Welcome to today's presentation, where we have the pleasure to present GomSpace. To help us through today, answer a lot of questions that have come in. We are joined by you, Carsten Drachmann, CEO of GomSpace. Today's event, a little bit look at the stabilization period you've been through 2024, your new guidance looking like you're moving away from a stabilization period. Then I would say we also have a little bit on the why, why invest in GomSpace, why GomSpace exists, and what problems they solve out there. So that's the presentation part. Then in the end, we will take the Q&A. There's a lot of questions already coming in, but you feel free to ask questions both in Danish and English. I will try and translate.
But if you could look whether something has been asked in that kind, because we already have around 20 questions, then that would be nice. But do feel free to ask more questions anyway. But for now, I think I will hand the call over to you, Carsten.
Thank you very much, Michael. Yes, indeed, I'm looking forward to all the questions and today I only have three slides. Just a reminder, of course, a comment on our guidance that we sent out this morning that I'm looking forward to talk about a little bit on strategy. Okay, let's get started. Reminder, the journey, remember 2023, uncertainty, change, clarifying, letting people go. 2024 has been about creating that clarity. We've worked on the stability. We just announced today also that not only do we think we are free cash flow positive the second half of 2024, it will actually be the full 2024. We can say that with confidence now. We're focused on driving the right sales. All of this driving towards a desired state where we can run our product business and measure it in its own right. We have our program business.
It's very synthesized now, so we know exactly what it is, how we execute it, how we measure it, and we have North America, and I would say moving into 2025, I will repeat myself in certain areas, but I think we can start to say that this is our current state. We have made those changes, so we are executing as we have said we would. Let's take a look at the market guidance going into 2025. It was so that I stopped in the beginning of 2023. We stopped on the revenue and EBIT guidance. It didn't make any sense. It was clear to me there was a lot of cleaning up to do. I knew I had to deal with order backlog, so for me to communicate on revenue guidance, it didn't make any sense. Every time I made a change, I had to communicate something.
We said free cash flow, cash is king. That's what we focus on. We said second half of 2024, we would be free cash flow positive. And we are. And we are actually for the full year. Now going into next year with a bit more confidence, we can say, well, we have a much stronger order backlog, especially in programs. So we are giving a guidance of SEK 320 million-SEK 380 million. That's up from an estimate for 2024, maybe about SEK 245 million, a bit more than that. So it's a pretty good increase. And we do it with a confidence because we have more than 70%, more than 2/3 is already in backlog. So it's about execution. So there's less uncertainty on the order intake during the year to generate revenue than ever before. So we have a quite high certainty here.
Also on the pipeline or the order backlog we are executing on, it's more healthy. There's profitability in all of it. It's more distributed. It's not just with one customer. It's actually spread over two, three larger contracts and a range of a little bit smaller contracts. So we have a much more diversity in our backlog, which is really going to help us for next year. Now we will also go back and guide on EBITDA. We are very focused on cash. I have been mainly focused on cash this year. Now we're going into 2025 with more confidence on EBITDA. The range we're indicating here is just below 0% EBITDA up to 10%. And compared to this year where we are somewhere minus 10%+ -ish. So also a great improvement with the right execution. We are able to deliver, I think, a very satisfactory result for next year.
A little bit on the dynamics here. The revenue is to a very large extent driven by programs. That's where we have by far the largest programs. The EBITDA is also driven by programs. However, products and North America are driving a relatively big part of the profitability. We've talked about it before. We have very strong margins on our product business. So this is a big swinger. So a little bit up and down on sales in products on North America has an impact on EBITDA. What's the difference in dynamics between the product business and the program business? Program business is visibility. It's longer-term contracts run for 12 months, two years, three years. So we know what we're doing and what's coming. Product business and North America business is three to four months visibility because every time we sell something, we deliver within three months.
So we will always have a rolling. So there's a little bit more uncertainty on the outcome of the order intake and conversion to revenue and therefore conversion to EBITDA. It can go in both directions, but can go some millions up. You have a greater EBITDA go some millions down, has a little bit of a negative impact. That's the dynamics important to understand. Should also help you to follow throughout the year to see that how are we doing in terms of the order intake. Last guidance, give you the same guidance on free cash flow as we delivered for 2024. It will be positive. Definitely, that's what we're working towards. Why do I not give a range? It really depends. There's some dependency on milestone payments for the programs, the customer contracts we have. I think it can be much more than just positive.
That is certainly the goal. But there's a lot of fluctuation. Also depends a bit on how to negotiate prepayment, for example, for contracts that's coming at the end of the year. So a lot of things we don't have visibility right now. But the way we set up the plan, the way we execute, we are fairly confident that we'll deliver a positive free cash flow benefiting everybody. We are fine on cash.
Just to clarify something, as you said, you will actually also report on this on your quarterly statement. I guess preparing the market, I guess you will see swings both on the cash flow side, but I guess also on the revenue side, on the completion rate, so it's more to prepare people for this is not going to necessarily be a straight line to the quarters. Just so we understand that. Is that correct?
