Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Hexagon Q1 Report 2026 Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Anders Svensson, President and CEO of Hexagon. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Hexagon's first quarter 2026 conference call. First, I will direct you to the standard cautionary statement, and then we turn to the next slide. Before I begin, a reminder that the upcoming potential spin-off of Octave, we are now presenting Octave as discontinued operations. We have provided this first bridge here for you to understand the performance of continuing Hexagon, Octave, and taking them both together, meaning the former Hexagon group. Looking at the headline numbers for the first quarter, Hexagon continuing operations delivered a revenue of EUR 964 million with an organic growth of 8%. EBIT was EUR 251 million, giving us an operating margin of 26%. Octave generated EUR 327 million in revenues. Organic growth was 1%, and EBITA of EUR 83 million, delivering an operating margin of 25%.
At the former group level, including Octave, revenues were EUR 1.29 billion with organic growth of 6% and an operating margin of 26%. During the quarter, we also completed the sale of our design and engineering business on the 23rd of February, and the business was deconsolidated as of that date. Today, unless I mention otherwise, I will discuss Hexagon, the continuing operations, excluding Octave, and with D&E deconsolidated as of the 23rd of February. Mattias will cover the Octave business separately after Norbert. Turning to the agenda for today on the next slide. I will start with taking you through Hexagon's performance in the first quarter and then dive into our business area performance. Norbert Hanke, our Interim CFO, will then take you through the Hexagon financial performance.
He will then hand over to Mattias Stenberg, CEO of Octave, who will then cover the Octave performance in the quarter. We will then, of course, have time for your questions at the end of the presentation. Next slide. Starting with the first quarter performance then for Hexagon on the highlights of the quarter slide. The first quarter of 2026 was a strong start of the year and also a busy one for us at Hexagon. We delivered 8% organic growth with a gross margin of 63%, an operating margin of 26%, and cash conversion at 77%. Alongside this strong financial performance, we continued to take decisive portfolio actions to sharpen Hexagon's focus on the core precision measurement and positioning opportunities. We completed a design engineering business sale to Cadence for approximately EUR 2.7 billion in cash and stock.
Here in April, in the second quarter, we announced the agreement to acquire Waygate Technologies from Baker Hughes for approximately $1.45 billion. This is then expanding Manufacturing Intelligence into the very attractive area of non-destructive testing. I will cover this more in detail on the next slide. Mattias and Octave team held Investor Day in New York on March 26, with the spin-off expected to become effective on May 22nd. We also continued to build the new Hexagon executive team. Renée Rädler has been announced as the Chief People Officer from the 1st of April. Enrique Patrickson, who will join us as Chief Financial Officer on the 24th of April, meaning tomorrow. I wish Enrique welcome to Hexagon and both of them, welcome to the executive team, and I'm happy to have you on board.
Finally, a humanoid robot, AEON, is making excellent progress in the past quarter. AEON successfully completed a pilot at BMW and will be deployed in production at the Leipzig facility. This is a significant milestone in demonstrating the real-world industrial capabilities of AEON. In parallel to this, our pilot at Schaeffler has resulted in an agreement to deploy up to 1,000 AEONs in the next seven years. This is a big step that we communicated here in April as well. We expect commercialization of AEON by the end of 2026. A very active quarter of delivery. Let me now give you the overview of the Waygate acquisition. Next slide. Buying Waygate is a natural next step for us at Hexagon. As a market leader in the non-destructive testing, they fit very well into our portfolio focus on precision measurement and positioning technologies.
They're completing the measurement chain from surface to the interior of components. The computed tomography hardware combined with our Volume Graphics software creates a unique value position for customers. The business also brings exposure to maintenance, repair, and operation markets with recurring utilization-driven demand, which boosts our exposure to the growing aerospace market. Waygate has a portfolio of assets with different growth and margin profiles. This brings a meaningful opportunity for us to create value. RVI is already growing very well at good and healthy margins of about 30% EBIT. Radiography is a strong business where we can leverage our manufacturing and sales footprint to really drive synergies across the business and leverage shareholder value. The ultrasonic testing and imaging solutions are also very good assets, but here we will assess the position of those assets.
