Hello, my name is Malin Siberg. I'm the CEO of Guideline Geo. Welcome to our year-end report and our Q4 report. For those of you that don't know us, this is who we are in brief. We design and manufacture non-destructive geophysical solution for subsurface surveys, and we target the infrastructure market, where we've helped find pipes and cables in the ground, as so-called utility locating. We also target the groundwater sector, where our solutions help find groundwater or monitor groundwater, and also we do ground investigations. It's often connected to the infrastructure market, knowing where bedrock is, quality bedrock, or stability of the ground prior to any type of construction. We're a stock listed company. We're listed on First North Growth Market. We have a long history.
We originate from the Swedish mining industry up north in Sweden, and given our size, we have a true global reach through our own offices and people across the world, in the orange dots in the map, and we also reach more than 80 countries through our strong distributor network across the world. We have a growth strategy, and I'm happy to announce that we are back on track on growth. So when we closed 2025, we are back on our growth journey. So let's dig into the numbers. In short, we saw strong growth and a stable profitability over the year. But if we start by looking at Q4, we were up 9% on our sales, compared to Q4 last year, and we crossed the SEK 60 million bar.
Our profitability for the quarter was 11.9% in EBITDA, and EBIT was SEK 7.6 million. Our operating cash flow was +SEK 2.4 million, lower than last year, and I'll come back to the reasons why. We are stable in our net cash. We have SEK 17.3 million compared to last year's SEK 19 million, and to us, that is a very stable level. If I look at the full year and highlights, we were up in net sales +9% also for the full year. Our EBITDA, SEK 20 million, our EBIT level, SEK 2.1 million, and the operating cash flow, I'm happy to talk about that, SEK 14.1 million for the year. We are an export company. We export 95% of our equipment worldwide, and we sell mainly in US dollars, US dollars in North America and Latin America. We sell in US dollars in Asia.
In Oceania, we sell in Australian dollars. In Europe and EMEA, we sell mainly in euros and less than 5% in Sweden in Swedish krona. So we are very much affected by currency fluctuations. If we look at our cost side, our supply chain from our sustainability agenda, our cost, our supply chain is mainly in Swedish krona. And employees, 2/3 of our employees are based in Sweden and are paid in Swedish krona. So we are very much affected by currency fluctuations, and last year was a challenge for export companies like us. And you can see the graphs, how the dollar dropped, and the euro dropped, and the Australian dollar dropped versus the Swedish krona last year. So to quantify how that means to us, we can look at Q4 currency effect.
EBITDA was SEK 11.9 million, our EBIT SEK 7.6 million, but the currency effect for the quarter on our profitability was -SEK 2.1 million, compared to last year's Q4, where we had a tailwind of SEK 1.8 million. So the currency fluctuations during the year has really hit our profitability. If we look at Q4 on the top line, on net sales, I showed you just that we had a growth in Q4 with +9% in net sales. But if we would have used comparable currency to last year, the net sales growth would have been +19%. So that means we ship a lot more instruments to our customers compared to last year. If we look at full year effect, the currency effect impacted our profitability with -SEK 6.9 million, compared to last year's tailwind of +SEK 2.3 million.
And the same goes for net sales. Our net sales were, for the full year, was up 9%, but, in comparable currency, we would have been up 15%. So export company like us, we follow the US dollar drop very closely, and we adjust, and we compensate for that. If we look at the sales per region, those who follow us, you recognize these charts. If you look at the Q4 numbers, that was one thing that stood out in EMEA. We were up 40% quarter to last year's quarter in EMEA, and that is mainly Europe. Overall, strong trending in Europe, and also two major orders that I'll come back to, that affected the Q4 sales in EMEA.
If we look at the lower charts, the full year highlights, I'm glad to see that we see growth in all three regions: APAC, EMEA, and Americas. Positive highlights is that we really saw a strong growth and a bounce back in our major markets, U.S., Oceania, and Europe. That was really tough last year, and now we've seen that we have a good bounce back in these three major one, and really important markets for us. On the downside, we had a tough year in Africa. One of the reason I've talked about that in earlier quarterly reports is the shutdown of U.S. aid had ripple effects in funding of water projects throughout Africa, and that affected our sales in Africa to a pretty large extent. We've also seen a decline in China.
Competition from Chinese local domestic brands, but also the industry in China has been challenging for the infrastructure and building construction market. We've also seen a drop in our Reutech sales, and I'll come back to the reasons for that. If we look at the sales split by our product plans, MALÅ and ABEM, it was a very, very strong quarter for MALÅ sales, and it was also a very strong year for the MALÅ sales. Product-wise, the MALÅ Easy Locator Core , the utility product, and MALÅ MIRA Compact, the 3D solution for utility infrastructure type of projects, grew really well for us in Q4. And we also...
