Thank you for having me. Good morning, everyone, My apologies for doing this presentation in English, but my Swedish is terrible. As my colleagues here in Uppsala always tell me. I'd like to talk to you about our company. We make satellites, we make components for space, We sell data from space. We do everything related to the space economy. This is a sector that has been growing since the first satellite was launched in 1957. We have been growing the applications from space. We have been growing what we use satellites for.
This is a sector that is growing quite quickly in the last few years as we have the need for more data and for more information from satellites. This information is required to actually help us here on Earth. Many of the things we do every day, many of the activities that we undertake are actually underpinned by space information. So you are all very familiar probably with your sat nav on your phones, with the weather forecasting. All of that requires satellites to operate. There are many other things like, for instance, our food, our food production. Our global food production is actually underpinned by information gathered from space. Our ability to actually measure how much grain we are producing is actually done, is monitored from space, from satellites.
The same way, as we see more challenges to all of us from changing environment, from our climate changing, we are becoming more and more dependent on this data. Our ability to produce food is being challenged by climate change. We see pollution on our oceans all the time, that affects our ability to produce fish or to access fish. All of that requires satellites to monitor and to manage. We are now using satellites, for instance, when we have big storms. When there are big weather events, you use satellites to monitor how to recover after that. Space is present in our life every day.
What the AAC Clyde Space Group does is we provide the assets in space that people need to access the data, to receive the data, but also for the services that they require from space. We are a company nowadays that in 2022, we have generated SEK 197 million in revenue. We've got an order backlog of SEK 428 million. We are present in five different countries. We have six companies in different countries. We are headquartered here in Sweden, in Uppsala. We employ around 180 people, actually a little bit above that, over all these companies. We specialize in what we call the vertical delivery of data from space.
We produce components, computers, power systems that go into satellites. We manufacture satellites. We launch them, we operate them. We can provide either the components for other people to build satellites, or we can provide satellites already in orbit, or we can sell just data and services from satellites. Currently, what we call space products and components is still our biggest source of revenue. This is selling computers and power systems to people all over the world. We do, as I say, space missions. This is when we design and build a satellite. We then organize for someone to send it on a rocket into space. We actually operate, we test it in space, and in the end, we hand over the keys to our customers. We are also doing Space Data as a Service.
This is where we own the satellites, we own the systems, then we just deliver the data, or the service to the customer. This is actually where we see the biggest growth, and I'll talk a bit more about this. We have about 25 years experience of doing space. If you look in our company, we have people that have been doing this for many years. They have done many satellites. They have done many components for spacecraft. The experience acquired and gained by our company is very, very large. If you compare this to many other companies, startups, it takes a while to actually gain this experience, and we've got that experience. I'm sorry. I seem to have gone backwards. I apologize. As I mentioned, we've got six companies in the group.
Some of these companies specialize in the manufacture of components for satellites. It can be your computers, your power systems, your batteries, your structures, your ADCS components. This is what the attitude determination and control. This is what keeps your satellite pointing in the right direction. When you are in space in zero G, pointing in the right direction is actually quite a big challenge. We have companies that specialize in sensors. This is the instruments that we use on the satellites to deliver the product, the end product. Then we have companies that specialize in the integration of all of these components into making the satellite. Then we are also developing, and we also have a company that specializes in managing the constellation. When you've got these many satellites in orbit, you have these constellations of satellites.
We manage them, and we extract the data that we need from those constellations or the service. We have been focusing very much in maritime and energy and farming and forestry. These are sectors where we can help the users on the ground. These people are demanding more data, more services from space, and we have been working with a lot of those. We also sell quite a lot of hardware to third parties. We sell, as I say, the components for satellites and the satellites themselves. If you look at the group nowadays, if I had to classify what are our unique capabilities when it comes to weather and climate, for instance, here in Sweden, in Gothenburg, we've got one of the leading groups in producing microwave sounders.
Now, this might sound like a very obscure technology, but it is actually one of the key technologies we use for weather prediction. This is what actually allows you to every day see on TV the weather maps for the coming days. It's satellites that are actually measuring the humidity and the temperature of the atmosphere. The guys in Gothenburg are world leaders in this technology. On the maritime and energy, we are one of the first adopters of the VDES technology, and this is VHF Data Exchange System. This is what we will be using to track and monitor the oceans in the coming years.