They are either challenged by not being market leaders, or they have not a perfect strategic fit for us. We will look at these assets from different perspectives, and we will try to then, either through acquisitions, make them into market leaders, or we will have also the possibility to go through strategic reviews, or do turnarounds of these assets. Now turning to our organic growth performance in more detail for the quarter on the next slide. We delivered a strong organic growth of 8% in the first quarter, and that's a significant acceleration from the prior year. This was primarily driven by Autonomous Solutions, which grew 13%, Manufacturing Intelligence, which grew 9%. Both businesses benefited from growth in aerospace and defense. Geosystems grew 2% while completing the channel destocking program that I talked to you about in the fourth quarter report.
Excluding this impact, the underlying growth would have been 4% for Geosystems, which gives us the confidence in that the momentum is again building within Geosystems. Recurring revenues grew 6%, driven by continued momentum in construction software subscriptions and also GNSS correction services. You can see the rolling three months figures in the chart on the right. For the full transparency, excluding the impact of our design and engineering business, software and services account for 44% of sales for the remaining Hexagon corresponding to recurring revenues of around 28%. The new product adoption is also progressing very well, especially if you look at our laser tracker, ATS 800, and also our new robotic total station, TS20. This is, of course, supporting the growth trajectory across our businesses. Turning now to the development by region and industry in the quarter, so on the next slide.
Here you have a snapshot of the development and I start with the geography. The Americas was the strongest region, delivering 15% organic growth with a positive performance across all of our business areas. North America was especially strong, while South America was weaker. EMEA recorded 4% organic growth with broad-based contributions across the portfolio. China reported a decline of 4%. Performance in Manufacturing Intelligence was very solid, but the wider China business was impacted by the weaker Geosystems business and also by the completion of the destocking actions taken within Geosystems in China. Without the destocking initiative of roughly EUR 8 million in the quarter, there was actually also single-digit growth in China as a whole. The rest of Asia delivered 7% organic growth. Solid performance reflected the good momentum in several of our key markets in this region, and especially a strong India.
By industry, if we look at it like that, construction remains our largest vertical, and we recorded a strong growth in Americas, with also good growth in Western Europe. General manufacturing, the second largest vertical, showed broad-based strengths across all the regions. Aerospace and defense continued to perform strongly, while mining was more mixed, with uncertainty impacting the demand in South America. We also had some pull-in of deliveries from the first quarter into the fourth quarter last year, and that had some negative impact for the first quarter. Automotive remained under pressure, particularly in the EMEA, but we also saw signs of weakness in China. Electronics was very strong in the quarter, and this is primarily then in China and rest of Asia. That's where strong majority of our exposure is, and it was very strong growth. Agriculture, while only being 2% of our sales, still remains weak globally.
I now turn to profitability on the next slide, and I start with the gross margin. I want to say first that the Design and Engineering that normally operates with strong margins had a challenged start to the year. While it was very strong in the first quarter of 2025, which is the reference period, it performed quite badly during the six, seven weeks that it was within our business before it was sold on the 23rd of February. There's a lot of reasons for that. If we exclude the impact of Design and Engineering in both periods, both in the first quarter of 2026 and the first quarter of 2025, the gross margin was 62%. In the comparison period, 62.6%. It's 60 basis points down year-over-year.
Gross margin was, however, stronger in this quarter than in the last two quarters, quarter four and quarter three of 2025. You will also be able to see this in the appendix slide attached to this presentation. The ramp-up of new product sales continued to support gross margin, but this was offset by a full quarter of tariff impact, and in the comparison period, there was very little tariff impact. We also had input cost inflation, and also on freight, and this is driven then by the Middle East conflict, primarily. If you look at the currency for the quarter, that also created a significant headwind. Going forward, we will mitigate these pressures through pricing and also freight surcharges, et cetera, actions already taken at the end of the quarter. The full impact of this, given our delivery times, should be seen in the third quarter.