That is correct. Thank you, Michael, for reminding me. I did write that in the press release. There will be some fluctuation on revenue quarter by quarter. The biggest fluctuation is probably on cash because cash is following some different payment milestones and some other triggers. So that could be very positive in one quarter, could be negative in another quarter. But over the year, the sum of everything should be positive. The revenue will go up and down. "Why is that going up and down, Carsten?" Let me give you an example. As long as it's execution with our resources, we have a fairly steady revenue. But in one month, we could resell a very large camera on one of our satellites. That's so-called pass-through sales. So we'll see a big jump in revenue, but just for that quarter. But it doesn't really mean anything on the EBITDA.
That should be stable.
Yes. So just to make sure that now we start seeing it, we might as well prepare us for that. There will be some fluctuations through the quarters. Perfect. Thank you.
Yeah, no, no, thank you, and I'm very, very happy to be able to provide this guidance now to the market. Now it makes sense. It didn't make sense for us to do it before. Now it starts making sense, and I believe we can control it.
So talk a little bit about strategy, and then we open the floor for all the questions. Reputational, existential, societal issues. This is our reason for being. Why are we here? Why do we believe that GomSpace has a role to play in the future? Why will we continue to be or grow into being even more successful as a company? National security absolutely is driven by all the unrest in the world right now. Over the last two, three years, this has intensified. Every state wants to have a space strategy. Every state wants to own their own assets to a very large extent. This is good for GomSpace. They want to have early warning, early detection, perhaps de-escalation. The more we know about each other, the more facts we have, the less likely we are to fight.
If we don't have information, we will have a problem. This is one mega driver. Information infrastructure. A lot of information that we are sharing today is going via land, fiber, but there is a necessity for alternative routes also. Another thing is, for example, in GPS, so the navigation signaling system, it's quite easy to distort. We have so many things that are depending on this, so security and safety around that is an absolute must into the future, and the data flow, we cannot survive that this is getting interrupted. Global climate is here to stay, I guess, has always been there, but we are, as Earth, people on Earth, not very good at taking care of it. A lot of the parameters that we're measuring ourselves against can only be measured from space.
You can imagine real-time monitoring of greenhouse gases and actually being able to act immediately if you see there's a problem. So these are mega trends that are driving our business in the satellite sector. What's specific for GomSpace? Our key strategic focus, and you will hear me talk more about that maritime domain awareness. that means understanding what is going on, especially on the water, can also be on land around any nation. Why? Well, there's a lot of internet traffic that's going underwater. You can cut it. There was a little incident around Bornholm, and I think there was a Chinese boat involved in it and cut a cable. So sad, too bad, but that was a bit problematic. 80% of all goods are transported via the sea. There can be safety around that.
It can also be about climate, pollution, optimal sailing route. A lot of the protein that we eat is from the sea. It's fishery. We need to make sure that the fish is still here into the future so we have something to survive on. All of that requires and can be monitored and can be supported from space, from satellites. So why is this a key strategic area for us? First of all, it's urgent, especially the national security. There is an urgency now to do this, and we see that trend in the market. More and more nations are saying, "We need to do this." You've seen it in Denmark recently. Some of you may have seen that more money is putting into research and support of space, developing space in Denmark. We see it all around the world. Urgency is there in the market. There's traction.
One of the examples is Indonesia. Yes, we'll talk a bit more about that. It is there. It hasn't gone away. We are well positioned. We still need the final government to move forward. Right now, they've been visiting China and the U.S., and eventually, they'll get around to Denmark also. So here is a very good example that the program we are expecting to deliver in Indonesia can be copied more or less straightforward, and we can use it on Greenland, the Arctic. It can be used in many places. So that is our baseline for going out into the world. Scaling. There are 150 countries around the world that have water, and they have a big interest in understanding what is going on in those waters. Indonesia is actually one of the biggest nations in the world in terms of water and water line.
We have selected out of the 150. We have a target list of between 16-20 that we believe are ideal for us to start with. maritime domain awareness is a focus here. Addressable market. Well, I just said that. It speaks straight into our technology, the strengths, everything we've built up over the last 17, 18 years is culminating into we are actually really good at this. There is a market. It's urgent. There's traction. There's scaling. We are here. This is our market, and there's a long-term growth. It doesn't end. The first time something goes up, give you an example in Indonesia, updating of information may be anything from 30 minutes, an hour, five hours, 10 hours. It's normal. Everybody might think that, "Oh, it's real-time. I have a satellite up. I get real-time links." No, usually not.
It actually takes a bit longer unless you have a lot of satellites. What does that mean? It means more satellites over time. So once the appetite and the ambition of understanding what can we do with the satellites, we see the first testing. We get data, say, every two hours. I know what's going on, but I'd like to know every two minutes. What do I need? More satellites. That's our long-term business case, and that's how we see the growth. So in summary, our key strategic focus, you will see more of that maritime domain awareness. and with that, I think we'll jump into the questions.
Perfect. Let's jump into them. I think we'll start around the subject about space economy, and I can see it's a hot investing topic again. So in 2021, then it went down. Now it seems to be very, very hot. So maybe a little bit on your thinking about it. How do you see this space economy developing over the next five years?
