Report 2025. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the Q&A session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO Henrik Fagrenius and CFO Thom Mathisen. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Operator, and a warm Welcome to all of you to Today's Q1 Presentation for 2025 for CTEK. The presenters today are myself, Henrik Fagrenius, and our CFO, Thom Mathisen. As always, I start with a short recap of CTEK. CTEK was founded more than 25 years ago by Bengt Wahlqvist, the happy guy on the picture, and he invented the first-ever smart charger with pulse technology. We are delivering—we are developing and testing and designing everything in Sweden, and we have production mainly in Asia and China, but also in Malaysia. We have more than 50 premium brands that are choosing CTEK as their charger, and I'm very proud to show the Lamborghini that is actually co-branded with CTEK, which is extraordinary and says a lot about our quality. CTEK has mainly two different technologies.
We have the EVSE technology, where we are focusing on destination charging, and then we have our low voltage, where we are present in different segments as consumer, professional, workshop, client, brand, and integrated solutions. You will find CTEK in a vast area of different usage alternatives. For the electrical vehicles and plug-in hybrids, we can sell our EV chargers, of course, but also our 12-volt chargers and our workshop chargers. For the combustion engines, we have our 12-volt chargers and our workshop chargers. For RV and leisure, like motorcycle, camper vans, etc., we have our low voltage and also our integrated solutions. For industrial, we have integrated solutions. We are distributing in mainly two divisions. We have a professional division that is focusing on business-to-business. They have the OEM car brands and also big parking operators and charge point operators.
We have a consumer division, which are selling into retail and e-tail. Over to the first quarter of 2025. We were growing for the fourth consecutive quarter, and the sales or revenue came in at SEK 213 million, which is an organic growth of 5%. Gross margin ended up at 56.4%, very strong due to a good product mix. EBITDA, SEK 19 million, impacted by non-realized FX impacts. Cash flow, SEK 8 million, and we came in on a net debt ratio of 1.9, so a very stable financial situation. If we look a little bit more deeper into the figures, we have a consumer division, which was actually growing for the seventh consecutive quarter. Strong sales in North America, strong online sales, and our efforts are very paying off.
I'm very happy to say that the professional division showed a positive EBITDA for the first quarter since we started that division, and that was due to growth in client brand, where we had good sales to Europe's biggest motorcycle manufacturer. We also see better margins on our newly introduced CC-free EV charger. With this, I think we are very good placed for soon entering into our third phase, and we will talk more about that in our capital market day the 22nd of May. With that, I leave the word to you, Thom.
Yes, thank you, Henrik. Some more words around the financials, and I go a step down to the divisions. As you can see, the consumer division on the graph on the upper side right, you can see that stands for more than two-thirds, or around two-thirds of the turnover of the company. Here we have grown again organically. We have 7% with a stable and good EBITDA margin of around 35%. Continuous good performance in the consumer division. Coming over to the professional division, which stands for one-third of the turnover of the company, we are happy to say that we have the first profitable quarter since we started the new organization in the end of 2023 with a positive EBITDA of around 6%.
That comes, as Henrik mentioned, both from the strong low-voltage sales to the OE customers, but also from improved margins on the EVSE side of the business. Around cash flow and CapEx, which is quite important areas, of course, for a company like CTEK, we continue to have a positive cash flow from operating activities, a bit less than last quarter one last year, but that is mainly reflecting some bigger payments in and out at these periodical impacts of that. As we mentioned a little bit later in this, in the fourth bullet, we see a long-term positive cash flow trend. That also means that we did an extra amortization of our loan with a EUR 25 million in the period. CapEx, as we have said before, it's now coming back on the more normal levels, around 8% so far this year of the turnover.
We over time see that being somewhere in the area of 6-8%. Net debt ratio, also an improvement versus quarter one last year, down to 1.9 from 2.2 at the end of quarter one last year. By that, I hand it over to you again.
Thank you, Thom. To summarize the quarter, moving back to our strategic plan that we put together a little bit more than one and a half years ago, we put it into three phases, where the first phase was to create stability and cost control. We left that phase a year ago, and we are now well into phase II, which is profitability and focus on organic growth. We have now showed four quarters of organic growth, and we are getting ready to talk about a more accelerated growth, which we will present at our capital market day the 22nd of May. Most welcome, and I hope to see you all there. Going into the quarter again, as I mentioned, fourth quarter of consecutive growth for the group and seventh quarter of consecutive growth for consumer division.
First-ever quarter with positive EBITDA in professional division, and that relates to high sales of client brand and also a better gross margin for our newly introduced CC-free EV charger. We have a very stable financial situation, a net debt ratio well below our financial targets. We are ready for our next phase, which we will present on our capital market day the 22nd of May. With that, I open up for questions.