Turning now to operating earnings. During the first quarter, we delivered an operating margin of 26.1% versus 25.9% in 2025. Importantly, excluding also here the full impact of design and engineering business in both periods, the operating margin grew 80 basis points versus the previous year. This, I would say, is a meaningful improvement, driven by the organic growth performance and benefiting from our restructuring program that we communicated in the second quarter report. With some of the contributions also, again, from a sale of a building within the quarter of about EUR 8 million. Offsetting our good performance was, like I mentioned, a weak design and engineering performance and tariffs and cost inflation. We also saw the strong currency headwind on EBIT, and that corresponded to a negative 60 basis point performance.
Year-on-year reduction in capitalization to amortization gap, which we have talked about before, had an impact of 70 basis points negative. A key driver for the margin improvement was the cost reduction program. We benefited here about EUR 10 million during the quarter, and the program remains on track for a total saving within Hexagon at EUR 74 million at the end of the year. We also had generally good cost control despite the growth, and that also, of course, supported the performance. Now turning to the business area performance. I start with Manufacturing Intelligence. MI delivered a revenue of EUR 433 million and an organic growth of 9%. We also had a very strong order intake in the quarter, which is positive for the coming two or three quarters. If I start with the geography, the Americas was the strongest region, but we also saw growth in EMEA and Asia.
By industry, aerospace and defense continued to perform very strong, and the automotive business remained under pressure, particularly in the European markets, but as I mentioned, also in China. Operating margins came in at 23.7%, down from 24.6% in the first quarter of last year. This reflects the impacts of currency headwinds and tariffs and the weak D&E performance in this year, which more than offset the positive operating leverage from higher volumes. Again, if we eliminate D&E, as we have divested this part from both periods, the operating margin improved from 23.1% to 23.6%, so 50 basis points up.
Looking ahead, we had an agreement to acquire Waygate Technologies, and this is a transformative step for Manufacturing Intelligence, and it expands, as I mentioned, into the adjacent non-destructive testing market and positions us to offer customers a truly end-to-end precision measurement solution from the surface to the interior and through the life cycle of products. As I mentioned earlier, we did divest D&E on the 23rd of February. If I move then into Geosystems slide. Revenue was EUR 349 million with an organic growth of 2%. Even if great to see a return to growth here, I should note again that if we disregard the China destocking program, which now has ended, the actual underlying growth of Geosystems was around 4%, which is a more accurate read of the demand environment within the business.
By geography, America was the strongest, EMEA was broadly flat, and we saw solid performance in Western Europe, offsetting the weakness we saw in Middle East. In Asia, China reflected a destocking that I mentioned, but India performed very well. By end markets, construction, software, and services delivered double-digit growth. Very good to see. We are seeing also the contribution of the TS20 Total Station. Operating margins were 26.9% compared to the 27.4% in the prior year. The decline primarily reflects currency headwinds, which were partially offset by strong cost discipline and favorable product mix. Turning now to our superstar of the quarter, Autonomous Solutions on the next slide. Revenue was EUR 176 million, an organic growth of 13%. By industry, aerospace and defense continued to be a major growth driver with very strong demand. Mining was more mixed in the quarter.
Customers remained cautious with capital expenditure, which also softened the demand for equipment investment. Our mining and safety business remained resilient during the quarter. Agriculture, as I mentioned, is subdued globally. We are not worried about the mining business in the midterm. There is a lot of activity, but, as I said, a bit of hesitation with the high oil prices for capital investments. By geography, both America and EMEA delivered strong double-digit growth, and APAC declined. Within the product portfolio, demand for anti-jamming solutions and GNSS correction services was particularly strong in the quarter, benefiting from the growing need for secure and reliable positioning in defense, but also in critical infrastructure applications like aerospace. Operating margins expanded to 34.1%, up from 31.6% in the prior year.
250 basis points improvement is strong, and that's driven primarily by the strong operating leverage on the higher volumes and also a favorable product mix. Of course, also here, partially offset by currency headwinds and tariffs. That concludes my overview of the business area performance, and I will now hand over to Norbert, who will take you through the Hexagon continuing operations financials. Go ahead, Norbert.
