Hello, and good morning, and welcome to today's webcast presentation, where we have Acuvi presenting the Q2 report for 2023. With us presenting, we have the CEO, Olof Stranding. If you have any questions for Olof, you can use the form that is located to the right, and we'll take that up during the Q&A presentation. With that said, please go ahead, Olof, with your presentation.
Thank you, Martin. Hello, and welcome, everyone. My name is Olof, and I'm CEO at Acuvi. Today I will present to you the Q2 results. I will also start with just, in case someone is not really up to date with what Acuvi is, I will just have a summary of what we do and who we are. So then I'll just get started. So this is Acuvi. What we are doing is high-precision solutions. We are Uppsala-based company, but we have, in total, 55 employees based in Sweden, in North Carolina in the USA, in Finland, and in Switzerland. And we, now, looking back 12 months, we have more than SEK 200 million revenue, which is actually the highest in our history.
We have a very high profitability. We are aiming for at least 20% EBITDA, and we are on a good way, and I will come to that later. To the right, you see first six months revenue. If you look the past three years, you can see that we actually are growing quite well. Also, talking about profitability, we have communicated that this year we are aiming for SEK 40 million in EBITDA. You can see the trend is growing in the right direction. We have had last year was the first full year for the new group. We acquired two companies, the Finnish and the American company in 2021.
So last year was kind of a consolidation of the group, and now we can see that we are moving, increasing profit step by step. What is Acuvi, then? We have, you can say that we have four platforms. PiezoMotor, that was the Uppsala company that acquired the two others . We have, we are building very advanced components where we can move and hold with very high precision. We acquired Sensapex in 2021, that has... What they are doing is to automate, they have a uMp platform that is automating movements around advanced microscopes. TPA Motion is the biggest company in the group, with the highest revenue and profit. They have a modular, it's kind of a design hub, you can say.
It's they have a very modular platforms that they can build smart and effective solutions for customers. And to show you then, I will show you the two piezo, PiezoMotor technologies. We have a LEGS technology that is the most high precision in advance. This is what we currently, 58% of our revenue with PiezoMotor company. And what we do, we have a ceramic that voltage, and by getting the ceramic to move, you can actually achieve precision down to nanometer. And I will show you where you see what you think. The only one is when you, also when you need to. So it's very compact, and you can achieve extremely high precision. PiezoMotor has, for a couple of years, developed a new technology platform that is called Ultra.
Ultra Motors, they are not as precise as the LEGS motors, but they can be smaller with still high force, and they can be produced much cheaper. So they are opening a wide range of applications for us. These applications we have been working during the design and the launch of this motor. We have worked with customers in 5G infrastructure. We have also worked with projects in point-of-care diagnostics. In these cases, it's not extreme precision. It's high precision, but it's more about building a compact, strong motor that can be cost-effective for the customers. So this is the two technologies that PiezoMotor has. Then looking at the applications, we have all companies, and especially TPA Motion and PiezoMotor-...
are involved in projects around surgical robots. And this is not only about high precision, but as you can see, down to the right, we have an application where the customer actually can check if a cell has cancer or not by picking at it and see if it bounce or not. So also here is extremely high precision, but we also can make motors and components non-magnetic, which open up the field of motorizing in MRIs, for example. So we see this as a very interesting, but this is one of many application areas. Also, we are working also TPA and PiezoMotor, especially in semicon. And what we do there, we are really in the heart of the production of where we, for example, can adjust optics.
In semicon, it's very important to have this nano precision motion. So we are down to single nanometer in some cases. We also help customers to inspect the wafer and device as well. So this is also an interesting field. But these are only two examples. We have a very broad customer base around the world. So that's a little bit about us, and then moving on to the financial report. As you might have seen in the report, in for the quarter, we grew by 42% and reached SEK 58.3 million in the quarter. We had a very good margin, 28%, SEK 16 million EBITDA for the quarter. Compared to last year, this is, you can see the, we...