I should refer to the market reports as such, and I'll give you the specifics that I see. There is a continuous growth depending on the report you read, maybe 12%, 15%, 20% CAGR for the whole market. If you're looking at the domain we are in, as maritime domain awareness is a growth area for sure. And also a trend that we see, and you might remember those of you who have been following the industry for some time. Some years back, everything was satellite as a service, basically copying what we have on the ground for communication networks and say, "Oh, as a service." And then we think it's the same in space. Actually, what we see now, not so much. When it comes to national states, they want to own their own assets.
So while they might be interested in short-term buying services, we start to see a trend over the last couple of years towards what everybody wants to buy and own their assets. So the service business case is becoming a bit harder. The hardware and solution business case is becoming harder. We are in a hot space with solutions.
So there's also which spaces do you see grow faster, maritime domain awareness, a little bit communication, but also, as you said, that the hardware part might see more development in the business plans and maybe more growth if we should divide. Is that how I should understand it?
Yeah, absolutely, because everybody wants to control the assets. You don't want to leave it to, let me just get concrete examples. Do you want Trump? You have Elon Musk sitting in the White House now with Trump. Do you really want to trust the Starlink network to protect your country somewhere in the world? Do you really want to think that that service provider is going to provide exactly what you need and no cheating? I doubt it. I doubt it. You see more and more nations saying, "I don't think so." And also for the monitoring of the seas, you can buy all of these imaging, et cetera. How do you know that it's independent? You only know that it's independent and reliable if you control it yourself. So that's the trend we see towards owning hardware rather than service.
Then maybe on use cases, which areas show the greatest promise? And when do you think development platform will be launched into these markets?
Yeah. So maritime domain awareness is what we have picked. There are, of course, let's pick some others that you know about: communication as such, data connection. I think that's a play for Elon Musk. It's a play for the big billionaires. Amazon and Jeff Bezos are launching Project Kuiper. We'll do similar things. So a lot of people in that market one way; we don't want to be there. That's not our strength. We are in the signal intelligence and surveillance and monitoring. That's our strength. And we see that taking off. We are ready to do it today. So it's not really a question of maybe it's going to be ready in some years. No, no, we can do it today. We are more working on the solutions and helping our customers understand the value of this.
And then we see our product business, of course, is a very good business. It's already at around SEK 80 million a year, and we'll go up with a good profit margin.
One of the hottest topics, and I don't know, is kind of the drones and maybe surveillance. There's one drone in New Jersey made every politician ask, "What if China sends 10,000 drones, autonomous?" Do you have some surveillance also of the airspace? I know you have something for the flight traffic and so on. Just to pick your brain a little bit about, because that seems to be a pretty hot topic, the surveillance of your airspace, but actually for small, small objects, not large planes or something coming in any sorts.
For sure. Where it started is that if it's a real threat, and unless you have alternatives, space can always be used, then it's a question of configuring the satellite so you can monitor. It may require higher resolution and some other kind of speed, but it's certainly possible. That's why we see space is an area where more and more is coming, and it's driven by, "Well, wouldn't it be cool if it's driven by while we have a need and we don't have a choice?" Other example is the real-time monitoring of carbon monoxide coming out, greenhouse gases. We can measure it real-time from space. That's incredible. There's a need to do that.
Perfect. And then a little bit about Indonesia. We don't have so many, and you also, I think you stated clearly that there's nothing new, what you commented last time, but there's a specific question. Is there an end to the KKP contract, and KKP meaning the Indonesian Ministry, or is it valid for a certain period of time if it does not come into force?
There's no specific end date in the contract. The contract is signed. It's valid with us. It cannot be taken away, if you like, and the only precondition is the financing, the government-to-government financing. We are in, as sort of another question, we are in regular contact with the customer. Of course, we are. Of course, we are asking how it's going. Not only us, our embassy, the Danish embassy in Jakarta, are on a daily basis talking with the relevant ministries there and using the diplomatic channels. I'm speaking regularly with EIFO, who are 200% backing this, looking forward to get started on the final financing discussion. Everything is on track, but hey, there's a new guy. He started October 20, and he's setting up his cabinet of 53 ministers. It takes a little time. I'm not really worried about it, but patience is good.
As I stated, and you can see that our budget for next year is not dependent on Indonesia. We can actually finance, execute for a whole year without any input from there. Do we get it? If, when we get it, great upside. All good.
Perfect. That is a little bit about the Arctic and the defense. Let's start by the Arctic one. There's a mention here that the former CEO was in talk with the authorities about the surveillance of the Arctic region. I think we have talked about this before. But are you in any talks? Are there any thoughts about this Danish area for surveillance with the satellite technology?
Yeah, I refrain from being sarcastic about talks. So let's just say that you saw that now there's a lot more money being put in from the Nordic Nations and Research Councils Ministerial. So there's a lot more money going into Danish space industry. There is certainly an ambition from our military, navy, and defense to build that network. I say with sarcasm because, yes, there's a lot of talk. All the technology is there just to get started, but it takes a long time in Denmark to do anything. But we will get there, and GomSpace will be part of it. I would say on this one, we definitely will be part of it as it's moving forward when we're getting ready.