Thanks, Anders. I will take you now through the Q1 performance. Unless stated otherwise, the slides and my comments will relate to continuing operations, so it will exclude Octave. Turning to the next slide, please. Let us begin with the Q1 2026 income statement. Taking the sales bridge first, revenues were EUR 964 million with reported growth essentially flat year-over-year. Currency had a negative impact of 6% and there was a 1% negative structural effect from the sale of D&E, resulting in organic growth of 8%. Gross earnings were EUR 606 million with a gross margin of 62.9%, compared with 64.4% in Q1 last year. The 150 basis points decline reflects currency headwinds, terrible impacts, and cost inflation that Anders discussed earlier. As he also mentioned, excluding the full impact of D&E, the decline would reduce to 60 basis points.
EBIT1 was EUR 251 million, with an operating margin of 26.1%, up 20 basis points year on year, or up 80 basis points excluding D&E. This improvement was supported by the cost restructuring program and organic growth in the quarter, partially offset by a reduction in the R&D gap of 70 basis points and currency. Earnings before taxes grew 4% to EUR 224 million, supported by the operating improvements. Earnings per share were EUR 0.067, up 3%. Next slide, please. Now moving to the bridge. As discussed, net sales were essentially flat on a reported basis with organic growth of 8% offset by currency headwinds and the structural impact from D&E.
On operating earnings, EBIT1 increased to EUR 251 million from EUR 249 million last year. The improvement was driven by the cost restructuring program and a net gain from the sale of a facility, supporting organic performance in the quarter.
Currency represented a meaningful headwind with a 35% drop through, primarily reflecting the weaker US dollar. On the margin bridge, we expanded 20 basis points to 26.1%. Both organic and structural effects were accretive, while currency diluted margins by around 60 basis points. Next slide, please. Turning now to the restructuring program. We are targeting EUR 74 million of annualized savings with the full run rate expected by the end of 2026. In Q1, we delivered EUR 10 million of incremental savings, bringing the annualized run rate to EUR 51 million. We are therefore well on track and progressing towards our targets.
As shown on the chart, we expect continued ramp up through 2026, reaching the full EUR 74 million run rate by year-end. This program continues to be a meaningful contributor and we remain confident in the delivery. Next slide, please. Turning to cash flow, where we continue to demonstrate strong operational discipline.
Adjusted EBITDA was EUR 351 million, up 3% year-on-year, reflecting organic growth and benefits from the restructuring program, partly offset by currency headwinds. Capital expenditure amounted to EUR 76 million, down 38% versus the prior year. Partly driven by proceeds from the sale of a building following our footprint rationalization. This resulted in cash flow post-investment of EUR 250 million, up 16% year-on-year. Working capital was an outflow of EUR 56 million, reflecting the normal seasonal pattern in Q1, as we see activity ramping up through the quarters. As a result, operating cash flow before tax and interest was EUR 194 million. This translates into a cash conversion of 77%, a significant improvement from 60% in Q1 last year. After taxes of EUR 46 million and net interest of EUR 24 million, cash flow before non-recurring items was EUR 124 million, up 84% year-on-year. Next slide, please.
This slide shows working capital to sales on the new Hexagon base, providing a view of the underlying trend. On this base, Q1 performance is in line with normal seasonal patterns. Net working capital was an outflow of EUR 56 million compared to EUR 68 million in the prior year. The rolling 12 months working capital to sales ratio improved to 11.9%, trending down versus last year. To conclude, we delivered organic growth of 8% with stable margin, despite significant currency headwinds and gross margin pressure from tariffs and input cost inflation. Cash conversion improved to 77% and the restructuring program continues to deliver with EUR 10 million of savings in the quarter and an annualized run rate of EUR 51 million. Looking ahead, currency is expected to remain a headwind and we remain focused on execution. I will now hand over to Mattias. Next slide, please.
Thank you very much, Norbert. Let's take a look at the first quarter results for Octave. What you're seeing in the numbers this quarter, it's not just a transition to recurring revenue. It truly reflects the early impact of connecting workflows across the asset life cycle, which is where the real value in this business sits. Recurring revenue grew 6% organically compared to the prior year, with SaaS revenue continuing to grow at strong double-digit rates. Reported organic total revenue grew 2%, whereas reported revenue is down year-over-year, driven by currency impacts and the disposal of the federal services business that we did last year. If you look at monthly project-driven subscription license revenue, that was roughly flat with the prior year period, while perpetual licenses and professional services revenue declined, reflecting the deliberate shift we are doing towards subscription-based models.
