Good morning. How are things?
Good, thank you.
Excellent. Luis, walk us through the highlights, and on the back of this order from EUMETSAT, the conclusions and implications for the shareholders and the markets. It's a rather, let's say, astonishing information you just highlighted. Please go ahead.
Yes. If we could start. We have a quick presentation to go through, some slides. Just to say we have told the markets that, and our shareholders and investors that we would come back with some updated forecasts for the year following our contract signing of the Sterna, the EPS-Sterna contract, with OHB, ESA, and EUMETSAT. We are now updating our forecast for the year. We are now saying that we will reach net sales between SEK 440 million and SEK 510 million for the year on an EBITDA of approximately 10% and having positive operational cash flow.
This is the result of the work that we have been doing, of the contract we have signed. We have been actually building up for this. If we go on to the next slide, please. Our order backlog is what's really driving this update. It now stands at about SEK 1.1 billion, or it stood at SEK 1.1 billion at the end of March. The growth this allows us to grow quite substantially over the rest of this year. The big order that was Sterna came quite late in the quarter, but will now actually drive very much the growth of the company, for the next few quarters.
At the same time, we have a very strong order pipeline. Our order pipeline has been growing, establishing itself. Now we are working on continuing to convert those into further orders for the year. On the back of that, we are very confident about hitting these forecasts. It is something that is now based on a very strong order backlog. Particularly we are seeing growth in Products & Missions through the Sterna order. Of course we continue to grow our Data & Services part of the business. We are entering now in a phase of further investment in that area. Probably margins are not going to grow as much as we expect them to grow in the future.
Nevertheless, we are building for the future. If we go on to the next slide, we can see exactly that. We have launched VIREON 1 and 2. Those two satellites are now going through commissioning, preparing to start their service. We are also building VIREON-3 and VIREON-4, so to complete that constellation of satellites. We are increasing our maritime services constellation, so we are building satellite Sedna-3 and Sedna-4 of the Sedna constellation, so to increase the amount of data we provide to the maritime sector. Of course, in that same area we've got xSPANCION. That is our big program with European Space Agency and the U.K. government to deliver a service for the maritime sector.
We are currently finalizing discussions and negotiations on phase two. We complete phase one, and now we'll continue on developing that program. Again, we are investing heavily on our Data & Services future, but at the same time, we are doing very well on our Products & Missions with a very strong order backlog.
Well, thank you. Interesting. I will kick off with a couple of questions. Have we received questions ahead-
Mm-hmm
of this presentation.
Mm-hmm
... press release? I can see that people are active here on the chat as well. I will kick off with a little cheeky variant of a question. You missed your guidance last year and had to revise it down-
Mm-hmm
What gives you confidence in this year's guidance? If I'd just like to add a follow-up here, one of the reasons why you missed your guidance was this order that you now have. Could you walk us through the technicalities of the order and then come back to why you have confidence in this year's guidance?
The current order, the very large EPS-Sterna order, we expected it last year. This was something that we expected in December of 2025. For reasons that are outside our control, the order was only received in March 2026. Now, that had a huge impact on our accounts, on our plans for the year. This is always the risk we take when we make a forecast. We usually have to make a judgment. We have to take a decision on what to include or not include on that, on those forecasts. Now this time, we have a contract. We are already working on it. We are ready. We already have teams. We have subcontracts placed.
Work is already happening, so we are much more confident that we can actually meet this forecast. There is always an amount of risk on any forecast you do.
Mm-hmm
Sometimes you have to take that risk. We could have said nothing, and then if the order had come, I don't think people would be very happy with us.
Mm.
In this case, we made the forecast. The order didn't come last year, but it did this year. Like we said to everyone, it was not a question of if, it was a question of when.
Mm.
We are now in that phase of delivering.
Mm
This very important project for Europe.
If I just understand it correctly here, the not if, but the when was actually to have someone in a political hierarchy to be signing off and
Yes
... that there had to be some elections and stuff in between there, which is out of your control, I take it.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yes. We don't control the politics. We don't control the governments.
No.
When you are working on governmental contracts.
Yeah
That sometimes happens.
What are the main drivers that could take you to the low versus the high end of the range? This is a viewer question here.
As always, these are complex projects, not just this one, but all the projects we do. There is always the opportunity or the risk of some delays or some subcontractor not delivering. We had that problem also last year. Some subcontractor, some disagreement with the customer about some performance. All of those can cause delays. All of those can actually, they make us recognize less revenue. And that's why we give this range.