Right now, for you as investors and shareholders, you want me to be somewhere else because there's a lot more opportunity out there in the world that's moving much faster than we are in Denmark, so we will be there when the time is right, and everybody's ready to do it. We are there, but right now, opportunities are elsewhere in the world.
Perfect. And then actually, there's a question here whether you have orders or plans with any European defense projects, defense organizations, maybe defense subcontractors, and so on. For EU . And what does the defense satellite market look like for EU? So first, are you in talks? Any projects you are already doing? And how could maybe a project look like there?
Yeah, now it's so that if it's an interesting thing, if it's military and government contracts, you're usually not allowed to talk about it. So I can't actually answer that question. So then you can interpret it as you like. But it's not a secret, though. If you look at Unseenlabs, our big greatest and longest customer and very dear friends in France, they are actually partly owned by the French defense. So yes, GomSpace technology is also involved there. The other thing, which is actually quite important, and it's just part maritime domain awareness, are satellites that you will use, which means they can be used to observing fishing boats and pollution and all kinds of all the green stuff, all the good stuff that we want to have. But at the same time, we can also look for submarines or unfriendly ships in a neighborhood.
So it's the so-called dual use. So any technology we create can be used both for peacekeeping and climate and other things, purposes, and it can also be used for defense purposes. So that's actually the beauty of it. It's not about picking two different directions. It's the same technology for us. So that's why we maritime domain awareness so much.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's just perfect dual use. Let's jump a little bit into some questions I have on orders. A lot of a little bit nitty-gritty, maybe into some of the orders and a little bit also lifting up and looking at satellite orbit development, in-orbit development, IOD-1 and IOD-2/3 has many sorry, the first two ones are yours, but the IOD-3 has many partners. What could be a possible corridor for GomSpace and if and when a constellation would be successful? So a little bit about your pathway of going there with you already being in the IOD-1 and IOD-2, as I understand it. Is that correct?
Yeah. So let's talk about the road to success for GomSpace to be part of it. It's first of all proper execution, deliver quality that works according to specification. That's a key. And this is what we're working on now, referring to the IOD-1 or IOD-2. So that we are in delivery. I think we are shipping it already these days to the customer. If it's not already there, and the customer Startical will be launching it sometime next year. So we are all good and well on track for that, which means our technology is now being tested. Now, I can't speak for Startical, but if you go read a bit more about what they're saying, right now they're going to go into test phase. They need to see how does it actually work. We have this giant antenna. It's four meters long.
It's quite interesting, like a telescope kind of thing coming out. So you need to see how does it work. You need to calculate capacity. How many of those satellites do you need for this to actually function? You can't do it with two satellites. You actually have to commit. It has to be either/or. It really has to work all the time. Otherwise, it has no value. So it's a lot of testing. How long time is that going to take? I don't know. I let Startical speculate in that. But I would say this way, once they come to their conclusions, we have been part of the journey. And don't forget, we broke up. We had a little disagreement with our girlfriend and boyfriend at the time. We broke up. They went away for a year, and they came back.
So they came back to us to work with GomSpace because I think they realized that our technology is actually pretty okay, and we have very good people for doing this.
Then a very general question. Are the major projects, Startical, microsatellite, et cetera, proceeding as expected and planned?
Yes. So far, everything is executing according to plan. Yeah.
Perfect. Short answer. In your presentation following the Q3 here, you mentioned that you expected to receive specific new orders. Have they materialized, or are they still pending?
They have materialized. In December, we closed more than SEK 100 million in contracts. You saw the latest yesterday from Unseenlabs, more than SEK 60 million for microsatellites, for two microsatellites. And earlier, you saw another new customer in Singapore ordering two microsatellites. So yes, they have materialized about SEK 100 million actually in December.
Perfect. So that was what you were hinting to at that point in time. Perfect. Then there's a question. I think we also discussed it last time, a little bit about AI and satellites. How are the developments on this area?
So let's talk about what AI could do for satellites, for customers, and for GomSpace. So if we take the satellite first, what could you use AI for? If you use, for example, high-resolution cameras and you take images of the ground, in order to do something with those images, you need to analyze them. Typically, today, you actually download them, but they're pretty big. You've tried when you take bigger and bigger pictures with your camera, high resolution, it doesn't even go through email. It takes some time to get it down, to get it analyzed, and to find out what was on that picture. Can I use it for something? With AI, you can do relatively efficient picture analysis on a satellite without having a giant mainframe computer running.
So that's going to help actually identify when a picture is taken within a few minutes to say, is there something here that's interesting or not? If yes, send a red alert to ground, get the data down, no more, or say everything is good, all is calm. So that's an example. So yes, that is coming. And of course, it's something we're looking at as well, depending on what the customer needs are.
So you're moving the AI to the edge, meaning that you're actually moving it to the satellite. Is that correctly understood?
I'm talking about in general how I see the development going with the satellite market. Yeah. So that you would see that, of course, the more processing power you can get on a satellite, you gain some advantages, especially if you want to have real-time analysis. So if you want to have instant, within a few seconds even, information, you actually have to do processing on a satellite. Otherwise, it's going to be too slow. So that's one thing. Yeah.