Through our work with Saab and with ORBCOMM, a U.S. leading company in this area, we are actually going to have one of the first satellites to deliver this service from space. We are already quite active in this area, so our U.S. company is selling data to track ships every day. This data is used not only to know where all the ships are, what they are doing, where they are coming from, where they are going to, but also to analyze, for instance, how the Arctic maritime domain is developing. Some universities in the U.S. are using our data to actually start to prepare the different models for Arctic maritime domain in the future.
These are key technologies that we have developed, but of course, underpinning all of this is our experience of building satellites, building spacecraft for many, many years. That is a unique body of knowledge that we have built over these 25 years of operation. We have the knowledge, we have the people that know how to do it, and we have the infrastructure on the ground to build successful spacecraft. That actually leads us into the... Sorry. That has led us to grow the group. We have become a much stronger group from our origins as suppliers of components many years ago, but we have been building this group of companies. As part of that, we have grown our management.
We have brought in different specialists in different areas to actually strengthen the management of the group. We have a board with a range of experiences, both from the financial sector but also from the space sector to guide us and lead us through this process of growing this company. The results in 2022. I'll continue. We're fine on the broad. Fine. Okay. Sorry about that. 2022 was a year of transition. We were coming out of the pandemic. There were still several challenges that we had picked up on the pandemic. It was a year of accelerating business. We didn't meet all the objectives we wanted. We did nevertheless. Sorry. We did actually grow the company.
We actually delivered many more systems, and we actually picked up quite new, interesting new contracts. On the fourth quarter, our net sales were not as good as we want them to be. We were nevertheless hampered by several delays. The space business, we always have to work by the launches, and the rockets go when the rockets go, and sometimes they go a bit later. We had several missions that we were expecting to have been launched at the last quarter of 2022, but they were only launched on the first quarter of 2024.
Nevertheless, we evolved quite a lot in throughout the year, our net sales have increased for the year. Our EBITDA, we didn't meet our objective. That was last year to actually be EBITDA positive. As I say, with all these delays that we had, particularly towards the end of the year, that was a bit challenging. We had a positive operating cash flow. That was an objective we were aiming for. What you can see there on that picture is actually one of the satellites that we launched in January. Just to give you a sense of scale, the height of that is about this big.
These are small satellites, and it is these small satellites, these low-cost satellites that are actually enabling many of the applications that we are now seeing in space. We can now make these satellites, we can make large volumes of them, and by doing that, we can actually service much more needs on the ground. We can produce much more data for many more applications. In terms of our order backlog, as I mentioned, although 2022 had its challenges when it came to delivering, it was actually a year where we started seeing a recovery of the market. Our order backlog has remained strong since 2021. We have actually seen a pickup of the market towards the end of 2022.
This is showing that many of those projects that had been put on hold by customers, during the pandemic have started to come back. They are now starting to develop their constellations again, their satellites. At the same time, this was a year where we delivered many new products. Just to give you an idea, in the space, in the space business, we tend to run very much by launches. That's when we put our satellites in rockets. That's when we actually achieve our delivery. If assuming that the projector works. Okay. Just in the last few months, so in October, we launched a satellite that we worked here in Sweden.
Our Swedish teams had worked quite a lot on the MATS satellite with OHB Sweden. It was launched in October, the MATS satellite. In January, in the beginning of January, we launched on a Falcon-9 , on a SpaceX rocket, Elon Musk rocket. We launched two satellites, Kelpie-1, that is one of our Space Data as a Service satellites. That satellite is owned by us, and it will deliver data to a U.S. company. NSLSat-2, that is a satellite that we do as a turnkey mission. That one we build for our, we build it for our customers, and we hand over the keys at the end, and then they will run their satellite. We also had one satellite on the Virgin Orbit launch from Cornwall in Britain.
