Hello, and welcome to today's webcast with Impact Coatings, where CEO Jonas Nilsson and CFO Bengt Vernerson will present the year-end report for 2023. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A. So if you're calling in and want to ask a question, please press star nine and raise your hand, and I will hand over the word to you. If you wanna write in your question, you can use the form to the right. And with that said, I hand over the word to you, Jonas.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to this presentation of Impact Coatings year-end report. I am Jonas Nilsson, CEO at Impact Coatings, and beside me, I also have Bengt Vernerson, CFO. So for those of you who doesn't have the time to stay for the whole session, we start with the key takeaways. We are on a journey towards profitability, and we have a new record in sales, SEK 88.8 million for the year, excluding metals for electrolysis. Just before Christmas, we delivered 2 systems, both within our focus segments, one for fuel cells and one for radomes. Those deliveries gave a revenue of about SEK 30 million. We did have a weak order backlog at end of Q4, but we do have a substantial sales pipeline in terms of leads and customer contacts.
The focus during 2024 will be to maintain market leadership in electrolysis coatings, increase sales, start producing according to forecast, and establish our coating service center in U.S. All this with a focus on profitable growth. So the agenda for today, we'll start with an introduction to the company, talking about what we do, what important customer problems we solve, some of the key benefit, and how we are positioned with regards to the competition. Second section will be me talking about the highlights from the quarter, then Bengt will give the financial overview. I will share some reflections before looking at the focus for 2024. So let's start with Impact Coatings at a glance. We offer coatings, that is, putting thin layers of metal or ceramics on the surface of objects and things.
We have advanced technology for this, but we do not put the technology in the center; we put the customer in the center. We will come back to this. Our technology of putting thin layers of metals and ceramics on objects is called Physical Vapor Deposition, PVD, and can be applied almost everywhere. A technology that can be applied in many different market verticals is often referred to as a horizontal technology. Today, we have operations in Sweden, we have a factory in China, and we are establishing a coating service center in Upstate New York. So although we have a horizontal technology, we have chosen to focus on selective market verticals. We strive to become the market leader in coatings for hydrogen solutions, and probably we are already the market leader for coatings for PEM electrolyzers.
We also want to get more business in the field of radomes and antennas, which are both metallization of plastic for the automotive industry, and a radome that is a plastic cover for the radar in the vehicle. Go back to the horizontal technology, of course, we do not say no to other business, where our machines are suitable. We have a genuine experience of developing coating machines for fuel cells. PEM electrolyzers and fuel cells, they have similar design with metal plates that need coatings. An electrolyzer converts preferably green electricity to green hydrogen. A fuel cell does the other way around: it converts hydrogen into electricity. If you would disassemble a PEM electrolyzer stack or a fuel cell stack, you would see a lot of metal plates separated by membranes.
Those metal plates must be coated with noble metals, ceramics, or other materials to function in the correct way. The coating has two main purposes, that is, to enhance the durability and increase the efficiency. We provide machines for coating, and we provide coating as a service. Here is a picture of our circular inline coater with four individual chambers arranged in a circle. By a combination of skill and luck, our machines have a very good product-market fit for the hydrogen market, as well as for radomes and antennas. It's designed for coating flat objects, and together with our coating services, you can go all the way from initial prototypes to full high-volume production in the same type of machine. If you look at the competition, there are fully automated, huge linear coaters with high throughput, high cost, and big footprint.
There are also so-called batched coaters available on the market, that is small machines with manual loading. With our circular inline coater, you get the benefit from both worlds. You get the flexibility of a small machine. And by adding multiple machines to the same automation system, you also get the throughput of a large machine. When I was in China last week visiting a potential customer, I saw an inline coater that was about 40 m long, so 3-4 times larger, 3-4 times higher throughput, and I would guess also 3-4 times the price, given the size and the number of vacuum pumps I saw. I also asked about the price, and although they didn't tell me, I could see it was a huge investment. With our machines, you do not have to make that huge investment.