To ask a question, please dial pound five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Johan Eliasson from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. This is Johan at Kepler Cheuvreux. I have a question just regarding your North American exposure. You mentioned that as a growth driver in this quarter. How big is North America for you today, now when the GM contract is out of the numbers? And how do you supply it, basically? That's my first question.
Good morning, Johan, and thank you for the question. North America was last year without General Motors a little bit less than 10% of our total sales. We moved the production to Malaysia for 80% of our total, 80% of our products to Malaysia. The tariff is hard to foresee, but my judgment today is that we are in a pretty good spot. I think it is neutral due to competition because I do not believe that there is anyone producing locally in the U.S., and all our competitors are producing in Asia. With the move to Malaysia, I think we are in a relatively good spot as it is today.
Just a question that you say 80% Malaysia. Is that for the North American sourcing, or is that for your total sourcing?
No, that is for the North American sourcing.
Yeah, okay, excellent. I am looking forward to the 22nd of May, so I have no further questions right now. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Johan.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Matthias Ehrenborg from Red Eye. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, Henrik and Thom. Matthias here from Red Eye. First off, I just want to congratulate a solid quarter. A few questions from my side. Could you share if there is any main driver behind the positive EBITDA in the professional segment, or is it more a general result from your cost savings and, yeah, I guess overall solid demand in all product categories and customer groups?
Good morning, Matthias. Yes, it is. We have reduced the cost quite significantly in that division. As we mentioned previously, it is up to getting volumes now to get a positive EBITDA, and that we managed to do in the first quarter. It was a good growth in client brand, which is the low-voltage chargers for our premium customers. We also had a stable sell-out of our EVSE destination. If we remove the GM contract, we have a stable sell-out of EVSE destination with a better margin, which also helped to have a positive EBITDA.
Okay. Did you have any positive one-off effects from the discontinued GM contract in this quarter?
No, not at all.
Okay, excellent. I think this already has been answered a bit in the previous question, but could you describe your U.S. business in the quarter and how your customers are feeling in the region?
If we start with the quarter, it was very good sentiments. We had high sales, especially on our online channels. With the move, we managed to reduce our pricing a bit with kept margins, and that we saw positive take-up from our customers in North America. As I mentioned before, 80% we have now produced in Malaysia, and at the moment, the tariffs from Malaysia is 10%. We do not know how that will develop, but it is relatively good for us compared to some of the competitors, I think. We look positive at that. Of course, it is very hard to say anything about the future and the sentiment of our customers and consumers in North America at the moment.
Yeah, understood. If we just look at the Q1 numbers, you had SEK 17 million roughly in sales from America, and you had SEK 21 million in Q1 last year. If we remove the GM volumes from last year, what would be a representative number, would you say?
In North America specifically?
Yeah, exactly. If we remove the GM numbers from the SEK 21 million.
We don't reveal that on that detail, but I can say that we had a good sales development if we clear for GM activities.
Okay, okay, excellent. Thank you. If we move over to the DACH region, it grew by, yeah, I think nearly 60% year- over- year, which looks very high. What are the reasons behind this development in the quarter?
We had also very, very strong online sales, but also our professional workshop chargers are developing really, really nicely, and especially in the DACH region.
Okay, so there aren't any timing effects that ended Q4 last year, for instance, instead of going to Q1, or it's just pure demand-driven, would you say?
It's very hard to say if it's timing effects because you always have, there could be timing effects between the quarters, but we are, of course, closely monitoring the underlying sell-out at our, especially our big online or e-tailers, and we see a very healthy growth in those figures.
Okay, thanks. Just regarding the development for the CC3, especially in the U.K. then in the quarter, what was the development like and what do you expect now heading into the summer months?
If we take CC3, our short-strong connected free, it has been very well received by the customers. The U.K. sales have not really taken off yet, so it's hard to say. We are working closely with our customers in the U.K. and also in Scandinavia, and later on, we will also launch it in Germany, as you know. So far, we have seen a stable demand in very, very turbulent times.
Okay, okay, thank you. Understood. Just a final question then from my side. Could you expand a bit on the Q1 net financials of minus SEK 13 million? I see it looking quite high.
Yeah, I can take that question, Matthias. So it's actually we are impacted both in financials, net finance, finance net, and on the operating result of non-realized FX impacts. You know, when the krona has been stronger against both U.S. dollars and euros, we have some impacts on that. On the finance net, it's primarily that we have quite a lot of euros on our accounts, and they are evaluated to one krona less per euro than during the quarter. That's its main impact. Around SEK 8 million-SEK 9 million of that impact is just non-realized FX impact.
Okay, thank you. That was very clear. Okay, that was all from my side. Thank you very much for taking all my questions.
Yeah, thank you, Matthias.
Thank you, Matthias.
More questions at this time. I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you very much for listening in to our Q1 report, and looking forward to seeing you the 22nd of May in Stockholm. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.
Thank you.