This graph is just for metal additive manufacturing. It is excluding polymer additive manufacturing. If you look at 2025, it was a CAD 3.6 billion market. The Material segment is CAD 1.2 billion there, and out of that, titanium is about CAD 200 million. That is where we play.
It is forecasted to grow 16% CAGR in the next five years. Specifically for titanium, they forecast about 21% or 22% CAGR. What is driving this additive manufacturing or 3D printing fast adoption? You know, you can make with 3D printing, you can make parts that you could not even make with traditional manufacturing. You would have to use several components, sometimes hundreds of different components. With 3D printing, you just put powder in the printer and you print the whole part. Sometimes not feasible with traditional manufacturing. You can make it much lighter because you're only using the amount of material that you need to use. Also you can use material like titanium, for example, that is much lighter than any other material.
You can have much shorter turnaround time because, again, you don't have to wait for parts coming from all over the world. It's only, you know, getting the electronic file in the printer, putting powder in the printer, and getting the part printed the very same day. You can have production distributed around the world close to the point of usage, again, because you need the powder and the printer. It's also being pushed, you know, by geopolitical trend. There's a lot of reshoring in Europe and also in North America. If you are going to reshore parts manufacturing, you would rather implement the most, the one that suit best your need. Also digitalization of supply chain. Again, you just have to transfer the electronic file of your part design to the printer company, and it can be printed already.
A lot of global trend are pushing the adoption of additive manufacturing, and we are one of the first mover when it comes to making the powder for that market. We're extremely well-positioned. Next slide. Okay. Again, if you look at the forecast for additive manufacturing on the right-hand side, this is from last year AMPOWER report. You can see the 2024 market for defense, space, medical, industrial, civil aviation and so on, and the 2029 numbers. As you can see, currently medical is the biggest market. Medical is quite mature when it comes to 3D printing. They're printing implant for body implant, for example. The 3D printing fits perfectly the need because they can print a part, an implant that is perfectly adapted to your shape, to your body shape.
Highly customizable. That's a good example. Defense, space, civil aviation are growing nicely. If you look on the left, we already have about 50% of our revenue in aerospace and defense. We are one of the first mover. We went very early into qualification with almost all the big user there, so extremely well-positioned. As I said, in the medical, our market share is lower right now, but we're making a lot of effort. We gained two new customers in Q1, we will announce a new customer win in the next quarter. We're making a lot of effort because there we have a lot of room for growth because our current market share is lower. Next slide. Okay. Before getting into more detail into the Q1 results.
Again, we are extremely well-positioned to capture the growth in additive manufacturing, particularly in aerospace and defense and medical. We are a world-leading provider of those advanced material and also system. We are well-positioned to capture the growth in all market vertical, including aerospace and defense and medical. System is more lumpy, but we see a lot of opportunity. We said in the previous presentation that we see a lot of opportunity to grow this business unit because it's providing, you know, very healthy contribution margin and also, you know, providing a lot of technological advancement to the Material business unit. As we progress in our exploration and customer engagement, we see a good pipeline that is building for the system BU.
We're in a good position to continue to target double-digit growth per year toward 2030 with 15%-20% EBITDA in a market that is forecasted to grow at around 20% per year. Espen will talk about our robust balance sheet that we have established, I spoke about all the opportunity to do it even better than the plan that we presented. Next slide. Now to Espen for the financial detail.
Very good. Let's take a look at the Q1 results. First of all, very happy to report Materials results in Q1, topping NOK 7.7 million revenues. This is our best Q1 ever for Materials. We had almost 24% year-over-year growth driven by aerospace and defense, and also a very nice uptick on the medical side. Our margins ended solidly again for the third consecutive quarter, well above 50%. This is as we guide also to achieve over 50% contribution margins. Very happy also to look at the backlog. Looking at the graph, you might you might get fooled, but it looks like it is going down year-over-year. Order intake last year had some orders that had lower selling prices compared to what we have now.
The quality of what we have now in the backlog is very, very solid, and the quality of the backlog we have now essentially is better than what we had on the same time last year. I'm very happy with what we see on this picture. We had several important wins in the U.S. defense with the large U.S. defense customer and also two new medical customers coming into joining Tekna, the Tekna customer base this quarter. With that, we can look at the next slide for systems. For systems, we also achieved very, very solid revenue, so NOK 2.3 million. Especially considering that we have a fairly low backlog or lower than what we are targeting. We have luckily a very, very solid pipeline.