You can go all the way from prototypes using coating services to a fully automated, high-throughput production line, like in this slide. This is important in the hydrogen market, which is a volatile market that at some point will expand. So to summarize who we are, we are a high-tech company and a global industry partner providing solutions for coatings with the customer in the center. So let's switch to Q4 highlights. Let's start with the first point, delivery of machines. We are on a path to profitability, and to reach profitability, we need to sell and deliver more, and we need to do that with the same or at least almost the same cost structure. This requires standardization of our products and streamlining of our production processes.
In the end of the year, we pushed the organization to deliver, but it, it was not only to get the numbers for the year. Having the machines delivered make the transition to production to forecast easier. If we go to second point, according to our strategy of putting the customer in the center, we have signed a five-year lease agreement with Waveland, where we host a production line for them in our coating service center in Shanghai. Third point, it is a volatile market for our customers, and we had a drop in coating, services activity. The combination of machine sales and coating services offers flexibility to our customers, and the pros with this approach is that we get business. The cons is that it becomes volatile for us, which we also see in Q4, with lower activity in our coating service center in Linköping.
We expect this to be just temporary. So next point, I'm very happy to be on board, and thanks to the team and the former CEO, the transition has been smooth. We have sharpened the management team with the ambition to have permanent employed personnel on all managerial positions. The changes in the management team also reflects our focus to the Chinese and North American markets. And finally, total net sales, including metals, was SEK 98.4 million for the full year and SEK 88.8 million when metals are excluded. So looking at previous years, these are good numbers. I would also like to show the rolling twelve-month net sales. As said before, we are on a journey towards profitability, and being primarily a product company, the key to reach profitability is to increase sales while maintaining costs.
Focus is on sales, and in order to increase sales, we will produce according to forecasts to shorter lead times. This also has the effect of reducing production costs. You can see it as going from sort of one-off production to serious production. We will increase the productivity within hydrogen. That means to further develop our offering to strengthen our customers. Premium FC is an example of this, that is a new coating with longer durability, but we also have other things in the pipe for electrolyzers. We want to strengthen the customer relations and become stickier, that is hard to substitute, and this applies especially for coating services. Examples of this is customer portal, we're going for a clean room, we enhance quality inspections, et cetera.
Then we want to further develop our after-sales business, and we have ongoing work to get our systems connected and networked to enable remote management and monitoring, and that will create a foundation for increased recurring revenues. So with that, we switch to Bengt.
Thank you, Jonas. So as we have concluded before, we had a strong growth in sales in 2023, supported by increased activities in customer acquisitions and investment in our coating services, service centers, and in R&D. So full-year net sales landed at close to SEK 100 million, with a strong increase in all revenue streams. So we had 4 systems were sold with a total of SEK 52 million. Coating services landed at SEK 35 million, and aftermarket at SEK 11 million. So as you can see, there is a gross margin improvement in 2023. So this is coming from higher volumes, favorable product mix, both in systems and in coating services, and from cost savings. So the new coating service center in China and increased activity in the Swedish coating center is the main drivers behind the cost increase between the years.
We also see that we have exposures in US dollars and euro, resulted in a currency loss with a stronger SEK in Q4. So this refers to bank balances and net of receivables and payables. So if we move to quarter four, the main driver in sales are the 2 machines that were shipped just before year end. In gross margin, there is one-time effect of SEK 4 million from recovery of metals, capitalization of development cost for the new Premium FC coating, and an upgrade of R&D machine. So note that this one-time effect only refers to the quarter, it's not for the year. So adjusting for this, the margin is fifty-nine percent in the quarter.
So we now move to the balance sheet and conclude that the increase of the balance sheet total, so we are moving from SEK 150 million in 2022- SEK 280 million in 2023, is driven by the rights issue, the increase of raw materials, and investment in our coating service centers and in R&D. So there is a lot of figures on this slide. I will explain the most important changes compared to last year. So the new coating service center in China represents the major part of the difference between 2022 and 2023 for machines and equipment. We also have the new machine to the coming coating center in U.S. as assets under construction in 2023, SEK 11 million. In 2022, there were two machines for R&D and the Swedish coating center.