Yeah. And then also, last time, you also talked a little bit how you're thinking about it in your value chain, meaning in your own production and so on. Any more thoughts? Anything more developed, or is it the same as we spoke a little bit about last time, how you could use AI in your value chain?
Let's repeat what we talked about last time. So I'll give you a couple of examples. We're doing a lot of bids. We're doing more and more bids and tenders with their customers. We can use AI to do our bidding faster and do more precise calculations, maybe even do designs by reusing what we already have, but we can use AI actually to synthesize it for us and make it faster. It's one example. Another example in the production out here, we don't have a high enough volume to start having robots and all kinds of things. It doesn't make any sense.
But we could have cameras that are filming how we're building the perfect satellite and then use AI to constantly film and see how we're putting it together or taking pictures of the satellites that we're building and then coming back and saying, there seem to be some issues here compared to where they were last time when you built it. These are examples. So we are working more on that. We are having now a Chief Information and Transformation Officer. It's a new position. We are putting into the executive team who's going to have the main focus of actually implementing digitalization and AI as well.
Perfect. And then GomSpace North America, how is that developing? And lastly, maybe in GomSpace America and the competitive situation. You actually mentioned the SpaceX and those big competitors. And I think maybe you gave an answer already to the competition that you don't want to move against them. You want to move in another place. But a little bit about GomSpace North America and development there and maybe a little bit about how you're seeing the competition out there.
So, for how we're developing, is we are building the foothold right now. Our pipeline is growing, and you can monitor it now that we're in accord with reports. We're actually showing the order intake per business area in North America as one. So you will be able to monitor and see how that is going. Of course, there's more and more traction. We now have five people on the ground there. And what we'll do, I wrote that in the press release also. So how we do with North America, I'm not looking to profit. I'm looking to reinvest. Every time we start growing our revenue and our profits, we reinvest that into more people because we have to build a bigger mass and a bigger presence in North America. That's the trick. We do that on a deal and case-by-case basis.
Of course, I know there's a question about SAIC. How's that going? Those are the bigger fish. That's the partnering strategy saying that we have the good technology. We sign up with bigger partners like SAIC, who is then working on closing contracts with Pentagon or with other agencies or ministries in the US. So North America is going forward as I expected. And yeah, all good.
Then a little bit about the competitive situation. I think you already gave the answer that it seems that you are moving your strategy-wise a little bit away from competing with those big guys with the big pockets.
Yeah, exactly. There's sort of two things to this. I did see that somebody competing with SpaceX. Well, no, we're not competing. It's not SpaceX. It's Starlink, really. Starlink is the data. Yeah, no, no, but it makes a difference because SpaceX is a different company. So Starlink is mainly focused on data communication. They can do some other things as well. But it's a closed network. It's like an Apple system, right? They build everything themselves. Everything's contained inside their own ecosystem. They're not really a competitor to us. We are not meeting Starlinks when we're bidding for something. They don't do that. They're focused on services, their own technology. Same with Jeff Bezos and Amazon. It's simply a different animal. Our focus is, again, signal intelligence surveillance. This is where we are strong, and that's where we're competing, and it's actually different competition that we're seeing.
Then there's a question about the contract you announced from Singapore. Has this contract anything to do with your partner, ST Engineering? And if not, can you talk a little bit about what this is about and maybe the prospect of this order? So if you can say yes to this one, then we don't need the other questions, but in case it's not.
Okay. Well, thank you for giving me a way out. The answer is yes. Yes, it's linked. Let me put it that way. Yes, it's linked to that agreement we made. I think the follow-on to that was, is it just a one-off, or will we see more? But the intention of the agreement with ST Engineering and the actual contract we signed is to build a relationship and partnership over time for more satellites and potentially, let's say, leading towards customers jointly and co-using technology. So definitely, it is linked to ST Engineering, and I don't see it as a one-off. It's just the beginning. Maybe I should say also Singapore is quite interesting because, as you'll notice, we start to have a pretty good foothold there, actually. And there are a number of reasons.
There's about five and a half million people living there on the size of Lolland. So you can sum that up. So it is all the people in Denmark living on Lolland. They don't like it down there when I tell them that. That's the size, but they have a very big ambition in space. Why? Because Singapore is in this very, very always challenging situation. They have to balance between China and the Western world, and they do it brilliantly. But they're such a small country with a huge wealth, so they have to take care of themselves. So they are very focused and invested in using space for their defense purposes and understanding what's going on around them. So therefore, even though it's a small nation, say, what do you want to do in Singapore? I mean, it's no bigger than Denmark, but the GDP is higher.
But actually, they have a very good reason to be careful.
Perfect. And then a little bit about the customer relationship, maybe more in general. Can you talk a little bit about how hard it is to build up a brand new relation with a brand new customer? As you see, you build up a constellation, but talk a little bit about how hard it is and maybe how you do it. And then the question is, does it always have to be that they will test you by making small purchases and testing their system on it, or could you actually see them buy a full constellation? And then how sure are you when you have made a relationship, you have made tests? How sure are you in general that that means also it will be followed through with your technology and you will deliver the final big constellation? So a little bit about this process, about customer relationship.