I think what we're seeing is temporary low on the backlog side. With the pipeline maturing, I believe we have much to look forward to. Nonetheless, in the quarter, we did achieve a NOK 1.5 million order from a leading U.K. university. Also lastly for the quarter, we also achieved a very solid contribution margin, 60% in line with guiding. While we do have a limited backlog, we also keep in place cost measures, both for staff and OpEx to align this with the current, with the current work level we have. With that, we can go for the next slide. This is the profitability program that we started in 2023. This is just a continuation of the reporting on this. We have recurring savings also into Q1.
We see that the last three quarters are fairly on a similar level and, you know, comparable to what we had in 2021. Okay. My screen went black here. Sorry about that. Then we have achieved the annual savings. If you compare it to the end of 23 to now the end of 26, we have annualized savings. If we take all the staff of the company, that would be NOK 7.7 million annual savings from the beginning of the program. With that, we can go to the next slide. Next slide again. We have the EBITDA. Year-over-year, we had a NOK 1 million improvement in EBITDA. We had good effects from both the materials side and the system business. We achieved our third consecutive positive adjusted EBITDA quarter.
We had also indirect personal cost savings of half a million NOK. We had some headwind with respect to FX and other income, which is timing effects related to grants. The adjustments we made in the quarter was related to some restructuring measures on costs that we executed continuously from a continuation from my previous slide. Also a litigation cost related to the litigation on the patent that we, the appeal that was ended to Tekna's favor in Q1. With that, we can go to the next slide. With the cash flow, we had a very solid improvement also from to about NOK 1.4 million increase. We had a solid contribution from the working capital side, first of all. This comes from, of course, improved EBITDA and operations as such.
As you see in the graph, it looks like a small negative, 0.3 contribution from the P&L, but that is on a non-adjusted basis, of course. This includes all the costs from the P&L. When looking at the working capital here, we had a very good improvement coming from all the major items in the working capital being trade inventories, trade receivables, and trade payables. CapEx very limited at NOK 0.2 million in the quarter, mainly on maintenance. We do keep our guidance from last quarter about NOK 1.5 million to NOK 2 million per year. We repaid a little bit more on the bank's bank loan for cash management purposes that we had increased in the prior quarter. With that, we ended the quarter with a cash position of NOK 18.8 million.
We can go to the next slide, please. This brings us to the balance sheet. We have, so you can appreciate a net position of debt, which is the net cash position. We have much more cash than we have debt. This is almost NOK 13 million, NOK 12.9. This improved from the NOK 9.9 that we had at the end of the year. Very, very solid equity ratio of 75%. We have a working capital of NOK 10.6 million, which is now the 28% of trailing revenues. This is down from the NOK 14.2 million that we had end of the year, the 40% that we had at that time. This is a very, very solid improvement quarter-over-quarter.
Liquidity now, 26% of our assets is cash, and we still have almost NOK 5 million of non-utilized credit facilities w hich brings our liquidity to almost NOK 24 million, and we have a fully funded business plan as we continue executing. With that, we can go to the next slide, and back to Claude.
Thank you, Espen. You know, before going to Q&A, some last comments. We reiterate our ambition to, you know, in the next 5 years, grow double digit per year to reach 15%-20% EBITDA toward 2030. Of course, the growth engine will remain the business area material, supported by the trend that I spoke about in additive manufacturing, supported the current backlog that we have and the reshoring trend that we see, also the trend of increased defense spending that we already feel in both business area. We keep working on other opportunity like for example, nanomaterial, more specifically nickel and copper. Again, we want to keep working on growing the system business units, providing very healthy contribution margin, and we see a lot of opportunity there moving forward.
Next slide. As a conclusion, we're very happy with our performance. Third consecutive positive adjusted EBITDA. Very healthy contribution margin in both business area. We see a good pipeline, good backlog. We like our backlog in the material business area, and we have a very healthy pipeline of opportunity in the system business area. Low CapEx need. We're still, as Espen said, talking about NOK 1.5 million-NOK 2 million in 2026. We are fully funded in terms of production capacity for the next five year. We could almost double the business with the current capacity that we have already invested in. I think that we are, you know, in full control to be able to deliver what we said we would deliver in the previous presentation.
That conclude the presentation. I think we can go to the Q&A, Arina.
Yes, Claude. Thank you very much for the presentation to both of you. People can ask questions below or depending what device you use, below or on the right side of your of this webcast screen. Feel free to send us your questions. In the meantime, I have a few for you. You talk a lot about aerospace and defense, how do you see those opportunities specifically and how is Tekna making use of the increased budget spending that countries are announcing?