Those represent close to SEK 20 million of the total of SEK 27 million in year 2022. So, and when it comes to raw materials, there is an increase of SEK 52 million between the years. It refers to metals for electrolyzers, and this increase in raw materials is fully financed by customers' prepayments. As you can see in the balance sheet, SEK 52 million at year end. So moving to the cash flow, we can conclude that we are entering 2024 with ample liquidity at SEK 120 million, with a note that we need to continue to grow sales and to be able to scale up the business in near future. So in 2023, increased sales have generated higher cash inflow compared to 2022.
Looking at the working capital, the shipment of two coatings machines resulted in a peak in accounts receivable at year-end, and there is also a deposit at customs related to the coating business that we did not have in 2022. So this means that cash flow from the operations in this is the same in both years, SEK -42 million. The investment levels is also about the same in both years and refers, as you know by now, to the coating service centers in China, Sweden, and also in North America. It also refers to improvement of capabilities in R&D. So the rights issue was completed in March and injected SEK 129 million in capital after the transaction cost. So in total, this resulted in a positive cash flow of SEK 60 million for 2023 and a closing balance of SEK 120 million.
This was all from finance, which means that we now move to market reflections by Jonas.
So let's talk about market update. I believe that green hydrogen is taking off, and many others who are making forecasts believe that green hydrogen is taking off. Interesting to note is that there is an existing market for hydrogen made from natural gas, and this existing market might speed up the introduction of green hydrogen. In this forecast, China, EU, and North America is expected to be the big markets, and that is where we are active. So during the last three weeks, I've been traveling in those regions to meet customers and potential customers. And I will share some reflections about that, but first, some background. When you manufacture a bipolar fuel cell plate, you first stamp it to make the pattern, then you weld two of them together, and the last step is to coat both sides.
There are, of course, variations of this. Sometimes, for example, you coat before welding. So during the last three weeks, I've been traveling in Europe, China, and North America together with our regional presidents, and we managed 19 face-to-face meetings. So I've seen a lot of those factories. Some of them are ready to start production, and some of them are being built. If you look at China, China is moving strong on fuel cells, but all customers and potential customers we visited are also looking into electrolyzers. And the Chinese model is to first build a factory and then fill it with production. This means that we do see opportunities in machine sales to those factories, and I can also mention that I saw one of our IC2000 machines installed in a clean room together with a stamping and a welding line.
In Europe, we see a clear interest, and many companies who are good at forming metal and has previously supplied volumes to the automotive industry are now looking for new applications. Forming of fuel cells is such an application, but if you form the fuel cell plates, you also need to coat the plate, and then you either need to buy the service, invest in the machine, or do a combination. In North America, there is a strong focus on electrolysis, probably due to tax reductions in U.S., but also due to a general lack of hydrogen. Our establishment of the coating service center in Upstate New York is mainly driven by the electrolyzer market. At the end of 2023, we had a weak order book, but a strong sales pipeline if you look in terms of leads and customer contacts.
Our challenge now is to shorten the sales cycles to get the business. Talking about getting the business, one thing that was very much appreciated by the potential customers I visited was our business model. So the fact that they can go all the way from early prototypes to high-volume production in the same type of machines was appreciated. It is a volatile market, and our potential customers do not know the future volumes. The traditional forecasting in the automotive industry doesn't really work on an emerging technology such as fuel cells; therefore, they appreciate our flexible business model. So to summarize, we want to maintain market leadership in electrolysis coatings for green hydrogen, and we strive to become market leaders also in fuel cell coatings.
Our route to profitability is to increase sales while maintaining cost, and a way of doing that is system manufacturing to forecast. Reduced lead times will increase sales. Going from one-off to serious production will reduce cost. Our operations in Shanghai is now up and running, so our next step is to establish a coating service center in Upstate New York, primarily to support the emerging electrolyzer market in the U.S. So with that, let's move to Q&A.
Thank you so much for the presentation here. And just to quickly repeat here, if you're calling in and want to ask a question, please press star nine. Oh, we have one pressing star nine here. I will hand over the word to you. And you have to press... Ah, perfect.
Okay, hello, this is Henrik from Redeye.
Hi, Henrik.