Last, 2022, we reported -SEK 2 million for the quarter, so it's a significant improvement. In the quarter, we did have an additional invoice that we invoiced for. We have a royalty agreement with where we have a customer that are paying a royalty. So we made an extra invoice of EUR 700,000, which of course, improved revenue and also the EBITDA. But even without this, we had a very good quarter. So looking at the quarter also is, you can see we reached SEK 58.3 million, compared to 41.2 in 2022. We had a gross margin, excluding depreciation of SEK 22.6 million, 39%, compared to 14.9.
And I have received questions, and I think we'll come back to that. But in looking at our income statement, we have depreciation for goodwill, which when you look at the income statement, it looks worse than this. So excluding depreciation, we show a very good gross margin. And this one is improving. It follow. We have a fixed cost base that doesn't grow that much with increased revenue, so we should be able to reach higher levels than today. And we are delivering SEK 60 million in EBITDA. And last second quarter, we delivered -1.9 million SEK. So, and the EBIT then also, this is affected by goodwill depreciation, mostly. It's minus 8 million SEK for the quarter.
Last year, we had SEK -34 million, so it's good. You can see, the trend is good. Earnings per share then, 0.23 for 2023, and -1.19 for last 2022 second quarter. So looking at the first half of the year, we have a net revenue of SEK 100.9 million, and this is the highest in the group history, so it's a real achievement, I must say. Last year, we reached SEK 84.3 million. We were quite happy with that. And the gross margin, excluding depreciation, though, is SEK 41.6 million, compared to last year, SEK 30.2 million. So we are the same as with the quarter.
You can tell that increased profit really goes all the way down in the income statement. And the EBITDA, we delivered SEK 22.9 million, compared to SEK 1.6 million last year. And then the EBIT is also here affected by the depreciation of goodwill. So SEK -26.6 million, compared to SEK 59.8 million last year. And earnings per share for the first six months is -1.1 SEK, compared to -2.23 SEK last year. So those were the numbers. And for those of you who are looking at the report, we have made a note to show to kind of dig down into the gross margin and into the EBITDA.
The important here is to see that we have quite high depreciations in the gross margin. We have a turnover of SEK 58.3 million. And out of the cost, cost of goods of 59.2, almost 24 million are depreciations. So, excluding that, we show a 39% margin. Most of the depreciations are in the gross margin. So in the further down, it's not that much, but a little bit. And I have received a question about this, and it's the reason why we are booking it like this is actually that we had to.
We have new auditors now, so we will bring up this with them and see if we can change how we, where we recognize the goodwill. So it's really the same logic, looking at the first six months, that out of cost of goods sold of SEK 108 million, 48, almost 49 of those are depreciation. So excluding those, we show a 41% gross margin for the first six months. Also, I should mention two things around the cash flow, and I don't have it in the presentation because it came up quite late.
But, those of you that have looked in the cash flow analysis for the quarter, the opening balance is actually the opening balance for the year, not for the quarter, but it doesn't affect the cash flow in itself. But, if you summarize, you will see that. So the quarter opens with SEK 13.4 million, not SEK 15.2 million. Also, looking at depreciations in the cash flow in the report, it says SEK 16 million. But that also includes an unrealized FX effect. So the depreciation for the quarter is according to the note. The depreciation in the cash flow also includes this FX effect, if you...
And then I know many people are interested in this new platform, Ultra, and the projects we are having here. So what we are doing now is that we are moving the new platform to production, the Ultra platform. And with that, we are start to build the starter kits and starting to send out to customers for to test and try and get feedback. But we have already, for a couple of years, been working with customers in specific areas. One area is 5G infrastructure, where we are moving antennas and cavity filters. And these products are really interesting. They don't move as fast and quickly as one might want, but we have seen progress here, and hopefully, we can communicate something here.
We have strengthened our internal knowledge by hiring a CTO with long experience from both Ericsson and Huawei. So that will be interesting to follow. We also have a project in point-of-care diagnostics. And this is with a U.K.-based customer that are developing a very small device that will speed up the test time for... Our technology-wise, this is the perfect applications for our motors, and it's a really interesting field that we think will grow. And also on this one, we hope to be able to update with positive news on this, but we are still working with the customer, and as soon as we hear, we will inform the market.