The EBIT for the first quarter reflects the lower perpetual license contribution together with lower levels of R&D capitalization and higher related amortization. Excluding these factors, underlying profitability was in line with the prior year period as disciplined cost savings offset incremental public company costs. Cash conversion was a healthy 118% in the quarter. Next slide, please. If we look at our workflow environments in Q1, the trends were consistent with our expectations. In design, perpetual license sales declined, while monthly subscription licenses continued their sequential improvement. Build delivered strong double-digit growth driven by SaaS adoption in construction and project controls. Operate also saw strong revenue growth across quality management, APM and EAM. In the protect area, recurring revenue continued to grow, offset by lower perpetual licenses and services revenue. Our advantage, however, is not in a single product. It is in how these workflows connect.
Intelligence created in design, build, operate, and protect becomes more valuable when it is shared across the life cycle. Next slide, please. To the left here, you can see the monthly subscription licenses. We saw a step down, as earlier discussed, in the activity level in early 2025. However, since then, we've seen sequential improvement, and that positive trend continued in Q1. We do expect year-over-year comparisons to get easier as we move through 2026. In the middle chart, you can see that excluding this short-term volatility from project-driven licenses, the underlying trend is, in fact, strong. Recurring revenue continues to grow at a high single-digit rate, reflecting healthy underlying momentum across the portfolio. On the right, you can see that our quarterly perpetual licenses continue to decline in line with expectations as we shift towards recurring revenue models.
We do expect this shift from perpetual to continue to pressure total revenue growth for the remainder of this year. Next slide. If we turn towards some of the information we shared at Octave's first Investor Day in March. If you haven't watched it yet, you can access the videos and presentations at the investors page at octave.com. One of the key takeaways that we discussed there was that we expect to accelerate organic recurring revenue growth to 10%+ over the medium term. Approximately two-thirds of that ARR growth is expected to come from our existing customer base. What underpins this is that expansion within our installed base is driven by the multi-workflow adoption, where we see a clear step up in ARR as customers move beyond a single workflow.
We expect the remaining third of growth to come from new customers as we invest in growth areas and expand the partner channel to broaden our coverage across geographies as well as customer segments. Next slide, please. Turning to customer highlights in the quarter, we had a number of important wins, both for new logos as well as expansion. I think these wins really reinforce several of the strategic themes we outlined at our Investor Day in March. If we start with new logos, we added [Visa Cash App Racing Bulls] for enterprise asset management to handle their logistics and operations in their F1 business through a multi-year SaaS contract. We signed both [BNSF Railway and Spokane 911] on multi-year SaaS deals for our on-call dispatch platform. We also landed a leading U.S.-based LLM developer on a design subscription for their facilities infrastructure.
These wins demonstrate two things that we emphasized at our Investor Day, the diversity of our addressable market across mission-critical industries, and our ability to land new customers on recurring SaaS-based contracts as we accelerate the shift toward recurring revenue. On the expansion side, I want to highlight two deals that could not have happened a year ago, frankly, from an organizational perspective, as these businesses then sat in separate Hexagon divisions. The first, a global motion and control leader, an existing design customer, expanded into operate through a four year strategic agreement, adding both our EAM and ETQ solutions across their global manufacturing operations. The other one was Kimberly-Clark, who signed a deal that consolidates over 700 of their systems onto our platform in a five year SaaS conversion spanning design and operate.
I think this is a great illustration of how our opportunity for ARR per customer expansion, where customers adopting three or more workflows consistently reach seven-figure ARR levels. While 86% of our customer base is still on a single workflow, and that is the expansion runway embedded in this business. We also expanded with a leading European chemical producer, displacing a competitor for critical communications across their production plants. This customer now runs on Octave across all four workflow environments, design, build, operate, and protect, validating both our platform strategy as well as the value customers see in consolidating onto our solutions. Lastly, we cross-sold our build solutions into a long-standing design customer who is a major copper mine operator, extending our relationship to include project controls.