Hi, hi. Okay, yes, well, thanks for the presentation. It, it included most of my questions there already. But if you could, well, maybe, help us and describe your Chinese Coating Services operation a little bit more in detail. And for example, how many customers are you working with now, and are some of these like big accounts that are in the process of ramping up their production?
Yeah. So we are up and running at our Chinese Coating Service Center in Shanghai. And today we have a handful of customers there. Some of them are customers that start with coating services and then aim for their own machines. And some of them actually aim for their own machines, not their own machine, so many machines. So this is. The Coating Service Center in Shanghai is primarily a way of sort of reducing the threshold to start with our coatings. So the customer can start with buying the service, and then they can buy the machine, and they can also use our services to cut peaks when they have peaks in their production. But we mainly see it as a way of getting into the business.
The factories I visited during my trip in China, they are typically larger than our coating service center.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
It was several questions.
Mm-hmm.
So did I-
Mm-hmm.
Was the answer to all-
Sure
... of your questions?
Yeah, yeah, I got a good idea, I think. Thanks. And if we talk a little bit about electrolysis. Are you currently in the process of trying to widen your customer base there now, or what should we expect? When might your second customer sign on, so to speak?
Well, if you look at paying customers, we do have several paying customers in that field. The first step to acquire a customer is normally to make some prototype runs, some test runs, and typically we charge for that. So, in Q4, we had 6 new customers, 6 new paying customers.
Mm-hmm.
And some of them are for-
Yeah
... for electrolysis.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And well, you have this agreement with Plug Power, as you have announced a year ago or a little over that, I guess. And obviously, they're not ordering... They did not order very much in Q4, but could you tell us anything about what you hear from them, and if things have started to move now, after year end?
Yeah. I was there last week, and when talking to the people at Plug, they are happy, and they see a bright future. They talk a lot about this hydrogen highway that they want to build. So they will invest in sort of hydrogen fuel stations every 50 miles.
Oh.
That will be like 100 of those fuel stations.
Oh.
And for each fuel station-
Oh
... you need some electrolyzer stacks. So, that will be some volumes. And I guess you have also read the latest press releases from Plug Power. And you can see in that press release that this hydrogen highway is still a focused area for Plug Power.
Mm-hmm. Okay. And then just finally, could you remind us of, well, your timeline for the U.S. coating service center and the establishment over there?
Actually, I was also there last week. I think I talked about customer stickiness in the presentation. One way of creating stickiness to our customers when it comes to coating services is to offer something that not every competitor can offer, and that is clean room production. Our plan is to build a clean room also in U.S. I had a meeting with the architect last week about that. We have a machine that is ready to go or almost ready to go in Linköping, but we will first build a clean room before shipping that machine. I can also mention that we do have a capacity in Linköping to deliver.
So, we want to fill that capacity first, and sort of make the transition to U.S. as late as possible, if you understand what I mean. But there is a push from U.S. customers that we have production on U.S. soil.
Mm-hmm.
That basically sets the timeline. It's the timeline is set by the customers.
Right. But what you said previously around the, I can't remember exactly if you specified the quarter, but, the plan still stands. There is no delay or anything like that?
The plan still stands. So my expectation is during 2024, but the exact date will more be set by customer orders than by us. But we
Mm-hmm
... are sort of ready to go.
Okay. All right. Well, thanks. That was all for me. Thank you.
Thanks so much for the questions. I think we go straight ahead to the questions that have been sent to us as well. You mentioned that you entered 2024 with a weak order book, but a strong pipeline. How are you going to convert this pipeline into businesses?
... Yes, and we typically have, or at least we have had quite long sales cycles. The coating services activities that we can more easily get customers to try our coatings, that reduces the sales cycles. And the ongoing work to produce according to forecast, rather than to produce to order, will also reduce the sales cycles, because then we can deliver, and if we can deliver, we can get more orders. So actions to convert those leads to real customers is to first get them in as customers to our coating services. And as I said, we have, like, six of them, six new customers during Q4. And second step is to ramp up the production and sell machines to them.
Thank you. You touched upon the sales cycles there. How long is a general sales cycle for Impact Coatings until a lead becomes a deal, so to speak?