Okay, so there are many questions in one, so let me try and give a good overview. If you take the product business first, the product business is actually to competitors, universities. We have a big business in Korea. So it does take some time to build up customers, but it goes a little bit faster because it's more transactional. If a customer has a program and they have a product we like, they will buy the product from us. It's not necessarily a very long sales cycle, but it takes time in a product business to build a continuous relationship so they keep ordering more and more. And of course, we want to have relationships with the customers that have a large ambition behind them to build a lot of satellites because then we sell more products. Program business, completely different. These are long-term contracts.
It does take a long time to build up a relationship, to close a deal. I would say anything from two to four years is normal if you want the bigger deals. There are smaller opportunities, maybe into the onesies or twosies, as we call them, the IODs. That can come a bit faster. It's often an RFQ sent out to five or seven suppliers, our competitors, and then you answer, and then you have some kind of competitive war. That can go a little bit faster. But the deals that we are really interested in are the solution-selling deals, the deals where we actually develop the market and the relationship with the customer. So we understand what they want. We help them. That's how we did it in Indonesia. It took three years and takes another year to close it. That's okay. That is the time it takes.
So what we are doing now, looking forward, is that I see rather than waiting aggressively for an RFQ to arrive, we're going to do more solution-oriented business. We're going to take our solutions and do market making, going out where we know there is a demand, but perhaps the customer is not able to formulate exactly what they need. We go out and start helping them. It takes two, three, four years, but it's worth the wait, as it is actually in many businesses that are doing the type of system and solution business we are doing.
And then a little bit on the last part. I guess in the programs business, you are pretty sure if you are the one being tested, it would be, I guess, technology-wise hard for them to change. But what on the product side? Are you actually also sticky on the product side? When you first come in, I guess when you are tested and being put in one of their products, I guess there must be some stickiness for the next one. I know, of course, price will always matter, but working in the space kind of, I guess, creates stickiness.
Yeah. So two things that I want to actually answer on both markets. On the product business, yes, there's a certain level of stickiness, especially if the customer is going to build more similar satellites once they have tested and used one or more of our products and subsystems. Just saying, "Oh, we'll just buy it from the neighbor," it's not so straightforward. It has a lot of consequences. So yes, there's a stickiness there. The other thing, though, is in the relationship. It is the reliability and quality that we're delivering. Customers want to buy quality. They want something that works. They don't want to have the hassle of things not working. They're challenged enough trying to just make the damn satellite work when they put it all together or maybe the payload with some new sophisticated measuring equipment.
The last thing you want to spend time on is a basic satellite, so there's a stickiness there, and I think if you move to the program and mission side, what's quite interesting is that, yes, it is slowly moving away from these IODs, one, two, testing. If you go just a few years back, the customers were acknowledging that maybe it doesn't really work the first time or maybe it's not working perfectly, and we're not sure about our business case, so we'll try it out. We'll test it out. It's changing now because the business cases, and a good example is Unseenlabs. They know exactly what their business case is. Five, six years ago, not so sure. Now they have contracts. We have another customer that we are working with right now. He has a service contract. He needs to deliver to make revenue.
If he doesn't get the damn satellite flying in time, he will not be able to get return on his contract. He might even be default and have penalties on his service contract. So it's changing into, "Oh, let's try and test and see how it works and let's do all of these things." We just need to do the job, but it has to be reliable. It has to be in time. So we see a change, and we also see a change towards an ambition to do more than one satellite. And these are the type of deals we're looking for. We'll still do the one or twosies, but we would like to start focusing more on the ones where there's repeat because that's also where the money and the profit is. If we only do one with some development work, margin is lower.
When we can do two, three, four, it starts scaling in the production behind me here.
Now, I don't know whether you want to answer, but as you said, two, three, four years. Right now, you have strong order intake, but was that built up two, three years ago? And you came one and a half years ago. Has there been a lump, or are you comfortable that you have built enough up to be kind of a growth company? Not next year, but also the year after, if you understand. And I'm not asking you to guide, just to make you understand that your next year is not something you're piggybacking on three, four years ago, and then there was a little bit lump, and then you came and changed the focus, and now you need to build that up so you could see a good year and then needing there.
Do you feel comfortable that there has been built enough relationships also back in the time before your arrival?
I think I'll let the market guidance that we just sent out, which I personally think is pretty good. I think it speaks for itself. We are on the right track. I hope you'll acknowledge and see what we did last year was to say the pipeline is not what it needs to be or our order backlog. It's not the right order backlog for us. There's no money in it. It's a lot of technology, a lot of risk, but no money. We have changed that now. Of course, it's a continuous business. The thing about this, unless you win that satellite constellation with 200 satellites, which, oh, by the way, doesn't really exist anywhere. Nobody has that except for Elon Musk. So it's a utopia to think it's like that.
So I think we have built a much stronger and solid pipeline now with a number of different contracts, which are all, and Unseenlabs is the example. Of course, we're living also with Unseenlabs now, and we both enjoy the relationship with continuous ordering. I hinted last time. I'll hint again. You do the math. The first satellite, we launched 18 satellites, 16 satellites with Unseenlabs. The first one had a five-year anniversary, but it's the average lifetime on a low-orbit satellite in five years. So you see what's happening here also that because of our long heritage, we have a lot of satellites out for a long time. We also start seeing this repeat business. Of course, the customers the second time around could go somewhere else, but they probably won't unless they need something very different.