That one, unfortunately, the rocket didn't work. It happens occasionally. Fortunately, nowadays, it's a very rare occurrence for us, but occasionally it happens, so. As you can see, this has been a very busy period. If you went to our clean room in Glasgow right now, in Scotland, you'd see a whole range of satellites being finished. We have many launches in the next six months, we've got about six launches to do. There is a lot of activity going on right now. Now, these launches, just to be clear, these two were actually supposed to have happened last year, at the end of last year. They happened this year. That was a small shift. They are now in orbit operating. These two are in orbit operating.
This pickup in activity that I mentioned can be seen actually in the number of contracts that we saw in the last quarter of last year. If you look at those, and this is, this is fairly old news, even more, you can see the ones that we have had since the end of the year. Over the last few months, we have done about SEK 50 million in new orders, and we are seeing, particularly in the U.S., quite a lot of activity. This is on the components side of the business. These are people coming to us and buying computers, power systems.
We are seeing a lot of activity in that, in that side of the business, proving that the space sector is again, space companies are again out buying subsystems. We're also part now of a consortium in Europe working with a European defense fund on space situational awareness. This is building satellites to keep an eye on other satellites, and particularly to keep eyes on satellites of people we don't trust. We want to see who else is out there. We are working as part of a consortium on that. We are also working with Space Forge is a UK company that actually wants to do manufacturing in space. This is not just about sending satellites to take pictures of the Earth or communication systems.
In some cases, it's actually we are going to manufacture things in space, usually things that are very difficult to manufacture on the ground because of gravity, like some medicines and some crystals. People are starting to do a lot of that. We are part of the supply chain for many of these organizations. Even if 2022 was still a year of transition after the pandemic, the end of 2022, and particularly the beginning of 2023, it's a year of recovery and activity. We are seeing increased sales, increased orders. We are seeing a lot more deliveries from our side, so we have many satellites to deliver, many subsystems and components.
I was talking to someone before this, and they asked me, "Well, how do I feel?" I said, "I feel optimistic." This has been after a few years that were tough, we are seeing quite a lot of activity in our sector, and things are starting to move again. As I say, the normal business is growing, but we have been looking at Space Data as a Service, as a growth opportunity. We see that many people that many of you, for instance, will not want to buy a satellite. You'd like to access the data. You like the service that it provides, but you don't really want to. You don't want the effort of actually owning satellites, operating them. It takes time.
At the same time, as I mentioned, we've got these big trends in the world. We've got sustainability being and everything that comes with climate change associated with it. We've got the development that is more an opportunity for us of Internet of Things, this fully connected society that we are developing. Then we have the blue economy, and all of these are big trends that we are working on. They influence our business quite a lot. These things are driving the demand-For more connectivity. They are driving the demand for more information. A lot of that information can only be collected from space. You need to be that vantage point. You are far away. You can look at the globe as one thing. Because of that, we are actually seeing that more satellites are required.
The way people want to access the information is not just about the satellites, it's also the business model that they want to see. In that sense, we are saying that there is a change. As I said, many people don't want to just own satellites. You need experience. You need to know how to do that. They do want to access the data. They do want to access the service. We have developed this model of Space Data as a Service, and it's very much you come to us, you say, "I need this type of data." We say, "Okay, don't worry. We'll go and build it.
We'll build the satellites for you, and we'll just provide you that data. What that is doing is that is opening the industry, the space industry, to a lot of other people that traditionally would stay away and they would not use data from space because they say it's too hard. Now we are making it easier for them. As such, we see Space Data as a Service, as a big growth engine for our business, in addition to the normal growth that we are seeing on our hardware business.
What we are working now in terms of what we see is an acceleration of the growth, not only because of the business model, but also because, as I mentioned, the experience that we have developed and the first mover projects that we are doing in some of the areas. As such, we have elected a few areas where we are doing quite a lot of work to grow this Space Data as a Service model or, in general, the business. On top of the normal growth of the business, what we are doing is we are investing in farming and forestry. We currently are building three satellites, so we will own these satellites. We supply all the data to a Canadian company.