We've focused a bit on the aftermarket sales this year, and we can see that that has a growing importance for us, both on the MALÅ side and on ABEM side. If we look at ABEM sales during the quarter, we had a strong quarter for TEM sales targeting the water sector worldwide and our newer TEM products. If we look at markets in Q4, we had a very strong, as I said, infrastructure and utility locating. It's grown really nicely over the year and very strong also in Q4. And it's the MIRA family, and this is the EL family that has been driving this growth. For those of you that follow our press releases, we've also in Q4 had a lot of success and progress and growth from the defense industry.
Throughout the year, we've had an increasing request and demands from the defense industry, and in Q4 we had two important and major events. First, we signed an OEM agreement with a European industry partner in the defense industry, and they also gave us an order in Q4 of SEK 4.2 million. Later in the quarter, we also got a large order from a European armed forces of SEK 3.1 million, that is part of a larger frame agreement of about SEK 6 million over a period of time for both instruments and services. And then, as always, the groundwater sector is important to us, and this is strong for us.
Here we can see a growth in the TEM solutions, and we also released a new important product for the water sector, and I'll come back to that a little bit more. On top of that, we saw the decline in sales in Africa that I've talked about. Sales channel. As part of our strategy, growing sales through growing our indirect sales is key for us. The indirect sales is a key growth driver, and it's through our partner network. If I summarize 2025, we signed seven new distributors across the world, two of them in the U.S., where we want to change the, move the needle to more indirect sales. And we also discontinued two of our earlier distributors.
We also in 2025 started our own legal entity, our own hub in Malaysia. In Asia, we have a very strong representation and a strong distributor network, and to form that hub is a way to support the indirect sales growth even further. But we also identified another type of indirect sales channel that we think is crucial to help us grow and to scale our growth without having to recruit our own sales pitch team, and that is through OEM partners. And what we mean is that we sell sensors, we sell products to an OEM partner, and the OEM partner integrates our sensor or our product into their full solution, and they sell their full solution to the worldwide market through their sales channel....
To us, this provides access to new market segments where we don't have our own sales channel. In Q4, I already mentioned the European OEM partner for the defense sector. We believe strongly in that. We also signed an OEM partnership with a company called Aestus, who is a U.S.-based high-end consulting company within environmental and groundwater surveys that will incorporate our solution into their offering. To provide sales growth through our indirect sales channel, the partner conference are key to drive and scale the indirect sales growth. Last year, we had partner conferences in Malaysia for the Asian team, in Ethiopia for our Middle East and African team, in Mexico for our Latin American team, and in Stockholm for our European and Middle East team. So key events for us to grow our indirect sales further.
If we leave sales behind and we'll look into our profitability number, in Q4, we had strong profitability, EBITDA at SEK 11.9, and EBIT at SEK 7.6, and can see that in the charts to the right in the picture. It's partly driven or mainly driven, I would say, if you look at the pie chart below, the sales per quarter. And the sales per quarter last year looked like that, and we had 30% of the annual sales in Q4. So this is a typical trend that we see over the year, that Q4 is often the strongest quarter, and our costs, our fixed costs, are fairly flat. So when we reach those SEK 60 million per year, then we have a very sound and healthy, and nice profitability.
Typically, what drives the strong Q4 is public tender, public budgets, but also seasonality around the surveys. That is not always. That is more frequent in summer periods. Throughout the year, we also faced challenges with the tariffs when we import to the U.S. And we are, since August, we have 15% of all ABEM and MALÅ products that we sell in the U.S. And from August, we also have 30% of, on our Reutech systems that we import from South Africa to North America. And in practice, that really hinders a further new product sales into, of our Reutech systems.
But those of you who follow us might have read the January news that we did a pretty large system sale of our Reutech systems in January to a U.S.-based customer, and that was one of our demo systems that we already had in place in the U.S. But these import tariffs, we are trying to push those to the customer as far as possible, but we can't. We haven't managed to do it to the full extent, so we are seeing impact to our margins, both because of the currency, but also because of tariffs. Still healthy margins, but margins have been affected. If we look at cash flow, operating cash flow for the quarter was SEK 2.4, and last year same period was SEK 17.3.
What's the reason for that difference is an obvious question. SEK 17.3 was a one-time effect. We got paid for a very large order last year, roughly close to SEK 9 million, that we got in Q4. But also, this 2025's Q4, we sold and shipped a lot in December. I think more or less half of our Q4 sales was in December, and then we will get paid in Q1 instead. So not nothing concerning, nothing alarming from our end about that, and we are still at a healthy level of SEK 17.3 million in net cash, and we have reduced our unused check credit to SEK 5 million. Innovation is part of our DNA.
Throughout the year, in June, we launched the tow hitch carrier to the MIRA Compact to turn the MIRA Compact into a more mobile solution, and we started shipping solutions in Q4. Strong, positive interest and strong sales, so we continue to believe strongly in this product. This product has also increased the number of active users of our MALÅ Vision, our software platform, and that's also nice to see. Expected, but still nice to see and track. On the groundwater side, on the ABEM side, in Q4, we launched the ABEM GroundTEM Trek, which is a semi-mobile solution targeting water exploration. Really good combination to our portfolio of solutions targeting the water sector. Really strong, positive interest, and we expect to ship first solutions to our customers end of Q1 or probably Q2. Branding and communication.