Now we have three microsatellite customers, which is also building well for the future. None of them are small. Unseenlabs is not small. Singapore is not small. And the one with ST Engineering is not a one-off.
No, no, and of course, you have the product business also to fill in the gap that has, I guess, much faster.
We have more legs to stand on, right? Yeah. And then we have North America. So we don't need to make money there, but we want to grow it slowly. So over time, of course, we're going to see more revenue. So I feel we have a fairly good structure for putting ourself up to future success as well and starting by 2025.
Then there's the will to enter the microsatellite market and missions you're moving up there. Will that also increase the product market? Which product are you going to sell, meaning you start now also in that market? Does that mean you could also move product in that market because you now have the experience and you will have the flight heritage to sell it? Is there a change by you moving up there also on the product side, product sales side?
Yes, in a sense that our products are sort of agnostic. They're not necessarily for nanosatellites. They can also be used in microsatellites. Sometimes maybe there's bigger power needed, bigger solar panels, so it doesn't totally fit. But when we're doing microsats today, we are reusing as much of the technology we already have in our product business unit. So of course, yes, the microsat market is also opening up. To your question, so when you then fly microsatellites with perhaps enhanced product technology, can we sell it somewhere else? Yes, absolutely. That's the beauty of this. When we productize it, we can keep selling our investment again.
Perfect. Then a little bit about the financials. Is the present gross margin close to where you want to be? I don't know whether you have disclosed that, but it's kind of. I know you haven't. It's kind of a thinking. Is, are you getting close at the gross margin? Are you having the right projects? Maybe we should talk. You don't guide it on the gross margin in the 25, but you are showing profitability for the first time in this. Is it the gross margin side that you could wish a little bit better, or that's actually starting to maybe be at a level where you could be satisfied?
I think, well, let's look at the bottom line, so we're starting to guide on EBITDA. EBITDA is my next big focus. Last year, like I said, or this year was cash. Now it will be EBITDA, so we are focusing a lot more on that. Of course, that implies that the better gross margin we can do, the better it is. We have a pretty damn good gross margin when it comes to the product business. It's good. It's in the nature of the business. Great, and then, as I said, we are changing our project backlog, our order backlog on programs. We are more careful about what we choose. We try to manage better our risks, and we start to be in a position where we can pick the ones that we really want to win. We've actually, anecdote, we actually said no to a couple of bids.
We say we don't want to do it. And guess what? The customer called back and said, "Could you please do it anyway?" And we said, "Well, not if you're asking for that price and that scope." Then we changed the scope. Okay, but that's okay. So we start to be in a little bit more privileged situation where we can say what we want to do and focus on not what we want to do, but what we are best at. And that's where we want to be. And where we get the better margin, contribution margin, gross margin, call it what you want, I call it margin, will be, of course, where we are comfortable and safe and we can add value.
Another thing on top of that, where we are moving out of in a program business is if we do this one-off technology to get technology, so we are competing. Our competitors, we have this satellite, it can do this, and we have this satellite, and then it's a price and time. And in the end, nobody really makes money, and the customer is never happy. We want to move into the solution business where we are delivering an end-to-end value. Indonesia is a good example of that because the discussion is very different. Discussion is not the price of technology. The discussion is what is the cost of a whole solution and what is it worth to the nation or the customer buying it. And that's where we want to be, and that's how you make money in this business.
And in that case, I think, yeah, it makes sense to focus on a bit instead of gross margin, right? To say it's margin, it's not actually how effective I can produce it. That makes a lot of sense. Then there's a little bit of a general question. Do you have any new thinking or tilt? Sorry, I haven't translated that. Are you doing anything new on the product and maybe on the production front and employee side, a little bit out of the financial targets? Any thoughts about how you think 25 needs will develop under these new financial targets on maybe on the employee side and on the production line side and so on?
Yeah. So there's one thing that I will give big credit to my predecessor, which I don't have to worry about. All the stuff behind me here is already paid for by you investors as well. I say it with a smile. So we have a huge, huge advantage, and the customers see that. We have all of this here. We have the production, the build. We have our electronic production in the back. Maybe actually we should film from that next time so you can see it. So we have all of that investment. So that's not a problem. It's actually pretty good, and it's pretty sophisticated, and our customers recognize that. So our focus in 2025 is efficiency in production. We're starting to gear up to do more. The physical surroundings is big enough. We don't need anything bigger. This is fine.
We could use a lot of satellites in here, but we need to get better at our processes, our workmanship, and making sure we're more efficient as when we start having more parallel satellites, which we see now. We need to work differently. So that's a focus, but it's all something that's within our control, which is great. So in terms of staff, managing costs very tightly, focused on cash, as you know, I'll be focused on profitability next year, which means we're really only hiring for what we need. So it's based on demand. And the other area where we have said we are investing right now is sales and business development. You want more pipeline. If you want to get to a much bigger company, it takes time, and we have to invest now.