Mm
'Cause there are always the opportunity for some risks. We have been cautious. We have been conservative in the way we have actually prepared this forecast. But nevertheless, we always have to account for that. Our focus is very much on hitting the higher end of that forecast, surpass it if we can.
Mm.
We have to recognize, and to be fair and honest with our shareholders, there is always a risk.
Mm.
There is always a risk that certain things delay us, in which case we recognize less revenue. We are pretty confident on the numbers that we have presented to them.
Mm-hmm. I think you touched upon growth and your strategy here of let's say, investing in future growth here. But if you could just clarify, your guidance for strong growth, but margins don't expand. Why doesn't higher revenue translate into higher profitability?
Well, percentage-wise, we have always said that the hardware business has a ceiling in terms of profitability. Where we see the growth in terms of profitability for the future in percentage is on the Data & Services. Now, we are in the phase of investing in Data & Services. We are growing our constellation. We are growing our data sources. We are growing our internal processing chains. All the infrastructure we need with salespeople, with distribution networks. We are in that phase. And as such now, we won't see the kind of growth in the margins that we expect in the future. When these satellites are online, when they start delivering data, yes, we then expect to see an improvement of our margins.
As I said in the past, our target is by the end of this decade to do basically half and half in terms of revenue between hardware and data. What then will improve our margins, because data has better margins than hardware. Now we are in that phase of building that business. We are expanding. As you saw, we have several satellites in build now or in commissioning. At the same time, as I say, we are preparing our infrastructure on the ground, our sales network, our processing and data distribution networks.
If one look at this, on back of this question, how much of the growth is driven by project-based revenues versus your data businesses? Because you mentioned there is a higher margin in the data businesses.
Yeah. In terms of this year, in terms of growth of margin or the absolute value, of course, hardware is going to be project-based, will be dominant just because of the size of projects like Sterna. Data is growing. It will grow this year. It will expand, and so we see that trend continuing. You'll see a real differentiation, a real improvement of margins in the next few years. This year is very much about building the Data & Services, and it's still very dominated by the hardware as part of the business.
You're still focusing on growing the Data & Services despite this mega order from Products & Missions, as I understand it, and it could be good to remind the viewers your target on your business model, would that be 50/50 then as a combination?
Yes, in the future, we expect towards the end of this decade, beginning of next decade, to be delivering about 50/50 in terms of Products & Missions and Data & Services. That is a mixture that we think is pretty good for the company. It not only allows us to be very profitable, but also allows us to still have a very strong presence in the hardware markets.
Mm
... that we need to supply our Data & Services. That's what gives us that uniqueness, is that we can do both. We can provide the instruments to generate, to extract Data & Services.
Mm.
We see a great opportunity, particularly with AI coming along, to grow that side of the business. Data will become an extremely important commodity. Those that can generate good data, timely data, good quality data, will always have an advantage, and that's where we are positioning ourselves.
Although we said we were just discussing the press release and the terms here, I can just have a couple of question here on other items. In terms of commissioning from VIREON, where are you now?
The satellites are stable. We are now in the phase of going through the checkups of all the equipment. We are starting to actually prepare to get imagery. That's the next big target. As we said, it takes a few months to do all of these properly, and to make sure they have to be put in the right orbit, we have to do all of that. We are going through that phase. We are working very hard on that. We're going through debugging all software, making sure that everything is fine and we don't want to risk the satellites in any way, fashion, or way. This is going through that phase now.
Mm-hmm. EPS-Sterna, how much and what can you say when it comes to potential or the largest risks?
Mm
... on, on, on, on that?
As I said, the largest risks on a project of this size are always. There are technical risks.
Mm.
Usually with our suppliers, something that doesn't go according to plan, something that doesn't work. We expect that to be small because, of course, there has been a prototype for Sterna called AWS, Arctic Weather Satellite. It's working fine. We learned a lot of lessons on that one. Those have been fed into all our discussions with subcontractors, our internal teams. We are pretty confident that we have removed most of those risks. There is always the possibility that something doesn't work or something is delayed. That's where we are managing. That's why we manage internal and externally quite closely. We are very close to our suppliers. We are very close to our own teams.
We make sure that everything is on target and on plan, but the risk is always that something unexpected happens. We are pretty confident that we have removed most of those. There is always that risk.
Care to give us any comments regarding the cash flow for the EPS-Sterna project? It's a viewer question here as well.
As always, we work on our projects. We try very hard.