To me, what these examples really show is that once we land in one workflow, expansion into adjacent workflows is not theoretical. It is happening, and it materially increases our ARR. In summary, the Q1 customer activity validates our strategy. We're winning new logos on SaaS, expanding within our base across the workflows, and displacing competitors where our integrated life cycle approach gives us a clear right to win. This is what differentiates us. We are not competing as a point solution. We are competing as a life cycle partner for mission-critical assets where failure is not an option. Next slide, please. If we turn to our Investor Day outlook, in the nearer term, 2026 is a transition year as we become an independent public company.
We're targeting 3%-4% total revenue growth on the back of 6%-8% ARR growth, with adjusted operating margins stepping down modestly as we absorb roughly 100 basis points of public company cost and up to 100 basis points from revenue model shift, net of savings. We do expect revenue growth to be second half-weighted, reflecting both the recovery in monthly subscriptions and the typical back half seasonality of enterprise software bookings. For the second quarter on a US GAAP basis, we expect organic recurring revenue growth of 6%, so similar to Q1. We expect organic total revenue growth to be flattish year over year due to the declines in perpetual licenses that we have discussed. On a reported basis, which will reflect again on the disposal of the federal services business, we expect second quarter total reported revenue to be down approximately 4% over the prior year.
Next slide, please. Our medium-term ambitions remain as we laid out in March. ARR growth of 10%+, and total organic revenue growth of 6%-8%. Over time, of course, these growth rates will converge as recurring revenue becomes a larger and larger part of total revenue. We also expect free cash flow margins to expand from today's level of roughly 20% to 23%-24%, over the medium term. Next slide. I'd like to close by reiterating why we believe Octave is a compelling investment. We operate in a large and growing market. It's EUR 28 billion today, reaching EUR 40 billion by 2029. We have a deeply embedded, sticky installed customer base with 97% gross retention and significant room to expand. Our recurring revenue base of EUR 1.1 billion continues to grow as a share of the mix.
AI amplifies the value of three decades of domain data and context that is very hard for anyone to replicate. We are leaders in our product categories as recognized by basically all the major industry analyst firms. We operate in mission-critical environments where failure is not an option, and as customers connect workflows across the life cycle, value compounds, and expansion becomes more predictable. That is the foundation for sustainable growth and profitability as we scale as an independent company. Final slide, please. As a reminder on the key dates for the separation, the Hexagon AGM vote is tomorrow, April 24, and assuming approval, the record date and effective date for the distribution is May 22nd, with Octave SDRs expected to begin trading on Nasdaq Stockholm on May 26, and the Class B shares on Nasdaq New York on May 28th.
With that, thank you very much, and I'll hand back to you, Anders.
Thank you, Mattias. Let me jump forward directly into the Q1 summary slide. Hexagon delivered a strong financial performance. Our cost restructuring program is clearly on track and delivering. On the portfolio side, we completed the sale of our design and engineering business to Cadence, and we also announced here in April an acquisition of Waygate Technologies. As we've heard, the Octave spin is remaining on track, and all these actions are then sharpening Hexagon's future focus on the core positioning measurement technologies, positioning technology, and autonomy opportunities. Our full executive team is now in place, as I mentioned, with Enrique and Renée. In looking ahead, we have a solid foundation entering into the second quarter. We had a strong order intake within Manufacturing Intelligence. With the closure of the Geosystems destocking program, we provided a clean base for growth in Geosystems going forward.
We remain, of course, attentive to the macroeconomic situation, particularly to the tariffs, currency dynamics, and also what's happening in the Middle East situation. We are very confident on the momentum of our different businesses going forward. As we have just heard from Mattias, Octave generated another very strong quarter of SaaS growth, contributing to recurring revenue growth in the mid-single digits. Before I move forward, I want to take this opportunity to thank you, Norbert Hanke, who has been an excellent Interim CFO, covering from the gap in August 2025 when David Mills was stepping down and now handing over to Enrique Patrickson. Norbert will remain as an Executive Vice President at Hexagon, leading our ventures, operations, and also strategic projects, and I'm very much looking forward to continue working with you, Norbert, in that capacity.