They came along and they said, "Yeah, we want all the data from those three satellites." The first one will be launched soon, but the other two will be launched throughout the year. We are now planning to do four more satellites, more capable, but also to provide information for farming and forestry, and we want to have those by 2025. This year we'll have three. We'll add to that constellation by 2025. On the maritime and energy, just in terms of farming and forestry, and why do we do this on farming and forestry? Because this is a market that is growing exponentially. Currently, the estimate is by about 2030, just providing information on crop quality and food production is worth about $1 billion a year.
You then factor in precision agriculture, that is where we are trying to actually make agriculture much more environmentally friendly, but also much more efficient, that is a market that is estimated to be worth about $4 billion a year for space data. Yes, we are investing in these because the opportunities there are huge. Maritime and energy, of course, on the energy side, we tend to focus on offshore energy production. These are areas that are traditionally underserviced. If you want to actually manage particularly large wind farms out in the ocean, monitoring them is actually quite difficult. Supporting services, like going and repairing the wind generators, it's actually difficult.
There is plenty of opportunity, and we are working particularly in Scotland because it's an area that does quite a lot of work on that. Here in Sweden, we are working with partners that are specialists in the energy production on the maritime side. We are the space specialists, and we work with them to provide them the data and the service they will need. Currently we have five satellites in orbit, providing that information. It is mostly about monitoring shipping, telling where ships are, what they are doing. As I mentioned, we are now working on VDES. That is a more advanced system that allows not only to track ships, but allows us also to communicate back. That allows things like, for instance, autonomous shipping.
You now have a system where you can actually remotely control vessels. We have four new satellites to go up later this year and the beginning of next year. The idea there is to actually grow that constellation to a constellation of about 50 satellites in the future. In some cases, it will overlap. These satellites here that I mentioned for farming and forestry will also carry some payloads. One of the big advantages of us being a manufacturer is that we can mix and match. Because we design our own satellites, we own the IP for all these satellites. We own all the intellectual property. We can actually design satellites that do several things, so we can mix different payloads on the same satellite.
On weather and climate, here in Sweden, we are actually working on the AWS satellite right now with OHB. The idea is to actually build a large constellation for EUMETSAT, the European meteorological organization, in a few years' time. In summary, we can offer solutions for the problems that we are facing now on Earth. We have the technology, we have the knowledge, we have built the experience, we have the people that know how to build satellites and to use them efficiently. As such, we are in a prime position to develop a whole new range of services and offerings to customers. We have also developed a business model. I think that's very important.
The way we have developed business models that customers can actually engage with. In this way, we are actually on our way to become a world leader in data and services from space. I would like to invite you to join us on that journey. Thank you very much for your attention. I hope you enjoyed this presentation. Thank you.
Thank you, Luis. Exciting. This was the Q4 was fresh since 8:30 this morning, I think.
Yes. It was 8:30 this morning, yes. I think our CFO, Mats, over there at Thideman that was working until late last night just making sure everything was okay, ready for this morning. Yeah.
You, the analysts, said SEK 75 million in sales for Q4. You came in at SEK 60 million. Even your stock went up.
Yes. Well, I think, as I said, the end of the year and the beginning of this year has been very optimistic. I think we have the level of delivery or activity in the company is quite high, and the new orders, as I say, are very, very encouraging. We are seeing.
It also tells us you are optimistic.
I-
The analysts are optimistic because it came in lower, but the stock went up, so the expectation.
Yes
was lower.
Yeah. I think we have had 2022 that was challenging. We have said many times that we have had a few issues with suppliers. There were staffing issues here and there. It was challenging, and I think it was challenging for all the space industry and even the electronics industry. It was not just us. We are seeing it improving towards the end of the year. There is more stability. There is the supply chains are recovering now. Yeah.
You are, it looks like you're moving into plus plus revenue numbers.
Mm-hmm.
You will not be at a loss maybe end of this year. Will you make a profit for 2023?
Our objective for 2023 is to be EBITDA positive. Our objective is, I stated that before and continue to state it is to actually beat our numbers and to actually be EBITDA positive this year.
Looking at the satellites, you aim to be a leader at small satellites.
Mm-hmm.
What is the range of satellites? I mean, know you supply systems to NASA, and they take them into their own.
Mm-hmm
... complete systems, but you also sell whole satellites.
Yes. Yeah.
if you should need one. What's the smallest one and what's the biggest one?