Very good question. What is good with the aerospace and defense is that there's opportunity for both business area. We spoke about PlasmaSonic where there's a need to test material either for hypersonic flight or space rocket or space shuttle. There's a lot of opportunity there, and we see that almost all the testing facility in the world are aging a lot. They're quite old and need to be modernized with more capability. There's definitely a lot of opportunity there. Of course, with our material, there's definitely, you know, additive manufacturing is getting adopted very quickly in aerospace and defense when it comes to making a lighter product or again, you know, some parts that are rather impossible to make with traditional manufacturing.
We already see it when it comes to making, you know, unmanned vehicle engine or, you know, all kind. I give the example of suppressor for guns. You know, it's growing a lot in the U.S. right now because of, again, of the way they need to make those suppressor with very complex channel inside. You know, when it comes to using a material, also our refractory material that are quite important not only in aerospace and defense, but also in nuclear energy, where there is also a lot of spending. We definitely feel it. We see it in the order intake, and we see it in the funnel of opportunity that we have in the system business.
Thank you. That sounds very good. Obviously we're trying to increase our market share in the medical industry. What actions are we taking to make that our position stronger in that market?
Yeah, very good question. As I said, in medical, we have a small market share. You know, we were not the first mover in this market. We're basically looking at getting qualified to most of the big user of powder for 3D printing of medical part. Every quarter we win new customer. We are getting qualified. Some customer already completed qualification and started the recurring production. Some other are progressing in their qualification. We regain our quality certification for medical. We're actively chasing, you know, new customer all the time in mostly in Europe and North America. As I said, we're making a lot of progress. We also feel it in our order intake and in our forecast. I think there again, the Tekna titanium powder is really the best powder you can buy.
When it comes to medical, of course, you know, powder quality, powder purity is very important. We are making the top quality powder. Very promising, and we are making a lot of progress there.
Excellent. In our research and development, we were working on nano materials for microelectronics. Can you give us an update on what's happening there?
Yes. We were working on developing a nano nickel powder from multilayer ceramic capacitor application. Tekna has been working on it for many years. In the last quarter, we kept making technical progress. You know, in the last meeting, we said that we were targeting to be qualified in 2026 for start of production around the end of 2027, beginning of 2028. We, the way we see it right now with a new customer requirement when it comes to powder performance, we can probably not achieve qualification in 2026 again. Not because we didn't achieve the expected performance from the customer, but the customer came with new criteria that we can't achieve at this time that would require more R&D work.
We have so many opportunity in both business area, and we need to be careful in which one we invest. We cannot invest in all opportunity we have. We're currently re-evaluating our business case for MLCC. We also have opportunity to sell system. You know, that's another opportunity that we can turn to instead of selling powder, selling system. We're really reviewing with the board all the opportunity that we have in front of us. We have a lot of opportunity in additive manufacturing with new alloy that we could tackle. It's really a question of making the best decision, where do we put our resource? Where will we get the best return on our investment? Stay tuned on that, but we're not expecting qualification again in 2026.
Clear. We have, obviously a situation, a geopolitical situation, happening in Iran. Do you foresee any issues for Tekna supply chain or deliveries, related to our business?
So far, we haven't seen any negative impact. Of course, we follow the situation very carefully. We maintain enough inventory of the needed raw material that we use, and when it come to gases, we have a very high level of recycling of the gas that we use. We are monitoring the situation very closely. So far, we haven't been warned by any of our supplier of a potential issue. We obviously haven't feel any so far. When it comes to energy price, we don't use oil in our operation. No, we use clean electricity. We're in Quebec, you know, so we haven't been affected there either. Also on the transportation cost, very little impact. So far, you know, we're not being materially affected, but of course, we monitor the situation very carefully.
Yes, exactly. I think I haven't seen any other questions come in from our viewers. Maybe you want to make some closing remarks before we.
Yeah. Again, you know, we're very excited, very proud of our Q1 results. I think we keep confirming that what we started establishing in Q3 last year, the 3rd consecutive positive EBITDA. 1st time that we were cash flow positive on a trailing 12-month basis, which is quite good. Managing better networking capital, and we're very excited about our current backlog. We like the backlog we see. We like the trend that we see from our customer in the market that we play in and also in the system business area also. I think, you know, we're having a very good and very encouraging start of 2026.
I feel the confidence also inside the organization. All right. Well, thank you both for joining us for this webcast. We will present our half year results in August 13, so that's a few months away. In the meantime, if you have any further questions, please email on investors@tekna.com or use the Q&A session on the website. That's it for today. Thank you all.
Thank you.