We can't sit and wait in three years and we put in a salesperson somewhere in Southeast Asia to win the next big Indonesia deal. It doesn't work like that. We have to do it now. So we do do some investment in that area. And then we keep maintaining our product portfolio. It needs constant refurbishment, support, et cetera, but this is normal part of having a product business. Maybe a further twist on the staff. It's really based on demand, and I'm very careful, and we're having that discussion right now. We don't want to be too many people. We want to try and find a way that we can grow significantly more without adding too many more people. What does that mean? Well, it means more partners.
It means more flexibility in having a flexible workforce, different parts of the world so that we can go with demand. There's no business that is just a straight line up, and every year is always better than the previous year. So the trick for us is that we want to grow, grow, grow, but we also want to be okay. Maybe some years it's going to go a little bit up and down, but we don't want to be caught in the sins of the past where there's simply too many people, and then suddenly you don't have any orders anymore, and then what? You have too much cost, and that's when you see the money running out of the bank.
Perfect. And now let's jump to something I know you always love to talk about as a CEO, the share price. I will divide them up in two. I was thinking about moving your location from First North to a main market and maybe to Denmark. That's one of the questions, whether you have any consideration to that to increase maybe some liquidity in this year. And the second part is, are you doing anything to increase the liquidity in your share? Because as one mentioned, and that's to ask his own opinion, if you have a too low share price, you are vulnerable. If space is getting interesting again, maybe someone wants to snap a good deal before the stock market sees.
Of course, there is reason also for a CEO to actually also sometimes look at the share price, even when they say, "I run my business," and then the share price must do what it do. Questions, any thoughts about moving to Denmark, to a main market? That's one part of the question. Secondly, anything you are trying to do to increase the liquidity and maybe get some bigger investors in, institutional investors? I know you have some of the big investors, but maybe also some institutional buying, which will not increase the liquidity, but might increase the share price. Long road ahead.
No long question.
I'll give you a chance of answering it.
I'll give you the CEO answer then, right?
Yeah.
That's what you're looking for. No. So how do we increase the value of the company? Let's put it that way. Of course, I'm looking at the share price, but how do we increase the value on a company? It's done by execution. I mean, honestly, give a little credit. Look at what we're forecasting for next year with confidence. It's pretty damn good. It's the biggest revenue ever in a company history. We are likely going into a positive EBITDA, maybe a very good positive EBITDA, depending on some fluctuations. This is really good. That is the answer. If we keep performing, it will go up. I'll give you some thoughts on where I think we will do more in 2025. We are, after all, listed on the Swedish Stock Exchange. It's a relatively small percentage, single-digit percentage of investors in Sweden. I've lived in Sweden for five years.
There's a lot more money in Sweden for investors than in Denmark. It's become a national sport from you're 16 years old to you're 90. Everybody's trading. Everybody has a trading account. So we haven't done a lot on that market. So that's something I'm thinking about how to expand because we're listed there. Technically, it's easier. So another thought is that what I'm focused on is that I've said it before, not many companies in our industry are making money.
Go Google. You go Google, you'll find. You're very smart on the chat forums. You can find anything. You go Google.
We write in our analysis of you that there is no profit in the past.
You're writing that part.
We actually don't know that part.
Exactly. So if you want attention from an international audience, which I think for Danish investors is probably good because then much bigger money comes from outside, perform in industry, and industry will know. So the people that are invested or have an interest in general in the space industry that are invested in the U.S. or other European companies, when they see the GomSpace is actually delivering, starting to making money, we really know what we're doing, it will rub off. So I'm very focused on the execution, the reliability, the quality of what we do at GomSpace, and the rest will follow. I am doing live events. I've done, I think, four this year in Denmark. I've been a couple of times to Stockholm. So we are doing the events. Some of them you see streaming. Will we do more in the future?
Yes, we will, as the results are there. Honestly, guys, there is no point in me going out in 2023 trying to promote GomSpace based on what? I'm sorry, based on what? There's nothing there, but now there is. Now it's under control. Now is the time, and it will come. And guess what? The best thing you can do is start telling other people about the share if you think some people should know. And hence, if you think your share price is really that low, why don't you buy a little bit? Because the share price goes up very quickly. I saw some of you were writing on the chat forum, but I'll leave that with you to make that logic. But you can count on me to deliver. The results are giving you a guidance for next year.
I think it's a solid guidance, and I'm confident it will be picked up by other media as well to say, "Maybe there's something here."
Perfect. I think that's a very, very good way of going out on a positive note there. So thank you, Carsten, for taking us to your results. And I'm sorry, not your results, but your expectation for next year and answering a lot of questions. So thank you to you, Carsten, and thank you to all the listeners listening in. And if we don't see each other before that, then everybody must have a nice Christmas.
Yeah, let me please also say thank you very much, everybody, or to all our investors and friends. Thank you for your patience in 2024. I said, "Can we afford to be patient?" I told you yes, and thank you for being patient. So thank you for investing in GomSpace. We are tired here. We are collecting cash. It's been a busy December, including closing SEK 100 million in further orders, meaning we're going to end on a high note for the year, as already implied. So I'm very happy with this year, and I'm looking forward to next year and hopefully doing even more. So thank you. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.