Before we move to the Q&A, I would like to draw your attention to an upcoming event on the next slide. We will be hosting our Capital Markets Day in April. That's April 30. That's next week, Thursday, in London. This will include strategy updates from each of our business areas, and also importantly, we will present the new updated financial targets for Hexagon, reflecting the new portfolio composition that I have spoken about today. Of course, I encourage all of you to join us in London or follow the event via the webcast. Details and registration are available on our investor relations website. With that, we are now happy to open up for questions. In the room, we have Mattias Stenberg, Norbert Hanke, Ben Maslen, and myself. Please go ahead, operator.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now go to your first question. Your first question today comes from the line of Alice Jennings from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got a couple. The first one is just on, I guess, the outlook for Q2. You've expressed some confidence, but then also recognized a bit of uncertainty. Could you perhaps outline where in the business, like which divisions you have the most visibility, or also the most uncertainty? Thinking about divisions, but then also the industries. I just have a question on the Waygate acquisition. I understand that we're expecting to see some revenue synergies from cross-selling, but how long after the deal is closed can we expect to start seeing some of these synergies? And how meaningful could these be? Thanks.
All right. Thanks, Alice. I can start a bit, and then, Norbert, you can maybe contribute as well.
Mm-hmm.
If we look at the different businesses and the outlook for Q2, of course, we don't give forecasts on the future. We have a very strong order intake in our Manufacturing Intelligence business, and that will of course benefit us in the coming quarters. As I mentioned, within the Geosystems area, we have completed the de-stocking initiative, so we don't start every quarter with a negative EUR 8 million-EUR 10 million. That is already sort of cleaned, and we have now a clear base to move forward from. As I said, the underlying growth has now turned positive within Geosystems, and we expect that to continue also going forward.
In the Autonomous Solutions, we have a very strong demand in different sectors like aerospace and defense, et cetera, and we don't see any signs of that changing, and we don't see any signs of the weak business of agriculture improving dramatically either, so many of the businesses are expected to remain in a similar level. Mining perhaps not growing very much in the second quarter because that's related to what I said in the presentation, but more in the midterm, we don't see any risk for our mining business as the activities is still very strong. If you look at electronics, for example, we expect that to continue to be a strong business for us also going forward. Automotive will be challenged in Europe.
I think also we have seen now some negative growth for us in automotive in China, and that might remain, but given also the high oil prices, you might come back to more electric cars, and that will also benefit our automotive sales in China. We have to wait and see what happens within that business. General manufacturing is a strong business across all the different businesses, basically, and we expect that to continue on similar levels. I think that's a summary what we can say about the outlook. If I then should comment on the Waygate acquisition, of course, there is a process here that we need to go through until we have actually closed this acquisition, and then there is an integration of the acquisition. We will start seeing benefits, I think, quite quickly, of the synergies because we have similar exposure to customers.
We will also complement our offering, and we will go to market with the same people across the different geographies. I think you will see synergies coming quite quickly after the integration of the business into Manufacturing Intelligence.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Alice.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Daniel Djurberg from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and good day, gentlemen, and congrats to nice growth profile here. I was wondering, Anders, you mentioned some pulls from Q1 into Q4, still strong organic growth, 8%. My question is do you experience any pre-buy or some reason, and how much of the organic growth was a result of this, if so? Also, if so, would it impact you negatively later on? Thanks.
Thanks, Daniel. The pull-in from Q1 to Q4, which I referenced, was primarily within deliveries in mining, and I wouldn't say that has a significant impact for the performance in the first half year here, in 2026. Of course, the first part of the quarter was a bit weaker within mining, of course, due to that, but not any permanent effects in any way. Pre-buys, we actually don't see across the different businesses to any extent that we can recognize that this is a typical pre-buy, so we don't see that as a future negative impact for us either.
Super. Thanks for clarity. May I ask you another question on Waygate? Obviously early days, but you mentioned that you will do a strategic review of imaging solution and ultrasonic testing. My question is, can you already start to plan for this right now? Or do you need to await the full consolidation and then
You're on plan later on or more or less. Can you do theoretically a divestment or something at the same time as you do the transaction late 2026? It's a little bit of a hypothetical question, perhaps.