The third area that is optical zoom, and this is something that we do in many other applications, but specifically for Ultra, is optical zoom in mobile phones. And here we have a partnership. It's the customer base is different. So what we are, we are the technology provider, and we have a partner and a license agreement with them. So the partner is doing the commercial work, and we are doing the technology work. And technology-wise, we are happy, but then we are waiting for commercial results on this one. So that is around those projects. And to wrap up this presentation, I think this is a very strong quarter. We are showing very good revenue, looking two years back, where we had a total turnover of SEK 150 million.
We are now exceeding SEK 200 million. We do see strength in the margins, both on gross margin and on EBITDA. And we are, in parallel to this, we are building up our marketing capacity, and we are preparing and launching new products to achieve a higher growth in revenue. That was everything for me, and I'm really looking forward to questions, Martin.
Thank you, Olof, for that presentation, and I will jump into the Q&A section here, like you just said. We'll start with the first one. Your net sales grew with 42% this quarter. What would you say are the driving forces for this growth?
There are many. Obviously, one is the license revenue of EUR 700,000, of course. We have also seen positive effects since we are heavily selling in the U.S. U.S. is our main market. But I also see that we have a couple of new products. One is the plate handler that is not significant part of the revenue, but you can see that it adds revenue to TPA. We also see that many customers are ordering more advanced products. So many of our sales actually are now higher per sale, higher value per sale, which also both increase growth and also our efficiency.
Can you give some color on the mobile zoom, 5G, and your diagnostics projects?
Not more than I said, really. This is something, of course, when we have, we will communicate, as soon as we have, big progress in an areas, but we, we, we are happy with the, with the, what we can deliver more, technology-wise, and we- so, so hopefully I will be able to come back to that. But right now it's not more than we have communicated.
Okay. And, what's included in your interest expense?
In our interest expense, it's, I mean, we do have, we have loans, where if you look in the balance sheet, we have one loan of 20 million SEK, and we also have a line of credit. So I think that would be the main parts of it.
Okay, thank you. And, what is your growth, excluding FX?
It's around 10%. I was saying, it's...
Yeah.
That is one thing I get that question quite a lot, and it's really digging down to what is FX and what is... You can make rough estimates, and roughly, we are growing by 10%, but then it's many variables in an analysis like that.
Thank you. Can you also put some more color on the order from Nikon and what that means for Acuvi?
Well, I think it means a lot. It's always entering an agreement with this, with a big customer, potential customer. It's always kind of nervous because, you know, it sounds very good, but then, they need to back it up. So, I was very happy that they actually went on very quickly and processed this first purchase. So, what I think will happen now, the coming months, is that they will start working and promoting Sensapex products. And if it works well, we see nearby fields that we can expand the partnership to. So, but I would like to see, get them to prove themselves as a distributor first, and then we will see if we can work in other areas.
Thank you. There are quite many products compared to your company's size. How can you cope with a large portfolio going forward, and how can you leverage economies of scale?
To explain that, it's easiest if one visit our factory here in Uppsala to see, because even though we have a very big variation of products, it's really two main ceramics that we are producing. And to this, we have a very smart modular system, where we customize for the customer, but it, for us, it's really about making very small changes to the basic design. So it's not that big variation, as you might think. I started 10 years ago at PiezoMotor, and then we had a really, really, it was a lot of, a very big and very, very varied portfolio. Now it's a big portfolio, but it's the basis are similar, and it's the same thing for TPA and for Sensapex.
They can vary, make variations out of one concept, and that is very important. Otherwise, it would be hard to achieve higher margins.
Do you have anything in your pipeline that you can comment on today?
No. That, nothing specific, but I see a very good activity. One thing to mention could be that we see increasing number of starter kits being shipped from Uppsala. And that is not, that does, that will not affect next year. It's usually one and a half to two years lag. But it's good, at least to think that it's a growing interest. You can tell that the products are being more mature, and the customer getting used to the technology.