Well the smallest one is about a kilo. It's about this big. So that's the smallest we can—we usually will do for you. Could be smaller, but usually it is. The biggest is probably—I always tempted to say as big as you want, but no. We tend to focus on about up to 50 kilo satellites. So about this big. So that's our sweet spot in terms of integration. And the reason for that is because if you, if you go bigger, you need a bigger facility. So your the costs, your fixed costs scale up very quickly if you do bigger satellites 'cause you need, you need cranes, you need big clean rooms. So we tend to limit ourselves to 50 kilos, up to 50 kilos spacecraft
We sell subsystems, components to people doing 300, 400, 500 kilo satellites going to the moon. Several of our systems are on the way to the moon right now, for instance. We do have.
We really need that beep to go off.
Yeah.
Find it during coffee break. Sorry about that.
No problem.
Um, um-
We do a range of things, but we as a manufacturer of satellites, we tend to focus on that, 1 kilo - 50 kilos.
Yeah. How long does the satellite last in space? Eventually, they fall down.
Yes. We
How long?
We try to be very good citizens, earth citizens. Our satellites will reenter and burn at the end of their life. Our aim, our design aim is for a minimum of five years operation. Most satellites nowadays are starting to extend that life. We have become very good at designing satellites that last longer. five-seven years would be the normal time that I would expect we design them, and after that, they will stay in orbit for a few years until they burn in the atmosphere. They come down, and they burn. That way, you clean up the orbits, and you don't create-
Right
... you don't leave debris in space.
Yeah. Is the price correlating with the weight, so that the one kilo satellite is one tenth of the 10 kilo satellite?
Yes and no. I think it has much more to do with the complexity. You can make a very, very complex one kilo satellite, and that actually drives the price more than the weight. There is a certain relationship between weight and launch cost. That's linear. Every kilo costs a certain amount to launch, so that is linear. When it comes to the price of the satellite, there is a certain relationship, but it's not strong. You can't. A one kilo satellite is not necessarily more 10 times cheaper than a 10 kilo satellite.
I get it.
It depends on the complexity.
Yeah. Is there a trend like, a 100 kilo satellite goes down and burns-
Mm
... can that probably be replaced using the same services and the same quality-.
Mm-hmm
... with a 50 kilo satellite?
It, it can. The sweet spot. There's always been in the industry this big argument about different sizes. I spent many years making bigger satellites, much bigger satellites. They are for different applications. The size of a satellite is very much determined by the instrument you need to fly on it. If you want to do very high resolution, those pictures you see from Ukraine, for instance, the war in Ukraine from satellites, those are usually 50 centimeter, 60 centimeter resolution images, you can see an object about this big. To do that, you need a satellite that has a camera that has this aperture and is as tall as this. That is the camera that defines the size of the satellite. We try not to do those.
Those are very expensive, very difficult satellites to make. It's not really what the market needs. We tend to focus on smaller satellites. You adapt the size of a satellite to what you need. For certain applications, what we do is perfectly acceptable.
Okay. Time flies.
Yeah.
We'll do one to two more-
Yeah
... short questions.
Yeah, sure.
... and short answers.
I'm confident that your products and services are first class.
Mm-hmm.
Since your figures came only this morning, I read your Cassian in Denmark's figures, and that was depressing reading.
Mm-hmm.
You seem to have a problem in common. You are not pricing your products and services correctly.
Mm-hmm.
This backlog of SEK 400 million can be a blessing if they are correctly priced. Otherwise, they are anything but.
Mm-hmm
a blessing. You cannot go on selling your services and products at a underprice.
Mm-hmm.
There must be a change.
Yes. That's what I would say is that in the case of subsystems and components, they are priced profitably. We always sell with a profit. We are very successful at actually doing that. That is profitable. Our Space Data as a Service is profitable. Of course, we are starting a lot of that data service now, but it's all at very nice profit margins. On satellites, we have had profitability challenges, mostly because of supply chain delays. Both of our suppliers and the launchers. That actually hits our numbers. Yes. Our business is profitable. The business, the selling, the margins are positive. We always sell with good net margins.
There have been challenges, yes.
Okay.