Yeah, I would agree with you, Daniel. I think we are here first making sure that we do the acquisition before we do anything else and close the acquisition. I didn't say that we will divest these businesses. I would say that we will evaluate them to see if we can make them into a market-leading position, number one or number two within those businesses as well. That could be with complementary acquisitions. We would also evaluate if we can do a turnaround of the business to improve the performance and create shareholder value. We don't exclude to do strategic reviews of businesses, which we don't exclude for any of our businesses, actually. We are always evaluating our portfolio.
Perfect. That's clear. I will get back in queue. Thank you and good luck in Q2.
Thanks, Daniel.
Thank you. Your next question for today comes from the line of Johan Eliason from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, Anders and team. Just two questions from my side. Just on starting on the cash conversion, obviously a good improvement, 77% in this quarter and then 60%, I guess, on some sort of comparable basis a year ago. I think your target has historically been 80%-90% cash conversion, but considering Octave bringing all the SaaS and the subscription prepayments with it, I guess one should assume that this 80%-90% target will be more difficult to achieve going forward or how do you see it?
Yeah, Johan, I will take it here for the time being. Yeah, I would agree. 77 was a good performance as we said as well from our point of view. Say, we will have this CMD next Thursday, and I think you will hear quite a bit from Enrique as well, going forward, what will be the target and how to achieve this. I think I would then say wait until Thursday. Hopefully, you are there.
I am. Okay. Just trying.
Good.
Another question. On the robotics, you mentioned the Schaeffler 1,000 robots coming 7 years or so. Are those on commercial terms, or can you sort of indicate what sort of price tags you are targeting for your type of robotics? I remember when you showed us them in September, I think it was, there was a wide range of assumptions on what price tags robots could fetch from the consumer side to the professional industrial use. Do you have any indications here and are you sort of satisfied with the returns for your clients, obviously, but with the returns for you as well in the deals you seem to have struck right now?
Yeah. Johan, I think we're not going out with any numbers as you can see from the release. We are very happy with this deal. I think the key thing for us here, it proves that this solution with AEON is commercially viable and implementable in an industrial application. We could also see that with the BMW announcements. We are happy with the outcome for our customer here, and we're also happy with the situation for ourselves in the deal. We don't comment on anything else regarding the deal.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take our final question for today, and the final question comes from the line of Mikael Laséen from Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking my question. I have a question for Mattias about Octave, and specifically how we should think about the capitalized software development cost going from 8%-4% over the medium term. My question is about the total R&D expenditures. How should you think about that in 2026 and going forward?
Yeah. No, thanks, Mikael. I think I'll pass to you, Ben, for the detail, but it is correct that we are stepping down capitalization. I'll let you take it, Ben.
Yeah. Hey, Mikael. As we said at the Analyst Day, there's no plans at the moment to change the growth level of R&D expenditure, which has been about 18%-19% of revenues for the last few years. I think there are areas where as we implement AI, we could get savings, but the priority at the moment is to reinvest in the product and drive growth. That was the message from a few weeks ago. Obviously, we're moving the product development more and more towards SaaS, where you have continuous development cycles, and it doesn't really make sense under the accounting standards to capitalize. This will be gradual at first, and we'll go from 8% of capitalized software development costs in 2025.
It'll come down this year, and then we think in the medium term, it'll come down to about 4%, as we said a few weeks ago.
Okay. The cash effect from the R&D activities will essentially then develop in line with sales.
Yeah. I think that's probably the best guide at this point, yeah.
Okay. Can I also follow up with a quick question on the stock-based compensation? That part is expected to go from 1%-4%. Will you have a step up now when you have been separated and listed, or will that be a gradual process? How does it work?
Yeah, it'll be a gradual process as the new program gets approved and kicks in, and it layers and stacks up kind of year-over-year. I would say it's fairly linear between the 1% and the 4%.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions. I will now hand the call back to Anders for closing remarks.
Thank you very much. Thank you everyone for participating and engaging with the questions. Looking forward to seeing you all then on the next Thursday in London. We wish you all a great day from here. Bye.
Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.