Mm
Actually, it is an internal rule to always have positive cash flow on projects. This is no different.
Mm.
We can't always do that 100% of the time, but the objective is always to be cash flow positive on a project, any project that we do.
Mm.
Except for development projects of course, but commercial projects we always expect to be cash flow positive-
Mm
...throughout.
You touch upon one thing there, which one could connect to the cash flow here. So-
Mm
Given the fact that you now have an order that you more or less well thought was in the bag, and it was in the bag a year ago, but it wasn't signed then.
Mm
How, if you could guide the market, would you like the market to, let's say, not focus so much on quarterly results or are you changing the company, going into the data sector so quarterly will be, let's say, a better way to view it than it has been before?
I've always said that quarterly is a difficult time period. A quarter is a difficult time period in our business. Projects are quite long. They are quite lumpy. Measuring by quarter is always difficult. There is always the risk that something moves on to the next quarter. It's quite a common occurrence. That data does have an impact.
Mm.
We have never been very keen on the quarterly timeline, but that's where we are. That's what we have to do. We have to report on a quarterly basis.
Mm.
Going forward, if you look at data, yes, data provides you more recurring, renewable recurring data revenue, a more stable baseline. It's made up usually, data contracts are made up of several much smaller contracts, which provides you much more stability in terms of the revenue stream. Large contracts, particularly hardware contracts, like the one we signed with the EPS-Sterna, will always be lumpy.
Mm.
You're always going to have to wait, and then when you get a phenomenally large number for your backlog. This is always going to happen to some extent, but what we are trying is to build with our Data & Services business a more stable financial baseline that allows us to actually have a more constant revenue stream. Of course, at the same time, in parallel work with our hardware business and continue to actually take on these big contracts. It will happen.
Mm.
You've got this baseline that is more constant, is more stable.
I have a viewer question here. You say, and also you said that on the slide here, that growth is weighted towards the remainder of the year. Then the question is, should we expect a weak first half and a stronger second half? In my humble opinion, what you just presented is fairly strong first half.
Mm
What can you say about the second half there?
Well, I will not steal the thunder of the first quarter report, but effectively what we have is that with the contract like Sterna coming right at the end of March-
Mm
We are going to see most of its effect throughout the rest of the year. I would expect that over the following quarters, we will see that impact. We'll see that effect on the company accounts. It's not just that. We have a very strong pipeline right now, so I expect other things to join that improving our finances throughout the year. Yes, I would say that the second half of the year will be better than the first half. Not to say that we won't see the effects now, starting now.
Mm.
Yes, that the second part of this year or the rest of this year is going to be better. We'll see that growth starting to appear.
That is a good segue to two viewer questions here. We have one who is asking about Sirius and Starbuck systems. What are the chances of selling these for EPS-Sterna and, well, my question here is, are you able to answer that, or shall we have to wait for the quarterly on the 13th of May?
You'll have to wait for any confirmation that of course Starbuck and Sirius are part of the Sterna design.
Mm.
They have been part of the AWS. Yes, we expect at some point that those systems will be contracted and will be part of the Sterna contract. That is part of the plan. Currently we are still in discussions with the prime contractor on that.
The final question here is the value of the VIREON contract, when will that be communicated? Shall we hold our breath to the 13th, or continue to wait, or are you able to give us an update now?
I'm not so sure about what the question is. The value of the VIREON contract?
Yes.
It's a development, it's an internal development. We have contracts on it. It's not something that we put a value to the constellation. I'm not exactly sure what the question is.
Yeah. Maybe it's just a complete value is to put a sum of the parts of the share. Basically, next news flow would be from you on the 13th of May, or shall we expect?
Yeah
... a couple of other, interesting press releases from you before that?
I will not take away the suspense of that. I will let it. Maybe something happens, maybe something not.
Mm
We'll see. There is, as I say, we have a strong pipeline, many things on the plate that we are working on. There is always the possibility that something comes through.
Mm.
We will see.
Basically, watch this space, and the next.
Yes
The next news flow that is scheduled would be the 13th of May, and that's the quarterly, right?
Yes. Exactly.
Well, Luis, an absolute pleasure. Thank you.
Thank you.
... educational, and if anyone has any more questions, we will refer them to the head of IR, Håkan Tribell. With that-
Thank you.
... thank you, Luis.
Thank you very much.
Thank you to all the viewers, particularly those who have engaged in questions ahead of the broadcast and during the broadcast. See you next time.