Yeah. I would say too long. But it's sort of a year is a good estimate of a sales cycle. It's shorter in China. It's longer in Europe.
Thank you. You mentioned that there was a lower activity than expecting for Coating Services. Why is that?
Yeah, the hydrogen market is a volatile market, and our offering to the customer is to... We can cut peaks for the customer, we can be flexible, we can start fast. So we sort of take the volatility from the customer. And the good thing with this is that we get the business. So, so that was one of the reasons why we could get the coating service business for electrolyzers that we have today. The downside is that, well, it is volatile, so, we have sort of very short forecasts. My expectation is that this is just a temporary down in coating services, and it will go back to normal.
Thank you. You set a new sales record in 2023. What has been the most contributing factor to that?
Basically everything. So we increased in aftermarket, we increased in coating services, and we increased in machine sales. So everything has contributed to the sales record. But I think the most important thing is to have a focus and tell the organization that this is the focus. We are on a journey towards profitability, and the way to reach profitability is to sell more. And this has been repeated to the organization over and over again. And the organization also did a joint effort in Q4 to actually deliver everything we had in the backlog.
This is good both for the numbers for the quarter, of course, but it's also good—a good start for 2024, because we want to go to production to forecast. We want to go to standardized product, and then it's good to have the deliveries made last year, so we can focus on that work. Now, I forgot your question. Did I answer your question?
Yeah, I think you answered the question here. Speaking of sales, during the quarter, you made your first delivery of InlineCoater IC2000. Have you received any response yet?
I've seen it. So when I was in China, I've seen it installed in a factory, and I talked to the CEO and the CTO of that factory, and they were both happy. They were talking about production capacity and what production capacity they wanted to reach in the future. I was also happy when I heard that.
Thank you. About Hyundai, what will be the relation with them going forward?
Yeah, we have had this joint development agreement for some years. We didn't prolong it for 2024. I mean, I'm fairly new, so I can say that I'm not really happy with the result of the joint development agreement. I would like to have commercial result. I would like to have a much more commercial relation where we can actually get revenues from this. That is our aim, to go to a commercial relation with Hyundai.
Thanks. And you touched upon it here, but I still want to ask the question: What have been the results of the GDA with Hyundai?
Yeah, in commercial terms, it has been very weak. The initial when the development agreement was initially signed, yes, we did sell a system to them. So, we have one system sales.
Thanks. One last question here about Hyundai. Will they stay, will they remain owners in the Impact Coatings?
Well, that's a question you should ask to Hyundai. But as of today, yes, they are one of the bigger owners. They have a board seat, but the question if they will remain, that is not up to me to answer.
Thanks. You talked earlier a little bit about Plug Power, and they, they seem to run out of money and lay off people. Can you give us a comment about this?
Yeah, I also saw the press release, if it was yesterday. I was there last week. They sort of saw a bright future ahead of them. They are still focusing on their hydrogen gas stations. They have a need for electrolyzers, and if you want to put a gas station every 50 miles, all from one end of U.S. to the other end of U.S., there's a lot of gas stations, there's a lot of electrolyzers, which means that there is a huge amount of plates for those electrolyzers, and those plates need coatings.
Thank you. Moving on to our last question here. Do the coating work for alkaline electrolyzers as well?
Alkaline electrolyzers doesn't have the same need for coatings, so we are primarily focusing on PEM electrolyzers. Basically, you can say that we can provide coating to any electrolyzer that needs coating, but that is primarily PEM electrolyzers. The difference between a PEM electrolyzer and an alkaline electrolyzer is that a PEM electrolyzer is much easier to start and stop. If you have green electricity from solar or from wind, then you want to start the electrolyzer when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining, and you want to stop it when the wind is not blowing, or it's a cloudy day. This is possible with PEM electrolyzers.
So that's sort of our big focus, but we do not say no to business for other electrolyzers.
Thank you. That was all the questions we had. I want to thank you so much for the presentation here today and answering our questions, and thank you all for tuning in, and I wish you a good luck going forward.
Thank you. Thank you.