If we're looking at earn-out from TPA, how much remains from this?
If you look at June thirtieth, it's $4.8 million. That one is reduced step by step. So it's the good thing is that both of the ones having this retention are also in the company. So we have a continuous dialogue, and if we cannot bring in external money, we can use internal funds. We have a good cash flow. So we have a good dialogue, and the ambition is to, of course, to pay according to the plan. That is the first quarter in 2024. But it's nothing that is, it's not a hard stop. So we are step by step reducing it.
Acquisitions, do they still happen, and in what quantity?
We did have problem with the scrapping in the first quarter, in Uppsala. That one has almost disappeared now in the second quarter. So hopefully, we are now in Q4, we are implementing our, we are establishing our new ceramic line that will shall improve quality and reduce scrap. So, so hopefully we will keep things over the water in that sense, just until the new ceramic line is up and running late Q1. So Q2 has been good so far.
The IVF and plate handler, is that on track?
It is on track, and we do see a growing customer base on it. We will have a capital market day. We had one last year, and we will have one now in October. And on that one, we will update more in detail where we are on that. But it's moving on good. So TPA is pushing it in the U.S., and our team in Switzerland has started to demonstrate it for customers in Europe. So, yeah, but it's not- there are not significant money that affect the revenue in big times this year. But you can tell an effect, a positive effect from it.
The accounts receivable are growing quite strongly. What's the reason behind this?
The biggest reason is that we had a really good June. It tends to be like that for all companies, especially for Sensapex and for PiezoMotor, that we... The last month of every quarter, we have the by far largest part of the deliveries, so, and also this quarter. Most of the outstanding invoices in June now is paid up over the summer. So we also had this royalty invoice of EUR 700,000. Half of that was paid in June, but the other half was paid in July. So that was also one part of it.
Thank you. Take the next question here. Nice to see your warehouse decrease, even though there seems to be a lot left. What can we expect there?
My ambition is to step by step, move it down a bit. But my, the plan is really to try to keep it as where it is now and, but while growing revenue, so the turnover will increase by the growing revenue. In general, of course, inventory is not a good thing, but for, especially for Sensapex and for PiezoMotor, we have a very big variations over the years. So sometimes it makes sense to build inventory of standard products in April, because you know that Q4 will be very intensive. So it is better to kind of spread the labor work over the year and that increase inventory, but it should, over the year, it should even itself out.
TPA has more stable revenue stream, so they have easier in that sense to plan, and they have also better turnover of inventory.
... what risks do you foresee that could impact Acuvi not reaching your goals for 2023?
It's right now, of course, quite a lot of things going on in the world. So of course, there is a risk in that sense. But, I'm happy we made the first half of the year as we planned, and also slightly better. So I think there is a risk, but I don't consider it a big risk. We have quite big order, especially TPA, have a strong order book, and we are building it in piezo motors, get more and more OEM customers, where actually place orders, call-off orders, and that make it easier for us to plan. So, and the key, though, is, the profit is really depending on the revenue, of course.
We have a fixed cost base, which is good, but if revenue doesn't come in as we think, then it will affect the profit very hard in short term. So that would be the risk, then, that revenue doesn't come in this year.
Okay, and we take one final question here, Olof.
Mm-hmm.
What can investors expect from Acuvi in the remainder of 2023?
This year, me and the management team at Acuvi, our ambition is, first of all, to reach the targets for revenue and for profit. And then we are focusing on, really focusing on driving long-term growth, and part of that is to start production in Uppsala of the new, Ultra platform. That is really a key, and the projects related to that also is really a key, long term, looking three years ahead, I would say. So, that is the focus, for the team.
Okay. Thank you very much, Olof, for presenting today and answering all of our questions. And, big thanks to everyone who followed along for this webcast presentation with Acuvi. I hope you have a great rest of the day, and until next time, thank you very much, and goodbye.
Thank you. Bye.