We've invested this year in a new brand identity and a new website to help scale our digital marketing worldwide. The year-end report is now sent to you in a new format that you can see below. So I hope you like it, and if we welcome any feedback or comments on that new format. Last year, we also had the employee event in Storforsen, and this is part of our sustainability strategy to invest in our strong company culture and a way to support collaboration across all the time zones and cultures and countries where we have employees. To summarize this Q4 and end-of-year report, we see a strong net sales growth and a stable and sound profitability, despite a very strong impact from the currency fluctuations that we've seen during 2025 and also continued a bit into 2026.
We've seen a strong bounce back and a strong growth from the infrastructure market, and specifically for the utility locating application, and really happy to see a strong bounce back in our major countries for GPR. The last bullet is around our channel strategy to grow our sales through our indirect channel. This year we've signed seven new distributors and three OEM partners that will help contribute to our continued growth path. With that, I will end this presentation, and I will open up for any type of questions that you may have typed in the chat.
Yes, we have one here to start. You have sent out two press releases last quarter about the defense industry. Do you expect more sales in this sector, and who are the customers?
First, it's defense sector. I can't name the customers, obviously, but let's talk a little bit about that sector. It's just look around you, follow the news. Of course, with this new geopolitical situation, the defense sector is growing in Europe and in many parts of the world. So we've seen that all along last year, a growing request from the defense industry to our geophysical solutions. So of course, we believe that geophysics can play a role in the growth in the defense sector. If I look at the specific press releases, partnering up with an OEM partner in this sector in Europe is not a one-time thing.
Of course, we do that because we believe that they see a need for it, and that we can provide a solution that to help them grow and to help us grow. So we continue to believe in the defense sector, and we think that is very interesting to track and follow and to see where we can play a role in that.
Your profitability is lower than last year. What are you doing to improve?
Yes, of course, we're not happy with the profitability numbers. We want that to be higher. We need to remind ourselves that we are very much affected by the currency drop. So this year's lower profitability is absolutely affected by currency. But that's a fact. We can't change how the currency affect, so of course, we need to work in all ends to make sure that we continue to have a healthy and sound and growing profitability, and we need to work in both ends. We need to work on our supplier side and our cost side of our products, and we also, of course, need to work on our revenue side. Like, we need to.
We do price increases, and we need to also make sure that we are efficient, cost efficient in our setup, in our cost structure. So of course, we've done a lot of work in the budget process around where we can reduce cost in our own setup and where we want to invest to help us grow. So the profitability and our margins is very high up on my agenda on how to improve that going forward.
Can you make a quick comment about the outlook visibility in 2026 for your main end markets: infrastructure, utility location, mining, and water research?
It's a bit hard to find reliable market data how those go, but I think we can all see and read about the growth in mining or the growth in the defense sector. I think to me, it's more important how much growth from these sectors will be for geophysics and subsurface surveys, and that is both how the industry grows and how these markets adopt geophysics as a method. But if I look at the market for GPR, we've seen a year-over-year growth over an industry cycle of in between 8%-15%. It's a very large span, but it's somewhere around that. But that is regardless of application or industry, that is for the technology.
You mentioned that you sell in different countries, in different places. What is your cost split, and how is the split between the currencies?
We have 2/3 of our employees in Sweden, and they are paid in Swedish krona. And then we have 1/3 in and our main office in the U.S., and then in Oceania, and then in Kuala Lumpur. So we don't give exact numbers, but it's a rough estimate, 2/3 in Swedish krona in our employee base, and our employees are the main cost in our company. Supply chain is the other big part, and we aim to have as much of our supply chain in Sweden as possible, and we pay them in Swedish kronas. But there's a lot of electronics in our equipment, and electronic components are bought in US dollars, so of course, we expect our suppliers not to actually compensate for the drop-off of the dollar. But we.
Our supply chain is mainly, I would say, in SEK.
What is the typical ramp-up period for a new distributor? Do you expect to continue onboarding five to 10 new distributors each year?
We've had a very high pace. And we also have people knocking on our door wanting to become our distributor, and it's been a really key part of our sales channel strategy to connect more distributors to our partner network. Will we continue at this high pace? We still have white spots on the map. We still have applications where we want to have a stronger distributor, so we'll continue to sign more. The pace we've had—let's just say that we've had a very high pace on new distributors. Onboarding it takes time and effort to onboard a new distributor. But we also learned how to do that in efficient way.
The partner conferences are one thing where they also can learn from each other, and where we can meet many of them at the same time, instead of having our sales team travel around the world to each and every one of them. So we've learned a lot how to onboard them. It is a bit different how from the signing an agreement to first sale and to have good traction. But yeah, it takes a while, and I'm saying quarters or year and not months, to really make sure that we see good traction in a distributor. But then, of course, there are individual differences.
I believe that was the last question.
All right. If any other question come up, don't. Please don't hesitate to send us an email, and I will try to respond to them also outside this session. Thank you for listening, and see you again in the quarter. Bye-bye.